capeandcowllogs | There's a certain hint of gray that stays...

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There's a certain hint of gray that stays...

WHO: Alastair, Kiryu, and special guest stars, Bruno and Kaiba
WHERE: KaibaCorp
WHEN: Friday night, late
WARNINGS: maybe some violence, soul-stealing
SUMMARY: Alastair needs more cards to take more souls. Where do you find card blanks? Why, at KaibaCorp!
FORMAT: who am I kidding it's para

The first person to lose their soul was a parking attendant on the street outside Hell Towers. It couldn't be helped, he was in the way, trying to ticket cars that totally weren't blocking the garage entrance anyway. Doing so helped Alastair to discover the single card that had suddenly appeared in his deck with the awakening of his new power, but it also alerted him to the limitation. He could only take souls with an Oricalchos card, that was how it worked. But where to get more? He could probably handle the printing, but he needed card blanks.

KaibaCorp. Surely KaibaCorp had card blanks.

It might have been a little too cold for motorcycles, but there was no way Alastair was going to be beholden to a taxi in this state. He needed to ride, to feel the rush, to control his own destiny. With Kiryu by his side, he could do anything. They could find the bastard who killed Bakura and deal with him their way. Fuck the police, they were nothing but a road block anyway. And so, about an hour after all of this had started, after the first soul had become his victim, the two duelists stood outside the KaibaCorp offices once again. Alastair had his bootleg duel disk on, deck in the tray, ready to wreak some havoc. He looked at the doors and the security camera, and grinned recklessly. He wasn't going to hack in, this time. They were going to go right in and Kaiba wouldn't be able to stop them. Never.

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Kiryu had mixed feelings standing there in front of KaibaCorp. On one hand, Alastair must have had a reason for coming here and Kiryu wasn't going to question it. On the other...this was the reason they'd been in jail last week. He still felt guilty about getting Alastair arrested.

But so long as Alastair wanted to be here, Kiryu wasn't going to argue with it.

"What are you going to do?" Kiryu asked, adjusting his own duel disk. Not that he really needed it, but it made it easier to keep track of his cards.

Alastair pulled the card that held the parking attendant's soul, now just a terrified face trapped behind the Seal on the image. "I used to be able to do stuff with this power, a long time ago," he said heavily. "I don't know if I still can, now that it's back, but...at least I can try." He glanced at Kiryu and smirked. "And if it doesn't work, well, I'm sure you've got something in your deck that will."

He slipped the card in his pocket, since it wouldn't do him any good now that it had a soul, and closed his eyes. He didn't even have to try very hard, the image of Bakura's lifeless body came to him the second he did so. It was horrifying to think that he'd lost another little brother, and the grief welled up. It brought with it another surge of power, making the Seal on Alastair's forehead gleam and flash and a burst of green light to surround them. He opened his eyes to glare at the door and flung out a hand. Arcs of green-tinged energy lashed out from him and crackled across the electronically-sealed door. It seemed to take far too long, but then the keypad and security controls suddenly fizzled and fried, and the camera watching them from overhead shorted out. The door had no choice but to slide open.

Kiryu smirked back, brushing his hair out of his face. Of course he did. but he definitely wanted to see what Alastair could do now. If it was anything like in that dream...

It wasn't. It was even better. He laughed a little when the door slid open and ran forward to investigate. That ability...the was really cool.

"Looks like you still know what you're doing."

Alastair grinned with satisfaction, but he wasn't quite as giddy yet. Some part of him was still shocked at finding the Oricalchos awakened again, but he rationalized it as being justified - they had killed his brother again, after all. This was right. "Keep an eye out," he warned as he strode forward to join Kiryu. "Kaiba's probably beefed things up since we broke in last time. If anybody's here, you're gonna have to handle them until I can get more spell cards."

At this point, Kiryu would admit the giddiness was to keep him actually functional in the face of their brother being murdered, and that certainly wasn't a bad thing. And it was probably because he felt so normal with this rage and guilt and anguish and it was about time he felt normal again. He just wished Bakura hadn't been involved.

He gave Alastair the warmest smile he could muster and shifted his duel disk arm. "Don't worry about it. I'm not going to let anything get to you."

Alastair brushed a hand along Kiryu's cheek in gratitude. "I knew I could trust you."

He stalked into the darkened corridors of the inner employees-only section of KaibaCorp, focusing on where he might find card blanks. If they weren't printed on-site, someone in the offices might have some. Either way, they couldn't dawdle. There was too much to do. If this was the Major's doing...he had to find that fat Nazi bastard and destroy him.

The anger kept the Seal of Oricalchos shining strong on his forehead. Anyone who got in their way now was going to face powers they never expected. Like that security guard who just came around the corner...

Kiryu smirked and hurried after him. Of course Alastair could trust him. He would rather die than let their family get torn apart anymore.

He scowled when the guard appeared and started shifting through his cards. A moment later, Armed Ninja was forcing the guard against the wall and making sure he stayed silent. And suffocating him long enough to make him pass out.

Alastair flinched at the suddenly flurry of action beside him, and then grinned darkly. How perfect was their team, that Kiryu could act so quickly? Without a word he gestured with a toss of his head for them to keep going. He intended to find the executive elevator that would lead them upstairs. Didn't Ruka still work for Kaiba? Maybe she had a desk in one of the upper-level offices with card blanks.

"Come on," he whispered, hurrying down the hallway toward the elevators. "But if Kaiba himself shows up, he's mine. All right?"

Kiryu nodded, directing his monster to follow behind them. No point in dismissing it and using up the energy to just summon it again later.

"Mmm-hmm. I don't need anything from him right now."

"Good." It was late, but Alastair didn't put it past Kaiba to still be there anyway. The guy probably lived there.

The elevators on this end of the building went all the way up, unlike the ones in the amusement park. A glance at the directory told Alastair which floor to make for, so he punched the button and stood back to wait. A slight undercurrent of anger remained pulsing through him the whole time, even if he had to remind himself of his mission in order to keep it there, over and over. That way, if anything else jumped out at them, he would be ready to burst out with more of the Oricalchos' power. He didn't want to short out the elevator, though. No sense in making it harder.

The designers' offices were all on this floor, including Ruka's. Alastair figured one of them, maybe all of them, would have card blanks at their desks to facilitate new cards. When the elevator doors dinged open, he checked both ways for security personnel and then dashed to the desks and started ransacking them.

Edited 2011-02-28 04:18 (UTC)

Kiryu decided to wait by the elevator and send his monster out to investigate the floor and any possible threats. Alastair would find what he needed faster without him in the way, and he would be able to protect Alastair better if he could see what was coming.

Fortunately, luck was with Alastair this night. He found the teal-colored spell card blanks in more than one desk, and scrambled to collect as many as he could as quickly as possible. All in all he pocketed almost twenty cards. He brought them back over to Kiryu to show him, already used to the Armed Ninja lurking around keeping watch for them.

"See, it's like this," he quickly explained. "That guy's soul I took on the way here. That was my only card. If I want to be able to take more...I need more cards. These should work. I hope." He shrugged. "If not, I've got blank spell cards to fuck around with."

And it was just in time, too. Staying in one location rather than moving through the building had drawn security to them, judging by the stamp of feet and slam of doors a few offices away.

Someone else had also heard the stamping and slamming going on nearby; someone who hadn't meant to be working this late tonight, but who had done it often enough that that he knew that this kind of liveliness was not exactly usual here at this time of night. And so he'd got up from his desk and headed in the general direction of the hubbub.

And now he was opening a door into the office area where the designers worked, and set eyes on just about the last two people he'd have expected to see back in this place.

"What are you guys doing here??" Bruno blurted out in a half-dumbfounded, half-accusatory tone.

Kiryu nodded as Alastair explained it to him, smirking a bit at the last bit. "Could be fun, making our own spell cards. Maybe some of the speed spells I still remember..."

He looked up abruptly at all the commotion and started drawing cards, absently directing Armed Ninja to head off the guards and take down who it could. He stood ready to summon something else too...

And then Bruno appeared.

He didn't let down his guard completely, because he doubted Bruno was the one making all that noise, but he did relax a bit. It was Bruno; he wasn't going to attack a friend.

"Hey, Bruno. It's okay, we were just leaving," he said, offering a small smile.

Despite his unstable emotions and incomplete plans, Alastair really had no intention of hurting anyone specifically - and certainly not a friendly acquaintance. He glanced toward Bruno with a nondescript expression, though he really couldn't do anything about the glowing Oricalchos symbol on his brow.

He pocketed the card blanks and waved. "Forget you saw us, Bruno. We're not gonna get you in trouble with Kaiba again." He looked sharply over his shoulder at the commotion of security, and the Armed Ninja, and plucked one card back out in case he needed to use it on one of the goons.

The glowing symbol on Alastair's forehead clearly startled Bruno; he didn't exactly know the intimate details of Alastair's porter-powers, but the one time Bakura had mentioned them all he'd said was that Alastair's had something to do with being able to speak any language. This didn't really look like it had anything to do with languages.

And even from over here, Bruno was able to zero in his focus and catch sight of what Alastair was pocketing. Blank magic cards...?

Bruno was surprised by the hot little bubble of anger that started to grow in him. He and Yuusei and Ruka and all the rest of Kaibacorp, they were just trying bring pieces of their home into this place. Kiryu and Alastair were from their world too! Why did they keep on making things harder?

Bruno steeled his expression and started marching across the office toward the two. "You guys are stealing again, aren't you?" he demanded, definitely being accusatory now. "Whatever it is, just leave it behind and go! I don't want you guys to get in trouble with the police again, but I...!"

Edited 2011-02-28 06:14 (UTC)

Kiryu sighed, only looking vaguely annoyed. "There's no 'again'. We haven't stolen anything before now." Which he felt was technically true, since they had returned the D-Wheels. "Besides, Ruka won't miss them."

Of course, Bruno was a good deal bigger than both of them, so he did tense a little, ready to defend both of them if necessary. "You don't want to mess with us tonight. Just forget we were here, all right?"

"Yeah." But Alastair moved slightly into a confrontational stance, torn between wanting to chase Bruno away and wanting to deal with the other security forces. One of them was hilariously trying to use his taser on the Armed Ninja blocking the doorway. "Just turn around and go back into your office, Bruno. Don't make me do something serious."

His fingers fidgeted with the blank spell card at his side.

Bruno's teeth grated a bit the more they kept saying he should just turn around, walk away, 'don't mess with us or you'll regret it'. Just because he didn't usually use his powers-- no, the abilities that came along with what he really was-- that didn't mean he didn't have them. And even though he'd never really confronted him about it, Bruno had never quite stopped being mad about Alastair's thinking he could just take pictures of that D-Wheel prototype behind his back and put them up all over the internet.

But even so, he genuinely didn't want to get them arrested again. As he finally got within arm's length of the two, he glanced quickly in the general direction of the commotion with the security guys and growled under his breath in annoyance.

"Come on," he started to say as he made a grab for Alastair's arm, intending to drag the two of them down a side-staircase he knew about.

Kiryu had to admit, he was surprised that Bruno didn't turn around and leave them alone. He hadn't seemed like the type who would charge forward and confront his problems head on like that, although Kiryu supposed Yuusei wouldn't be so close to someone who didn't. He'd have to do something to make up for all of this later.

And that was probably why he was slow to react to Bruno grabbing at Alastair. Because really, it was Bruno, who usually seemed like he couldn't hurt a fly.

Alastair jerked his arm back, not sure if Bruno was going for the duel disk or the blank card in his hand. "What?" he yelped. "Get off me!" Out of instinct he shoved back, and the crackling power under the surface zapped towards Bruno. It wasn't enough to do damage, but then, Alastair didn't know that Bruno was potentially just as electrical as the door he had broken through downstairs.

Bruno barely had time to process the fact that there was something green and power-tinged crackling toward him from Alastair's hand before every input, every stream of data from within or from without his own body was completely overwhelmed by a sudden surge of incomprehensible energy.

Outside, Bruno halted mid-reach with a sickening twitch as his eyes flashed instantly to red and snapped wide in terrified confusion, then he seemed to briefly lose any sort of body coordination and almost fell to one knee before barely recovering his balance with a strangled cry.

A fraction of a second later and he was swinging a superhumanly fast backhanded strike towards the last known three-dimensional location of the nearest part of Alastair's body.

"What the fu--" Kiryu reached out to grab Alastair and jerk him away as soon as he saw the attack coming. He definitely wasn't as fast as Bruno, but after training with Saitou for a year and a half, his reflexes had gotten pretty damn good.

"What did you do?" he demanded, glancing at Alastair. It hadn't looked like much, but then why did Bruno suddenly look like a long lost Decepticon?

"It shouldn't have been enough to hurt him!" Alastair insisted. He wasn't out of control, he couldn't blow up windows or anything at the moment like he was used to. It should have just been a little warning jolt. He stumbled next to Kiryu, having barely gotten away with just a glancing blow to his arm.

He stared at Bruno. What the hell? But rather than protect his smarting arm and try to get away, in his enraged state, he finally had the courage to fight back. He held up the card between two fingers, wanting to be sure he had no other choice. "Can you take him, Kyosuke?"

Bruno staggered sideways a couple steps and clutched at his skull. He heard sounds, voices speaking words that he still couldn't attach meaning to through all the pain.

He tried to bring his mind to comprehend something, anything. What am I doing right now? What was he doing right now. He was trying to prevent these two people here from doing something. He wanted them to do something else. Ah, right. First he needed to stop them. He looked up at the closer one, the one who had reacted faster. He should stop him first.

Bruno reached out to take hold of the other and put him in a simple supinating wristlock. It should be easy to perform it with little to no injury, against an opponent with at best human-ideal reaction times. He knew that he didn't want to hurt him.

This time, Kiryu could quite react fast enough to get out of the way. Which would have been fine--at least Bruno was going after him now and not Alastair--except that it hurt. No matter how gentle Bruno was trying to be, he couldn't quite be gentle enough and it hurt, and Kiryu had to bite his lip to keep from making a sound.

And he was really hesitant to try and break free or wiggle into a less painful position. He really didn't need to deal with a broken wrist. His other hand flailed out at Alastair to grab his shirt of his wrist or something that he could focus on other than this.

"Fuck...Bruno..."

That was one step too far. Alastair snarled, "Kyosuke!" and then added, "Let him go," as a warning moments before he acted. He really didn't want to hurt Bruno, either, but when the choice was him or Kiryu, there really was no choice.

Losing his soul...would only hurt for a moment. And then he'd be fine. Safe, even. He could take a nice long nap until after this was over, and then Alastair would return it to him when he had what he needed.

He swept the card face-out toward Bruno, and the previously-blank window instantly displayed the same green symbol that was on his forehead. "I call on the Seal of Oricalchos! Seal the soul of my enemy!"

Even as he said it, Alastair hoped that Bruno didn't have a deck on him and wouldn't be able to duel him for his soul. Let this be over quickly!

This time the words did successfully get processed into meaning. Bruno just ignored them. He was trying to calculate the most probably successful method of coercing these two down the stairs (he had at least remembered that he meant to get them outside undetected, now) with minimal observation by the guards. This was a fairly complex set of objectives, and hinged among other things on whose power it was which was animating the Duel Monster blocking the door (review of the few seconds' worth of partial visual contact indicated with high probability that it was an Armed Ninja) in case he needed to render one of the two unconscious. He was setting several fractions of a second aside to process all this.

Just as he had nearly formulated a plan of action, the other individual (Alas...tair? Right, Alastair) began making a statement which from tone and cadence seemed to resemble an incantation. This could be a key new variable.

Bruno turned to look at Alastair as he spoke, and even as he was holding Kiryu to the floor and his eyes maintained their unsettling glow, his head cocked marginally and his expression had an almost innocent curiosity to it.

And then it was gone.

With an abortive little cry of confused pain like a bird flying into a glass door, Bruno's face went from an instant's worth of frightened shock to... sheer lifelessness. His grip on Kiryu's wrist and shoulder went slack, and he slowly crumpled to the floor beside him as the red in his eyes flickered out.

Kiryu jerked away as soon as Bruno's grip slackened and scrambled to get close to Alastair again, where it was probably much safer than elsewhere.

"Thanks," he muttered, massaging his wrist. "...Do we just leave him here?" For the moment, he was just going to stare down at Bruno's lifeless body. It sucked that Alastair had to do that to a friend, but at least he wasn't hurt.

Alastair hesitated a moment, and looked at the card in his hand. Bruno's curious expression was now frozen on the card face behind the Seal - he had no idea what was hitting him when it hit. He swallowed his feelings, though, and straightened up. "He'll be all right," he assured, his tone curt. "Security's coming, we don't have time. They'll find him and take him to a hospital or something."

He paused once more before fleeing, though, to look Kiryu over. "...are you okay? He didn't hurt you too badly, did he?"

Kiryu nodded with a faint smile. It still hurt a little, but it wasn't anything he couldn't deal with. "I'll be fine."

He glanced over at the hall where Armed Ninja was still blocking the way. That monster wasn't going to last much longer; it was only a level one after all. "Yeah, we should get out of here. C'mon."

Alastair spared one more glance at Bruno and then turned to run, reaching for Kiryu to keep him close at hand. It was a quick dash to the elevator, which was a more secure way to get down even if it wasn't exactly fast. He looked back at the Armed Ninja and the security behind it even as the doors closed, hiding them all from view.

He breathed a sigh of relief for the moment, and checked through the cards he had managed to nick. There would be enough to make him formidable for the time being - he could always release any he didn't need, right?

The door chimed and slid open on the ground floor, but the scene wasn't exactly one they expected. Security was there waiting for them - at least five, and armed.

Right about when they hit the ground floor, Kiryu felt Armed Ninja disappear. Fine. It had stalled the guards long enough. He could set something else up if they tried to follow.

And of course, it didn't look like those guards needed to follow. There were a whole bunch right here, waiting for them. Kiryu quickly started shuffling through the cards still in his hand. He didn't really want to kill these guys--Kaiba didn't need another reason to go after them--so he'd have to go with less hurtful effects.

"Lightning Vortex!" he said, holding out the card. Lightning started raining down out of nowhere, never coming close to himself or Alastair but targeting the bewildered guards with astonishing accuracy. Two were taken down before they could realize what was happening. A couple more managed to dodge the first bolt only to get hit by a second. At least one tried to fire at them but missed by a yard in his distress. But eventually, the lightening stopped and they were all lying on the ground unconscious.

"Nice move," Alastair encouraged. "I've got a couple of Hinotama cards if that'll help."

He heard something behind them as they stepped out of the elevator, and turned quickly with another blank card held out before him. Another guard, possibly coming in from the amusement park, had the worst timing. He blundered on them without realizing, and in that instant, had given up his soul to the card. He fell down unconscious with the others, while Alastair stood back looking serious. "Shit. How many more are there...?"

"Heh, yeah, I have a couple too. And some of the others like it..." And they were actually the easiest card for him to use, but he didn't really want to burn the building down. It was KaibaCorp; they still needed it.

He looked over in time to see Alastair take the guard's soul and started looking through his cards again. As great as it was, he wouldn't be able to use Lightning Vortex again for a while.

"It is Kaiba's place. He's probably beefed up his security since we broke in."

Kaiba had been contacted by the remains of his security after the attack. He had been told that two intruders had entered the building. It wasn't known what their agenda was, but they had taken out the security teams in the corporate floors. Kaiba had tried to remotely get into the security camera footage, only to find that it had been taken off line. Most of the electrical grid had been taken out, but was now coming back online. Once it was obvious that he couldn't do anything from where was, he was in his car and speeding towards KaibaLand.

He was greeted by the frantic security guards, and the maintenance teams working on getting everything back up. They believed that this had been carefully planned, because the security systems had gone out but the elevators were still functional. He got the entire briefing on the ride up to the designer's floor where the worst of it had happened. They were warning him that not to go up yet, and that something odd was happening, but he wasn't listening to them anymore.

As soon as the doors opened again, their warnings made sense. The large steel cage in the middle of the hallway, should not have been there. It was too large to have been brought there and it looked like...Nightmare Steel Cage. Inside of it was..

"Bruno!" he shouted angrily, "What happened?"

It had very quickly gone through all conceivable methods of escaping from the summoned cage, including main force. The object did not possess all of the properties of the physical metal out of which it visually and tactilely appeared to be made. The bars could not be bent. This phenomenon could possibly be explained by the fact that this object had been summoned from a Duel Monsters magic card by a probable psychic duelist. It was also therefore probable that the structure would disappear when the psychic in question ceased to actively concentrate on its summoning or lost consciousness.

And so, when Kaiba walked into the room, the "Bruno" to which he was shouting was standing quite calmly in the middle of the cage. When its name was called, it turned its attention toward the speaker.

Seto Kaiba. Its employer/superior.

"Sir," it said, in a perfectly emotionless voice. "There has been another break-in."

"I already know that," Kaiba said, coming closer to examine the scene. It was definitely Nightmare Steel Cage, but it wasn't a hologram. He was able to touch it, and feel the metal. There was no explanation for how it could have appeared suddenly enough to trap someone though. It was also large enough to have the effect of making it impossible to get around it.

There was also obviously something wrong with Bruno, but he had to solve one problem at a time.

"Where did this come from?"

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There's a certain hint of gray that stays...

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i'm assuming since alastair doesn't have any blanks, this is okay?

beautiful!

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sorry, I'm going to add to this so it gets to the fun part faster

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