MMBN RP - broken eyes watching over us

It had been a little while since both the concert and... well, the sleepover that had preceded it. As weird as thinking about that whole event was, Lan couldn't deny that she had fun. Both it and the concert had done a lot to assauge the stress she was under from the whole Triese incident, and with her slowly recovering and Lan splitting the watching work with Iris, things were getting... more tolerable. The chatroom was something she hadn't really trusted when Triese first introduced it to her, but now that the members (the normal ones, at least) had gone so out of their way to help her several times, she had a lot more faith in it. Now that Lan had a little more time on her hands, she was thinking about the sleepover again. One of her mirrors - the one with the blue hoodie and the jelly plush - had taken a liking to her, in a weird way. (It still surprised her how people kept calling her "cool", in spite of the fact that she certainly liked to tell herself that she was cool.) They had both agreed that they should meet up again at some point, when things were a little less chaotic and crowded - and besides, he had yet to deliver those Fossa Trackers that were promised. She really wanted those for the extra security, considering how much of her life lately had randomly been about portals. Today was a Saturday with absolutely nothing better to do, so now seemed as good of a time as ever to follow up on that conversation. She was feeling a little lonely and cooped up in her room after the excitement of the concert, so- she really wanted to move around or something. Rock, too, was bored, and shared a similar desire to see the people she'd met at the party again. She was quite enjoying living vicariously through Lan's suddenly expanded social life. [MSG:

] i was wondering. are the fossa trackers finished? [MSG:

] if they're finished, maybe i could pick them up and we could hang out...? (Lan couldn't believe that she was the one initiating this kind of conversation, but she supposed this is what being called "cool" did to her impulse control.) "Do you just wanna head over there?" Rock questioned, butting into Lan's thoughts. The other Lan had given them a second set of coordinates that matched up to his house instead of Mayl's, so they could, quite literally, drop in at any time. "What's stoppin' us? We've got nothing going on." Lan found it difficult to argue, so with nothing to do and nothing going on, she simply repeated the portal process from the sleepover and locked on to the new coordinates, stepping right through. @scenegraph

Netto had been putting finishing touches on the Fossa Trackers meant for the members of the chatroom who’d expressed interest, following the conversation he’d had with the twisted Hikari-hakase. He was sure that man was planning to engineer a way to open a portal without tripping the Fossa Tracker, and without having to be in a different world to lock onto chatroom members; and in turn, he’d built in a failsafe, one that relied on the energy signature of the portal opening rather than the particles it emitted before and during. With the last bit of casing in place, he shuffled over to the bed and half-fell onto it. “You’ve been way too worried for too long, Netto-kun,” Rockman sighed. “You should touch base with that person who was working on the jammer, and definitely tell Netto-ko as soon as you see him next, but then we’re definitely going on that arcade trip tomorrow. You’re exhausted, and you need a rest from all this.” “I can’t,” Netto said, too tired to protest much further. “If I step away… and he…” He shuddered, turning to bury his face in the pillow. “His own son.”

2:27 AM

“Netto-ko’s okay, you know he’s okay,” Rockman soothed. “How would… he even make something like that, with his world the way it is?” “Hn.” It didn’t change the awful feeling that he absolutely would, just to see if he could. It also didn’t change the fact that Netto had needed to explain what a Pantheon was to Rockman. Just thinking about it, coupled with the exhaustion, made tears spring to his natural eye. In that moment, the chatroom seemed like a terrible nightmare. “Looks like y’got a message from girl you,” Punk said. “…An’ another. Wonder how girl me’s doin’.” “Oh,” Netto managed to say. “You should get in touch with her and Rock-chan, too!” Rockman said brightly. “She would destroy you if she heard y’were callin’ her Rock-chan,” Punk pointed out. Then the relative silence was rent by every Fossa Tracker going off at once. Netto felt like his mind and nerves had been set alight, get to the closet the improvised firearm the— “It’s okay!” Rockman called to him, halfway through scrambling off the bed. “It’s only Netto-chan! It’s okay.”

Lan immediately regretted her impulsiveness the moment she spotted the absolutely terrified other Lan - and realized that the coordinates were directly in his room. The Fossa Trackers going off didn’t help her own nerves, either, so she quickly tensed up and waved her hand wildly in apology. “Ah! Sorry! Sorry! I didn’t- know that-“ She really thought this was a better idea on paper. That she’d stroll right through, and be at the entrance of the house or something like that, and say hi and they’d be on their merry way. Lan kicked herself for making that kind of assumption. “I- was impatient. I’m sorry,” she finished stammering, clutching her hand close to her chest and stepping back to give the other Lan space. Rock rolled her eyes. “Guess we bungled that one,” she mumbled to herself. “Should’ve listened to me, you know.” “What? You were the one who-“ “Shush. I’m defusing.” “How is that defusing??” As Lan and Rock whisper-argued with each other, they felt the tension in the room and both trailed right off into silence. A few seconds passed - Lan had practically backed up against the wall at this point - and she managed a light wave. “Um. Hi. Sorry.” (edited)

With the shock having nowhere to go, Netto was too tired to do much else than slump to the floor while he processed it all. “Ah, you’re all right!” Rockman reassured their guests. “What part’a this is ‘all right’?” Punk asked. Netto’s room was starting to resemble a lab—or a bunker—more than a bedroom. The Squishjelly on the bed was the one bit of it that still looked normal. “It’d be great if th’ chatroom just had folks like girl Netto ‘ere, but y’know that ain’t the case.” “…I know,” sighed Rockman. “But let’s be good hosts for now, at least. Okay?” He turned to the other Netto once again. “Thanks for coming over, Netto-chan. I think Netto-kun really needs someone else who knows what’s going on to talk to.” Punk seemed to think it over, then nodded. “Don’t mind ‘im. He’s worked ‘imself too hard again, an’ anythin’ woulda startled him like this.” With a tilt of the head in the direction of Rock’s PET, he added, “Nice t’ hear from you again, kid.” “Why don’t you hand him his Squishjelly?” Rockman suggested to Netto-chan. “He could use something to hold onto right now.”

Megaman and Punk's reassurance helped- if it was just her and her mirror, the latter of which she cringed upon seeing crumpled on the floor- she would have felt a lot worse, like it was a repeat of the start of the sleepover. Lan nodded fervently and took Megaman's suggestion with no hesitation, scuttling over to the Squishjelly on the bed and handing it to her mirror. Rock grinned, and waved back to Punk. "Well, if it calms your nerves, we haven't exactly been handin' out these coordinates," she said, shrugging. "Who else could it be?" Once she had handed off the jelly, Lan went straight back to having her back against the wall. "Um- right. Yeah. Sorry. I hope, uh, I didn't intrude on anything," she stammered. "I was just- there wasn't much going on, and I was thinking about things, and, uh..." "We just decided, 'screw it'," Rock butted in, finishing Lan's thought for her. Lan smiled nervously. "I'm... glad I can provide a distraction? I guess?" she admitted, rubbing the back of her neck and glancing at Megaman.

This time, Netto wasn’t dissociating—just exhausted. He propped himself up on the added heft of the Squishjelly like it was a life preserver. He really thought he was going to be able to stand a chance against their enemies from the chatroom when he was lying on the ground clinging to a stuffed animal. This was getting, Netto had to admit, a little ridiculous. “See, Netto?” Punk pointed out. “It ain’t like you’ve been tellin’ that creep to come an’ find ya. You’re doin’ fine.” “Mm,” Netto managed weakly, sagging bonelessly into the Squishjelly. “What was that…?” He sat a bit straighter and tapped the underside of the PET a few times, causing a holographic window to appear displaying Netto-chan’s last two messages. “Ah.” After another moment, Netto flopped back down and belatedly informed his counterpart, “Yeah, they’re finished. Let’s hang out…” He haphazardly gestured to the pillow on the bed. ‘Hanging out’ apparently meant ‘laying on the floor’. “You’re a terrible host, Netto-kun,” chided Rockman. “This is always what I do,” Netto pointed out. “When I don’t have anything to do.” “It is what he does,” Punk agreed. Rockman crossed his arms disapprovingly. “Let’s actually do something fun while we’re hanging out with Netto-chan.”

...he was completely exhausted. Lan wondered for a moment if she had came at a bad time, but... well, she knew better than anyone that she couldn't just let him stay slumped up against his bed. She had these moods, sometimes, too, where she just didn't feel like getting up and wanted to waste the day away. But she knew that was bad for her, and Rock knew that was bad for her, and basically all of her friends knew that, too. "Well... um, we could... make something to do...?" Lan suggested weakly. She wasn't sure what her other self was getting at by suggesting they hang out by sprawling themselves on the floor. Rock raised an eyebrow, surveying the room around them. It felt like something out of a sci-fi movie than someone's actual room - and his friend's house had seemed... substantially more normal, so Rock just wondered to herself if this guy was just a freak. (Well, she sort of had that vibe from the sleepover, but- moreso.) "You've got the trackers with you, right?" she questioned. "Man. Where the hell do you get the resources for this stuff?" Lan blinked. That was a good question - she was so nervous that she hadn't really taken in her surroundings fully. Was his room... a lab doubling as a living space...? (...Bad memories.) ...It was true that she didn't really know what he did in his everyday life. The other Lan that was an adult- she knew what he probably did, regrettably. But not him. "...Yeah," she quietly agreed with her Navi. "Have you still been working...? On what...?"

“They’re behind you,” Netto explained. “One for you, one for Iris-san, one for Triese-san.” After a moment, he managed to tell Netto-chan and Rock all the details, which was quite the achievement in his current state. “I’m the head of security at the Ministry of Science, as well as a Net Savior, as well as its head scientist’s son. So I have access to all the Ministry’s resources. I’ve been trying to prepare, after work. For those people who kidnapped Triese and set that SoulNet on Meiru.” Rockman explained, “If we can stop them here, in Japan, it’ll be all right. But if they got their hands on anything serious from one of the countries where substantiation isn’t banned, it’d be a disaster.” Netto sighed into the Squishjelly. The things wielded in the Dimensional War would be world-ending stuff anywhere without its own nightmare arms race to counter them. And that Hikari Yuuichirou both knew what they were and had threatened to use one of them. “I really don’t want things to come to this,” Rockman confessed. The note of desperation in his voice made Netto look up in mild surprise. “I don’t want Netto to have to defend himself so… violently, nobody does. So we’re all trying to keep a low profile in the chatroom. Not talk about these things we’ve learned about it any longer.” “But we sure as hell can’t stop ‘em from comin’ to us,” Punk concluded, stern with the experience of every one of his years. “An’ if he knows enough to make the kinda threats he was makin’ t’get th’ Fossa Trackers? Then it only makes sense to be prepared, ‘cause y’know Doc Nasty won’t be able t’stay away from somethin' that twisted.”

Lan quietly grabbed the Fossa Trackers and stashed them in her bag once her mirror pointed them out. She could at least rest easy that they wouldn't be caught off guard by random kidnappings with those around - they'd at least get some warning. They'd be able to fight back properly. -SciLab? Lan hesitated for a brief moment. Of course, SciLab was where her dad used to work- she thought. It didn't exist anymore, and... that's all that she could really remember. She cringed, trying to remember anything more about it and then realizing, does he work with his dad, was he just inducted into-? ...No, it wasn't that simple, because she trusted him and he had gone out of his way to make something to specifically stop things like Triese's kidnapping from ever happening again. Maybe things were different here. They had to be, if SciLab was still up and running. And it sounded like... there were other things that the three of them were worried about, anyway. "I think... that that's for the better, yeah," Lan responded nervously. "I guess- in a way, that makes these meetups more... secure. Than the chatroom." "True. No one's listenin' in on us," Rock added, nodding confidently. "Unless you installed cameras in here or somethin'. Then those could be hacked, and..." Lan's face twitched - the last thing they needed right now was paranoia fuel. "Rock, shut it," she said. (Rock promptly did so.) Both of them went silent for a few seconds. Obviously, they needed some kind of distraction from... everything that was going on - in her experience, distractions were pretty reliable for clearing her head. And now, she felt... a sort of responsibility to get her mirror off the ground, put some effort into clearing his exhaustion, help him somehow, because she was the one who had made this problem and she should be finding a solution. Right? "...We don't have SciLab in my world anymore," she spoke softly, trying to attach to any subject that'd be worth their time at all. As painful as those memories were. "I'm. Um, glad they have the resources to help us, at least."

“Like I’d be dumb enough to put cameras in here,” Netto scoffed, a bit of fighting spirit reawakened by the idea. “And, yeah. We need to be meeting in person or using the DMs, if we want to share anything important.” “You don’t have the Ministry of Science?” Rockman asked, genuinely surprised. “Your world came out different,” Netto recalled to his counterpart. To Rockman, he suggested, “Could be the Ministry’s just doing other things besides network technology. Or maybe it was folded into some other department.” “I guess…” Rockman began to explain, “When we lost Netto-kun—” “It’s like I’m a set of keys,” Netto groused to his visitors. “—I served as Papa’s Navi, helping him wherever I could around the Ministry and learning more about his work. So I know they’re capable of almost anything.” A bit reflective, Rockman said, “It’s a little... strange, to think of it all not existing.” “And yet they had attacks on their network all the time. That’s where I come in,” finished Netto. “I can't invent whole new categories of technology like Papa, but I'm the best there is at what I do.” His tone wasn't boastful about it. It was more like he was stating a fact.

Inadvertently, Lan choosing to pursue this conversation meant that she had to recall some... foggy memories. Most of what she knew was absorbed from harsh, whispered conversations between her parents and various stories on the TV and online. "I think it was just... dissolved," Lan thought out loud. "A couple years ago, I think. The government was dropping support for the Net in a lot of places." She realized, then, that her counterpart might have no idea what she was talking about. Rock made the same note, and jumped in to add her own personalized explanation. "Oh, in case you guys don't know, our Net's messed up," she chimed in. "Bug wiped everything out, hasn't really been rebuilt, not a lot of Navis around, yadda yadda." Lan was beginning to get sick of the story, especially with how personal it was for her. "It's like I'm a set of keys"- yeah, she knew that feeling maybe a little too well. "Well- um, but that's not really important," she stammered, with a bit of an uncomfortable look in her eyes. She was a lot more interested in finding out what... was on her side, for lack of a better term, than jump straight to her sob story. "What's... more important is making sure we're all safe." "Guess we're in luck to have the 'best there is' on our side," Rock added with a light joking tone. "Can't be too bad of a place, SciLab, if it's able to do 'basically anything'."

Rockman listened to Netto-chan and Rock’s story in sad silence. “I know everyone is making the most out of what’s left, but… I’m still sorry that happened to all of you.” With a gentle smile, he added, “I’m glad your world’s future is in the hands of people like you. And Triese-chan, too, Meiru-chan’s always had nice things to say about her.” With more enthusiasm, he explained, “The Ministry’s where the Net Saviors and Meijin-san wait on standby, and it’s where we keep track of any new mysteries developing in the Internet! It’s a really fun place to be.” “Of course you’d say that. Pinky’s there,” Punk pointed out flatly. “There are other cool Navis who work at the Ministry!” protested Rockman, blushing. “Like Blues, and Gateman, and now Ring-chan and Turboman. And Searchman's in town, too, and...” “But mostly Pinky,” Punk finished. “I didn’t say that!” “Everyone ‘ere who's in on it's gonna keep watchin’ over th’ chatroom, I guess,” Punk explained, leaving Rockman no room to launch a counteroffensive. Netto didn’t seem like he was going to share any details; he was curled over the Squishjelly, a distant look in his eyes. “An’ if that fucker tries anythin’, we retaliate. But until then, we see what he’s capable of, an’ we prepare for it.” “…Why target Triese?” Netto wondered, hushed. “What would a world like that have to offer people like them…?”

Rock was the first to respond, since Lan was stuck in her own pensive silence. "Eh, it's all good. We're livin'," she insisted. Easy for her to say, since she had only existed for so long - but that's how Lan saw things, so that's how she felt she should see it, too. "Solving mysteries with other Navis, huh? Sounds like a fun place to me." Lan, meanwhile, was more preoccupied with the threat at hand. Uncomfortable questions related to said threats that she had no idea how to answer. Why did they target Triese, of all people? "I guess... they thought she was just easily manipulatable," she wondered aloud. "But... she doesn't have anything. Maybe... maybe her dad, but they didn't... I don't think they even knew." She really had no idea. It was as her mirror said- if the Net was broken, what would they even be after? The Photon Decoder and the Dream Eraser were gone, and- if there was something else they weren't aware of, how would they have even gotten that information? Was there more to this that she wasn't understanding-? Now Lan was wearing the same glassy look in her eyes, lost in her thoughts about how she was going to fight back against any of this. That she had stumbled into something way bigger than she was- worse than what she'd been through before, even. Pause. Rock noticed her awkward silence, and the same look on her counterpart, and she felt... guilty about it. She couldn't let Lan just... be absorbed in these shitty thoughts. "Hey. Kid," she piped up, waving on the PET screen. Lan blinked, snapping out of her stupor. "We don't have to think about that right now, 'k? Let's do somethin' cool with our time." She paused for a moment, glancing back at Megaman and Punk. (Dang, she was really starting to feel jealous of those holograms.) "Hey, we've been talkin' about that SciLab place, right?" she suggested. "I wanna see. Sounds like a sick place. Gets us outta this dark room."

Netto sighed. After the threat ‘Doc Nasty’ had made on his son to get to him and the lack of follow-through so far, he’d started to wonder if it had simply been some kind of sick joke enacted to put Triese in her place. Learning there was nothing in her world for Regal to benefit from didn’t help any. But if even Netto-chan didn’t know for certain, it was more likely that he was letting his past experiences color his perception of everything. Just about anyone under the Citadel would’ve come up with similar, but that Regal and Hikari-hakase weren’t from there. He wasn’t sure if that made this situation better, or just different. Netto glanced back in the direction of his counterpart just in time to hear Rock’s suggestion. “I don’t know who’d be around right now, though, this isn’t exactly a peak time.” After a glance at Netto-chan’s PET, he added, “They don’t do anything with the Progress, anyway. That’s a little more underground.” “Enthusiasts love ‘em,” Punk added. This was a bit of a fudging of the details—said ‘enthusiasts’ were into things a bit more unsavory than a standard Netbattle—but it was close enough. “Its run was real short, but th’ grip and scope slots can get tricked into a whole lot more than th’ stuff IPC produced.” “If their world has fewer Navis, it might be more likely that Netto-chan has a Progress PET because they never made the Link or the Mode PETs,” Rockman pointed out; he wasn’t completely oblivious to that envious look in Rock’s eyes. “So really, a better question would be whether Netto-chan would want to shop for a newer PET while she’s here…”

Lan was decidedly not familiar with how PETs worked, and neither was Rock - she was just the Navi sitting around in it, all she had to know was enough to operate the device from the inside. This stuff was more Triese's thing, but she was... decidedly out of commission. Even Megaman and Punk knew more than her, it sounded like- which was a little funny when they weren't even from the same world. "I... don't really know the differences between the PETs...?" Lan questioned out loud. She held up her PET - pink casing, black pads on the corners, a blank grey emblem - surveying the device like she'd never seen it before. "It's called a Progress PET? I... didn't know." Rock raised an eyebrow and pulled up the PET's device settings, flipping through a maze of tabs and eventually finding the info she wanted. "Hmm. Says here the model name's a Transport PET," she said. "How's that happen? What, did our worlds just make the same device and called it a different thing?!" (There were some subtle differences, unbeknownst to Lan and Rock, since they had no frame of reference. The "Transport PET" was a bit blockier and smaller, and had a wider screen, with smaller buttons clustered on the left as a result - still recognizable as a Progress, but putting them side by side would make it more obvious.) "...I just got this as a birthday gift two years ago. I didn't think very hard about it," Lan recalled, spinning her PET around. "...Uh, but why would I need a new one?" Rock almost took offense to the statement. Her gaze shot towards Lan as her eyes sparkled fiercely. "What do you mean?! For cool new features, that's what!" she declared. "You see those holograms? They don't make stuff like that! But now I know it exists, so I want to walk around, too!" (This was probably the most like a petulant child she had ever sounded. This was made worse by the fact that Rock hadn't been allowed to use a Copybot yet.) Lan reeled back slightly. "But I... I don't have money, Rock," she protested. "And... uh, I don't think I could hide some super other-world PET model from everyone." "Then it sounds to me that we ought to know what those enthusiasts were up to," Rock responded, giving Punk a sly grin.

“Th’ PET itself’s hard to score nowadays, from what I hear,” Punk told Rock (and Netto-chan by proximity), “but grips and scopes for it’re dead cheap at pawn shops. Then we can loot a more common PET for th’ hologram tech, an' then we'll be cookin'.” Rockman tilted his head to the side—the Transport PET did seem a little different than he remembered the Progress PET being, but without one nearby to compare, he wasn’t certain. “The… Transport PET?” Netto wondered incredulously. “What was the campaign for that one?” One of his earliest memories of his return to Densan City had been catching the commercial for the Mode PET—which featured Enzan flouncing about like a supermodel to demonstrate ‘every fashion of life’ it was named for. “Did Enzan have to dress up like a train conductor, or something?” The idea of it seemed to be breathing the life back into him; it was quite the distraction from what he’d been thinking over before.

Lan blinked - there was a lot she was going to have to explain, and she didn't even have the full details for everything. "Chaud? Uh," she mumbled out loud. "I knew another Chaud, but he wasn't from my world. A campaign...? I don't really watch TV..." Rock's curiosity was piqued - but considering that they were in the wrong world, they couldn't just look this up easily. Luckily, they could learn enough from the hardware settings. "Manufactured by a company called Zephyram, it says," she read out loud. "Never heard of 'em. I don't do business." "...I dunno how they even market PETs," Lan kept wondering. This was so out of her wheelhouse- she constantly had adblockers on and never paid attention to what was playing downstairs. "I think most people just... have PETs because you have to have them. I couldn't tell you what kind of features this thing has..." "See, that's why we gotta get more," Rock insisted. That sparkle was still twinkling in her eyes. "I'm all for looting. And surely we've got some pocket change to pick up some spare parts. Right? Right?!" Lan sighed. She did have a little bit of savings handy, and it would be a little less objectionable to beg for some spare change than money for an entire new PET. "I guess," she relented.

“Zephyram…?” wondered Rockman. “Wasn’t that an old Ameroupian company…?” “I think it is, yeah,” Netto recalled. “They’ve still got a foothold in defense. But IPC ate their lunch in the consumer market, and now it’s all anyone thinks of when it comes to PETs.” To his counterpart, he explained, “Enzan used to be the poster boy for IPC’s PETs, so they’d market them by making him star in these inescapable, goofy commercials. You should ask one of ‘em for his TV smile sometime, it’s the creepiest shit you’ll ever see.” “It’s a perfectly nice smile!” Rockman protested weakly. “It’s just, um, not really his.” As if Rockman hadn’t commented, Netto continued, “But if IPC doesn’t make PETs, then of course you don’t know the Enzan from your world.” “Looks like we’re hittin’ th’ nearest pawn shop,” Punk said, much calmer than Rock. “Guess you’ve gotta get up, Netto.” “We can’t keep Rock-chan waiting, Netto-kun!” seconded Rockman. With a wordless sound of protest that might’ve been either a whine or a groan, Netto attempted to struggle to his feet.

Rock-chan. She scoffed at that- she was lucky she had a lot of respect for Megaman, so all he got was a vaguely nasty glare in his general direction. But at least they had a plan. "...Yeah, he mentioned being a vice president," Lan recalled out loud. "The... one I met. He was my age, so that was kind of weird." It was less concerning hearing about this when the Chaud she saw at the sleepover was considerably older than her - but then again, she also didn't have a time reference for any of this. "I've never heard of a Chaud in my world, but I haven't met that many people, so I don't know if that means much..." "I guess if he is around, it means he's not famous," Rock speculated, putting her thumb to her cheek. Lan scrunched her face. "I don't really know famous people, though," she protested right back. But both her and Rock realized this was kind of a pointless conversation, anyway. ...Watching her counterpart struggle to get up was enough to get Lan out of the corner. She scuttled over and offered a hand to help him get up- and Rock couldn't help but giggle over it. "Look at her. She's practically the life of the party," she joked. Rock had become used to watching high-energy people lug her operator around, so the idea of watching... these two drag each other with their matching energies was deeply amusing.

The helping hand made it much easier to get up, even if Netto felt like lazing about was his natural state of being. “…Thanks.” He thought over what had been said in the meantime, and said, “When I first met Enzan I think he was a vice president, and he would’ve been, like, eleven or twelve back then. And then he got the Net Savior job about half a year after that… This is probably the most free time he’s had in his life.” “He sure seems less shitty, since he left ‘is dad,” Punk noted. “He was always like this. You just didn’t know him yet,” Rockman gently but immediately protested. (Ah, Rock-chan had an image to uphold, she didn’t like being Rock-chan like Netto-chan was Netto-chan…) “Everyone who’s ever been anywhere near th’ region knows ‘im,” Punk scoffed. “They know of him, but I don’t think that means they know him as a person,” Rockman retorted. As they began to head in the direction of the stairs, Netto somewhat ominously pointed out, “Mama’s down there. Get ready.” “For what?” Rockman asked, incredulous at the idea that Haruka needed to be braced for. (edited)

Lan ended up being the one in front of the pack- unusual for her, but, well, someone had to go down the stairs first. There was something a little eerie about the house once she stepped into the hallway; there was enough resemblances that she recognized it as her own house, but there were just as many subtle differences and shifts that threw her off. (And as for Chaud, the idea of being that busy at an age younger than where she was at the moment was dizzying. How did he even survive? Well- he did have people to post for him, apparently. That was one thing to ease the nausea, she had to suppose.) "I didn't get to know him very well," Lan mumbled. "It's- kinda weird. We fought together, but I feel like I already know the one you know better... he never really talked about his life. Just... what our next moves were." Halfway down the steps. "Your mom?" Rock wondered out loud, sharing in Megaman's incredulousness. And then she remembered the sleepover, with how much Haruka had... doted over her operator- something she certainly hadn't seen coming from the one she knew. Rock looked up- and she could tell Lan was taking her counterpart's cold warning more seriously, taking the last few steps down the stairs and practically bracing herself to be attacked on sight. She had one hand pressed to her chest, an apprehensive look- and she rounded the corner.

“Yeah, that sounds like him,” Netto said, smiling. It was clear he was thinking about something far in his past. “He doesn’t like bugging people with his personal stuff. But that’s why you have to keep bugging him about it! It’s good for him.” The smile widened into a huge grin, clearly but silently amused. “Enrichment.” As they started taking the stairs down, Haruka called up, “Netto, are you o—“ Then Netto-chan came into view—and, from her perspective, Haruka did as well. “Netto-chan!” She set down the pan in her hand and swiftly walked over to greet the other Netto in the usual way, sweeping her son into the embrace along with Netto-chan for good measure. “Why didn’t you tell me you were having a guest over?!” she asked him. “I would’ve had snacks ready!” “It was a surprise visit,” Netto managed to come up with. “I’m so glad you came over! Are you doing well?” she asked Netto-chan. “She’s as cool as customer as ever!” Rockman laughed. “We’re going to make a custom scope for her PET, in fact.” “A scope…?” wondered Haruka, sounding totally unfamiliar. “Oh, her world’s still a couple of PET models behind ours,” Netto explained. “It’ll be fun.”

Lan was just as caught off-guard by being captured by her mother's counterpart as she was the first time. She let out a pretty embarrassing squeak as the three of them were squashed against each other- she couldn't help but tense up, and Rock couldn't help but laugh out loud. "U-uh, yeah. I'm doing okay," she muttered awkwardly. "Apologies for dropping in, Ms. Hikari," Rock said, extending her arm to no one in particular. (She would love those holograms right about now, then everyone could see all her expressions and-!) "Was totally spur of the moment. But we've got a plan now!" Lan blushed- both from the situation and from being called cool yet again, this time by Megaman of all people. She supposed this was just the reality, which- well, she should be fine with it. It was just odd to feel like so many people... were caring about her? "My Navi wanted some of the new features," she said, following up on her counterpart's explanation. "Um, which will be, interesting. I'm not really a tech person, but..." Her voice trailed off, still half-distracted by being squished up against two separate people.

It was still weird to have so much touch that wasn’t meant to harm, after six years without it. But it felt so safe in the embraces of the people he cared so much about, and who cared so much about him in turn. Netto was totally relaxed, unlike Netto-chan. “Thanks for getting my Netto out of his room,” Haruka told Netto-chan. “You can use the living room for your scope. I don’t know what his room looks like right now, but he keeps bringing computer parts into it…” Netto was half a head smaller than his mother; he had to look up to see her face. She was not lying. “You… don’t?” “An adult needs a space that’s theirs alone, you know?” Haruka said, smiling. “Which also means you’ve got to clean it.” “Th-thank y— Of course,” Netto stammered, still faintly surprised.

Lan blinked, sharing in her mirror's surprise. Her mom didn't come up to her room that often, but the idea of her not knowing what his room looked like at all was a bit comical. "Y-you're welcome. It's- uh, a nice room," she described, still caught up in the awkwardness. Given, she barely knew half of what was going on inside of it, but with how much stuff was crammed inside of it- she got the feeling that he was well-prepared, and Lan appreciated that more than anything else. ...Haruka was right, too. Lan wasn't exactly an adult, yet, but that kind of space, one that was just for them, brought a lot of comfort even when she was feeling down. A safe space, even if it wasn't all that flashy or interesting. "Huh, is he a mess?" Rock wondered out loud. Her Lan was a little disorganized, but she picked up after herself - nice for her, since it meant she didn't have to nag too much. "Or, I guess... was he, if you haven't been up there." Lan's lips twitched. "Hey, be nice," she retorted, finally relaxing a little bit. "I'm sure, uh, he has his own way of doing things. All those parts are probably useful? I think?" Rock shrugged. "True. And it all works out in our favor," she asserted. Neither she nor her operator had a strong idea of what the scope would entail, but if it let her do more, she was all for it.

“When he was younger, I always had to nag him! But now he’s too tidy…” sighed Haruka, as if Netto wasn’t perfectly capable of hearing everything. “I want him to be comfortable taking up space. Making that room his own again.” “It’s getting a little better,” Rockman reported to Haruka. “It was still a bit plain, before this trouble in the chatroom started, but at least he got another pillow?” “None of you have ever told me why this is so important,” Netto pointed out flatly to Rockman. “If nobody’s inspecting my room, then it really doesn’t matter, does it?” In a mock-whisper, Haruka told Netto-chan, “This is exactly why it matters.” Obviously uncomfortable talking back against his mother, Netto weakly protested, “I can still hear you, y’know…” “How long do you think you’ll be out?” Haruka asked next. “Probably only ‘bout an hour,” Punk said, since Netto wasn’t about to. “Have fun, you two!” With a final squeeze, Haruka released the Nettos. “I’ll make cookies for later.” As they walked toward the door, Netto embarrassedly muttered, “It’s not a play date…”

Lan was a little confused at first, before remembering that- right, this Lan had been kidnapped in the past. It only made sense that he would be so worried about Triese's own kidnapping- she didn't have very many details on what went on with him, but she could fill in a few blanks from that knowledge and the way Haruka spoke. The thought freaked her out a little bit. "I mean... she's sorta right. It's your room. It's your space," she quietly agreed, pondering her thoughts for a moment. Her own room was honestly a little bland-she ought to feel a little braver by now, shouldn't she? "I should get more posters or something," she wondered aloud. An hour trip for what sounded like a big upgrade was pretty brisk- and in that moment, Lan found herself a little more excited, helped by the prospect of snacks. She supposed Rock's enthusiasm was infectious. (Though, of course, once they were out the door and her counterpart's protest was thrust unto the world, Lan's attitude shifted for a moment as she nodded in agreement. They were both older, they weren't kids, this was all important stuff, and suddenly now she was too cool to eat cookies.)

“I don’t know what to do with it,” Netto admitted, referring to Punk’s navigation in the PET to lead the way to the pawn shop. “It’s… easier, kinda, if I just use it like another lab.” Labs were something he definitely knew how to fill, in contrast to bedrooms. Rockman seemed a bit surprised. “You don’t have to know what to do with it, Netto-kun. It’s a bedroom. It’s… sort of like my homepage inside your PC. I just have things I’ve accumulated in there that I enjoy. Like the hoodie Meiru-chan made for me to match Roll-chan’s, and things I’ve found from around Internet City, and links to game instances of ours, and so on. I guess you can put a bit more thought into curating it all, like Roll-chan does, but for me it just sorta… happened?” “It’s weird you’ve got so much stuff in your homepage, is more like it,” Punk said.

Lan paused for a second as they walked out the door. Unfortunately, she'd been unintentionally called out on her hypocrisy. "...Yeah, I don't know sometimes, either," she wondered out loud. "But, I dunno. If I'm holing myself in there all the time, maybe I should live a little..." "See! I'm rubbing off on you," Rock beamed, giving her operator a thumbs-up. "Get some posters, and a cool stand for your PET, and a plushie or two... Heh! Maybe we could go on another interdimensional shopping trip later." Lan blushed. "N-no, we're not doing that," she protested. Punk's comment about Megaman's homepage got her thinking, though- the Megaman she knew told her how empty he thought it was, which would only make sense if his homepage was.... so cluttered, like that. Though, Rock wanted her to customize her homepage more, too- maybe she ought to listen to their advice. She paused for a moment, tugging on her vest. Maybe her counterpart would understand how she felt, anyway? "It's like... for a while, I wasn't thinking about this stuff, because I thought it didn't matter, and I didn't really have anyone to push me to do better," she mumbled, her tone and expression a little pensive. She glanced down at Rock and smiled. "I... guess that applies to my PET, too, huh."

“Yeah, I never think about it, either,” Netto agreed. “I wasn’t allowed to keep anything besides what was assigned to me, so I just got used to it. It feels… a little scary to have so many things around that could be used against me. Even though I know nobody here’s going to do that.” The urge not to call attention to himself, the real him, was still there. It had been a matter of survival before, but even with Regal and that Hikari-hakase around, was it really as all-important as his nerves screamed it was…? “Netto-kun.” Rockman and Punk were both looking up at him. Rockman was visibly worried, and Punk was giving him a silent look of warning: it’s probably not that deep, you might want to reel that back in. “I think… it’s normal, isn’t it? For teenagers to figure out how they want to express themselves.” Normal? Netto didn’t think he’d had that sort of phase. Or maybe he had, and it had lasted about three months before—no, no, Rockman was trying to give him an out, he needed to take it. “Yeah,” he managed faintly, forcing his thoughts away.

Lan wasn’t quite sure if she was understanding what assigned and used against me meant at first- she knew her own mother had restrictions, but whatever he was talking about seemed a lot more serious. She had half a mind to ask- until Megaman intervened and swerved the subject back to normalcy. Probably wasn’t the best idea, then. Rock jumped in to continue the conversation in her stead. “Normal and encouraged! By me, that is,” she boasted. “I bet she wants to go all out, but she’s always afraid people’ll call her cringe at school or something. But we both know she’s above that.” Lan grunted. She hadn’t said that outright, but Rock had enough of a read on her based on all of the Disturbed AMVs she was watching lately. The fierce glare Rock received in return told her that she should probably just leave it at that. “…Anyways, speaking of swag,” she continued. “Give us the rundown. What’s a scope? What’re are options besides the holograms?”

Netto looked around at the shopping street they’d arrived on; a bit smaller than the main Downtown stretch, with more generic-looking buildings, but not completely rundown. These sorts of places were starting to feel ordinary. Ordinary again, even, if he let himself think back that far. It was so strange, considering what they’d just been talking about. “I don’t think anyone’s ever had the nerve to call me ‘cringe’,” Netto said, still in that distant, reflective mood. “Or anyone else I, uh, received my education with.” The idea of calling the other Silver Division members ‘cringe’ was great, though, since he was fairly sure half of them had no idea what slang even was as a concept. And if they did, the person doing so would probably end up very disproportionately dead as a direct result. From the outside, it probably seemed as though Netto was giggling at nothing, hand to his mouth to hide his expression. “There are two ports besides the wireless plug-in port on a Progress PET, called the Custom Gates,” Rockman explained while his Operator was enjoying his fantasy. “There’s the upper port, for a scope attachment, and the lower port, for a grip attachment. Grips usually increased stats, like Hit Points, or powered up elemental attacks. And scopes did things like help accuracy or focus attacks.” Sheepishly, Rockman explained, “The Progress PET was only the newest model for a few months, so that’s really about it…” “But that’s jus’ all we’ll find for sale,” Punk added. “Those grips and scopes’re easy t’modify, and then th’ Custom Gate’s anti-piracy is easy t’satisfy. Y’can put whatever y’want into ‘em, so long as y’don’t draw too much power outta th’ PET.” A badly made grip or scope program could also damage the Navi, but it wasn’t like most Operators Punk had run into cared about that. And Netto wasn’t about to make a badly made scope, anyway. (edited)

Rock nodded pensively. "...You must've been a lucky kid, then," she absentmindedly mused out loud, entirely ignorant of whatever her operator's counterpart was giggling about. "Meanwhile, I'm here to make sure people don't keep trying that shit against my operator. Lots of losers in this world." Lan shied away from that conversation topic- luckily, Rock had already given her the out, anyway. She was shocked at the idea that this world only had the "Progress PET" for a few months- PETs weren't getting that many reissues, and the Transport PET had been the "current" model for the past two or three years. (Now that she thought about it- she glanced at her PET, and, yup, the ports were there. They were kinda lucky the model was close enough for this information to still be relevant.) "So... kind of like physical Navi Customizer parts...?" she guessed- oh, do they even have that? Well, whatever. "I guess- that's just the official stuff, though... we can really do whatever we want...?" "Oh, hell yeah," Rock beamed. "We never have enough room for FloatShoes. We could get that, and then stat boosts on top of that and then we can also make all our attacks explode!" She paused. "...On second thought, maybe that's a little too cheat-y..." Lan tugged on her shirt collar. "I- dunno. Maybe we should... focus on safety stuff before battle stuff..."

Rockman’s expression grew sad when Rock assumed Netto had been ‘lucky’. “…Naw, that wasn’t luck,” Punk said bitterly. “That was bein’ turned into th’ scariest thing in th’ room, so no one'd dare to say it even if they were thinkin' it.” It was hard to say whether Netto had been paying enough attention to hear everything, but he did seem to return to earth just in time to avoid walking into a bike rack. (Nobody in the Nova base had called Black ‘cringe’, either. They’d just wondered what was wrong with him, with varying levels of incredulity or fear.) (Nobody had even wondered what was wrong with Punk. They simply feared him if they were Navis or commanded him if they were human.) “Navi Customizer…?” wondered Netto. “I know about adjusting stats, but this sounds different.” “Is… that like the Air Shoes Battle Chip?” Rockman wondered, still in a bit of a dampened mood from earlier.

...Okay, Lan definitely had to ask about this later. Every time Punk, or Megaman, or her counterpart delved into what she had to assume was about the kidnapping, she only got more confused. She supposed it didn't help her only frames of reference were... TV shows and Triese. And even then, she still wasn't entirely sure what Regal had done to Triese. Turned into, like something was forced on him. Like how Triese was drugged and... split apart. But- that was for later. And... it was still a private question to ask. She wasn't sure how to bring it up- good thing Rock wasn't thinking about this, too, otherwise she would have immediately brought it up with no hesitation. "You guys don't have the Navi Customizer?" Rock balked- her mind was luckily in a completely different place. "That's surprising. I thought we were the lame-os that had nothing cool to our names." "...That is kind of weird," Lan wondered out loud. Maybe they just had a more advanced equivalent? "It's... like, this puzzle grid. You have programs that boost your Navi, and you try to slot them all together... and there are these colors and different rules, and..." "It's sorta like a game," Rock finished. "Lan's been learnin' the ropes of it the past month. It's a nice thing to fiddle around with when you're bored." (It was true - Lan had only really learned of the Customizer when she received Rock. When she was with Megaman... even if she had known about it, there was no way she was going to mess with someone else's setup. But now that she had her own Navi, it was relevant.)

“…No, we definitely don’t have something like that,” Netto said. “You customize attacks and battle parameters by tweaking those objects’ code, not by…” “It sounds like a UI that abstracts customization to make it more accessible,” Rockman thought aloud. “I wouldn’t want somethin’ like that, anyway,” huffed Punk, crossing his arms. “I know what bad customization jobs can do, I don’t want it lookin’ any more tempting to any ol’ human than it already is.” Rockman sighed. “Yeah, I guess so…” “I don’t know how it’d interact with you and your Ultimate Program, anyway. You’ve always been a bit of a black box,” Netto pointed out. “Might not work at all, or it might mess with something, like how Cross Fusion made you lose Style Change.”

Rock was even more surprised, now. Wouldn't it make sense for a more high-tech world to have those kinds of safeguards? "Yeah, that's basically what it is," she confirmed. "I mean, you can fuck things up. Don't put the same colors next to each other, stuff like that. But Lan's a smart kid, and the worst it'll give you is annoying bugs. Not like it's gonna blow you the hell up." "I'm not... a programmer, really," Lan added shyly. "I'm... not into that sort of stuff. So- uh, it's nice to have a bunch of blocks to fiddle around with." Rock nodded in agreement. "Oh, yeah. We've got an Air Shoes chip," she answered, turning toward Megaman. "But there's a Customizer program that lets you activate it on the fly. And Float Shoes is like its weird cousin. Lets you walk on the ground unimpeded. Great for getting past shitty cracked paths." Said "shitty, cracked paths" made up the majority of Electopia's Net, so Float Shoes was particularly valuable. "...Hey, but on a kind of similar note," she continued, raising an eyebrow. "What the hell is an Ultimate Program?" They could probably play this back-and-forth of dropping unfamiliar proper nouns left and right all day- and to be fair, both Lan and Rock were interested. Lan adjusted her bag out of nervousness- this whole shopping area had a familiar vibe to it, at least. The knowledge that this world was notably ahead of hers technology-wise made her wonder if she was about to walk into some futuristic city straight out of a movie. but, no, these were just standard, slightly worn buildings - so, standard for ACDC, at least.

Glancing at his left hand, Punk muttered, “Yeah, I’ve been stuck with an ‘annoyin’ bug’ too. Wasn’t exactly an experience that left me wantin’ more.” Rockman, on the other hand, was untraumatized and curious. “Wow, so we’d just be able to float forever? That sounds really powerful!” Most of the ways he knew to fly were temporary, like using Dash Attack or Air Shoes. (Or Gyro Soul; Rockman felt a twinge of sadness, remembering how joyful flying in Gyro Soul had felt. Gone for years, like all the other Soul Chips…) “It’s good to at least know the basics, so you can troubleshoot things at home,” Netto advised. “Anyway, Ultimate Programs are kind of…” Netto waved a hand. “Nobody really knows how they form, for the most part. But Papa managed to make Rockman’s, so he’s even unusual there. Though I don’t even think Papa knows everything it can do…” “Each one does something different, too. For instance, my Ultimate Program is one of adaptability,” Rockman explained. “I’m not defined by a purpose, so I can learn tasks more easily than other Navis can.” “For example, when he forced himself back onto me, he learned to be funny,” Netto said archly. As if Netto hadn’t said anything, Rockman continued, “Sometimes, I can even transform in response to what’s happening in a Netbattle. Blues is super-fast and can analyze situations better than any other Navi, and then there’s one other known Navi with an Ultimate Program, Forte, who can assimilate other abilities into himself.” (edited)

6:19 PM

And just like that, they were in front of the pawn shop. Under the glass case up front were a plethora of Advance and Link PETs with various amounts of wear, but they were the least important half of what they were after. Netto slowly perused the aisles, looking for the case with the parts he was after. They filed past old Battle Chips of different shapes and sizes, past faceplates shelved three deep in the case as though they were books in a library, past laundry baskets filled over the top with wristbands… In the back of the shop was a single case with what they were after—various colors of grips, but only two different types of scopes. “Well, what the scope itself does doesn’t matter. Just pick whatever you like the most,” Netto told Netto-chan. (edited)

"Well, it's not forever. Gotta land every once in a while," Rock answered, as they approached the pawn shop. "But it's pretty useful. Too bad the piece has the most ridiculous claw shape you'll ever see in your whole damn life." The idea of a powerful program forming from nothing wasn't incredibly surprising to either Lan or Rock- there were plenty of technical mysteries on the Net, between the inner workings of Navis, unexplainable events, or the scourge of logic that was bug formations. And Megaman's "adaptability" certainly sounded like Megaman- so Lan just had to assume this was a basic concept that hadn't been explained to her. Megaman himself hadn't explained much of what he was capable of during his time with her besides vague mentions of an ExaMem; Lan figured that they were probably related. (...Forced onto him...?) (With that being said, though, she was content with that explanation; as correct as her counterpart probably was about programming, messing with Navis directly just felt... icky, to her. There were certain paths she could go down that she wanted nothing to do with.) The inside of the pawn shop was definitely a sight to behold; a strange mix of familiarity and cluelessness, with some of the chips and PETs resembling ones Lan and Rock knew and others they'd never seen in their life. There were a few of Lan's favorites, which caught Rock's attention - Magnum, Elec Pulse- was that a corn Battle Chip...? -Well, the chips weren't important. They'd found what they were looking for, and luckily for their time, Lan and Rock were able to make their choice pretty easily. Pink and black were Lan's favorite colors, and there was a black grip, so that was that. Rock, meanwhile, chose the scope. "I mean, we obviously gotta go for the attack scope," she decided. "Not that it really matters, but if it did, that'd be more my speed, y'know?" "...She likes to hit first, ask questions later," Lan admitted, half-embarrassed and eyeing the other Search Scope. "I mean, this isn't just about battling, but... well, it doesn't matter." (Lan decided to omit the part where she was just as prone to hitting first as her Navi.)

Rockman found the ideas of the other worlds—their use of Full Synchro, the Navi Customizer—fascinating, especially with his Operator beside him once more. The chatroom was a frightening thing, yes; but it was also full of potential, and their friendship with Netto-chan and Rock was proof of that. “Okay, next we get a Link PET,” Netto said, once he’d waved over the cashier to unlock the case and remove the grip and scope. “One with the hologram function working and without anything in it, if that’s possible,” he told the cashier. The Link PET that matched that description had a scratched-up neon green faceplate and a cracked screen; definitely not much of a looker, even if the cashier did make sure to show off that it worked perfectly well. The PETs less expensive than it were in much worse shape; the ones more expensive had cards next to them that said ‘Navi data inside’ or, in one case, ‘Custom Navi data inside’. Punk’s eyes narrowed at the cards—that had been him inside a powered-off PET Advance, once—but he said nothing. The cashier went to ring up the purchase—the grip made it slightly more expensive than Netto had been anticipating, but it wasn’t that huge of a deal. He still had all that Nova money to spend, after all, not to mention his salary at the Ministry.

There was some irony in looking at all of these banged-up PETs that were objectively more advanced than anything that she'd seen before. Obviously, she knew that her world was "behind"; she had gotten to know that quite well through her experiences with the other world. But a display like this was such a tactile reminder of how much history that she never had and had never seen. It was surreal, in a way. Rock, meanwhile, was distracted by the PETs- her operator's counterpart, with the cashier's help, was able to find the exact PET we needed, so she was left alone with her thoughts as they rang their purchases up. Did people just- leave Navi data inside of those PETs? The hell? She knew that Navi data was disposable in her world, but most custom Navis - at least, the ones she knew and had heard of - were still living, sometimes in spite of everything. If people no longer needed their empty Navi, they just dissipated it - that was how things worked. The idea of a custom Navi just sitting there, sitting in the PET in stasis and waiting, was visceral. ...But, she noticed Megaman's expression of comfort, and that brought her back to reality. She gave him the warmest smile she could. (Punk's expression was unreadable, though.) Once they had rung up the parts and were leaving the shop, Lan gave her counterpart a little bow. "Um! Thank you," she muttered, half-embarrassed. But, well- it was the polite thing to do. "Uh- so... how are we using these?" (edited)

“We’re going to take the holographic projector and its drivers out of this Link PET and put those into the scope,” Netto explained. “I’m not sure what you want to do with the grip, but you’ll see what to do from what I’m doing, so I guess you can decide that on your own time.” That was how Netto had learned everything he knew about hardware—watching over old Carlssen’s shoulder as he gutted a PET or an attachment and built it back up, then being expected to do the same. (And then being drilled on what everything was and what it did, rapid-fire, by the General himself if he hadn’t paid enough attention; earning blows from that awful ruler when he inevitably couldn't answer every question quickly or correctly. Netto didn’t plan on passing that part along.) In spite of everything, Punk, too, was alive. There was no chance of him being sold on to anyone else now that he was Netto’s Navi. But he’d just been lucky enough to find himself assigned to Netto, and talented enough to win his trust; it was undoubtedly true in Punk’s mind that there was no space on the Internet for a weak Navi, but there was something fundamentally unjust to him about how the humans left Navis at the mercy of luck…

Lan raised an eyebrow - you'll know wasn't exactly the most detailed explanation. "...Will I?" she questioned. "I don't... Well, I'm not a tech person, so I'll be even more clueless for hardware, to be honest..." It wasn't like she had been a particularly avid technology user for most of her life - she just got things that worked and took for granted that they worked. And if she had any question now, Triese or Iris probably knew way more than she ever would. But... well, they weren't here right now- she'd have to hope that her counterpart could pickup the slack. "Man, if I can walk around, then I can take a look, too," Rock wondered out loud, already fantasizing about the possibilites and freedom that she'd gain from being able to walk around. "And then we can jam the PET full of... whatever else you want. I guess it's your decision first, kid." Lan blinked- this was not a decision she felt she could be informed about in any sense. "Uh. Well. What other features are we missing out on?" she stammered. "I guess- we should be concerned with making sure we're prepared to fight against... Regal, and all the people he's got on his side. How do we safeguard against that... besides those trackers you made...?" "Well... I dunno. If we're talkin' that freak, he was harming Triese in the real world, wasn't he?" Rock wondered- she only rememberd being able to hack away those monitors. "Not like I can just jump out and beat the shit out of 'em."

Netto made a mildly disbelieving face. First it was that Hikari-hakase undervaluing his son, now it was this Netto undervaluing herself. Was he the only one presumed to have done what he did through some sort of talent or skill rather than dumb luck? (What he wouldn’t give for the rest of the planet to have had such low expectations of him…) “We’re kind of a natural at this,” Netto explained. “I remember when I was little I made a wireless attachment for my Plug-in PET just going off of stuff I found on the Internet. And when I was learning about Custom Gate mods, I was actively trying not to at first. It’s really not that hard, for the most part. It’s more like… understanding a set of directions enough to do things a little differently.” Rock and Netto-chan’s ideas were quickly traveling in a less than reasonable direction, anyway. It was well past time to nip that in the bud. “That would be substantiation, and we’re not doing anything related to that today. That’s extremely illegal here, and for damn good reason,” Netto told them flatly as Rock started taking about ‘walking around’ and ‘jumping out’. “You’d have better luck going to that other universe with the tall version of me and all his friends, they don’t seem to have any sort of problem with it there.” “Er… I’m not really sure of what else would be possible, against someone like Regal,” Rockman admitted. “Roll-chan was unable to pick up the signal that got used on her team, so maybe something that makes the onboard sensors more sensitive to resonance…?”

Rock was taken aback by the other Lan's grave reaction. "Wh-huh? I was joking, that's real?!" she exclaimed. Well- their world did have Copybots, and that Navi Regal summoned was using one of them, too- though, still with his weapons, somehow? "I mean, we've got Copybots, but- those are limited, they can't even use weapons. But- uh. Huh. Forget I said anything, then." ...Lan, meanwhile, had shied away at that face her counterpart made. Was- was it a bad thing that she didn't know this? Was she supposed to know this? It was hard not to notice the mild distress on her face, but... at least his explanation made a little more sense. "...I guess so. I was gonna watch anyways," she agreed nervously. "It's just... with tech, uh, I don't want to... mess things up, or do something bad by accident." It was a little more complicated than that. She had trouble wording why she felt this way, but there were too many awful memories associated with incomprehensible devices and talking points about said devices and other inscrutable machines that would show up in her house or on the news. She- didn't want to be like her dad. The idea made her upset. But, at the same time, the more capable of things she was, the more in control of her life she was. So she ought to pay attention. Rock was wracking her brain for how to follow up on Megaman's suggestion. "Dunno what that means, but it sounds smart, so... maybe?" she said. Then, finally, she had a eureka moment, glancing at Lan. "Oh yeah! Hey, if you wanna do safety stuff, then what about stealth features? Masking n' shit?" (An Invisible chip and hiding under a table never felt like it was cutting it, either to Rock or Lan - and their lack of stealth had bit them in the ass during the rescue.)

“Here, Copyroids are a way to substantiate any Navi you want out into the real world, attacks and all. They use technology like the Dimensional Area, but they can operate anywhere, with no barrier,” Netto explained. Rockman explained, “They’re banned in a lot of countries, but they’re super popular in Ameroupe.” They were also popular for use in other places, as well. But this was a pleasant, lighthearted bit of modding! And speaking of, there was an excellent suggestion from Rock! “Camouflage,” Netto realized. “It’s a military-grade effect that cloaks the Navi from any form of perception, sight or otherwise.” He looked over to Netto-chan—she looked nearly as nervous as he'd felt sometimes, while he was in training. “It’s fairly commonly utilized, so it’s not going to be hard to install onto the grip,” he pointed out. “Nobody’s going to evaluate this project, remember? You can tape the insides together if you want.” After a moment, he reconsidered. “That’s going to fall apart in five years when the tape deteriorates. You’re really better off soldering.”

"Damn. You guys' Copybots are hardcore. No wonder they got banned," Rock said. Even though she had yet to experience a Copybot herself, she couldn't imagine it'd be all that exciting if the ends of her blades were entirely dulled. Nerfed down to rubber toys. What a shitshow. In return, Lan squinted her eyes. "They're banned here too, Rock," she reminded her Navi. It was easy to forget, given how much they were used around the Wily mansion - there wasn't exactly anyone to check if Copybots were being used inside. (And they were only banned in some countries, anyway.) Rock tilted her head. "Oh. Right," she commented flatly. Lan sort of felt like she was being voluntold to learn the ropes of PET modding, but she supposed this is what she came here for. At least no one would be breathing down her neck about it except her counterpart- and she doubted he'd judge her for anything, given how he was talking. (And even if she completely fucked things up, there were more advanced PETs in this world going for five times as cheap as the ones she could get back home. What a safety net.) "...Being able to hide like that would be good," she quietly agreed. "We, uh. We like investigating stuff on our own time, so... anything that'd help us evade or block people out is... good." Rock wasn't exactly a stealthy Navi, either, but Lan was still a shrinking violet even after receiving her. And the less people that felt compelled to look into Rock's existence, the better it was for both Lan and Dr. Wily. (Rock was rather entertained by the idea of being a feared force of the unknown more than anything.) "I'm sure you'll get all this down once he shows you the ropes," Rock encouraged. "Maybe tinkerin' with it yourself'll give you more ideas."

“Even though they can’t use their full power?” wondered Rockman. Then, reconsidering, he reluctantly admitted, “I… guess that makes sense.” There were probably a lot more angry Navis in the world, and in Rock’s world, than he realized; the pawn shop had only been a reminder of that, with how quiet Punk had gotten next to him. “The worst that’s going to happen is you’re going to have to disconnect some wires and start over,” Netto said softly; he could tell Netto-chan was still a bit apprehensive. “You’re modding a grip, not a whole entire PET, and we’re not doing anything that needs to draw more power than the PET can supply.” That first wireless adapter project had been something he’d been proud of, now that he let himself remember. He’d always enjoyed learning more, gaining those additional bits of autonomy—until he’d been forced to at such a rapid pace, and never for his own benefit. Something like this, a project she’d come up with the ideas for herself to increase her own capabilities, almost felt a little nostalgic. With that in mind, he definitely wanted to go through this at a comfortable speed for her. Maybe they wouldn’t get through the entire grip in one sitting; that was fine.

Lan curled her lip at Megaman's assumption. The idea that Copybots had been banned for so much less in her world was a little depressing; the general public was so distrustful of Navis coexisting with humans, even when they couldn't actually do anything. Not more than what a normal adult was capable of, anyway. And... yeah. Right, of course. They were just messing with small stuff- that should be fine. "Well... okay," she finally relented. "I'll try. It can't be that hard." Rock puffed her chest, satisfied with Lan's resolve. It brought her a lot of satisfaction to see her operator wanting to try new things- that was what she was here for, after all. The kid had been trained to hole herself up because she thought no one cared about her; so it was up to her and the friends she'd made to make sure that she was out there, doing things, actually living her own life instead of going through the motions. ...And in that sense, seeing her get tugged along by her counterpart was kind of adorable. "Look at you. You're breakin' into a new trade," she teased. "Can't believe it. She's growin' up so fast... and yourself is about to teach you everything you know..." She overdramatically slid her finger down her face, feigning a flood of tears.

“Yeah. One step at a time,” Netto agreed when Netto-chan seemed to settle more into the idea. “If it takes a while, well, that’s what the cookies are for, I guess.” Netto was a bit surprised by Rock’s assertion, but Rockman grinned. “It’s good to pass this sort of knowledge down, isn’t it?” he remarked. “That way, it can be something you can be proud of.” The trip home was shaping up to be fairly uneventful; it was late afternoon on a weekend, and they were safely far from any nightlife.

...Something she could be proud of, Lan quietly thought to herself. That made her warm up a little- and flash the best smile she could muster at Megaman, though it was a little worn. Rock mirrored her- she could immediately tell that putting it that way made Lan a lot more receptive to the idea.

- - - - -

Lan had rather appreciated the quiet ride back, given how cagey she still felt about this whole ordeal. Being dragged into trying out homemade PET modding was about the last thing she expected to get dragged into- though, given that her first real interaction with her counterpart was him building a tracking device and inviting her to test, maybe it wasn't that surprising. (It helped that he knew what he was doing. His attitude, the way he acted, the way he treated her- it was lot more of a hardened confidence, rather than obnoxious obliviousness. She had a hard time letting go of the fact that he was in a similar position as his own father, but- at least he was helping her. She doubted her own dad would ever do something like this for her, anyway. They were breaking a boundary, not keeping her inside of one.) Lan was content to hide behind her mirror upon their approach of the Hikari household (it did have some obvious differences, now that she was actually looking at it - the roof was curved slightly differently, and the shade of blue was a lot lighter, and... the paint was a little less worn...). Using him as a shield seemed like the best idea, lest she be captured in Haruka's grasp once more. "Um, go ahead," she mumbled on approach, giving her counterpart a little bow and waiting at the bottom of the steps. "What. You nervous or somethin'?" Rock taunted, clocking Lan straight away and making her blush a little. "I thought you wanted the cookies. Show a little enthusiasm!"

Something he could be proud of. Something he was doing to help his counterpart, no danger compelling him to or anything. It felt sort of… warm. Netto opened the door, letting a blast of heavenly, buttery-sugar scent into his and Netto-chan’s faces. “You’re home!” Haruka beamed. “You two’ve got to show me what you picked up!” The promised cookies were still warm enough to be on the cooling rack, with both chocolate chips and rainbow chips.

It was hard to deny the scent of the cookies drifting into Lan's nose- powerful enough to pull her out of her counterpart's shadow. The rainbow chips looked especially attractive- any sense that she was too old for this was immediately thrown out of the window. She definitely wanted at least one. Or two. Or five. "U-um... wow, thank you," Lan mumbled, drifting closer toward the tray and further away from what she thought was supposed to be her shield. "They look really good..." Rock sit back and let it happen, content to let Lan be absorbed by nice things. "We got some spare parts n' stuff," she reported as Lan closed in. "They don't mean much right now, but not-Lan's gonna be teachin' my operator how to mod them herself!"

“Ah, you’re quite welcome!” beamed Haruka. “Make yourself at home!” Netto, too, was slowly drifting toward the cooling rack, staring at the cookies but not daring to snatch one. “Go ahead and try one!” Haruka encouraged him. Carefully, he picked one up, then took a huge bite. After a long, silent moment of Netto tuning out the rest of the world in favor of slowly chewing over his bite of warm cookie bliss, Rockman pointed out, “You can have more than one, you know.” “Mm,” Netto sighed. He would get to more cookies when he got to them. “How cool, Rock!” cheered Haruka. More as a thought aloud than a criticism, she mused, “I think both of them are Netto, though…” She next encouraged, “Good luck, you two! Papa said he might be home in the next hour, so if you end up having any trouble, I’m sure he’d be happy to help!” “I don’t think we’ll have a problem with this, Mama,” Netto deflected. After a peek past the kitchen to see the table was cleared off and ready for action, he said, “Thanks for getting the space ready, though.”

Lan wasn't as picky as her counterpart- she quickly snatched up one of the cookies and savored in the warm, doughy bliss, then swallowing, mumbling a "thank you", and immediately deciding she wanted another, repeating the whole process. Rock was, admittedly, a little jealous- but at the very least, Haruka was humoring her. But- well, okay, she didn't quite get her thing. "Oh- I mean, I know that," she responded, trying to play her comment off. "It's just, uh, that's how I'm differentiatin' them. Catchier than using 'other her' or somethin' like that." Lan nodded- Rock referred to the other Lan she'd met as that in the first place, and having to stoop to differentiating by the -chan would probably make Rock shrivel up like a raisin. Either way, she considered snatching a third- a- third- ...- Papa. Papa? Papa-? Well- of course, why wouldn't he be here-? She- she should know better than this, it was better for him and the older counterpart, so- obviously she was the one living the wrong reality. N-no, shut up. It wasn't just that, she knew better now, but- if he'd be here, and especially if he tried to help them and talk to her and give her that look- Rock's jealousy was immediately replaced with concern- and a mild annoyance- when she saw Lan's mood sink, and there was that uncomfortable zoned-out look in her eyes. Lan only had that look for a second, before she tried to force her feelings away and be polite because she was a guest in someone else's house and they really didn't need to be hearing about this right now. Much less pity her. "Oh. Okay," she responded. She was trying her best to put on a pleasant expression, but there was a clear emptiness to it. Lan politely thanked Haruka and shuffled her way over to the living room couch to take a seat and catch her breath. Rock glanced at her with concern, but she didn't respond. (edited)

Netto immediately gave chase. (Haruka simply looked on; there were some conversations she felt it was better to be had between friends, at that age. Or Nettos, in this case.) “What’s wrong?” he asked as soon as they were sitting down. “I can tell, you know. That something’s…” He and Rockman realized it at about the same time. “Papa?” wondered Rockman. “But he and Mama are so nice—“ “Th’ network’s less advanced where they are, remember?” Punk reminded Rockman gruffly. “An’ Pops was a huge part of that, right?” “…Oh,” Rockman realized. He assumed it was a lot like the youngest Netto at the sleepover with his Mama being out of the picture. “I’m so sorry, Netto-chan.” “We can always move upstairs later,” Netto reassured Netto-chan, then reconsidered. “Or now, if it’s as bad as it was for that kid…”

Lan immediately felt worse when she realized she hadn't hid her reaction nearly as well as she thought she did. She shrunk back in her seat, trying to think of any way that she could take back her reaction or play this off, and act like she was fine because she hated it when people felt bad for her- but Rock was worried, and both her counterpart and Megaman guessed exactly what made her clam up like this right away. "A-ah, um," she stammered. "It's- it's okay. Really. We- we don't have to move." She was unsure how much she meant that, and how much she was just saying that to not be a bother. Rock definitely thought it was the latter- so, after taking a deep breath, she decided she needed to step in. She'd never met or seen Lan's father, so... she couldn't imagine the idea of running into him, but better off, was particularly pleasant. "...C'mon, Lan," Rock said, keeping her voice hush, but firm. She glanced at the other three- "Yeah, it's about her dad. They, uh. There's bad blood, I guess." Lan sank further into her seat, her face getting a little red now that Rock had pinned her down into this conversation. "...Yeah. I guess," she admitted, averting her eyes. She paused for a moment, before finally getting the actual assumption they were made- she grit her teeth, a little frustrated that they'd think that, of all things. "I- well. It's complicated. He didn't... cause the Net to be messed up, really..." Rock squinted her eyes. "...But he would've," she mumbled.

“’Bad blood’?” asked Netto. Still alive, then. “It’s all right. Mama really wants you to feel comfortable, I’m sure, because she always does. And Papa was… really understanding when I came home, when he didn’t have to be. But sometimes you can’t help your reaction when you see a face, y’know?” Netto admitted, “I’m always afraid of that, too, that someone’ll recognize me and assume I’m still the exact same. I don’t really like to go to too many places, since it feels like… they’ll think I’m someone I’m not.” “But, Netto, that’s not true,” Rockman pressed. “You’re still you, even if you seem different at first. If they’re our real friends, they’ll accept you as you are.” Netto just sighed in response. “…This isn’t supposed to be about me,” he pointed out weakly. “I know, I know. It’s just so strange to me,” Rockman sighed. “Papa was so sad when all those representatives were painting him out to be this terrible person. I think he still regrets the Dimensional Areas after what they said and what people did, even now. But there are worlds where he really could do those things…” Netto nodded along silently. If Netto-chan was only used to a Hikari-hakase like the one in the chatroom, it would probably feel too wrong to be faced with someone who was quite the opposite. “…Okay,” Netto decided. “We can make a plate of cookies and go back upstairs.”

The fact that this conversation kept going only made Lan tense up further. She hated this conversation topic, especially when she hadn't even found the words for what to say to her own father in prison- let alone the other Yuichiro in the chatroom, the one Iris hated. But- they were being patient with her, they weren't judging her, and she knew they weren't because it would be stupid if they would, and Rock knew better, too, and she was listening patiently... ...And then her counterpart kept going, his words and tone becoming heavier, and Lan's expression shifted. Intentionally or not, he had put words to that exact feeling that had been weighing on her for so long. "...You're... you too?" she mumbled, sitting up ever so slightly and averting her eyes. "I... when... Dad was on the news, we could barely hold it together, and..." It really should have been long enough to where these memories couldn't hurt her anymore. But she still remembered those moments in public - when she was in elementary school, or just on the playground or outside and people knew what Lan Hikari meant and what it stood for. And people knew that there was a gaping hole in a specific ACDC Elementary School class, a hole that was instead dug in a cemetery that she wanted to stay far away from. And everyone knew, because it's why ACDC Town made national news. "No one thought of me like me anymore," she said, shuffling in her seat. "A weirdo, or a victim, or an idea, or a daughter of a mad scientist- like..." "...Guilt by association," Rock finished. Lan nodded. "Everyone's heard of me, and I hate it," she continued. "I don't want to be the girl they're thinking of. You- you get that, too, right?" ...She paused. It brought her comfort to know that there were more people like her- that she wasn't the wrong one. Lan thought back to all of those odd statements and implications her counterpart had made- she had been trying to think of a way to ask about them, and she still didn't have something she was satisfied with, but- it was becoming more unavoidable. "...If you think it'll be best, then we can head upstairs," Rock offered in that moment of silence, glancing back at Lan's troubled expression. "It's more private, at least." Lan eyed Rock, then turned back toward her counterpart and took a deep breath. "...What happened... to make you feel that way...?"

Netto listened, really listened, as his counterpart explained. The emotions her explanation was stirring up were too close to home. (No one thought of me like me anymore.) Not long ago, Netto had been playing a role he’d mostly copied from Yumi and Atsuki's mannerisms, because it unnerved people to see that there was nothing underneath. And now, Rockman and Meiru and Papa and everyone were trying to convince him that there wasn’t nothing underneath, even though he couldn’t manage to let whatever it was out. “I don’t know who I am anymore,” Netto admitted, tears forming in his brown eye. “I was… annoying, and dumb, and oblivious, and spoiled, and I couldn’t escape, I couldn’t hide. I told myself I was okay with what they made me do until I really was. That’s why I’m not the same person anymore. That Netto was a hero, and I’m n-not…” Netto curled into himself. Even his crying was choked-back and near-silent, as if he was trying not to be heard. As if there would be consequences if someone did. “Netto-kun was kidnapped,” Rockman explained to Netto-chan quietly. “When he was almost thirteen. He was isolated underneath an old Darklish castle, and trained to be a hacker, because he’s Papa’s son. But the other reason he was taken from us was because our Cross Fusion made him… different. It… changes people, more than we realized, and they…” Rockman couldn’t keep going. His hologram abruptly winked out of sight. “They cut ‘im up, an’ they took what they wanted,” Punk finished coldly. “Jus’ like if he was some Navi they wanted the code outta.” (There is, of course, no sign of Haruka. That lady’s like a ninja! It’s almost like she’d like the Nettos to talk it out amongst themselves because neither Netto needs to hear it from her again, or something!)

Both Lan and Rock were dead silent listening to the other Lan talk, their breath stolen away by witnessing the sudden tears. I don't know who I am anymore, he said - those words rang in Lan's mind. There were some times when she really did want to scream that out loud, because Megaman and the Destroying Angel had forced her to think about what Hikari meant all over again, and she wasn't sure how she'd move on. ...The way her counterpart spoke reminded her of how she felt about... the first Lan that she'd met, the one who was brimming with optimism and energy, and she choked a little realizing that that was what he was, before he was kidnapped and all of that was taken away from him, shattered like glass, and now he had to pick up the pieces. ...In a way, the same was true for her; there was a person that she would've been, and it was taken away from her so that she could be an empty shell. The difference was that she was three; her mirror was a whole ten years older, and he was already a complete person with a life and victory and happiness to his name. "I- I," Lan stammered, a few moments after Punk finished talking. "I'm so sorry..." She grasped her arm, gritting her teeth and staring down the sofa cushion. It really did sound like a nightmare brought to life. I couldn't hide; they cut him up; because he's Papa's son; - so much of it was what she was terrified of, except for this Lan it was vividly real and haunting him so closely that it brought him to tears. No wonder he understood. "...Shit, man. That's fucked," Rock mumbled, holding her head low. Cross Fusion- she had half a mind to ask, given she'd only heard the phrase in passing and didn't really know what it meant, but now seemed like a terrible time. Instead, she offered her apology, the same as Lan- she really hoped she wasn't beating herself up over asking. It took a few moments for Lan to find the words- the room had fallen quiet, the only sound being her breathing and her counterpart's tears. Both her and Rock were still a little haunted by Megaman blinking out. She also noticed that Haruka was gone- probably a good thing, to have a little bit of privacy. Lan had half a mind to just- say we don't have to talk about this, and just move on and act like nothing happened, but- when she thought about it, she thought about Megaman, the one she had met, and how he pushed her to keep talking because if she didn't talk then she'd just keep her own issues bottled up forever. And never gained the strength to fight. "I... I... well. I can't. Really claim to know everything. Obviously," she began, her tone slow and hesitant. She kicked her feet a little, trying to shake off the anxiety. "But. I understand. A little." It felt so wrong to say that- she wasn't the one who got kidnapped, and taken away to a place as far away as Darkland, but- that's why I'm not the same person anymore- there was no way she'd just say nothing. "There's. Times that I wonder... how much I want to be... 'Lan Hikari'. How much it would make a difference if I just... threw everything away and made up a new name. Like a fantasy," she said, slightly embarrased. "Or if I should... dig my heels in, and try to reclaim it all. I- I guess... that's where you're at, too."

Netto wiped at the one eye that could produce tears. “I never thought I’d end up back here, using this name,” he admitted softly. “I’m just here because Rockman found me again, and… he just wouldn’t leave.” Rockman reappeared. Netto-chan’s words had made him realize that maybe this really was what Netto needed to hear, both of them. “When I look at you, I see you. You’ve always been empathetic and so clever, Netto, I don’t think your heart’s changed at all. Either of you.” He looked from his own Netto to Netto-chan. “I think there are lots of people who’d be sad to see you go, if you really did start another life.” Netto lifted his head. “I’m sorry people went after you because of your dad. I wish…” He sighed. “People have all these expectations of me,” he said into his knees. “And maybe they were right. I could do what they asked of me. I could do it perfectly. But now nobody’s asking that of me, the work is easier but they want all these other things, and I… I guess I’m afraid I’m going to disappoint someone else that feels important to me. Like I did with Enzan at first.” “But you should do what you want to do, too,” Rockman said. “Y’say that like he knows what that is,” Punk pointed out. “You should do what you want to do, too!” Rockman immediately shot back. “This is fine!” Punk seemed a bit miffed that Rockman had managed to swing it onto nearly everyone. “I mean, Rock’s doin’ what she was made for, too, an’ she’s happy.” "I just have to figure that out," Netto said quietly. "Sometimes I feel like there's nothing there, and I'm starting over. And other times, I remember perfectly."

A deus ex machina- being pulled back into living a life by a Megaman. They even had that in common- which was kind of haunting, in its own way. Her heart ached, both from piecing together what her counterpart must have felt like, and from the fact that... somehow, she was trying to relate his own horrific nightmare to hers. She briefly chastised herself for being so selfish, but- Megaman reigned her in with his reassurance. "...I think so, too," she agreed softly, her eyes drifting towards his hologram. "It's just- random thoughts. When I'm feeling down. But... I can't act like me being... Lan Hikari... has nothing to do with... anything good that's happened to me. Or any of the friends I've made." She thought of Triese, who, for so long, was this annoyance to her, trying to pry into her personal life to get some secret nugget of information that wasn't really there- but when it actually mattered, and she finally decided to speak up, Triese backed off immediately. There were probably more people like that in the world than she was giving them credit for. Rock nodded fervently. "True. I haven't been around for that long," she responded to Punk. "But I couldn't be happier. She's a strong kid. She ought to realize it more often!" Lan blushed, sinking back into the cushion a little. "Hey. Come on," she protested weakly, before pausing for a few moments. She really didn't know what she wanted to do, either - she had been too absorbed in silence to ever think about it. (...She wondered if he felt the same way.) "...I have a lot to figure out, too. I guess I have time," Lan murmured, kicking her feet again. "But it really... does feel like that sometimes, doesn't it? That sometimes it's... all blank and static-y, and then other times when it's all hitting you and... it's way too loud." One more pause. She thought back on her counterpart saying using this name, and how Megaman had reacted. "...So... you did throw away your name," she thought out loud. In a way, he had lived out a twisted version of her fantasy.

“I was forced to,” Netto said quietly. “I was assigned a number internally, and then outside the Citadel they assigned me identities.” With a bit of amusement, he added, “I was way older than I really am for a while, because all those fake IDs had to say I was of age.” He managed to unfold himself. “But… ‘static-y’, that’s a good way to put it. Only, for me… that feeling’s kinda like a shield. I can just withdraw into that blank feeling, because… I couldn’t let it get too loud. I couldn’t be loud,” Netto slowly explained. “And there was… a lot I needed to get away from. Even when I was let outside the Citadel, it was… the world was so big, and wonderful, but I was there to harm.” He sighed, eyes shifting away from his counterpart’s. “I should be in prison, after everything I’ve done.” “You were acting under duress,” Rockman reminded him. “The choice the General gave you wasn’t really a choice.” But there was something about Netto-chan’s story that bothered him; something that wasn’t entirely clear to him from what had been said. “So… Papa really did all that stuff, in your world. He really did… get ‘carried away’.” It was clear from how he said it that he was repeating what someone else had said. “And… you had to stop him, all while everyone was judging you for something you had nothing to do with.” Rockman wondered, “What’s happened to… here? Is Mama all right, did she…?” He was afraid to ask, but he’d seen how Mama had absolutely refused to believe the things they said about Papa. Her unwavering support, in the face of the world telling her that Papa’s work was wrong. Rockman’s head dropped, his eyes falling shut. Those people being right would break her heart.

God, it really is some shit straight out of a movie, Rock thought to herself, though she knew it'd probably be inappropriate to say out loud. All of this felt way beyond her or Lan - he'd been forced to harm the world, in his own words, at practically the age her own operator was coming up on. The thought made her shiver - she couldn't imagine how Megaman must have felt. No wonder he wouldn't leave- she wouldn't, either, if... something like this happened. Lan nodded in understanding. "It... it is kind of a shield, yeah," she mumbled. That empty feeling she hated was... painful, at times, but sometimes it was all too easy to fall inside it for comfort, to pretend that nothing had happened and that she just was living right here in a complete vacuum. But- this was just about people bullying her, and not- being forced to commit crimes. She felt guilty, again, for trying to compare them, but shook the feeling off. She was sure the last thing someone like him would want would be pity. ...And now they were back to her dad. She tensed up a little. "Well. I don't really... know what you're thinking of," she responded to Megaman. "Because, I... um, I dunno what a Dimensional Area is. It was... more like..." Her voice trailed off, prompting Rock to pick up the slack. "People thought of the Hikari family when they thought of Net society, right?" she started. "So imagine how they felt when that whole structure fell apart. Add that on top of her dad tryin' to turn her dyin' brother into a NetNavi, and, well. Ain't a good look." Lan was still visibly uncomfortable every time they went over this story, but she pushed through. "He... he disappeared for a long time. So it was just me and Mom," she recalled, a haunted look still floating in her eyes. "And then he came back, a month ago. He wanted to restart the Net with a... thing... called the Destroying Angel. I stopped him." She paused. "...He thought that... he could just rebuild everything, and then everyone would... love us again. But it was... just some stupid delusion." (edited)

The emptiness had been all Netto had to himself for a very long time. It was easier to keep all those pesky emotions and opinions that made himself up submerged where they couldn’t hurt anyone, himself included. …And yet letting them surface and sharing them this way, with someone who could sort of relate to the feeling of eyes staring down from everywhere, was such a relief. As much as sharing them with someone who knew nothing and wouldn’t judge him had been. (Talking felt like such a risk. Why did it have to work so well?) Rockman shivered; he didn’t like ghosts to start with, and it sounded as though the other version of Yuuichirou had been trying to make one. But it was undoubtedly something he’d do; he thought of that summer afternoon in his Papa’s home office, trying to piece together something similar with what little he had left of Netto. “Restart…?” wondered Netto. “I… get it,” Rockman admitted, reluctantly. “Papa doesn’t deal well with things being unfixable. And for everything to happen one after another…” Rockman sighed. The chatroom’s Hikari-hakase was unrecognizable, but this one, with his love twisted into obsession, was far too easy to see Papa in. “I’m sorry. It must’ve been really hard on you and Mama both. There you were, trying to rebuild and move on with the rest of the world, and he was still stuck in the past.”

"Blowin' it all up and starting over, basically," Rock clarified - she'd heard enough in the past few weeks to recall the story, even if she wasn't there. "Wanted to do it by spreadin' this fungus that ate everything and multiplied. Think it came from this Navi named Sapronosis?" Lan wasn't sure how surprising it was that Megaman understood immediately. She supposed that was why everything had happened - because her dad refused to give up, even when so much had gone so wrong, so... if they were fundamentally similar, then there was no wonder Megaman would piece that together. "...Yeah. That's it, yeah," she mumbled, nodding fervently in Megaman's general direction. "I just... wanna live my own life. I don't want to have this crap hanging over me forever." She couldn't allow herself to be the abandoned, lost, trapped child forever. "...I'm old enough to be my own person. I just have to... figure out what that means." Her head lowered as she talked, pensively staring at the floorboards. When she finished, though, she snapped back up and tried to give her counterpart the warmest smile she could. It was nice- to meet people that understood these emotions that she couldn't quite put into words. She... felt safer, in a way, and she hoped her mirror felt similarly. A few moments of silence passed before Rock stepped in. "Think we should get a move on with this scope...?" she asked, doing a mediocre job of hiding her own impatience. "Glad you two are talkin'. And you should keep doin' that. But... y'know, the parts are sitting right there, and..."

“So when this fungus ate everything that’d include the Navis, I assume,” Netto murmured after hearing Rock’s explanation. “Nobody would get to enjoy the new world who was there before. How selfish.” He let himself relax as his counterpart continued to talk, allowing himself to think on the same thing, smiling back. …And then Rock reminded him that there had been a reason Netto-chan was here, and it was sitting there in front of them. “Right,” he murmured, snapping up the Link PET. “Well, I’m sure you’ll figure it out. You have lots of time.” He took a small screwdriver and attached an even smaller head to it, and proceeded to unscrew the casing. “I feel like I was better at this whole ‘own person’ thing when I was your age. I like doing things with the others, but I feel kind of silly doing things alone that aren’t. You know.” Tiny screws plinked to the tabletop as he worked, quickly and efficiently. “It’s like they were saying that one time in the chatroom!” Rockman said. “It doesn’t matter if you feel silly or not, you’re old enough that nobody can tell you no anyway!” “But it feels weird,” Netto complained, setting down the screwdriver and picking the Link PET up between both hands. “I’d rather do stuff in here, where nobody can see me.” With a cracking sound like he’d broken open an egg, Netto popped the Link PET in half down the seam. “And there’re cookies.”

"Basically, yeah. Everyone who'd worked hard to make a livin' despite everything would've just... died," Rock responded pensively. "Like their lives didn't matter. It's gross." Lan watched as her counterpart pried the Link PET open- she honestly was a little in awe over it, since she hadn't exactly seen the inside of a PET before. And- well, she supposed the grip and scope were on her...? She picked them up and rolled them around in her hands, eyeing them like they were small, mysterious creatures as she listened to her mirror's words. "...Yeah. I get that," she murmured. "I mean... I didn't really have friends, not for a long time. So... I'm not like you in that way, but... my room is safe, you know? Compared to going out anywhere else..." Crowds made her nervous. Too many eyes looking at her. Those eyes were judging her. They knew who she was. They would pity her over it. She didn't want to talk to them. She wanted to be alone. "...I don't like standing around in public. I don't like the way people look at me," she admitted softly. She... supposed she'd just have to connect the devices, first? She snapped on the scope first- did she even know what this would do...? (She was lucky they were connecting in the first place...) There was a buzzing sound to the left of Rock, and an odd static feeling- like something was loading in but having trouble going through. Then- finally, the part connected, and Rock noticed a new file being imported- an Attack+1 part in their collection of Customizer parts. She raised an eyebrow. "Well, I guess it did something," Rock reported in. "So, what now? We're doing... y'know, stealth-y stuff?" Lan blinked. "Yyyyyyeah," she answered slowly. Her eyes darted between the tools and the scope. She disconnected it - there went that Attack+1 part - and then stared at the scope in the palm of her hand. She blinked another few times, her eyes continuing to wander- and it was becoming more and more obvious that she had no idea where to start. "Um..." (edited)

“I know. Well, I don’t know, I mean, I just look weird.” Netto glanced away; it felt so unfair to him that his counterpart felt that way. He’d gone and made an example of himself for Darkland to take interest in, but she felt judged because of something she hadn’t even done. “It’s probably not as bad for me as it is for you. It’s still really uncomfortable, though.” “You look a lot better now than you did when I first rejoined you,” Rockman pointed out. He looked sadly over at Netto-chan; there was no denying that she had the right to be wary. But things weren't as bad as they'd been before for her, either. “Now that you both have friends, though, you’ve got more of a chance to explore! Safety in numbers, right?” "Right." Netto wasn’t even thinking about the scope yet—they needed the piece that was going into the scope first. “Yep, that’s how it’ll fit once it’s done,” he said once he noticed what his counterpart was doing, assuming she’d just been seeing how it’d look. “So,” he explained first, lifting out a green circuit board-looking thing from the center of the wires and parts he’d just exposed from inside the Link PET. “This thing’s the motherboard. It looks about the same on every PET release until the Mode, just oriented differently. “Every sensor on the PET is hooked into this board. So we just need to go over here to output—“ He ran a finger over the left side of the motherboard, which had at least six different cables leading out to other chips, a little nervous system of technology. “One of these holo outs is for the windows, just like in the Progress, and the other’s for the Navi projection module. It gets consolidated in the Mode, but this came out really fast after the Progress, so it’s a lot of the same stuff.”

Rock beamed at Megaman's assertion. "Yup! The more friends she's pallin' around with, the better," she agreed. "So... I'm glad we met you guys. Lots of strong people hangin' around in the chatroom." She blinked, her eyes drifting over to her operator's counterpart. Of course, she hated the idea of her own Lan getting looked at, but- she had a hard time believing that this counterpart wasn't a little more, uh, eye-catching. "Don't you have, like, a robo-eye? I'd think more people glance at you 'cuz of that. No offense," she said. Lan paused - that eye had slipped her mind since the sleepover. (It was still really cool...) "Well... I mean, it would just be... like... it's called heterochromia, right?" she wondered out loud. "Carme's eyes were like that, and... I didn't think it was that weird." "...Carme wasn't cool, though," Rock pointed out, to which Lan fervently agreed. Both of them had nothing but respect for this much cooler shimmering eye...! Lan paid attention intently to her counterpart's explanation of the motherboard- she nodded along and at least felt like she was getting it, so that was a start. "Oh, so... the port's for the pop-out screen," she wondered out loud - she'd honestly taken those screens for granted, so it surprised her to learn that the Navi projection feature was basically just one step away from it. "So... could we just make it project whatever...?"

“When I was first assigned to Japan, I was a lot thinner, and I had an optic lens like most people who… lose eyes end up getting,” Netto explained. He was still fairly lightweight, even having said that. “I was, like… scary-ugly.” “I don’t think you were that ugly,” Rockman defended. “Just sort of… sad-looking.” “The fuck does that mean?” Netto wondered. “Naw, he was for sure intimidatin’ in that outfit they gave ‘im for infiltratin’ Nova,” Punk said, sounding like he thought that was a good thing. “Ya weren’t there for that.” “I mean, you’re a little short to be scary, aren’t you?” Rockman gently pointed out. “Not when they saw my face,” Netto said; it had honestly stung a little bit, how people recoiled. It had felt like another reason he couldn’t return, because he was ugly and Hikari Netto wasn’t. “I barely even got carded.” “But this one looks more like a normal eye than anything I’ve even heard of,” Rockman said. “It really does just look like heterochromia.” He smiled brightly. “I think it’s really cool, too!” Netto was now blushing. “A-anyway, it… sort of works that way, and sort of doesn’t,” he explained. “The GPU in a Progress, or a Transport I guess, won’t support that.” “That’d mean ya wouldn’t have t’buy a new version,” Punk added sardonically. “So that’s why there’s an entirely different holographics chip,” Netto explained. “And usually it’s…” He followed the innermost holo cable to its terminus, a little emitter that sparkled with all the facets of a bug’s eye. “Yep. This one.” He gently worked it free from the tangle, then said, “All right, we’re going to go ahead and take all of this out, and the graphics card, too, for good measure…”

Lan did a slight double-take - she definitely had no idea whatever "most people who lose eyes" meant. Was losing an eye common for him? Did he mean, like- in... anime or something...? Was it just... like a bandage, or...? (Man, she had no idea-) "You pulled off a scary look? Damn," Rock blurted out loud, interrupting Lan's train of thoughts. "Hey, my operator's friends say that she can pull off a damn good scowl. Heh... now I'm imaginin' how she'd look with a scary outfit!" Rock was very amused by this thought, to the point where she almost wanted to ask for pictures. Lan was a lot more embarrased- but, secretly, she kind of did share that desire too. "Hey, I'm- I'm not really scary," she protested, tilting her head. Pause. "But- it'd kinda be fun to be," she admitted quietly. There was something a little fascinating about watching her counterpart pick this device apart. "O-oh. Well... I guess it'd work that way when it's hooked up," she mumbled, trying to save her assumption. "Oh oh oh, it's going to be stuffed inside the scope...? Right, right..." Rock raised an eyebrow. "...What did you think we were doing...?" Lan pouted and grabbed her knees. "I- I thought we were gonna pop my PET open or something! I don't know," she hissed, shooting Rock a glare. "Look, it's... I dunno this stuff. I'm trying to think through this."

Fortunately, Netto didn’t know what his counterpart was thinking about, or he would’ve had to explain the sorts of people who stereotypically wore optic lenses to her. (Bandits, or Regals, or…) “It’s, uh, not really that fun,” Netto explained. “It gets old, after a while.” And isolating. Though Kaita had been able to see through it, eventually, after a while. He made a disbelieving face when Lan admitted what she thought they were doing. “Of course we’re not. Your PET’s made by an entirely different company, for all we know everything’s laid out differently in there.” “I’m not sure if I’ve ever seen a PET made by anyone else,” mused Rockman. “You’re not missing much,” Netto shrugged. “They can’t do holo stuff, and they tend to be made with subpar parts. Though in a world where Zephyram is the top PET manufacturer, maybe their civilian stuff looks more like their military hardware…” He returned to business, explaining, “Okay, I need to go get my laptop so we can get this shit to talk to the motherboard in the scope. And get more cookies.” As he wandered upstairs, he wondered, “…Have I ever seen a civilian Zephyram product…?”

Lan tilted her head. She didn't really get how something like that would get old - maybe after a while, but after all the people that'd messed with her and given her looks, she totally wanted to bite back in any way she could. But- well, he was the one who lived through it. "You think so...? I guess. Sorry," she relented, sounding subtly disappointed. Rock picked up on it and chuckled over it. "...Probably, yeah," Rock responded, to the other Lan's assertion. "You're definitely askin' the wrong people. These things are basically black boxes, anyway." (It was pretty difficult to find information about the internal workings of a PET on the Net they were used to. Lan had found that out from a particular rant from Triese. Both were unsure if this was just out of lack of interest, or if they were hiding something...?) "Um- okay. I can wait here," Lan responded, as her counterpart disappeared up the stairs. She was currently resisting the temptation to get more cookies herself. And... that left her alone with the parts. Well. ...She thought on what she wanted to do for a moment, and her mind wandered back to the camouflage proposition, and back to the "scary look". Pulling off... something to make sure they could go unseen, or be intimidating, probably would be useful, wouldn't it...? But... how would that... Rock leaned over on the PET screen - she could tell that the gears were turning in Lan's head. She had half a mind to try and look things up herself, before remembering that A. they were on the wrong Internet, and B. it was honestly pretty fun to see Lan get drawn into this. Something she could be proud of, right?

For a little while, all was quiet. Netto was habitually silent as he moved; the house sounded as though it was totally empty, the only sound the air circulating around the building. At the door, there was a swift series of clicks as it unlocked, and then admitted one Hikari Yuuichirou. “Honey!” cheered Haruka, neatly intercepting him before he could turn his head to see Lan. She winked at her over his shoulder, then asked, “How was work?” “Quiet, for once,” Yuuichirou said. There was a pause, and then, further away, his voice came again: “Are those cookies?” “Mm-hm! It’s pretty cool out now, so I wanna watch the sun set with cookies and lemonade, just the two of us,” she said happily. “To celebrate the end of the week.” “That sounds just perfect, dear,” Yuuichirou said, smile audible in his voice, and then they departed out a side door. Netto was silent going down the stairs and assembling the plate of cookies, which probably made his absence seem even longer. When he reappeared from the kitchen, it was with his laptop, the cookies, and a pair of dongles in hand.

Lan jumped as the door unlocked, and she instinctively ducked down to hide behind the couch cushion- only for Haruka to appear out of thin air. …Where did she come from?? wondered both Lan and Rock. -it was still a little odd, to Lan, to hear her father’s voice at the door, but at least she didn’t have to see him. She was easily able to stomach the brief interaction as both of them slipped out of the door- and Lan breathed a sigh of relief. Pause. “Huh. Your not-mom’s on top of things, ain’t she,” Rock observed out loud. Lan nodded, slightly confused but appreciative all the same. She’d have to thank her later… Her counterpart had also mastered the art of sneaking down the stairs as she had, as she was admittedly caught a little off guard by his return. “Oh. Hi,” she greeted meekly, finally sitting up again. She was content not to mention the arrival, lest she dwell on it longer. “Nice, nice. Maybe you should’ve brought your laptop, too, kid,” Rock added upon the other Lan’s arrival. “I guess now we’re really crackin’. You oughta start brainstorming.”

Netto’s laptop was as modern as it got, what anyone would expect a self-proclaimed hacker to be carrying. Its bottom half was as wide as it needed to be to receive external inputs, but its screen was as thin and light as a photo frame. He flipped it open, and wasted no time hooking in the salvaged holo chip. He stole a furtive glance at the cookies, but his hands were pretty occupied right now. “Now, we open up the scope,” Netto explained. “It’s just like how I opened up the Link PET—we’ll unscrew it all around here—“ he turned the scope on its back and pointed out a series of tiny screws lining the edge “—and then it’ll just pop right open. Once we’re in there, you’ll see that what’s inside is just another chip hooked up to the output port.” There was, of course, plenty more to explain, but this was more than enough until they were actually looking at the guts of the scope. Netto held the screwdriver aloft. “Wanna give opening it up a try?”

Lan spent a moment marveling at how high-tech her counterpart's laptop was- her own looked completely pedestrian in comparison. She supposed it was to be expected, given he was a tech-y kind of guy. It... kind of was straight out of a movie, wasn't it...? (The same thought passed by Rock, and she was greatly enjoying that Lan was learning from a person like this.) "U-uh. Yeah. Sure," she quickly agreed once the other Lan offered her the screwdriver. She really appreciated that they were taking this slow - something that was obvious to everyone around her once she actually started unscrewing the back of the scope. Her turns were particularly labored, and she carefully removed each screw and placed them gently on the table like she was performing an operative surgery. Finally, the scope popped open, just like her counterpart had said, and Lan let out a little squeak trying to catch the casing before it fell on the floor. (Oh, he meant... computer chip, not... battle chip.........) "Oh oh oh," Lan muttered out loud, gazing at the inside of the scope like she was watching a cake being cut. "Okay, so... what now...?"

Netto took the opportunity to slowly chew over another cookie. Ah, the bravery of youth…! She was so much more methodical in unscrewing everything than anyone Netto had known before. It was kind of charming. “Okay! Now, we run our holo card’s driver over here through a wrapper tool, which’ll basically tell it how to talk to the scope’s motherboard and the Progress PET through that. Or Transport, in your case.” “I’ll send it your way so you have it for later, don’t worry,” Rockman reassured Netto-chan and Rock. “In the meantime, we need to get this out of here,” Netto said, taking a second motherboard from inside the scope and gently tugging it into the light with his fingers. It was still attached to the top half of the scope, since there was one cable running from it to the screen and another from it to the port that would fit into the top of his counterpart’s PET. His hands were steady and his movements intentional, but nonetheless they were swift. “Now, all the chips that go into this motherboard will be on these slots here,” he explained, pointing an array of rectangular white protrusions on the top. There was a single black chip attached, which Netto wasted no time prying out. “This was that attack booster, which we obviously don’t need. You can just shove this in a box for later or toss it, I guess.” Pointing out an empty, black slot that ran under the chip slots, he said, “This is where graphics or memory cards go. None of these grips and scopes ever needed one out of the box, I don’t think, but it’s got a place for one anyway. It’s weird, but useful.” Now the motherboard had nothing in the white slots. All ready for their holo chip and graphics card.

"So the wrapper is like a connector...?" Lan wondered out loud - her head was spinning a little, but she was doing her best to follow along. Rock flashed a thumbs-up to Megaman in the meantime. Lan tapped her fingers watching her counterpart pull the motherboard out with way more confidence than she could muster. She was surprised that he wasn't afraid of breaking it, or something like that. The chips were starting to make more sense to her, though - it was like putting Navi Customizer parts in and out, but physically (and presumably, this was a lot more freeing, too). "...Ohh. And because it has all those extra slots, we can slot a lot more stuff in it than intended?" she continued, gently taking the attack booster from her counterpart and setting it down on the table. "Like the holo chip? Do we just slot it in?" She shied away a little, hoping she wasn't getting too ahead of herself - but the interest was still obviously visible on her face. If she knew how lit-up she looked right about now, she'd probably be pretty embarassed. Rock, on the other hand, was more than happy to continue butting in. "Hey, and if you figure out how to make your own chips, you could just do whatever you want," she pointed out rather obviously. "I guess that's easier said than done, 'tho."

“Soooort of,” Netto said in response to his counterpart’s first question. “It’s more like it’s translating the information the holo chip’s sending out into something the PET can use.” Working at a bit of an angle so his counterpart could see what he was doing, Netto first slid the graphics card in, then looked over at his laptop. “Finished an’ ready t’ go,” Punk reported, prompting Netto to pull the holo chip out from where it was docked. He slid that in, too, angling the emitter so it would nest along the top of the scope, close to its screen. “If you put too many things that draw power in, it’ll start affecting the PET’s battery life,” Netto explained as he began to coax the loose motherboard and holo chip into place in the scope casing. “So it’s better to just stick to one function at a time.” There were, of course, ways around that. But they didn’t have access to them here, and having so many things to manage increased the complexity of what they were doing. His counterpart definitely didn’t seem ready for some kind of monster rig like what Atsuki’d once carried around Affriku. “Nah, chips are way easier than this. They even sell blank ones at any ol’ chip shop or electronics store,” Netto explained. “You just have to know how to program them, you don’t have to open anything up.”

"Oh, okay... yeah, a translator makes more sense," Lan nodded in understanding. "I mean... it's not like everything will just magically work, right? Because they're different PETs..." "And manufactured by totally different people," Rock added. "Honestly, it's a miracle all us Navis can exist around each other. Guess all our bases are close enough such that we're not gettin' our shit totally rocked." Lan did remember the struggle with Protoman and those other Navis existing on her Net - she idly wondered why that would have even been a problem in the first place. Maybe she should ask Triese about it one day - she or her dad would probably be able to explain it. But- "...That's cool. I don't really... know programming stuff, though," Lan muttered, watching her counterpart snugly fit the parts together. "I wonder how hard it'd be to learn. I mean- it seems kinda scary, but..." "You're already a third of the way there with the Customizer, aren't ya?" Rock pointed out, once her operator had cut herself off. "Fittin' parts together based on rules. You just gotta know what your tools are." Lan blinked. Admittedly, she was getting more interested in this than she would've expected, even with all the baggage... this held to her. She supposed it was easier to let go certain... comparisons when they were working on a physical hardware level. "...Right, yeah," she agreed. Pause. She was unsure if this was a question she should really be asking, but- part of her wanted to know. "How... did you learn this stuff?" she asked the other Lan. "I-I mean, you were forced to, right...? But... I can't even imagine how much... you'd have to..." Her voice trailed off, unable to find the right words. She winced a little, like she immediately regretted asking the question.

“I memorized it,” Netto shrugged. “The way things interacted, the equations, everything they asked of me. I studied so much that it was all I could even remember, for a while. Which wasn’t so bad, I mean, in a place like that it’s nice to totally, uh…” He searched for the right words. “…lose track of yourself like that.” He wasn’t sure if he needed to add that there was a short end of the stick, but they’d both been so open with each other that it felt almost contradictory not to. “The General and most of the other instructors would punish me, if I wasn’t paying enough attention for them.” “I’m sure that was just an excuse, too,” Rockman said bitterly. Netto looked at him and then to his counterpart—had that been too much after all?

Lan was taken aback by how matter-of-fact his explanation was. Though if he was trapped in an old castle, she supposed that... that was all he really had time to think about, right? And... he had to, lest he face the wrath of... whoever the "General" was. That namedrop was enough to make Lan wince, even without knowing a thing about him. "So... I guess it was kind of your distraction from... everything," she responded. "For better or for worse. I think I get it." The more she thought about it, the scarier it all was to her - he was forced to become someone else, be an ideal thing for people to control and order around, live an exaggerated version of her worst fears. But when her counterpart glanced at her with what she thought was regret, she returned only a warm empathy. She was... five? whole years younger than him, still burgeoning and figuring herself out, but- she was doing her best to sympathy, and there was this look on her face that betrayed her undying need to help and to understand. "...It's how we... make it so everything isn't as loud, right. Distracting ourselves," she said. "I guess that's why I gotta find out what I like. So it can help." Rock smiled and nodded along. These two were a weird pair, weren't they. But... weird in a kind of warm, fuzzy way. "...Um. Could I help with slotting the holo chip in?" Lan asked softly. "I... wanna try. At least."

Netto was thinking over it all, nodding along, and almost missed it when his counterpart asked to help. “Oh. Sure, we’re just bundling everything back into the scope now and closing it up.” He handed the scope over gently, facedown so that gravity would keep everything in place. “It all should fit in there this way, even when you put the other side of the casing back on. But if you need to nudge anything, make sure you only pick the motherboard up by its edges, like I’ve been doing it.” With nothing in his hands, he found himself picking up another cookie, slowly chewing through another bite. “…I guess I really do like this kind of stuff, huh?” he said, smiling wistfully. “It was just learning stuff that I hated. But now nobody’s teaching me, so I get to make things at my own pace.” Rockman looked on a bit sadly. Netto couldn’t see it himself, but he didn’t have to distract himself anymore. He was home. But he could also see that this was another person Netto could trust enough to be honest with his feelings, like his team of friends here at home. He found himself smiling softly; Netto had made another friend who could reach him, and the more of those he had the more he could heal.

Lan scooped up the scope as carefully as she possibly could and gingerly slot the pieces back where they were - it helped that her counterpart had already set the pieces in place, so all that was left to reverse the process and tighten everything up. Slotting the back of the scope in, she screwed the casing back in - a little faster this time - thankfully without having to adjust much. It was honestly pretty satisfying, even if she hadn't gotten her hands as dirty as her counterpart's. "...Yeah. That makes sense," Lan agreed as she admired the scope. "I mean, even if you hate learning, you can do it at your own pace now, right? It's for... your hobby stuff, instead of, like... school. Or Darkland. I guess." "That's what Triese is up to all the time, ain't she?" Rock specualted. "She's always lookin' up stuff on the Net to find out about crazy strategies n' viruses and such. Too bad our Net kinda sucks for that." Now, she supposed the work was left to that wrapper. She glanced at Megaman and her counterpart returning that soft smile. Rock smiled as well, though her smile was less of understanding and more expectation. They had to be close, now, right?!

“I mean, it’s not really learning learning, is it?” Netto softly laughed. “I can’t get it wrong, or not do it fast enough.” His counterpart was getting more comfortable with this part already, which was good—it wasn’t like she could mess this part up too badly! “You seem to really enjoy learning when it’s things you’re interested in, at your own pace,” Rockman said, smiling. After his counterpart had finished closing the scope back up, Netto said, “Speaking of… it’s time to see if this thing works. Go ahead and attach it to your PET, and let’s see what happens.”

"I guess so," Lan relented. It wasn't the same, really, when you cared versus when you had to. She smiled and nodded, and slot the scope back into the PET just like she had before. This time, the buzzing feeling that enveloped Rock was way different - it was obvious that there was a lot more data being transmitted to the PET this time. Rock braced herself for some kind of error or hangup, but instead, everything was smoothly transmitting, ala a software update. Instead of adding anything to the Navi Customizer, some sort of toggle program was directly installed to the homepage. Said program was definitely... odd. It was embedded into the base functionality that she could interact with as a NetNavi, with no human-readable interface to it. She supposed this was just how foreign programs were. For someone who was so obviously excited about the hologram functionality, Rock hesitated to actually... press whatever toggle was here for a moment. "I think it loaded in fine?" she reported as she psyched herself up for the big test. Finally, she stopped mucking around, and flipped that switch- -and there she was. A hologram of Rock suddenly materialized on top of Lan's PET, flickering for a brief moment and struggling to render until it evened out and her Navi was just standing there, coated in a blueish hue. "W-woah," Lan stammered. "Rock?" Rock blinked for a moment - it was a little disorienting to be taking this all in. The fact that she hadn't used a Copybot yet only made this more novel to her. She was just standing around in a place she'd only seen behind a screen before, and she felt so weirdly small when she was actually scaled up against the table and the sofa. "Holy shit," she mumbled out loud, walking in a circle on top of the PET. After a moment, she even decided she was brave enough to jump off it and onto the table below. She almost lost her balance landing. "Woah. This is sick! What the hell?" Lan was similarly impressed. Watching Rock move around was kind of like watching a cool animal at the zoo, if the animal was instead a very small armored spiky human. "W-wow. I'm surprised this... worked? Cool..." Lan expressed, bowing a little in her seat as thanks as Rock continued to run and jump around the table like a child at recess.

“All right!” cheered Rockman. “It’s working!” He jumped down to join Rock, grinning at how obviously delighted she was. He’d had access to this technology for so long now that it took some reminding to remember how overjoyed he and his friends had been at first, eager to see the outside world from a new perspective. “Of course it is—we put it together,” Netto pointed out, more for his counterpart’s benefit than Rockman’s. “It’s light, so it reflects funny around water and stuff. Like, see…” He got up for just long enough to fill a glass of tap water from the kitchen and return. “Try this out.” He had quite a bit to remember, too. The Link PET had been the model he’d gotten to know the workings of the best, before everything had vanished in smoke. Seeing Rock try it out made him recall reading through that manual, flipping open options to make sure he was following along correctly, while Rockman explored his computer desk.

Lan perked up and put her hands on her knees with her counterpart's emphasis. It was theirs, wasn't it? And it wasn't like she was just going to stop here - they still had an entire grip to work with, and whatever other custom stuff they'd cook up to bolster their arsenal. They had a lot of options. Rock was unsure if the novelty of getting to walk around like this would ever fully wear off. She happily welcomed Megaman to join her in prancing around the table - she even waltzed right up to him and tried to hit him with an unprompted high-five, only for that attempt to be thwarted by the hologram's lack of solidity. Such a failure only elicited a cackle, however, and that amusement only increased when Lan picked up the water glass and she pressed up against it. Her face bulging and distorting was a major source of amusement for her, and even Lan was stifling a giggle. "Man, this is so damn cool," Rock muttered to herself. "I can't believe this is just normal for you guys. Just goes to show you how behind on tech we are." Lan blushed. "I wouldn't get... too envious," she protested. (They had to remember that their world was still worth protecting, in spite of everything.) Megaman and Rock were obviously having a good time, and Lan could tell that... this was comforting for her mirror, as well. There was this subtle longing in his eyes, and it made her think back on... their emotions. How their hearts seemed to be tugged at, and healed, by similar things. She glanced downward, her lips tensing slightly. And then, with little prompting, she spoke. "...How... did you escape...?" she asked tepidly. "I know you mentioned something about Megaman, but..."

Netto didn’t answer for a while, thinking it over. “My friends all came together to save me,” he finally arrived on. “I was assigned here because I knew better than to think I could escape, and by then all my memories were so… distant. But they all recognized me eventually, and I remembered, and then I was told to do this horrible thing, and I just… couldn’t. I sent Rockman a letter to tell him goodbye, and then he just… showed up, instead… and then he told everyone else, and they all showed up, too.” Netto could feel his mind trying to close off, but shook himself awake. “I returned to the Citadel, so the General wouldn’t suspect a thing. And then I let everyone else in, to destroy the Silver Division entirely. And it worked.” His breathing had become a bit shallower as he wondered what to say. “Everyone tells me this is fine, but they did so much, and I’m just…” He hugged his knees to his chest, socks on the edge of the seat. “I’m letting them all down.” Rockman, having noticed something was amiss, returned to Netto’s side. “We missed you so much, Netto-kun. You just need time to heal, and I think all of us wanna give you that time.”

Lan listened intently, trying to imagine how it must have felt as her counterpart told his story. "So... they all came back... to haunt you, in a way," she thought out loud. "But they were... ghosts that weren't just watching you, they wanted to protect you." She blinked- then immediately shook her head wildly and blushed. "S-sorry. Did that sound weird?" Rock hesitated upon listening to the story and watching Megaman jump back up. "The Silver Division? Oh, I guess that was... the kidnapping thing. Or whatever," she muttered to herself. She glanced at the other Lan, confused and almost a little offended that he was balling up all of a sudden. "Wh- who the hell are you letting down?" she asked incredulously. "Your pals from the sleepover? They definitely didn't seem disappointed in you." Lan immediately felt bad once he curled up, and she leaned forward, like she wanted to reach out to him. "H-hey. Megaman's right," she assured, raising her voice a little. "I don't... I mean, even if you think that, you're not letting me down! You've... you've been helping people in the chatroom, and... I..." She paused, also curling inward now. For a moment, she was afraid she'd pick the wrong words, but the way Rock was looking at her, and the way Megaman was standing there and the fact that they'd been so open the whole time made her want to speak straight from the heart. "I... I think you're cool!" she asserted. Her tone was hasty, like she was trying to force the words out. "You- you lived through all of that. You said your plan worked, right? And you fooled the General guy, and you're still here, and you... know all this stuff, and you're using it to help us, and... I don't know. You're cool. Is that okay?" Lan's face was bright red now. She absolutely looked like she wanted to crawl between the couch cushions and hide there like a bug.

“If anything, it felt like Netto-kun was the ghost!” Rockman said. “He was always there in the corners of our eyes, stirring things up.” “Guess he did literally have a grave…” Punk agreed, before turning back to wait for Netto to unball. Netto’s face was redder, but he didn’t immediately uncurl when his counterpart’s honesty struck his heart like gentle rain. “He has a hard time taking those sorts of compliments, even if they’re all true,” Rockman explained, beaming. “I just… I didn’t feel cool when it was all happening. It just hurt.” It helped Netto to explain if he was curled up like this, where he couldn’t see anyone’s reaction.. “I mean… I think what you did, standing up to your dad like that, was cool. It was brave, is what it was. I never… For a long time, I didn’t fight back. He’d tell me to do something and I would.” He hugged his shins tighter. “I should’ve kept fighting, but instead I just got so… tired. And scared.”

Lan stammered and dragged her arms against the couch cushion, taken aback by the conversation being flipped on her. Rock, wanting to give her a confidence boost, jumped off the table and onto her leg - she was lucky the acrobatics she could pull off as a Navi carried over to the hologram. With another leap, she joined Lan on her shoulder and leaned up against her neck. "H-hey, what," Lan protested, once the words finally came to her. "How aren't you brave?! You... you were in a way scarier place than I was, weren't you?" It was true. She was just a child sitting in her room, all sad about everything. He was actually kidnapped and held in a prison. She- she'd just crumple if she was in a situation like that, wouldn't she? "...You were lost in that haze. We both were, right? But you decided to fight back, because you couldn't take it anymore," she continued. "I-I didn't do that. I just had people drag me out. I would've been stuck forever, if they hadn't helped me. But you really... fought. I didn't..." Rock winced listening to her operator put herself down. "Kid-" "...If you were forced to, then you were forced to," Lan continued to protest. "I-I don't think. I could've survived that. If... way stupider stuff was getting me down. So- if you think I'm brave, then you're brave, too, okay?!"

That couldn’t be; he’d acted out of desperation, not bravery. He’d only decided to because he’d failed to keep his friends away from the truth, and it’d been about to come crashing down on them. If he hadn’t been sent back to Densan he’d have kept crawling along until he died that way— A choked sound came out of Netto’s throat, and he curled tighter into himself. Maybe Kaita, or Meiru, or Netto-chan would’ve handled it better, and maybe they wouldn’t have. He didn’t know, either way. He just knew he’d handled it poorly, that he was ashamed of how he’d gone from fearlessly battling giant monsters to being the lifeless thing the General had needed him to be. “I think there’s something to be said about being brave enough to accept the help you’ve been offered, too,” Rockman ventured. “Netto-kun… when I was mourning you, I could’ve just refused to go back to the Ministry with Papa, and go out into Internet City with Roll-chan. I could’ve waited and waited for you, and never tried to live a life outside of that.” Netto shook his head; the very thought of Rockman wasting away for years like that pained him further. “I couldn’t imagine a life without you, but I was brave enough to make one anyway, with Roll-chan and Papa’s help. And you were brave enough not to stop walking forward, even when you couldn’t see the point. You accepted everyone’s help, even when it scared you to imagine how they’d react.” You don’t know that, reminded a gentle voice from the recent past. …Maybe he always would’ve found a way out. Maybe Netto-chan always would’ve, too. “All you two needed was a chance, and you were both brave enough to take it,” Rockman said, as if he was reading Netto’s mind and adding onto the thought. “So, I don’t think you need to compare between yourselves! You have that in common.”

"You better be listenin' to him, Lan," Rock lectured, trying to grab her attention with a stern glare from her shoulder. "You don't gotta kick yourself to put other-you up. Both of you've been through similar shit, right? And you're sitting here right now, so you ought to acknowledge that you're worth something." Rock closed her eyes- it made her angry to see both of them get like this. Lan didn't deserve it, and her counterpart didn't deserve it, either. She hopped right off of Lan, back onto the table, and walked over to the other side, trying to stare the other Lan down even as he remained curled up. "Y'hear that? Other Lan? She ain't just placating you. Kid's right," Rock said. "You've been through some bullshit, so you're allowed to have a little confidence in yourself. And we owe ya one... or maybe two... anyway. You're good in my book." Lan stared at the floor for a solid ten seconds after Rock's lecture. She felt so unbelievably guilty, like she kept stepping on landmines for him, and now she was making a fool of herself just to prove a point. But- she choked up- she couldn't... really believe that this was wrong, right? They understood each other. "...Yeah. It really was... like that. We were waiting for our moment," she solemnly repeated. "I- I'm sorry I brought this up. It's just... we both had to... escape, right? So... it's just..." Her face was still just as red as it was a minute ago. "I thought I'd be stuck in peoples' shadows forever. That I'd just... be a shadow," she admitted quietly. "And... you've had to fight that, too, being locked up and forced to live a life you didn't want, to shadow other people, and..." She shook her head. "Nevermind, this is stupid."

Rockman gave Rock a bright, grateful smile, then turned back to the Nettos. “No, you’re right, Netto-chan!” he encouraged. “You both had the odds stacked against you, and yet you were brave enough to stand up and do the right thing anyway. And that’s really cool!” He heard his Netto’s breathing start to slowly even out. He gave his Operator a half-minute to wind down, then gently asked, “Can you look at me, Netto-kun?” “Mm…” Tiredly, Netto lifted his head. He was undoubtedly sad, but not angry or irritated by the turn the conversation was taking. (Rockman had even managed to defuse things before Netto got himself properly worked up over it! He was going to end up adding ‘therapy Navi’ to his list of present and past occupations, at this rate. If only Navis carried calling cards.) “There you go!” Rockman beamed. “Rock’s right, too,” he said, after they’d locked eyes for a moment. “You should have more confidence in yourself.” “I’d be insufferable, wouldn’t I?” mumbled Netto. “And not on purpose, either. Just like he always said I was.” Shyly, he tilted his head to look at Netto-chan next to him. “…Please, don’t be sorry,” he said after a moment. “You’re right, it’s just I—“ He choked on what seemed to be reflexive tears. “—have a hard time. Talking about these things,” he managed to warble. “I guess I’ve—always been a crybaby—“ "You had to hold it in for such a long time," Rockman reassured him. "It's okay if it comes out weird."

The silence helped Lan regain her bearings, as well. It was hard to shake the guilt, but Megaman agreeing with her and Rock with no hesitation helped to validate her. And- well, now he was sounding a lot like Rock, too. Was she rubbing off on him...? ...She kind of felt similarly. The first Lan she met came to mind, again. She did think he was insufferable when she first met him, didn't she? But it was all a misunderstanding. Except, he didn't get to talk that out with someone - he was just punished for it. That... upset her; but she couldn't deny that she had those same fears, like if she made too much of a scene she'd get even more of those looks. "I- I... it's fine," Lan stammered, trying to protest against the crying. She had trouble crying nowadays - it was good that he was at least letting it out, but it still made her feel a bit bad. "I- I do, too. I don't know... what words to use for some of the things I feel, but... you seem to get it, so..." Rock backed off once the other Lan was speaking again. "Let it out however ya need to," she assured. "It's okay to cry. And it doesn't make you less cool, Lan." "W-what is that supposed to mean?" Lan protested. "It's just- I don't... cry a lot, what does..." "I'm messin' with ya. But I mean it." Lan pouted, to which Rock stuck her tongue out - it was great that she could do this so directly to her face, now. The girl paused, trying her damndest to think of some way to pull this conversation out of the depths. "I'm- I know you said not to say sorry, but. Still," she said. "I know this is. Hard. I'd probably be the same way, if. You were asking the questions. But... I think you know a lot, and... you're older than me, and been through more, and..."

“No, yeah, it’s like… it’s hard to find other people who know how it feels,” Netto said. “My friends here kinda know what it’s like, but it’s hard to explain to anyone else. It’s really… scary for me, sometimes, because if I ran into someone who knew me before, they wouldn’t get it.” After a moment, Netto finished the thought. “So, it makes sense to ask a lot of stuff, if you don’t know anyone else exactly like you.” Rockman looked up at his Operator with cheerful calm, thoughtful. “Hey, that’s why you don’t talk to a lot of people besides Netto-kun even though you could, isn’t it?” he asked Punk, who had been watching all this play out with a tired expression. “He knows what it’s like, but you don’t have anyone else who would.” “This ain’t about me, Rockhead,” Punk returned icily. Netto wiped his eye clear. “I guess the scope’s done,” he said, then burst out laughing at his own non-sequitur.

Oh- yeah, there would probably be a lot of people that her counterpart could never explain this to. She hardly had any friends in the first place, most of which knew what was up with her already. "Huh, yeah," she mumbled to herself. "Yeah, um- I mean, my friends are nice, but... I don't know if they really get it. So... I'm glad I met you. It... is really scary. I hate it." My friends are better off than me, was the thought that rang through Lan's head that didn't leave her mouth. Rock grinned at Punk's reaction - that kind of prodding from Megaman did make her curious. Maybe she'd have a dark backstory of her own to recall one day... (And a cool scar over her eye, and... okay, maybe she didn't actually want a scar, that'd kinda mess up her face...) Lan giggled alongside her mirror's laughing - they had gotten so off track. "Oh- yeah, I guess so," she said. "It looks like it's working perfectly... Thank you!!" She clasped her hands and did another little bow. "U-um, so... now what?" she questioned. "What should we fill the grip with? A custom program, or...?" (She doubted that she'd be able to really learn that much programming in one day, but she didn't want to call it for the day, either. She was feeling too comfortable, and there were still cookies to enjoy, too...!)

“I’m not sure yet, actually,” Netto said. “We only got enough stuff to take care of the scope today, but we can always figure out what we would put in the grip. Everything around here’s probably closed by now, because it’s getting sort of…” He realized what was about to happen at almost the same time as Rockman. “…They were just going outside to watch the sun set,” Rockman said aloud as Netto quickly scooped up the cookie plate. “We should head back upstairs!” (edited)

Lan tilted her head - the scope and their conversation had taken quite a bit of time. And he did say that she could take her time with this kind of stuff - maybe they were better off leaving the grip for another day... Rock apparently read her mind, and piped up to voice her opinion. "If either of ya wanna call it, then now's the time, I guess," she shrugged, placing herself squarely in the middle of the table, between both of them. "You could always look stuff up on your own time, too, Lan." Lan averted her eyes - that was true, though she wondered how much good information she'd even get on her own Net. "Um, okay. We could just go upstairs," she agreed. "We could definitely use some more ideas, so... we can figure out what, like, I could learn. What kind of stuff have you made...?" Rock quickly figured out how to disable the hologram, returning to Lan's PET feeling immensely satisfied with herself. The two trekked back upstairs to the other Lan's bedroom-slash-lab, with Lan snatching another cookie on her way. She smiled - this was worth it, and it was going to continue to be worth it.

Netto took a seat on his bed, leaving space for his counterpart to sit next to him, set the cookies down between him and the space he'd left, and opened up his laptop. “…I hate it, too,” he admitted. “I feel like I ought to just suck it up and lie, just pretend to be that person I was before, but I don’t want to do that, either. It’s just too much work, like…” He looked up from the laptop to see the mess scattered around his bedroom. “…with the chatroom,” he finally admitted. “It seemed like just another weird virtual space at first. But now that I know it’s not, I’m always trying to watch what I say in there, too. It really, really sucks. …It’s exhausting, is what it is.” He sighed. “What are we gonna do?” he wondered. “Stay on constant alert, again? Just talk in DMs from here on?” Rockman and Punk seated themselves on the pillow at the head of the bed. “Both of those’re the smart things t’do,” Punk pointed out. “…But they don’t seem like what you want to do,” Rockman finished.

Lan was a little surprised by where the conversation had suddenly swerved as she sat next to her counterpart - wow, she actually decided to sit down this time instead of hiding in the corner! "U-uh? The chatroom...?" she stammered, struggling to find the right words to say. ...Admittedly, he had a point. Lan really felt that exhaustion; it exhausted her, too, when Triese rambled to her about how cool it was and then all that it got her was a kidnapping. It seemed to have so much potential for hurt, and - for what? But... if it weren't for the good people there, then Triese would have... never been rescued in the first place. She would be trapped in Regal's clutches forever - like... her counterpart was, in Darkland. It was since then that she couldn't bring herself to sling venom at the chatroom, because there were too many good people for her to stop caring about it. "I... really don't know," Lan answered, after a long pause. "There's... no way we can keep watch on it forever, right? And there are some... scary, and awful, people in there." A deep breath. "But... if it weren't for all the good people, then Triese might have..." Died, was the final word that Lan couldn't bring herself to say. But it was obvious enough what she meant. "We... can't just abandon it, right? I think... we just have to be careful, and... take comfort in that... there's more good than bad," she finished. "I... guess it's like Triese would say. Remember the best parts..." Rock was now using Lan's shoulder as a comfortable seat, thanks to the hologram gizmo. "If shit always goes south, then there's enough people we can trust that'll help kick those guys' shit in," she offered. "You've got us, and your own friends, and most of those faces from the rescue are pretty friendly." Another long silence. Lan shuffled on the bed, badly hoping that what she was saying made any sense at all. "If... it makes you feel better," she mumbled to herself. "I... never knew the... old you, I guess. And... I still think you're cool, so... that has to be worth something, right?" (She immediately cradled the moment the words left her mouth.)

Netto mulled it over himself, though he couldn’t seem to make himself settle on a conclusion. He was unable to just let go of what had happened, but just as unwilling to leave behind the chatroom entirely and force Meiru to do the same. Then, his counterpart’s admittance made him look over at her, surprised. “I mean, you sort of do… That older Netto’s probably what I should be like,” he shrugged. “I never would’ve prepared for the worst like this before I was recruited—“ “Kidnapped,” Rockman corrected firmly. “…kidnapped, either,” Netto finished. “But… I did live through all that, and I can’t just ignore all the threats that other version of my—of Hikari-hakase’s been making. I know a lot of the people in there are nice, but I don’t know how many of them can help with something as delicate as this…” He sighed. “But, anyway, you don’t need to hide!” he circled back around to. “You’re not even the only person who’d say that.” “That’s ‘cause you’re much cooler than that ‘old you’,” Punk said decidedly. “But you still have the same heart,” Rockman added. “…I can’t just abandon the chatroom,” Netto decided next. “But that still leaves how much to do about all this mess around it.” He gestured to the mess around the floor and shelves.

Lan almost took offense to the statement that he should be more like that other Lan. "W-what? No! I like you, I- I don't think we should be like him!" she exclaimed. "You're- you'd probably have done a better job than him staging that rescue, wouldn't you? You seem... more prepared, and you... you... I don't know..." She was getting angrier the more she talked, struggling to find coherent words as to why that Lan made her angry. The rage was enough to provoke concern from Rock. "Kid, what are you...? C'mon," she chastised. "We don't have to bring this up right now, do we?" "He was the one who brought him up," Lan pouted. "B-but, whatever. I guess it doesn't matter." (She was very vindicated by Punk's assertion to the other Lan. Because it was true! No one who was a stupid Official could've been as cool as him. He- was helping her, but all the Officials and their friends did was take away-) "I guess all we can do is keep preparin', and make sure we've got lots of people on our side," Rock speculated. "Maybe we are the best of the best, and the rest can't help too much. But we've got our own friends, and surely there's a couple folks we can get up to speed, right?" Lan relaxed now that the subject had shifted. "It's... probably good that you're so prepared. I'm definitely going to feel safer with the Tracker," she added. "I know... maybe it's not so good to be on the defensive, but if we do anything other than prepare, then... I'm scared they'll pull the trigger faster..."

Netto was a bit startled by the vehemence of his counterpart’s rebuttal. He wasn’t sure if he should feel guilty or relieved; he’d thought, and still did think, the same. That there had been a step or few of reconnaissance and strategizing that had been skipped over in favor of charging in. …But then, he would have done the same before. It had been the Citadel, and the Dimensional War, that had taught him all that caution. “He did well helping that other Netto at the sleepover,” he recalled. “He definitely means well, so I don’t think there’s a point in being angry-angry…” But the conversation quickly moved along; maybe this really was a little extreme and he didn’t have the full story here, but then, he’d been plenty pissed too when Meiru had been missing and then turned up after a hospital stay in another world. (Rush was still missing.) “…Yeah. I just…” Watching over the chatroom in shifts with Meiru, putting together all this stuff beyond the Fossa Trackers for his and his friends’ own use; making contingency plans in case the worst came to pass. “We’ve got to dial it back, or at least pass the burden around,” Rockman decided for him. “Maybe we can share our observations amongst ourselves, Netto-chan, having another set of eyes to watch for anything odd would be super helpful! But Netto-kun can’t be spending this much time on it any longer. It’s wearing him out.”

Lan twitched and averted her eyes at the mention of the sleepover; that was true. He'd basically pulled him aside and handled that other Lan while she... couldn't really... do much. Well- of course he meant well, he helped them rescue Triese, but... she couldn't stand the idea of him. She hated looking at him. "Hey, we could totally do that," Rock quickly agreed, perking up at the thought. "I mean, we're lookin' in there most of the time, and so're Triese and Iris. Well- Triese is kinda... out of the picture, but Iris knows what's up." "...Yeah. As long as we're keeping an eye on things and stay in contact, then... we'll be able to react to most things," Lan said. "I don't want you to wear yourself out, because... it's not really worth it..." She paused. She had seen the threats that... the other Yuichiro Hikari made. Those threats became something that was used against Triese. She was unsure about... how much they could do about it, but... if they let this tear them apart, and consume their lives, then... how could they even live? "We'll live through it. Just keep on fighting like we always have, right?" Rock encouraged, wearing a shit-eating grin. (edited)

“Yeah!” agreed Rockman. “We’ll just make sure to pass it along to one or both of you if we notice anything weird. And maybe we can get a few other people in on it, too!” “…And then we can take a break from watching it all the time, because we’ll know someone trustworthy’s in on it,” Netto finished. “Exactly. It’ll feel less all-consuming if we get some days away from it all,” Rockman said. “And then, being careful in the chatroom won’t feel so tiring. It’ll probably help all of us keep our stories straighter, too, so we won’t have another incident like Hikari-hakase taking over the chatroom.” What Rockman was describing definitely sounded a lot more manageable than what Netto had been treating it as. “I think… this is enough, for now,” he said, though he sounded uncertain. “Enough trying to read his mind. We’ll know if he gets here, and we’ll definitely know if he’s planning on getting here.” Netto sighed, letting his feet kick over the side of the bed—he was still small enough that his legs didn’t quite touch the ground. Then, he looked back over at his counterpart. “Thanks for, uh, talking that out with me. And for working with me, going forward,” he said quite solemnly, extending a hand to shake on it.

Lan smiled - it was nice that her words were actually making a difference. Of course, it was a lot easier to say them than to feel them… but it was true. Trying to predict their every move, constantly worry about an invisible threat - it was too much. They just had to support each other as best as they can. She was a little surprised when her counterpart offered her a handshake, but after a momentary hesitation, she returned the favor. It was a gentle handshake, but… it was nice, to have a strange kind of… symbol of friendship. “Th-thank you. Really. For the scope, and… for talking with me. It was… really nice,” she said, her mirror’s solemnity reflecting on her. “I hope we can… uh, keep hanging out…” Lan was feeling way too awkward to give her proper thanks, so Rock jumped on her shoulder to finish the job. “Happy to help. Here’s to a partnership, I suppose,” she said, giving them a thumbs up. “You’re all cool guys in my book. We’ll def’ be keepin’ watch for freaks and weirdos.” “I’m… sure there’s a better way you could put that,” Lan said, cracking a smile. It was a terrifying unknown they had to navigate, but there were enough hands in the dark to grab, to join together and navigate through such a twisted maze. Rock was satisfied with having made a powerful ally (in her mind); but for Lan, there was comfort in receiving guidance, and knowing that there really were other people like her. Knowing there were others wading in that same darkness lessened the burns of those invisible eyes.