Chapter 18: - Round 1, Fight!
Yugi was nervous as she progressed up the pitch black corridor. The double doors slamming behind them had cut the friends off from any light sources, leaving them wandering blindly through the darkness.
"Stay close, Yuge." Jou's voice came from her right, "I've got you."
"That's my arm!" Honda protested, "Let go!"
Yugi couldn't help the giggle that escaped. Trust her friends to break the solemn mood that had been settling.
"That's your arm?" Jou continued rambling, "I thought...yow!" Jou yelped as the lights came on all at once. Yugi yelped and covered her eyes as she was flash blinded by the artificial lighting.
"ALERT! ALERT!" A mechanical voice screamed, aiding the disorientation by deafening them, "ALERT! PREPARE FOR INVASION!"
"Ow." Yugi complained covering her ears as she blinked spots from her vision and took in their surroundings. It looked like the corridor of some space ship from a sci-fi film. Pretty generic looking but it still set the scene well enough.
"That was uncalled for." Jou grouched as he took point, Honda covering their rear as they progressed forward, thankful that the booming noise seemed to died down a bit. "Still, we can't be too far from the start of this blasted..."
"Help!" A woman screamed as the doors at the end of the corridor opened, "Please help me!"
"Anzu!" Yugi darted towards the sound of the screaming, having recognised the voice and terrified that Kaiba had gone after her too, "Anzu!"
"Yugi!?" Anzu yelped, stepping out of the doors only to stare at the group in shock. "Jonouchi? Honda? What're you doing here?"
"That's our line!" Jou shot back, "Did Kaiba get you too?"
"Get me?" Anzu was confused, "I work here. I was hired yesterday."
"Hired." Honda deadpanned.
"I needed another job after the Burger World one fell through." Anzu retorted, "And this one pays well. I didn't know you were going to be here."
"Be here?" Jou snorted, eying up the costume she was wearing and the gun in her hands, "This entire place is one giant death trap for Yuge and 'Neesan."
"Wha...what?" Anzu yelped.
"Kaiba's Challenged me." Yugi explained with a sigh, her hand going to the Puzzle, "He probably didn't know you were my friend when he hired you."
"I didn't see Kaiba. Just his recruitment team." Anzu admitted, looking worried. "The first game's right ahead." She gestured into the room she had exited.
"Good, the sooner we win this the better." Jou grouched, entering the room and taking in the armour and guns as the others followed, "So what, laser tag?" He guessed.
"That's right." Anzu nodded, "This is a shooting match, three against three and the battle takes place on the electrical field behind this door." She pointed to a sliding door just beyond her as the others got changed quickly. "There's a sensor on the left hand side of the armour," She tapped the one on her own outfit, "If you get hit there, you'll feel a slight vibration and you'll be out the game. The first team to lose all its members loses." She looked over at Yugi, worried, "Be careful. Please?"
"I'll try." Yugi wasn't going to promise more than that. She didn't know the games Kaiba had planned and Challenge or not, couldn't bring herself to expect him to play fair.
"Yuge, hang back for a sec." Jou gestured for her to stay with Anzu, "Let me and Honda go first."
"I should fight too." Yugi protested, "This is my Challenge."
"Just let us scope the starting area out." Jou tried to reassure her, "I still think Kaiba's setting us up and us guys should go first... wait up." He chased after Yugi, who had gone for the door, reaching it just after her.
"I'll be fine." Yugi promised, hoping fate didn't make her a liar as she opened the door and glanced around the opening carefully.
When she couldn't see anyone she edged out into the room, closely followed by the boys, only to jump a mile when there was a long 'bleep' floor and the floor revealed itself to be reinforced screens when Kaiba's face appeared on every 'tile.'
"Hello again, Yugi. Welcome to Death T-1, the first game of the theme park of death." He looked too happy to be saying that, "The three enemies you're about to face are mercenaries I've hired especially for this game! If you're lucky, you'll die in a blaze of glory like a shooting star across the sky!"
"Listen up bowl head!" Jou snarled back, "Your games suck! We're gunna make it to the top!" Yugi nodded her agreement, determined to make it to the final round and defeat Kaiba with her grandfather's cards.
Kaiba didn't respond to Jou's attempt at insulting his park and just turned off the camera with one last parting shot, "Enjoy your last game."
"GAME START!" The mechanised voice bellowed.
The trio of teens fell silent at the announcement, edging forwards in a group carefully until they could secure a corner. Once Honda and Yugi had it covered, Jou, in an insane move, decided he was bored of waiting and climbed on top of the barricades.
"Jou!" Yugi hissed, trying to keep her voice down, "What're you...?"
"Now I've got room to fight." Jou proclaimed quietly. "Now, where are they?" He leapt from barricade to barricade as quietly as he could, looking for his opponents and crowing when he found one, "Gotcha!" He yelled as he leapt, the adversary going to shoot Jou's sensor only to get a boot to the head. "One down! Eep!"
Jou had to make a speedy retreat as the other two mercs took pot shots at him, his 'totally planned' diversion giving Honda a chance to shoot the sensor of one of the other mercs, only for nothing to happen.
"You okay, Jou?" Yugi asked, worried as Jou ducked behind their cover, Honda covering his rear. Honda didn't catch Jou's response as a laser glanced off of the shoulder plate of his armour and an electric shock erupted from the piece of equipment.
"Yugi! Jonouchi! We need to fall back!" Honda ushered Yugi out first, well aware that it was her Kaiba wanted to beat and that they were just collateral. Jou followed his lead, complaining as he did so.
"Why're we running away? It's not cool to show your back to the enemy." Jou complained as Honda pushed Yugi through the door back to Anzu's room and he headed in after.
"You guys aren't supposed to leave in the middle of a game." Anzu pointed out.
"It doesn't matter if we take a breather or not." Honda snapped back, "Kaiba's rigged the game."
Yugi wasn't as shocked as she wanted to be. She had suspected something like this would happen the whole time but she had hoped that he had at least learned something from his Penalty Game.
"These guns are useless!" Honda chucked his on the ground hard enough to crack the outer casing, "There's no way we can win!"
"Are you sure it's not just your gun malfunctioning?" Anzu asked, horribly aware that Oneesan would happily have Kaiba's guts for garters if he was cheating.
"Look." Honda shot one of the spare vests. Nothing happened.
"Try mine." Anzu offered, handing over the laser gun that had come with her costume. When Honda hit the sensor with the second gun, sparks erupted from the armour, electricity playing over the dummy holding it, burning it. Yugi and Anzu both paled as Jou started cussing.
"So we have one working gun." Honda scowled, speaking only once Jou had finished his tirade. He looked to Yugi, "What's the plan?"
"You're asking me?" Yugi yelped.
"You're the one being Challenged." Honda pointed out. "We're just the backup."
"We've got two enemies left." Yugi thought aloud, moving away from the doors and noting that her friends followed her lead. "But both of them are professionals." She frowned slightly, cross at both Kaiba for cheating and herself so not being able to think of anything. "We're not going to be able to outshoot them. We need another way."
"They're gunna be waiting for us the moment we walk out the door." Jou pointed out.
"Which means they're gunna see a trick a mile off." Honda grouched.
"Not necessarily." Yugi replied slowly, a plan formulating in her mind as she did so, "I have an idea..."
LINE_RECOGNITION_HAS_GONE_AGAIN
Kaiba was, admittedly, disappointed when he watched Jonouchi step out of the door to the 'safe zone' first. He had hoped a gamer of Yugi's calibre would provide some sport before his games destroyed her, yet it was her friends who were providing the entertainment while she cowered.
He wasn't surprised though when Jonouchi dropped his gun and put his hands up, a universal sign of surrender. It wouldn't matter. The professionals he had hired wanted their hit money so defenceless or not, Jonouchi Katsuya was going to die. It didn't bother Kaiba in the slightest. If anything it was a good thing. When Yugi realised that it was 'fight or die' she might put up the fight he was looking for.
Jonouchi's defection wasn't even a wrinkle in his plan. He had expected Yugi's friends to abandon her. Friendship was nothing more than a lie perpetrated by the masses to get others to do things for them. At the end of the day the only person you could truly trust was yourself. The moment things turned really dangerous, people looked out for number one as this proved.
Or at least he thought it did until Honda sniped the two professional hitmen from the safety of the entrance and took them both down with no trouble using the gun he had provided for the guide. Still it wasn't until Jonouchi turned to Yugi, who was looking relieved but a little ticked off, and high fived her that he realised that the blonde's defection had been a diversion, nothing more.
It had been a clever trick, Kaiba allowed. One the hitmen obviously hadn't been prepared for. He supposed he should have seen it coming himself considering that Jonouchi never left Yugi's side if he could help it. Still it was the unknown qualities to his adversaries that made the game interesting. Even an unbeaten Game Master like himself wasn't omniscient and it was the odd little things, like underestimating how much it would take to split up Yugi's party, that stopped the games getting dull and made them more of a challenge.
Still there were four more stages to his theme park of death and while he didn't expect the whole group would survive till the final stage, he had a strong feeling that Yugi's Other Self, the one Yugi and her friends referred to as Oneesan, would be there. Ready to face him with her grandfather's deck and ready to face the Penalty when she lost. And she would lose, even with her grandfather's Blue Eyes White Dragon in her deck.
He had honestly expected to see the Other Yugi already. The 'normal' one always switched out with her when she was in a difficult situation. If anything he was vaguely insulted that he had yet to draw her out. Obviously his hitmen hadn't been enough of a threat for her. Perhaps the Horror Zone would do what they had not.
As he watched the quartet move forward into the next section of Death-T, he paid little attention to the ramblings of Yugi's guard dog. He might have found round one a 'piece of cake' but that was nothing in comparison to what was to come. Kaiba doubted that he would find a run in with Murderer's Mansion so easy to dismiss.
Of course they had to get there first...