Kaita was wide awake.
Somewhere in the house, something was shuffling. It sounded like footsteps. Nobody was ever awake at this hour. Nova footsteps? Something else thrummed away in the background, muffling the shuffling to where Kaita wasn't sure whether or not it was his imagination.
He turned slowly to the side, seeing if he could still hear it, and met his Navi's gaze. "It's the dishwasher, Kaita-kun," Turboman said, concerned. With forced lightness, he said, "It's always made that sound. Why didn't you notice it before, silly?"
"I don't know," Kaita said, though he had a feeling he really did. "I guess..." Tiredly, he said, "You'd warn me if it was trouble."
"Yes, so go to sleep," Turboman said. "You've got school tomorrow, remember?"
"Mm..." Kaita rolled over to the other side of the bed, where the PET's charger light didn't bug him, and shut his eyes. It was Black's fault, of course. Kaita couldn't stop thinking about him or Nova, even though it had been months since he'd last seen any of them. The pause in their activities seemed ominous to him; there were so many questions that had been left unanswered.
The more optimistic side of Kaita liked to think Black would have the answer to all of them. At least, the one who could be thoughtful and almost nice. But he was going to be difficult to talk to; that was the Black that stayed hidden, while the presented one was merciless and cold. And Kaita had no right to expect Black to let that mask drop again. The hacker had said himself that things would return to normal once they were back in Akihara.
But Kaita was back in Akihara, and nothing felt normal. Partly because of that, Netbattling was another thing he took more seriously. Now, he spent just as much time polishing his skills as he did helping out in his dad's repair shop. It had started with that defeat what seemed like an eternity ago, and it had just gotten more obvious after Black had told him to shape up in the forest. Kaita didn't know exactly when it had happened, but he was a Netbattler first and foremost now. Nova would eventually continue to stir up trouble, and Black would be there with them. Certainly, Meiru and Enzan would be fighting as well, but Kaita couldn't just turn his back to what was going on. He felt like he was a part of things now, in a way he never had before. It was another reason he wanted to see hidden-Black; everything felt like it should have been changing, like he was missing something, but that didn't seem to be the case. He needed advice, and he wasn't sure Meiru and Enzan would give it to him.
The worst part was that none of his interest in talking to Black made any sense. Hidden personalities or not, he was still the man whose Navi had almost made scrap out of Turboman. He was still on Nova's side. But the questions kept returning to Kaita: why did Black feel the need to be who he said he was? What were Nova's real goals, anyway?
When would this feeling of dread go away?
0110110001100001011100110111010000100000011000110110100001100001011011100110001101100101
Mary looked out her bedroom window at the sleeping neighborhood, unable to stop thinking.
Atsuki was out there, somewhere. Bullying people around, giving them lip service while he gave them those strange, intense looks. Mary hated people like him, who knew they were strong and used that power to make themselves feel superior. It struck even closer to home for her than her friends, since she was the most defenseless against some big, burly man like Atsuki. His friends were out there, too. The woman, Yumi, who hadn't done very much around Mary but was well-known to Kaita; and the man, Black, who didn't even bother to hide his smugness. Black and Atsuki were different as night and day to some, but they had more in common with each other than Yumi did with either of them. And they ran free under the night sky, hiding in the far-off pinpricks of light from the Densan skyline.
Kaita was worried. Mary hadn't known him long, but she knew enough to be concerned. He'd never had any reason to feel that way before Nova came. But suddenly she and Ring were constantly sparring with him and Turboman, and while she didn't mind being able to use a Program Advance with ease, she'd always pinned him as a more recreational Netbattler. He probably hadn't even cared about the more powerful tricks and strategies before Nova's plague virus gave the whole region a scare.
She shivered, and pulled the sheets closer to herself; seeing Ring bent over with pain in her PET wasn't an image that she cared to remember. It wasn't really the people in Nova that scared her so much as what they were capable of. If the whole of Internet City could be infected in a heartbeat, what would they do when they got serious?
She shook her head and burrowed deeper into the sheets. She wasn't going to lose her friends to some unknown, nebulous threat. It just wouldn't happen.
0110110001100001011100110111010000100000011000110110100001100001011011100110001101100101
To Enzan, Nova was a little like a bad joke; variations of it would pop up only to not catch on and vanish. It had first surfaced before he'd even known what a Net Savior was, in the year immediately following the Gospel incident, and the Net Police had had little trouble stopping them. They'd never made the news. When he and Netto were still battling Darkloids, they'd reappeared, once more a tiny syndicate that the standard Net Police Navi had little trouble stopping. The Net Saviors hadn't been told about them; there were bigger fish to fry. And while he and the others had been trapped in Beyondard, Nova had made a couple of pipes burst.
But they'd been quiet for those four long years after the subway bombing. The subway bombing whose culprit remained unknown. The subway bombing whose victims hadn't all been found before the police decided enough was enough. The subway bombing that had taken a boy away from his family too soon. Four years later, and there were still more questions than answers about that bombing.
Four years later, Nova wasn't a joke anymore. The Net Police were finally paying attention to it, and that was almost all thanks to their new member. Black Hiroki.
To his surprise, Enzan had found a little bit of history on Black, too. He'd made his debut in Ameroupe only a few months before he came to Japan, an accomplice in an incident that had wiped two cities' worth of computers clean and left three people dead. The next place he showed up was Japan—and with his help, Nova had suddenly become the biggest threat in town. And it wasn't just him; his friend, the one who Netbattled using a Darkloid, had been Black's partner in that first crime. Homura Atsuki. His name showed up a few more times before that. Enzan wished he had more to go off of. He was sure these weren't the two criminals' only names, as sure as he was that this new version of Nova meant business.
But the second handle he knew Black went by, the one Sigma had assigned him like a title—"Silver"—got nothing. It was too simple to trace. Yet it bothered him; over five years of fighting criminals, and Enzan had never run into the term before.
The world had seemed relatively small to Enzan—corporate VP, Net Savior, no stranger to jet lag—before.
Now, he was starting to realize just how easy it was to hide in it.
0110110001100001011100110111010000100000011000110110100001100001011011100110001101100101
To say that Yumi was unaware of the changes going on around her would be a slight untruth. Every day, she saw Black vanish into his office, staying inside for hours at a time—if he even bothered to come out at all. And Atsuki was nothing but a pretense; he tried to act nice around her, almost like a bad parody of Black, but his dismissiveness couldn't be hidden.
The Boss had told her to keep track of both of them. He was worried. He'd been worried before, back when Yumi was still a teenager and this side career in cyberterrorism was more for fun than a favor. But Black and Atsuki knew their Boss was worried, and they obviously didn't care. Black was nearly silent at the monitor, focused on making line after line of code spill across the screen. It wasn't like before, when she'd tease him and he'd babble excuses and eventually leave the work for a little fun. He had no time to explain what he was doing, just saying, "It's part of the final project." Atsuki worried her more; he had no set project, yet Yumi would see him in his own office, obviously doing something. He would look at her with his piercing eyes, daring her to try and ask him what he was up to. And there was something about him—certainly his bulk, but some intangible quality as well—that always made her walk away. They were alone in that hallway, and if something happened to her, the Boss would have no one.
Yumi had always thought of herself as street-smart. Making it out of this alive would be her ultimate test.
0110110001100001011100110111010000100000011000110110100001100001011011100110001101100101
A man was slouched in front of his old computer, bought secondhand. They were necessities now, no matter how rich or poor he was, so he had one. There was a well-worn book open next to him describing what he was doing, but he'd been through it so many times that he knew it by heart. A battered PET Advance—the only thing he could afford, the way things were now—was hooked up to the computer. He hit the Enter key, and the smaller device chimed as it came to life. He raised his hands before him; a little melodrama seemed appropriate, and opportunities for it were sadly lacking in his current occupation. "My labor is finally complete," he breathed. A black-suited figure with pink jewels adorning his thicker, white armor appeared in the PET. "My chance for revenge has been born!"
Perhaps he was only a minor player now, but he could somehow sense things were changing. He was determined to be part of that change. He couldn't wait any longer.
0110110001100001011100110111010000100000011000110110100001100001011011100110001101100101
Meiru didn't know what to think.
On the one hand, things were looking up. There had been a few minor cases, but nothing Nova-related; Laika was back where he belonged, and adjusting as well as could be expected; and it seemed Roll was trying to get her a date for the junior prom, much to her embarrassment.
On the other hand, there was something ominous about the peace. Something continued to eat away at Enzan's thoughts, that much she could tell. Judging from how it'd been nearly half a year since the tournament and he still wasn't talking, it was something he didn't think she'd like, or something he thought shouldn't be a concern until later. But knowing things later had never suited Meiru, even if the people keeping secrets thought they were doing it for her own good. Similarly, telling anyone things before he was ready had never been Enzan's strong suit. If she tried to force it out of him, there would be a fight, and with Nova still at large she wasn't sure if they could risk the fallout.
What had happened at the tournament? That seemed to be where it had all started. Black had been his usual obnoxious self, Atsuki had been a little unnerving but nothing she and Enzan couldn't handle, Mary had seemed like a pretty nice girl, and Kaita... had had that day when he seemed on edge, had been understandably upset about his loss, but had returned to normal the next day with no explanation. Perhaps he'd seen something? Or maybe it was nerves, and she was over-thinking this.
Regardless, something definitely had Enzan worried, and she knew she needed to find out what. And above all, Nova had to be stopped before harm could come crashing down on everything she cared about.
0110110001100001011100110111010000100000011000110110100001100001011011100110001101100101
The Boss's eyes were on the monitor at his desk. This was nothing unusual. As the head of Nova, he was always on call to iron out any potential problems or receive reports from his underlings. As he scrolled through window after window, occasionally making a note in a text box off to the side, he only wished what he was doing was odd.
He'd been trying to find a clean way out of this problem since it had arrived on his doorstep almost a year ago, blank-faced and irritatingly polite: eliminating his sponsors' agents before whoever really commanded them tired of Nova and its leader. Black and Atsuki were just the kind of men the Boss hoped to wipe out with the former's own ultimate virus; two-faced thugs, content to be puppets on some other man's strings. The Boss didn't doubt the money he paid them paled to what they got from groveling at their true leader's feet. But he couldn't just stop that cash flow, as that would only make them suspicious. Attack dogs they were, but the Boss knew at least one of them had a brain. Much as he hated it, they continued to get their pay.
In the meantime, he planned out what he'd do after the Devil had been completed—it had to be afterwards, as the Boss doubted he could find another programmer like Black. Outright killing him and Atsuki would be easy. Finding a method of doing it so there was no trace of foul play was harder. And then there was the problem Atsuki posed. Black was physically weak; alone, picking him off was a matter of a rooftop and a firm shove. Atsuki was like his bodyguard, stronger than the average attacker. Both were sharp enough to avoid anything that would pose a threat—they'd never lunched with the Boss or left food or drink opened around the base—and together, any obstacle the Boss could think of would be negated in a matter of seconds. They had to be killed separately; inconvenient, but there was no way around it.
The Boss sighed. "I'm getting ahead of myself." The Yellow Devil's completion was a long way away, even with Black on the job almost constantly now. Right now, it was just a matter of keeping Japan on its toes, weakening the machine before tearing it apart. The Boss grinned. Nothing brought him more joy than imagining all the traitors' and bullies' heads strung up outside his door for all to see, Black's and Atsuki's high above the rest. He'd sponsor his sponsors, and they wouldn't complain - they'd consider themselves lucky to stay in business when so many other organizations were cleansed away. And Yumi—loyal Yumi, the one who really believed!—would be rewarded greatly. Perhaps she'd oversee Japan while her leader moved to other countries. The other agent that was truly his would get his share, too, but Yumi had been there since the beginning. She deserved it more than anyone else.
He took a long sip out of the wineglass on the table, then closed the windows. It was foolish to be researching ways to eliminate Black and Atsuki when they weren't near being finished playing their parts yet—but it all felt so close that it was hard to control the urge.
0110110001100001011100110111010000100000011000110110100001100001011011100110001101100101
In a sea of metal and lights, Black worked.
He had no time for what could be. He'd never given himself time for what had been. So he carried on, much as he had for years, without heed to his own needs or those of anyone else's. Punk knew better than to stop him; why should he? They were essentially the same. There was always some task to carry out, always someone who needed obedient hands to supply whatever was needed. Black had learned long ago to deliver, and so had Punk. They both knew the consequences of saying no.
Black lived and died by his work. It was what was expected.