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 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."

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

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