MMBN RP - Lionhearted pair

@scenegraph + @Cosmine Pitmeen

2:43 AM

They’d been going at it for a while, ever since Cometman had received that upgrade from the helpful Dr. Hikari, Ellen had been pushing non-stop for training with Mayl and Roll. Practically every moment of free time she had she was sneaking over to Mayl’s world, eager for a fight. The only thing stopping her was the fact she couldn’t sneak out every day after her studies. But she was able to sneak out today and she was going to take full advantage of that! “Alright Cometman!” she declared, “All we gotta do is outmaneuver her and land one hit in!” He grumbled under his breath, “That’s what we’ve been trying to do…” “Let’s make it harder for her!” she grinned, flashing her teeth just briefly, “Ice stage!” Ellen shifted her hands and after a second of lag, ice painted the floor in a reflective sheen. Cometman dashed forward, jets blazing brightly behind him, barreling straight for Roll.

Meiru and Roll were honestly quite happy to be tutoring Ellen and Cometman after school. There had always been a bit of a lull time between school letting out and the Ministry calling them in, and now it was always full of people. If eighteen-year-old her could tell sixteen-year-old her that she would have this many readily available friends to choose to spend the afternoon from, the latter would’ve thought it impossible. It was still a bit of a mystery as to how to teach Cometman to act on his own, the sticking point that had started this whole exercise. Ellen wanted to learn in action, but Cometman still couldn’t use attacks on his own. So far, their Netbattles certainly seemed to be teaching Ellen how to react more quickly against two minds working as one. Even though Ellen was improving at playing the game she wanted to against Meiru and Roll’s Netbattle technique, the lag was still more than enough time for the pair to adapt. Roll shifted her weight and effortlessly hopped onto the ice like a champion figure skater, while Meiru gathered chips into her hand. “Area Steal, Satellite, slot-in!” she called, before sending in one more chip uncalled. Where Roll had been standing, there was now a Yura virus, crackling with electricity—and Roll herself was, for the moment, not in Ellen or Cometman’s field of vision.

The sudden attack was not a complete surprise, and Ellen quickly selected a Freeze Knuckle chip to counter attack. Then she remembered that she needed to let Cometman take control too, and the resulting attack ended up whiffing the Sparky entirely. It rammed into him, causing double damage as the ice powered up the electricity. He fell onto one knee as he gathered himself. Ellen grumbled in frustration, scratching her scalp and making her visualizer fall onto her face at an angle. "Shoot!" she barked, "I'm not getting it!" Then readujsted her visualizer back onto her head. "What were you trying to do there?" Cometman asked. "Hit the attack, but I thought, maybe, it'd be a good point to let you take control, but," she threw her head back in a weak groan of frustration. "Wouldn't it have been better to hit the ground so I could've pivoted around it to dodge?" he suggested. "No- uh- maybe?" she mumbled, shifting her weight and tapping the ground with her heel with her lighter foot, "It's just practice right... Learning how your Navi fights and working with that..." Ellen mulled over the advice and training she'd been given these precious few days. To listen to her Navi and adapt to his fighting style, but she still couldn't help feeling like it would be easier to just take control herself. She looked up at Mayl to see if she had any input on this.

“You should communicate that to Cometman first,” Meiru pointed out. “It’s hard for him to react in time if he doesn’t know what the plan is.” Rather than slam the follow-up Yo-yo into Cometman, Roll landed on the ice near him, leaving her weapon undeployed on her arm. “Besides, Cometman, once you’ve been sent the chip it’s yours to use in the way you want to! If you think hitting the ground’s a better idea, then go ahead and do that!” “Hmm…” Meiru tilted her head to one side, rethinking her approach. “Are you sure this isn’t too much all at once? We could do other things to help you learn the basics and work up to an all-out Netbattle, y’know…” “We can use the training simulator upstairs!” suggested Roll. “We can set the enemies to move around but not attack, so there’s less pressure. You can figure out how all the types of chips feel, and which kinds you like, and Ellen-chan can see what works best for you, too!” “Then we can get to the part where you two refine things and put it all together,” Meiru finished. (There was no harm in it, since the upstairs rooms were all nice and tidy.) (edited)

Mayl may have well have asked if Ellen would like floaties to swim with or perhaps a baby toy with her kid's meal. Ellen was devastated and her face fell like a ton of bricks. "Back to training on targets?" she deflated weakly, "Come on, that's beginner stuff..." She held her tongue about her frustrations over the fact she could just do it all herself. She knew how much that unnerved Mayl and Roll, and now that she's been thinking about it for the past couple of days, it's started to unnerve herself too. "I'm sure I can pick it up quickly," Cometman assured, "You just gotta be patient. This is all to get stronger. Two minds working together as one, right?" He nodded to Roll. "It just feels so awkward to call out what I'm gonna do," Ellen hummed, her face slowly becoming more inquisitive, "Although when that girl Lan did that call out thing when she jacked Rock in... That was pretty cool. Maybe it'd be fine to do call outs for chips..." "Well I've been fighting with you for a while, so I bet I could take a guess at what your next chip would be," he held his chin, looking at the battle field, "It'd probably be an Aqua chip cause you're planning to do 'freeze break strats' as you call them." "My strategies!" she gasped theatrically, "Spoiled by my own Navi!!" Cometman chuckled, "You just gotta trust me. Maybe when you need me to make a snap decision, you call out the chip you send me?" Ellen straightened out, pondering this, "You know, that might actually work. I guess I never really saw the point before, but that makes sense." She nodded to Mayl, "I'm ready to keep going! Whenever you are!" as Cometman returned to his starting position.

“Cometman is a beginner, though,” Meiru pointed out. “You know what you’re doing, Ellen-chan, but he’s still working some of it out.” “Even we practice on easier targets when we’re working out what we can do with a brand-new chip or combination,” Roll added. “It’s okay to build up to stuff…” “I think you’ve got the right idea, though!” Meiru added. “We call things out to communicate what’s coming to our Navis, but there are times when they’ll know what’s coming because it’s a combo you use a lot. Like the Area Steal leading into Yo-yo I just sent.” And, indeed, it seemed as though there was no way Ellen was going to want to use the simulator—and no way Cometman would choose to let her down. So, dispelling the Yo-yo for now, Roll resumed her starting position as well. “Are you ready, too, Cometman?” Meiru smiled a bit mysteriously, ejecting the Yo-yo for future use and waiting to see what would happen in round two. (edited)

"I'm ready to continue," Cometman declared, pounding his fist into his hand. "Yeah!" Ellen exclaimed, raising a fist into the air, then gripped her Game-Xross in a wide stance, "Battle Routine Set Ex- Actually wait a minute, should I make up a new phrase?" "Right now Ellen!?" he groused, deflating all at once. "Right! Right, no, some other time! Anyways EXECUTE!" she effused, leaning in and sending Cometman racing forward. His arm formed into a double barrel machine gun, firing a rain of bullets back and forth across where Roll stood, his other arm forming into his titular star mace and firing forward. It was a pretty standard opener, he figured. Cause the opponent to react to a weak multi-hit projectile to put pressure on them, and catch them as they try to dodge with a follow-up. He could lose himself in this, just let Ellen take the reigns because it seemed like she got this, but that's not what he was there for. He watched Roll carefully as the first attack concluded, eyeing her flinches and body movements to gauge where she was going, angling the mace's trajectory to intercept her with a grapple.

Roll, being quite used to mace-wielding sorts after nearly two years of fighting Punk, opted to take the last Vulcan hit in order to hop up and over the mace at the same angle it was coming in at. “Battle Chip: Aqua Blade!” Meiru immediately called. Roll tumbled to her feet and swung the Aqua Blade just as fast as she would’ve to cut off Punk’s mace, but halted inches away from Cometman’s extended arm—a feint to illustrate what would’ve happened in a real fight. “You know we’re just training, right?” Roll asked her Operator. “That’s too harsh!” “Ah, sorry,” Meiru told Ellen and Cometman while Roll darted in closer, staying low to the ground and holding the sword to jab ahead of her. “Aqua Whirl, slot-in!” Roll sprang off the ground, keeping the Aqua Blade engaged while the waterspout encased her, attempting to graze Cometman with the outer wall of the Aqua Whirl or the much more dangerous edge of the Aqua Blade.

Ellen's face twinged at her unsuccessful attack and shifted her grip. "Jet Attack!" she announced, making her chip selection. Cometman eyed the whirling torrent barreling towards him and immediately activated the chip. It took almost too long to load as Roll was nearly on him when the chip finally reached his thrusters and dashed to the side of her like a pair of jousting knights. Jet Attack's temporary invulnerability protected him from harm, and yet he launched himself at such an angle that it didn't do any damage to Roll either. He immediately spun on his heels as the attack concluded, giving a quick look to Ellen who narrowed her eyes for a baffling millisecond before recovering. Both his hands reformed into maces and shot out to grab Roll from behind, their trailing chains making a 'x' shape as they whipped down towards her.

Meiru rapidly slotted in a pair of chips, but it seemed not to do anything; Roll was grabbed, all right. She didn’t make a sound as Cometman’s chains ensnared her. “Nice shot!” Meiru said. She was congratulatory, but not alarmed. Abruptly, a Bubble Shot exploded around and over Cometman. The Roll in his hands crumpled and shrank into a small, smiling Kawarimi doll. “Battle Chip: Burning Body!” A small Birdraft appeared, zipping around Cometman’s feet to distract him from Roll making her landing. “Let’s see how well you can dodge!” Roll said, before blowing a kiss. “Heart Slash!” She scattered the smaller hearts wide, sparsely covering the field around Cometman with tiny, stinging projectiles. (edited)

"Tch, AntiDamage," Ellen mumbled to herself, then announced cheekily, "And how dare you use a Fishy against me!" With a sideways grin she input her counter, making one of Cometman's mace and chains fling around him in a spiral as it retracted, knocking the Burner out and away from him. "Curse Shield!" Ellen called out. The large grey rectangle appeared before Cometman, and his jets flared. He had a brief moment of confusion before he let himself go with the flow, placing his hands in front of him and braced himself against the shield. He was then sent barreling forwards, Curse Shield spearheading his charge as it bit the air straight through the flurry of hearts.

That was obviously not Cometman’s move. “I was asking how well Cometman could dodge, not Ellen-san!” Roll protested. “He’s gotta come up with a move like that on his own!” But if the battle hadn’t stopped for their concerns earlier, it wasn’t going to stop now. And what was more, Ellen wasn’t holding back with the Battle Chips. It was quite unlike the technique-focused sparring Roll and Blues did—this was an all-out fight. “Break Hammer!” Meiru immediately countered after seeing the Curse Shield. There was no time for Roll to soften this one, unless she wanted to get flattened herself. She teed up like she was playing softball before swinging the Break Hammer around to punch through Cometman’s defense—and, if he didn’t react in time, through Cometman behind it.

The Curse Shield's maw clamped right onto the Break Hammer, refusing to let go even when Roll followed through on her attack. When it was flung away, it revealed Cometman further back than expected. And standing still. "Ah-! I!" Ellen sputtered, her face completely flabbergasted. "Ellen," Cometman groused quietly. She deflated, all her energy leaving her in an instant, "Shoot I got too into the battle and forgot..." "Ellen," Cometman grumbled flatly. "Gah, I'm sorry!" she squeaked, giving a sheepish grin. She had been dying to fight since she first heard of the chatroom. And even though Dr. Hikari's wrapper program was holding up, there were still issues with it and Ellen couldn't just challenge everyone just yet, so this was her only chance! Or at least, that's what it felt like. All her life, every fight was to determine who was stronger. It was going to take some extreme rewiring to get those instincts tempered. "How about this, Ellen," Cometman suggested evenly, "What hand do you use to control my movements?" "Uh," she held up a hand, "Left? Why?" "Then put the Game-Xross on your left arm so you can't use it," he smirked, "I think I've gotten a pretty good idea about the basics of footwork, so how about you just focus on when to dash and I'll handle movements?" She blinked back brightly, pursing her lips curiously as she looked to Mayl. It sounded like a good idea to her! She docked her device and got into position. "Ready to start again, Roll? Mayl?" Cometman turned to the other Navi and Operator as his Operator bounced and nodded excitedly.

“You’ll have a chance at more Netbattles once the wrapper program’s done!” Meiru reminded Ellen good-naturedly. “Right now, though, it’s kinda better to focus on technique instead of our heavy hitters. The wrapper's not done yet, for one thing. And Roll doesn’t have as many hit points as Cometman, so if some of those Chips earlier had landed we would’ve been done a lot earlier.” “But Meiru-chan wouldn’t let that happen!” Roll chimed in confidently—no harm, no foul. “So we’ve still got plenty of time ahead of us.” “I didn’t!” Meiru agreed. “I am going to match whatever level you throw at me, though. I can’t be too hard on you two, but I also can’t let Roll get hurt unnecessarily.” “Say, that’s a part of it we need to communicate, too!” Roll realized. “You can match what Ellen-chan throws at us because you can trust me, and I can move confidently because I can trust you.” Sheepishly, she laughed, “I guess it’s become so second nature that I didn’t think about saying it that way until now.” “Good point…!” Ellen was already raring for round three, though, so Meiru said, “You guys’ll figure it out best through practice, anyway! So, Cometman, let’s see what you do when Roll goes on the offensive first!” “Me?!” Roll was obviously put on the spot; this wasn’t usually how they opened a Netbattle. “Sure! That way it’s practice for both of us,” Meiru explained brightly, readying a Chip. “Well, okay!” And with that, Roll sent a Heart Slash Cometman’s way, legs bent and ready to evade however she needed to.

Ellen giggled whistfully. The idea that she was an equal match to a Net Savior like Mayl tickled her. But this wasn't the time to go all out! Training mode. Training mode. She repeated to herself like a litany against going too hard. She flashed a winning grin and nodded, just as Cometman prepared himself and jumped to the side to evade the Heart Slash. Ellen input a command to send out a mace in the same direction as Cometman was already going, cracking the ground and pulling him in that direction, but her timing was off and he was clipped by a couple of hearts in the leg. She let out a contemplative hum that didn't go unnoticed by her Navi. "What's wrong?" he asked. "Dodging to the side and back has always been difficult. The hip jets only point backwards, so sideways movements and backing up is so much slower," she explained. "So that's why," he hummed as his mace retracted back into his arm. He ran forward towards Roll and shortly after, his thrusters propelled him into tackling range. He raised an arm just as a mace shot out, chain trailing behind, anticipating a dodge from Roll and trying to predict where she'd end up for a counter.

On paper, most matchups were unfavorable toward Roll, and that suited Meiru just fine—that just tilted her opponents more and made it easier on her when she ‘somehow’ ended up with the upper hand. If anything, Meiru was deeply surprised and a little flattered that Ellen thought she was cool. It made Meiru happy that she had so many talented kouhais now, between Ellen and Mary and Kaita. Working from a point of being underestimated could be a powerful advantage, but it felt even better to be taken seriously. It seemed that while Ellen was still directing Cometman’s weapons, Cometman himself was being given the chance to independently move. Meiru smiled—the training wheels were properly coming off, and Cometman was getting more opportunities to make his own choices. She readied another of her Area Steals, but she wanted to give Roll a chance to evade under her own power before scooping her out of danger. (After all, Roll was a Net Savior Navi.) Roll knew what to do after eavesdropping in on Ellen and Cometman’s conversation—she sprang and tumbled diagonally in the opposite direction to Cometman’s momentum, landing in a crouch. Ready to spring away again at a moment's notice, she looked back as if saying, Well, Cometman? What will you do to compensate?

The mace slammed into the ground where Roll once was and Cometman shifted his body so that his arm was against his torso perpendicular to the ground. This along with his thrusters flaring caused him to fling himself around, using where the mace hit the floor as an anchor point, tracing a circle. He swerved and quickly gained momentum, swinging his free arm as a mace launched out of it right on queue. His and Ellen's plan became clear; with every missed shot he would anchor to the ground and propel himself forward, accelerating a threatening amount each time. With Cometman aiming and Ellen's timing, he was sent skating across the battlefield like a racecar, but the mace shots were still too easy for Roll to read, and he continued to miss. He was starting to get frustrated, but didn't show it. The gap in experience was apparent here. He knew to 'aim where they were going to be', but that required predicting movements correctly, and Roll was a seasoned acrobat well armed with tricky movements. "This is why I kit out my folder with Magbolts and freezing chips," Ellen explained, looking a bit frustrated herself, "Lock down the opponent and then come in for the big damage. Bit difficult to do with one hand though." "I think I'm starting to get it," Cometman grumbled. He was not.

“But it’s a novel way to propel yourself across the battlefield, Cometman!” Meiru said encouragingly. “Yeah!” agreed Roll, still nimbly leaping out of Cometman’s clutches. “It’s hard for a lot of Navis to read patterns like that.” A less experienced Navi would’ve been hit ages ago. It was only because Roll was so used to evading Navis like Blues and Punk that she had learned to predict the angles they’d come in at on the fly like this. “I guess we’d better switch things up, or they’ll be dodging each other for the rest of the afternoon,” Meiru remarked. “Get ready, Roll! Ice Stage, slot-in!” Roll timed her next jump so that she landed with her feet ready to slide on the ice. It only seemed to make her faster, with her familiarity with Meiru’s various strategies involving this terrain or water.

The ice did not slow down Cometman either. He skated along it effortlessly, not even bothering to think about how he should move across the ice and simply letting his legs carry him. He steadily increased his speed across the frictionless surface, keeping up with Roll's acceleration. "Wide Wave," Ellen muttered into the mic, making a clawed hand in order to press the buttons necessary to pull up the chips. Cometman felt the data load, but didn't activate it yet. Timing was everything to the freezebreak technique, but all they had to do was catch Roll off guard once. He watched her arms and raised his own, taking a big sweeping swing just as a mace was flung out of it. A very easy to read attack that aimed for the feet. Roll leapt over the attack as expected and as she did Cometman fired off the Wide Wave. "Can't dodge while you're in the air," he smirked, while Ellen beamed with excitement on the screen behind him.

Roll was quite surprised to see the student keeping pace with the master, but she tried to keep her cool about it. “So, you’re comfortable on this stage, too,” she noticed, before being forced to evade. That comfortable use of the Ice Stage’s speed in turn made Meiru less surprised to see Cometman unleash a combo attack. “Barrier, slot-in!” she called. Roll whipped a hand forward to deploy the Barrier, and not a moment too soon—the Wide Wave broke against the Barrier, showering the area around Roll with the remnants of the attack. It really was tricky for Meiru to judge how to pull her punches like this—would another Area Steal be too frustrating for Ellen and Cometman? "Prism, slot—"

Cometman slammed into Roll. Even if the Wide Wave wasn't going to hit, Ellen was still going to input a tackle attack and Cometman knew this. He was prepared and leaned into it, but instead of following up, he shifted his feet and skid across the ice with his skates. Once he came to a stop he trotted over to Roll and offered her a hand to help her up, "How was that?" "That was awesome!!" Ellen cheered, bouncing up and down, "You timed that attack out so well and you were ready for the dash too! I didn't think it'd be possible cause normally I'd be doing all that, but you did it! You just pulled it all off!! You moved yourself and everything and all I had to do was time out the attack and then bam!! That was so cool!" She continued to giggle excitedly as Cometman turned to look up at the screen with a smile on, "It just makes sense. Maybe I'm a natural at this." Ellen let out extra giggles, "A natural? How can a Navi be 'natural' at something?" "Hey! I've been picking this up pretty quickly!" he smirked back. "True, true," she conceded and then beamed back at Cometman and then Roll and Mayl.

It was too late to offer assistance; Roll cried out as she sailed across the homepage. “Roll!” Practice or not, Meiru couldn’t help but feel bad for letting her Navi get hit by what looked to be a serious blow. But Ellen and Cometman seemed to understand the purpose of sparring a bit better now, seeing as the latter didn’t follow up. Meiru relaxed in turn, not needing to whisk Roll out of danger. Roll accepted the help back up to her feet. “Thank you, Cometman!” She looked over to Meiru once she was standing. “Don’t worry, Meiru-chan. I’m okay!” And that much was true. Roll’s hit points, the measure of how long she could safely battle, were still a bit above two thirds of her maximum. Knowing that, Ellen’s enthusiasm was more than enough proof that playing it less safe had been the right move. “You guys did great!” Meiru congratulated them. Ellen’s grin was contagious—Meiru and Roll’s teaching was working! “That was way more of a team effort than before! Just keep going after that same feeling, and you’ll be ready for the real thing in no time!” “Navis can definitely be natural at things!” Roll pointed out. “There are specialty Navis who can do their jobs freshly booted. And we have other talents we can find along the way, too, like my fortune-telling!”

"That same feeling..." Ellen wondered. She pursed her lips like words were forming just behind them but- "I'm probably just a natural at fighting, if I had to make a guess," Cometman shrugged smugly, "Don't know what it is about it, but I just like it." Ellen blinked back, then brightened instantly, "Yeah!! It's fun isn't it!?" Cometman tilted his head to the side slightly, "It is. But thinking about it, I would like to try other things too. Though I don't really know what? Roll, what is fortune-telling?" Ellen contemplated that comment her Navi made. She had only had him for a short amount of time, but during all of that, how many times did Cometman get to choose what they did? It wasn't like he ever really asked to do so, and he enjoyed whatever she proposed, but had she ever... Asked what he wanted directly? Had she been holding him back, preventing him from exploring his own interests, because she never considered it? It was a haunting thought that made its way onto her face as she stared at the scene playing out on her Game-Xross with a distant expression.

Roll, not considering herself a natural at fighting, laughed sheepishly at Cometman’s confidence. “There are definitely Navis who are purpose-built for battles!” she explained. “Maybe you’re one of them. But, as for fortune-telling…” Roll explained, “Fortune-telling is when you use a chance-based method to predict someone’s future, or tell them about themselves. You can use tarot cards, or stars in the sky, or even tea leaves. And I use these hearts, in lots of colors!” She popped up one of her Heart Slash hearts, then let it dispel. “It was something you picked up a long time after I first got you,” Meiru remembered. “I was already a Net Savior by the time you came up with that.” “Part of it’s the presentation of it,” Roll added. “It’s like putting on a show, which is part of what I like about it!” She tilted her head, a finger raised aloft. “And that can be really important to keep in mind when you’re looking for things to try! Though, of course, you can also just accidentally find things by tagging along with friends.” Meiru noticed how worried Ellen seemed now. Little wonder; they were here because she and Cometman hadn’t had any frame of reference for what he was supposed to be. “Give him time, and he’ll start figuring it out for himself,” she gently reassured Ellen. “You’re doing just fine by him, by thinking of him.”

"Ah!?" Ellen stammered, taken aback and flustered, "Am I that easy to read...?" Cometman laughed uproariously and so loudly that Ellen shot him a pensive glare in response. "What?" he shot back with a smirk, "It's thanks to that readable face that I can tell what's going on in your head sometimes." Her cheeks flushed and she pouted grumpily, mumbling to herself about "she can't help it" and "shouldn't give her opponent any extra information". He laughed again, shorter this time, and turned back his attention back to the other Navi, "Roll, do you think you could do a fortune for me then? What's the future got in store for me?"

“Well… okay then!” Roll was nothing if not able to improvise! She took a couple of steps backward, set up another large heart, and then clasped it to her chest with both hands. She entreated the skybox above them, “Rainbow of the Heart, answer our call!” Roll elegantly danced about, cradling the heart close to her all the while. “Travel the skies to reach us! Reflect across the moon!” Her next leap took her closer to Cometman. “Un, deux, trois! Kirarirariiiiin~!” And with one final twirl, she released a sparkling rainbow of hearts into the air. “Lovely Heart Fortune~!” They drifted over her and Cometman’s heads for a moment, fluttering around as if teased up by currents of air the Navis couldn’t feel. “Now, reach up and discover your fate on your fingertips!”

The multicolored hearts floated overhead, too fast to discern what exact color each of them were. Cometman raised a brow at the display, not really sure how this would relate to anything that could predict the future. He reached up and grabbed one at random, pulling it down and inspecting it. "It's... Black?" he muttered, turning the heart around in his hand, "What does that mean? Is that good?" Ellen laughed hesitantly, "Surely something like, 'things are awesome!!', right?" They both looked at the other two with equally apprehensive looks. Then, in the distance, a rumble echoed through the cyberworld.

Roll looked at the black heart in alarm. She only ever put one of those into the mix, more because it felt like a proper fortune-telling device that way than because she wanted anyone to actually pull it. “It’s… er…” Nervously, she admitted, “…pretty bad.” Even distracted as she was by the tatters of her little show, the colorful hearts wafting around them before gradually dissolving one by one, she could sense the disturbance in the Cyberworld. “We’re not alone, Meiru-chan!” she reported to her Operator, shocked. Meiru was just as surprised as Roll was. For this to be happening in her house network, it had to be a targeted attack. But who would do such a thing, with times being as relatively peaceful as they were? “Be careful, Roll!” Apologetically, she looked over to Ellen and Cometman. “It’s okay, Meiru-chan,” Roll assured her. “I’m not about to let some bad fortune come true for our student!”

A second rumble shook the cyberworld with a shockwave of pressure so intense that it fell onto the two Navis like a waterfall. Cometman yelled out as he fell to one knee, struggling to move even his head under the pressure. The Netbattling machine in the real world buzzed slightly from the sudden uptick of processing, but it was enough it could be felt through the floor of Mayl's house. "Wh-What's going on!?" Ellen cried out, placing both of her hands on the dome like it would help stabilize the thing. "There's something here... Attacking us..." Cometman managed to get out before falling further onto his arms. Bounding towards them was a beastial virus with the upper body of a doll like being for a head. It had a solid mace like tail and a sharp mane that resembled something more like the head of a screwdriver than fur. With a loud roar that emanated from the beast like body it slammed into the ground before the two Navis, knocking a shockwave of panels upwards. The wave of pressure subsided all at once as an almost invisible distortion in the air dissipated. Cometman immediately stood up and backed off, only for the pressure to fall on him again as he did. "Uh, Ellen?" he called out, looking back over his shoulder. "Right!!" Ellen scrambled, trying to unhook the Game-Xross from her arm and whining as she found it stuck, "I can't-! Agh, nevermind!! Battle Routine Set Execute Cometman!! You'll need to move yourself around, my Game-Xross is stuck on my arm! I'll send you some chips!" then after a moment, "Oh right!! Yo-yo!"

Roll felt as though she’d been flattened under the invisible pressure. She felt the shock of the floor smacking into her before she even processed that she’d fallen. “Roll?!” she heard Meiru ask. “It’s... coming…” Roll managed to choke out, feeling the echoes of a large beast’s footsteps through her antennae. She braced herself, either to be plugged out or to be hit… “Area Steal!” Meiru called out. It was their usual strategy against something unfamiliar and large, to simply evade until they had a handle on its abilities. But before Roll could trigger it, the pressure weighing her down… disappeared? She picked herself up while Cometman backed away. “Cometman?” she wondered, watching him visibly slow. If Roll stayed in place, she was a sitting duck. But instead of taking herself as far away as she normally would with the Area Steal, she chose to warp behind the creature. Even that seemed to increase the weight she felt from the pressure wave. “We’re being pushed in, Meiru-chan,” she warned her Operator. Close quarters were hardly ideal for Roll, and both she and Meiru knew it. But with Cometman not even considering retreating, could she really leave her student behind…? “Aqua Blade, slot-in!” Meiru called, clearly thinking the same thing.

The hulking beast spun around, swinging its mace like tail in a very easy to read arc. Cometman leapt over the tail and loaded in the Yo-yo, flinging it out and watching as it rolled off the beasts haunches, showering the area in sparks. "It's body is tough," he noted as the Yo-yo swung back, "We'll need something that can break through that armor." "Your dash attack does breaking damage, but we'd have to coordinate on that," Ellen mentioned, then blinked as she realized what she had said. She quickly looked between Mayl, Roll, and then finally back to Cometman, "Do you think we can?" It wasn't so much of a question as it was a dawning realization. That maybe the weird training they had been doing could pay off, but not in the way she expected. She had always thought that she was going to have to go back to operating Cometman like she was playing Netken, because that was what was strongest, but maybe that wasn't actually the case...? Cometman was not waiting for a response and began running in, holding his arm beside him ready for input. Ellen scrambled over to her Game-Xross and input the commands just as Cometman swung outward and launched a star mace forward and around one of the beast's legs. It latched on fast and Cometman used it as an anchor to swing around with a dash, reaching out to Roll. "Going up?" he offered with a smirk, hand out stretched.

Roll, too, was finding that trying to slice through the creature’s joints was an exercise in futility. Neither the back of the knee nor the hip allowed her blade to wedge in. Its attacks were easy enough to evade, but she couldn’t help but wonder how long that would last. “Of course you can!” she heard Meiru encourage overhead. Cometman, with his defenses (and perhaps his relative youth), was already fearlessly charging in. It had been a long time since Roll had last done the same; she simply didn’t have the defense or raw power to reliably be anything but cautious, with the kinds of enemies she usually fought. She and Meiru had learned the hard way to be much more careful than they’d been as hobbyist Netbattlers. But space was at a premium, and the thing in front of them did seem bizarrely easy to read. Roll was sure Meiru was hiding her worries over the inability to properly evade. She had been, too. But maybe, this time, Roll could fight like Cometman was—no limitations in mind, just pure speed and confidence. So when Cometman offered, Roll directed him, “You bet—up and over!” Once she was in position over or even on the virus’s main body, she would aim her Aqua Blade at the doll-like figure on top of it.

Cometman flung Roll high into the air using the momentum of his large swing around the creature to propel her. The giant virus lumbered about, lifting a massive paw to crush Cometman just as he let go from its ankle. The doll figure hanging out of its head whipped around and held its mitten like hands out in front of it, causing a wave of pressure to press down onto Roll's Aqua Blade, bringing it and her down onto its back with it. Just as it did, the distortion that once encircled the arena lifted. Cometman was dashed out of the way of the incoming paw, into the area that once had far greater gravity. Ellen and Cometman put two and two together and soon Cometman was sending out a mace aimed directly at the doll parts, catching it at the limits of his range. The virus reared up on its haunches, throwing its front paws into the air and dragging Cometman up with it, flinging him upwards like he was a cat toy on a string. Gravity shifted once more, releasing Roll and distorting the arena around them. "Ah! Moon Blade!!" Ellen called out, holding her breath as Cometman didn't immediately use the chip. Instead, he made apprehensive eye contact with Roll on the back of the beast, looking for a guidance in this split second.

Suddenly, Roll was sat down hard on the creature’s back with its hands catching the Aqua Blade. The best she could do to reposition herself on such short notice was to ride it like a mechanical bull. (For whatever reason, a voice in Roll’s head that sounded suspiciously like her yellow-jumpsuited other junior’s crowed, ”Yeehaw!”) She instinctively adjusted her balance with the virus’s bucking and rearing, ably keeping herself situated on its back. And then—the pressure lifted once again. Roll nearly overbalanced, her head and torso jerking back to catch sight of Cometman’s mace trailing up into the air followed by Cometman himself. She wasted no time stabbing the Aqua Blade into one of the now-preoccupied humanoid figure’s shoulders. “It can only pin down one of you at a time when you’re split up like this,” Meiru confirmed in a rush before Roll could wonder it aloud. Cometman needed instruction, fast. And he was looking to her. Not one of the Operators, her. The first thing that popped into Roll’s mind was crazy. But she was already riding a virus around like a wild horse; was this really any crazier? “Let it bring you down right on top on it!” she told Cometman, leaping onto her feet on the virus’s back like she was on a surfboard. “We’ll switch places!”

In those couple of seconds of air time Cometman flashed a look of determination and rocketed downwards with a dash from Ellen, narrowly dodging a paw swipe from the virus. He slammed the circular slash of the Moon Blade into the humanoid figure, dislodging his grapple in the process and grabbed onto the beast's mane. "Nice!!" Ellen cheered, heart racing. The figure on the front of the beast twitched and spun around with a surge of power, seemingly uninjured from the Navi's combined attacks. It threw up its hands, crossed its arms, and then flung them out, sending two waves of gravity in opposite directions. Cometman was thrown off, flying into the outskirts, while Roll was sent in the opposing direction. Cometman stumbled back up, then was immediately met with another wave of gravity pressing down on him as the virus set up its arena again. "We gotta get right back up on that horse, Cometman!" Ellen exclaimed, "Condor-!" Gravity doubled on him, sending him to his knees and cracking the ground beneath him and only him as the virus focused its efforts on Cometman alone. "I can't... Move..." he managed to mutter, unable to load the chip without also slamming himself into the ground from how he was positioned.

Roll was sent flying, taking fall damage but not much else. She still had a solid two or three hits’ worth of hit points left before Meiru needed to start worrying. More importantly, both Cometman and Roll were at a distance—only for the virus to start exerting its invisible pressure again. “Area Steal!” Meiru called, sending Roll the tool she needed… to come in closer, for once. But then the virus focused its efforts on Cometman and Cometman alone, far from where it and Roll stood. “Ryuuseigun,” Roll said, rather than the Gold Fist Meiru was readying. “I can dodge it.” There was no time to doubt Roll; Meiru called, “Battle Chip: Ryuuseigun!” Roll wasted no time lifting the staff high, calling a meteor shower straight down onto the spot where the virus stood. She twisted and tumbled around the stray shots that came far, far too close to where she was standing. “Once the attack finishes, Cometman should be good to head in,” Meiru explained. She suspected Roll was thinking the same thing—that with the creature distracted by the Ryuuseigun and Roll right next to it, it wouldn’t be able to concentrate on Cometman.

The meteors fell and struck the beastial virus, exploding on and around it, knocking it out of its attack on Cometman as it landed all four paws on the ground with a thunderous stomp. It spun around, flinging its tail in a wide arc that dragged along the ground an kicked up pixel debris in its wake. Cometman immediately used the Condor chip the moment the beast relented its gravitational grapple, sending him flying out of the cracked panel and into the air, dodging the tail swipe. "No hesitation!" Ellen called out, gripping her Game-Xross. "Right!" Cometman followed up, throwing his arm out just as a mace was shot, only for the virus to throw its hands up, suspending the Navi in the air, and then all at once, slamming the gravity back on them. Cometman fell from the sky, chain trailing behind him and yelling in fear. "Invis!" Ellen exclaimed, with her Navi activating the chip just before impact, thankfully negating all that damage. She huffed, "This thing is relentless!! Are we even damaging it!?" As if ignoring her pleas the beast refused to pause for a single moment, leaping high into the air with its paws forward and aiming to land squarely on Roll. "Look out! Above you!" Cometman warned, raising slowly as he fought against the gravity.

Ellen was right; there was no telling whether they’d left a scratch on their attacker at all. Though she couldn’t visibly lose face in front of one of her juniors, Meiru was beginning to have to fend off increasing misgivings. One wrong move, and both Navis would be in danger. There was also no running from the incoming attack, thanks to the virus’s gravity distortion field. Now Meiru sent in, “Meet it with this! Gold Fist!” Roll’s battle cry sounded more like a terrified scream, but she threw the punch with perfect timing, aiming to meet the virus’s paws coming down on her with the maximum force of her Gold Fist. “It’s too smart to distract with objects,” Meiru thought aloud. “But we’ve got to string together something bigger than what we’ve been doing…”

The Gold Fist connected with the beast's forepaws in a massive shockwave. Both sides exerted a massive amount of strength and refused to relent, forcing a stalemate where the virus attempted to squash Roll even further by commanding more gravity upon her. The panels underneath cracked and burst, but Roll maintained her attack like a thorn in its paw. Gravity finally let up on Cometman and he immediately ran forward, wasting no time getting into position just as a dash reached his thrusters and chip data loaded in. "Buki!" Ellen exclaimed, though Cometman didn't seem to need the call-out as he was already swinging. His hammer connected with the virus's back ankles with a thunderous clang, making it flinch for just long enough for Roll's attack to break through, knocking the beast over and showering the arena with shinning gold glitter. The virus floundered on its side, kicking until it lifted itself with an inversion of gravity, righting itself in mid-air. "Follow it up! Burning!" Ellen yelled, sending Cometman wreathed in fire bolting straight upwards and into the belly of the beast, stunning it for a brief moment-!

Meiru immediately knew what chip to grab for. “Battle Chip: Air Spin! Slot in!” A turbine spawned in Roll’s hand. “Air Spin!” Immediately upon regaining her balance, she slung it across the ground to sit under Cometman, the virus, and the firestorm around them, amplifying it into a flaming tornado. “How’s that for ramping things up?!” “Get Cometman away, and we’ll put the cherry on top!” Meiru called, pure instinct taking over to complete the combo. “Battle Chip: Air Shoes, Black Bomb!” “Give me the signal, Cometman!” Roll shouted over the blazing carnage that had ignited ahead of her as she shot into the air to take aim at the center of the tornado and the Black Bomb materialized in her arms.

The turbine whirled underneath Cometman, catching the trail of fire and erupting the winds into a blazing tornado. It boosted him into the air with the updraft. He turned his attention to Roll, whipping out his hand as it formed into a mace, right when he wanted it. "Now!" he commanded. Roll chucked the bomb up just as Cometman's chains encircled it, catching and slinging it around into the fire and upward. Its fuse ignited and reached its end just as Cometman's swing reached the virus, exploding into a massive fireball that rang so loudly it shook the simulator in the real world. Cometman landed far away, skidding to a stop and looking back at the massive cloud of smoke the bomb left. "Was that enough...?" Ellen asked, breathing quickly. The cloud dissipated, revealing the limp body of the virus hanging in the air, floating by some power. All was quiet until with a snap its torso twisted and spun around, getting pulled into the gaping maw of the beast as a sickly aura began to exude from the body of the virus. All at once it landed on all fours and proclaimed its power by roaring a panel breaking shockwave that burst in all directions. The pale purple aura distorted its features on its edges like a mirage and its smell immediately set off alarms in both of the Navis as they could feel their health getting drained just in its presence. But instead of making any motions to attack, it merely stood there, thrashing its tail about as if the massive hit it just took was an annoyance and nothing more. Cometman held a hand to his face, unable to stop the poison from entering his body, fearful as he'd never encountered anything like this before. Ellen however, grit her teeth and growled, "Looks like we've got a time limit! Come on, we did great so far, let's not stop now!!"

Roll half-landed, half-fell out of her Air Shoes as the explosion shook the battlefield. Meiru slowly exhaled. That was the kind of hit that’d take a serious chunk out of something three times the size of this virus; it had to be over, and not a moment too soon. And then the effects of the bomb faded, only to reveal the virus ominously floating overhead, dazed but not visibly injured at all. Before Meiru could try to bean it with an Iron Ball, it swallowed the doll-like thing that had been controlling the aura… and producing something new. An alert from her PET startled Meiru; Roll was rapidly losing what hit points she had left. The Navi girl wobbled, then fell to her knees. “It’s some kind of… poison effect,” she explained. Yet Ellen wanted to keep fighting. Meiru, looking at Cometman’s obvious distress and Roll’s weakened state, said, “No, we can’t safely continue this fight the way we have been. Our Navis are both at their limit—look at them. They can’t afford to lose a step against something like this.” But it was just standing there, as if giving them the opening. She got out the three Cannon chips she kept on hand for exactly the purpose at hand. “Roll, can you hold up to a Program Advance? We’ve got one shot.” “Hurry,” Roll said in response, pushing back to her feet and visibly bracing her body for it. Meiru winced; even if the PET hadn’t been telling her Roll’s hit points were depleting, it was obvious from her movements how little strength she had left. “Program Advance!” Meiru called. “Program Advance!” Roll confirmed. “Battle Chip: Cannon!” Even under the circumstances, changing her rhythm wouldn’t help matters. For Roll’s sake, it had to remain at its usual speed and steadiness. “Triple slot in!” Two cannons formed on Roll’s arms, and she raised them overhead to form the massive gun. Aiming it straight into the hole that served as the beast’s oversized mouth, she called, “Giga Cannon!”

The virus didn't move. It stood statuesque in the crater it had made as if the blast that was barreling towards it was an errant breeze. The flashing explosion from the Program Advance blinded everyone for a brief moment, but as the light faded, it was clear the massive virus remained unchanged. The maw of the beast was closed like the beak of a sea urchin, and with it, the hazy aura dissipated as well. But then it slowly reopened, releasing the aura once more. "What the heck!? Is this thing really going to poison our Navis to deletion while it just stands there??" Ellen barked, leaning in and scrolling through her chip list. "For a moment the poison stopped," Cometman grumbled, retreating into his collar as if it would protect him against the draining aura, "That opening must be its weak point if its wanting to protect it that badly." "Mayl," her eyes shot up to meet hers, "I don't have any big, long range attacks in my folder. Please tell me you've got something," she blinked and then grinned wickedly, "Me and Cometman will keep that thing open, he's got the strength for it! Then you do your thing!! It'll be just like that conductor's butt we kicked, right?" Wasting no time, Ellen sent Cometman straight towards the beast, jets flaring and rocketing him forwards. Two maces shot from his arms and just as he flew under the legs of the virus, the maces caught something and held fast, hooking the underside of the maw and pulling the beast down. It struggled against the pull like a dog being held back by a leash while Cometman wrestled for control underneath it. The window was open, and they had just seconds left. "Go!!" they commanded in unison.

The Program Advance disappeared from Roll’s hands, and with it, the last of her energy. She slumped to a crouch on the floor as the light and damage began to fade. But it soon became clear to Meiru that their last-ditch attack had done absolutely nothing. Cold shock began to sink in. Ellen seemed almost indignant next to her, but all Meiru could think was not again, with a side of knew this was coming. She’d handled this entire attack like she would’ve as a little girl with more confidence than sense. She’d stepped into a battle against an enemy she knew nothing about with no plan, stripped of the element of surprise and the ability to stay safely away that normally carried her and Roll through, and they'd lost as surely as they had against Flashman. The only option left was to retreat. But Ellen had not noticed that they’d functionally lost, that Roll was well into a sanctioned battle’s logout range and Meiru had gone through everything she’d had left that could be used in such close quarters. In response to the question, she weakly murmured, “Of course n—“ only for Ellen to barrel ahead again. Had she never been in this position before, of realizing she and her Navi partner were hopelessly outclassed? “Meiru-chan, it’s different this time,” came Roll’s voice, punching through her thoughts. “We’re different.” (”Go!” shouted Ellen and Cometman.) “I won’t lose this time…” Roll staggered to her feet. She threw herself into a clumsy, staggering run toward the gaping maw of the beast, shouting, “I can’t lose this time!” Ellen had called back to the bizarre experience on the train—if it was going to close its mouth against an attack on the outside, they had to start their assault from the inside. Would that end up doing too much damage to Roll’s frame? Again, Meiru’s instincts moved even when her mind was paralyzed with doubt. “Area Steal!” Roll turned into a rainbow blur of light, shooting straight into the beast’s gullet.

The beast's maw opened to a dark cavern barely lit by its opening. It struggled against Cometman's grapple; tossing its body back and forth fruitlessly. Roll was tossed about like a ball inside a bell. The tunnel of light coming from the opening flashed onto a figure in the center. The white doll like thing floated on its back, arms crossed against its chest, almost like sleep. It shifted its arms slowly, attempting to right itself against some unknown force. Despite its porcelain features, it looked weak. It rose and stretched out its arms towards Roll, its hands curled with a latent ferocity behind them.

The inside of the creature seemed so much bigger than its outside suggested. Instead of the internal programs Roll had expected to find herself amongst, there was just blackness. But the movements of the outer body could still be felt within; Roll had to grit her teeth as her frame, already weakened by the earlier hits it had taken, suffered a few more skids against the floor. But when she looked up, she could see what she was aiming for: not to punch a hole in the frame or destroy key data like she’d originally intended, but the doll, the thing that had been controlling the beast’s crushing auras all along. Though she couldn’t hear anything going on outside, she felt the energy of the chip Netto had made for Meiru, based on the attack her power had created with Rockman’s, surge in her hands. Roll’s arms punched right past the doll’s, straight into the ground beneath. “Elec Aqua Tower!” An electrified spout of water burst out, immediately engulfing the doll completely. (edited)

The beast thrashed against Cometman's chains, closing its maw around Roll as it reared back, front paws flung high. Cometman was thrown forward, landing in a heap and barely strong enough to roll himself upright. The virus, however, suddenly spewed water like a grand, magnificent fountain; the water caught the simulated light and sparkled with a rainbow. Immediately cracked appeared all over its body. Most notably, its underside had a crater like crack that radiated out right from where it was struck with the Black Bomb. Light shown from the cracks as the beast lost its color and fell to pieces, hitting the battlefield and breaking apart into pixels. Emerging from the rubble was Roll's heavily beaten, but still kicking frame, and a hexagonal chunk of glowing data. "Cometman! Are you ok!?" Ellen cried out, shaking her Game-Xross strapped to her arm. Cometman groaned and slowly lifted a thumbs up from his prone position. She let out her held breath and looked up to Mayl with an excited grin on. "We did it...!" she could barely contain her excitement, even though she was hit with a sudden wave of exhaustion.

With the danger having passed, Roll lasted for half a second before she collapsed to the ground. Her frame was quickly obscured by the standard animation as she logged out almost immediately after. “Roll…” She was already in sleep mode, preventing the damage from worsening. Meiru almost ran right for the door before she remembered to manually retrieve the data the creature had left behind. Hikari-hakase would want a look at that, too. “We need to get them to the Ministry of Science. Roll’s taken too much internal damage for auto-repair to fix it on its own.” But then, Ellen’s eyes were on her. She certainly did seem to recover from these shocks quickly. “I… I’ll feel more like celebrating once Roll’s back on her feet again,” Meiru admitted shakily. “But we made it.” She took a deep breath; she couldn’t let herself lack composure for too long. And Ellen did have a point—they’d gotten through it anyway. To the Navi and Operator awake to hear it, she said, “Great work, Ellen, Cometman.” With that, she wasted no time getting their party of two on the road toward the Ministry.

Ellen smiled, but her exhaustion was hitting her hard. She leaned onto the netbattling machine trying to get her bearings. Cometman was still in the comp, face down on the cracked stage, groaning. She dizzily tried to navigate her Game-Xross to jack him out and managed to do so after a great amount of effort. Cometman's wrapper program was a mess. It was a miracle it had lasted this long. Ellen took in a deep breath to clear her head, then followed along after Meiru. "Man, real netbattling is intense! I didn't think I'd get this tired from it!" Ellen huffed with a grin alongside Meiru. Cometman tiredly spoke up from her arm, "I don't think that was a normal netbattle. What was that...?" From the sound of his voice he seemed spent.

“Usually, it’s better to plan ahead some and take a more measured approach, so it doesn’t end up being so intense,” Meiru clarified with a shaky smile. “This ended up being a really serious battle, the sort that, well, only someone like Enzan gets called out to handle solo.” What with how close-in the virus had forced them to stay, she couldn’t honestly add ‘or me’ to that statement. Ellen had seen herself how terrible a shape Roll was in now. “I mean it when I say you two handled yourselves well. Most people wouldn't have been able to deal with something that strong.” To Cometman, she asked, “How do you feel? If the damage is really bad, Navis can usually enter sleep mode to keep it from getting any worse.” Meiru looked up, both thinking about their location—they were nearly to the subway station already, and a train was due to arrive—and about how strange it was that Cometman had just laid there after the fight. “…But the wrapper can’t keep track of damage like a frame can, huh? It should have hit the threshold and started trying to log you out, to preserve your internal data. But I didn’t think it’d get put under that kind of fire, and I bet Hikari-hakase didn’t, either.” Which was a bit silly, with how battle-ready Ellen was. It wasn’t like someone like her was going to sit around and browse web shops with Cometman. To Meiru's relief, the train was right on time. She boarded briskly, the PET on her wrist cradled in the other hand.

"Thanks..." Ellen murmured, her voice trailing off as any confidence she had was dashed while watching Meiru unenthusiastically explain the situation. She followed along after her into the train, fiddling with her Game-Xross still stuck on her arm. She sat down and exhaled, feeling the exhaustion that had built up in her legs. "That's what sleep mode does?" Cometman mumbled, "I don't think we've got into that many fights that got so intense for me that I'd need to prevent more damage..." He looked over at Ellen, face marred with worry as she stared ahead. The things he had bouncing around his processors were too difficult to articulate, so instead of speaking or sleeping he watched Ellen from her arm quietly. He had to ignore all the alerts indicating errors in the poor, mangled wrapper program. The genius Dr. Hikari had his work cut out for him. Ellen was unusually quiet. Choosing to look at the ground as her mind replayed the fight over and over. It wasn't that different from when she fought a strong opponent in Netken. Even after a win she'd spend much of her time going over the fight in her head; what went wrong, what to improve, the weird feeling in her hands like she could feel the jaws of that virus herself as it was pried open... She massaged her hands to ease herself, remind her body that it was made of meat.

With nothing better to do to fill the air, Meiru explained for Cometman, “It does a few things, I think! Navis even have dreams in sleep mode, sometimes… But after a battle that goes for too long, there are… missing pieces of data, I guess, that can cascade into bigger failures. Eventually, if it isn’t stopped, everything comes apart, and…” She stopped, out of a sense of politeness. It wasn’t hard to guess what ‘everything coming apart’ meant for a Navi, after all. She looked down at Roll’s PET, with its empty homescreen. They really shouldn’t have won, when Meiru thought about it. It had been fast and instinctive and messy. And, sure enough, they’d barely managed it. But they’d done it anyway. Maybe it was time to stop waiting for the next hint to appear and make the first move, in more situations than just this battle. It didn’t take long for them to arrive at the Ministry. Meiru was a familiar enough sight that she and Ellen faced no resistance as she led the charge back to Hikari-hakase’s office. Once they’d gotten themselves situated and Roll was recuperating in stasis, Hikari-hakase turned to the two Operators. “I can’t say I was expecting Roll and Cometman to get themselves into this sort of state,” he remarked. “What happened?”

Cometman and Ellen both looked towards Meiru with pensive expressions, and then to each other. "I don't know if that's how I work. Admittedly I don't know much about how I work," Cometman grumbled. "Well... You're basically a Navi just like all the others, right? I mean, that's how it's worked so far..." Ellen murmured, "So maybe a sleep mode would be good for a deeper repair? I guess? Are you holding off cause you're worried about me?" "I-!" he balked, turning towards his collar, "You'll be fine!" it sounded like he was mostly saying this to himself, "I'll... activate the sleep program... I do keep getting alerts for it so it must be important..." He trailed off. He closed his eyes tight and then a light encircled him, flashing and then fading quickly to show a softly sleeping Cometman in its place. Ellen sighed and leaned back into her seat, too tired to continue the conversation for the moment. She followed after Meiru once they arrived at the Ministry, still in a bit of a haze. Once Dr. Hikari expressed his concern, she straightened out and looked over at Meiru. "Well, we were training, and then we were ambushed by a weird virus..." Ellen explained, "It was tough, but we beat it." She was oddly unenthused recalling the events and continued to watch Meiru's reaction with concern.

Now that Roll was safely recovering in stasis, Meiru visibly relaxed, though her gaze was completely captured by the large overhead screen displaying her Navi. It had been a very, very long time since she had last let Roll get into this kind of state. She could have been more careful. More forceful in insisting that they pull back and come up with a better plan. They’d done it, but this kind of desperate state wouldn’t be an option if she really wanted to go through with seeking out Rush; and the idea continued to linger at the back of her mind. “A ‘weird virus’?” Hikari-hakase asked the pair. “Meiru-chan?” “Oh!” Meiru was startled back into reality. “It, er, had something inside it. Like the one that attacked our expedition to Oran Isle on Netto-chan’s world.” She wasted no time handing over the vault program. “This one’s still got some residual energy,” realized Hikari-hakase right away. “If I can analyze it without deactivating it entirely, it’ll be a huge help to our understanding of these viruses. Thank you, Meiru-chan.” On another terminal, Meiru noticed the first vault she’d taken back to him. With a few keystrokes, the glowing vault joined it. She could see other small differences between them; almost like mutations. “Now, as for Cometman,” Hikari-hakase said. “I get the feeling his wrapper program’s taken about everything it could, given the incomplete state it was in…”

Ellen sheepishly chuckled, holding her hands together and bringing them up to her face shyly, "Um. Yes. Sorry about that." "The wrapper program-" she attempted to unlatch her Game-Xross, with little luck, and instead flipped her arm all around and tugged at a part of her jacket that seemed stuck in a moving part, suddenly popping the device out and causing her to clamber for it, grabbing it just before it fell. She paused, holding the Game-Xross right where she grabbed it, surprising even herself that it didn't fall to the floor tragically. "Ugh, what happened," Cometman grumbled extra grumbly, "The gyro detected a lot of movement and it woke me up." "Cometman you're awake!" Ellen cheered, pulling her Game-Xross in close, "It's been like, twenty minutes since you went to sleep, how you feelin?" "Like I still need repairs, but better," he replied, flexing a hand, "Are we at Ministry of Science?" "Mhmhmhm!" Ellen nodded, "Dr. Hikari was wondering about the wrapper program." "Right. It did work, but the virus did a number on it," he explained as Ellen turned the device around to face the doctor, "It's still holding up, but it has a lot of errors in it. I think the virus's aura was too much for it and it caused errors to accumulate, breaking it down. I can give you the list, but I don't know if I can connect to your comp at the moment."

Ellen’s attempts at freeing the Game-Xross would’ve been funny in any other circumstance, but with the Navis as injured as they were, Hikari-hakase and Meiru merely watched with bemused alarm. Once Cometman was awake, Hikari-hakase dutifully listened to his report. “I’ve still got that virtual machine we made before you had the wrapper—I’ll boot it up, and you can transfer into that,” he explained, striding back to his desk to get it started. “From there, I can copy the wrapper off of you to repair.” The great monitor was now in split-screen—one side still showed Roll, but the other was loading in the virtual machine Cometman had started in before. “And we need to see if you need any deep repairs, as well. I suppose we should copy over whatever recovery programs are on the Game-Xross, if any…”

"Uhh," Ellen flipped around her Game-Xross, finding the jerry-rigged port that Mel had put together so long ago. She jacked Cometman in and grimaced as she saw an error pop up along side him. "Cometman just sort of, heals in the Game-Xross so... I don't know?" she worried, fiddling with her jacket sleeves. "We haven't had a fight that got this bad," Cometman added, "That poison attack the virus did damaged me and the wrapper program deeply. There's so many errors." He groused and grumbled to himself, but it all seemed more magnified as he was displayed on the split-screen. Ellen held her hand close to her chest, her thoughts dipping into the grim idea that if things went a little worse, if they weren't as bold, if they had made a mistake, where would they be right now? Cometman brought up the list of errors and unequipped the wrapper program for Dr. Hikari to work with. He caught sight of Ellen looking on with concern and tried to offer a reasurring smile, but it didn't quite reach his face. His processes were too focused on pointing out errors and attempting auto repairing. All of this read as exhaustion that slowed his reactions and restricted his actions. Not a well rested person in the house.

Hikari-hakase immediately made a copy of the wrapper program to pull across the divide to him, leaving the original for Cometman to do what he wished with. “I’m amazed it’s even in one piece, to be honest,” he admitted. “You two really did a number on this.” He then turned to Cometman. “So you have a form of self-repair, then… This is a safe place, so why don’t you start that repair program up? I can observe it, so that if it needs a little nudge I’m prepared.” Meiru watched this exchange thoughtfully. She stepped away from the monitor, closer to Ellen; she was confident now that Roll was going to be all right, and part of being a teacher was offering reassurance when it was needed. “We made it,” Meiru assured Ellen. “We didn’t let them down. And that’s what’s most important to remember, right now.”

"I..." Cometman looked between Dr. Hikari and Ellen, "Alright. I'll go into sleep mode." He crossed his arms and mulled over his thoughts for a bit. It always felt weird after the fact when someone looked into his code, like he was supposed to be feeling something but didn't. Like nothing had occurred. That was him, wasn't it? All code. And he felt like he should feel when someone messes with it, like he could feel damage from a fight or just the sensation of his arms against themselves, but it didn't. Dr. Hikari was trustworthy, but it still didn't make it any less weird. Hopefully nothing would come up when he activated his auto repair... He closed his eyes and the brief flashing animation replayed as he entered sleep mode. Ellen instantly lit up as Meiru reassured her, "Yeah!!" she grinned, "We were strong enough to beat that thing! It was a bit scary in retrospect, but it all worked out! Our strategies worked!! And now we've got their weird program thing too now, yeah? You said you got attacked by something that dropped one of those before?? You think that means there's even more of them out there? What even are they?"

“How odd,” Hikari-hakase murmured as the flashing animation played. Nearly as odd to Meiru was how Ellen’s mood ricocheted upward. She’d just been putting on a front, but Ellen seemed almost comically genuine. “Uh, one thing at a time,” she managed to say with just enough of a senpai-like veneer. “We could definitely clean a few things up, but our strategies did work, it’s true.” Meiru looked back up at Roll recovering on the monitor. Enzan wouldn’t have let Blues get as battered. That was the level of strategizing Meiru needed to be aiming for next. “I’ve already received the ‘program thing’, yes,” Hikari-hakase said whilst gesturing to it on the side monitor, sensibly entertained by Ellen’s wording. “Meiru-chan ran into another one during her expedition to Oran Isle in Netto-chan’s world, but it was completely inert. This one should be able to give us more information, as well as having the Oran Isle one to act as a benchmark.” “Netto said he’d run into one recently, too,” Meiru recalled. “But that one’s core is in yet another world, I think…” She refocused on Ellen’s original question. “So, yeah, there’s definitely more of them out there. And then the last question was…” There had been so many of them that she didn’t quite remember. “As for what they are, we don’t know,” Hikari-hakase supplied. “But this takes us one step closer to understanding them. Thank you, Ellen-chan, Meiru-chan.”

Ellen nodded along excitedly, chasing away all those worries with a dose of joy. Meiru was proud of her, and she was an expert on these things so that meant a lot! She giggled to herself, thinking about how if this was a video game, they had just won a lot of exp or had just beat a secret boss. Most of all, it was clear to her now that her and Meiru made a great team!! All four of them were unstoppable! "It was no problem Dr. Hikari!" she cheered with a big thumbs up, "You know what I think? I bet those viruses are all from an evil organization hell bent of destruction! Or something. That's usually how it goes, right?" She had no idea. This wasn't a video game. This wasn't anime. But it sure felt like it sometimes these days. Cometman's long list of errors began to pile up. Most seemed to be largely innocuous, a lot were inscrutable to 20XX era tech, and all of them were in addresses scattered all over the place. Even without digging into his code, it would be clear, especially to the father of all Navis, that whoever coded Cometman was making things up as they went.

Meiru, still bemused by the sudden shift in mood, could only blink in confusion; from her experience, it was too early to tell. The people in the cave had seemed more like emissaries from a start-up than ones of destruction. Hikari-hakase, who was used to these sorts of emergency fixes feeling a lot more solemn, was nonetheless the one who answered, “We don’t know that much yet, Ellen-chan. It feels as though the people who set these viruses loose have motives as varied as… well, as the things they make." He gazed at the terminal showing the diagnostic output, evidently deep in thought, before turning back to Ellen with a smile and a raised index finger. "Maybe they just want to send it from world to world, like one of those traveling program projects!” He then returned his focus to Cometman’s spaghetti code; he certainly but privately had to wonder, had a human really written this…? Absently, Meiru nodded in agreement with what had been said aloud. She glanced back at Roll, the empty PET on her wrist feeling almost itchy against her hand.

"A traveling evil virus, and it just happened to land here?" Ellen pondered, crossing her arms in thought, "Wait, do you think it's using the portal system from the chatroom like we are?? Could the people behind it be part of the chatroom? Have we... Somehow met them already?" She looked over at Meiru, gauging her reaction. She felt like a detective hot on a trail with a mystery unraveling before them! She couldn't help an excited smile starting to peek across her face.

“We don’t know that yet, Ellen-chan!” Yuuichirou laughed at the assertion the virus was 'evil'. “Meiru-chan, what do you think?” “Oh!” Meiru straightened, putting her game face back on, before turning away from Roll to face Ellen. Distracted as she was, she’d still caught the gist of things. “I think it’s pretty likely it’s traveling via the chatroom,” she agreed amicably. “But Hikari-hakase's right. We don’t really know their motive, do we? I can’t think of anything some group could want in my house network. It really is more like a ‘traveling virus’, right now…” “The Fossa Tracker!” Yuuichirou remembered. “Meiru-chan, did it—?” “…No,” Meiru realized. “We didn’t have any warning.” Looking back over at the two cores, she added, “But it wouldn’t make sense for it not to be from some other world…” “It might be using a sort of portal of its own,” Yuuichirou theorized. “One different enough from the Fossa Ambiences we’ve seen previously to not set off the Tracker.”

Ellen hummed and held her chin thoughtfully, "Ma~aybe... You could use the data we got from the virus to track them? Make the Fossa Trackers react to them and maybe even figure out where they come from? Could their data be used like that? I don't know much about these things..." It was kinda crazy to think that Dr. Hikari, despite being four hundred years behind, could probably figure out any odd program of her time way faster than she ever could. Then surely he could figure out how to track down more of these mystery viruses! "We need a name for these things too," she tilted her head, "Big otherwordly viruses... Mysterious... Big monster beast viruses..." she trailed off, muttering to herself, "There's gotta be a common thing between them..."

“It’s certainly worth a try,” Yuuichirou agreed to Ellen’s first suggestion. “I’ll have to run it by the Trackers’ creator when I get home.” Ellen’s second suggestion was met with a nod from Meiru. “They all have those programs at their centers, so far.” “For now, though, it’s time…” Hikari-hakase turned to Meiru and Ellen, glasses gleaming. “…For dinner, right?” chirped Meiru. “Since you’ve got things under control, and it’ll help the time pass.” “Exactly!” Hikari-hakase confirmed with a smile. “This shouldn’t take more than a few hours. Meiru-chan, I’m sure you know a good place to take Ellen-chan.”

Ellen blinked and her eyes lit up like stars, "Food! Oh my god, that'd be great right about now! I'm starved!" She let out a boisterous laugh, suddenly aware of how hungry she was. She was so focused on the training and then the fight and then poor Cometman that everything else fell by the wayside. "One of these days I gotta take you to the burger place I like back home!" she grinned, "A future burger with out of this world tastes and a secret ingredient that would break space-time if you knew it." She waved off the idea, "But we can do that another day, today I'm feeling more... Curry! I've had some from the place Mel works at and man, I've been craving it ever since! What do they put in that stuff that makes it so tasty?"

“That does sound good right about now…” But as Meiru figured out what Ellen was talking about in regards to her time, she couldn’t help but laugh as an insane idea came to her. “If it was in town, that’s gotta be Maha Ichiban. That’s my friend Dekao-kun’s cooking!” She pulled open a window of the chatroom app. “…But they’re not in town right now. They’re in Jawaii.” For a moment, she paused. It definitely felt strange to be planning something like this without Roll there to assist. But Hikari-hakase absently said, “Ah, Meiru-chan, could you bring me back the house special curry?” He waved his white Link PET in her direction. “I can help you adjust the portal, if you need it.” “I, uh, I think I’ve got it,” Meiru said, lifting her own PET to receive the funds before continuing to massage the portal generator. “Well, that oughta do it,” she finally said. “One trip to Maha Niban, coming right up.” Sure enough, through the other end came the sound of ocean waves.