Netto sighed deeply, unsure of the task he had been given by his father and everyone else that had been present at the meeting. He, who was the greatest NetBattler of he world, was stuck in SciLabs's network via a Pulse-In machine as a babysitter.
Or in this case, a "cat-sitter".
"Rockman, remind me..." the boy called to his friend, unamused. "Why am I doing this again?"
The blue navi, immune to the newest outbreak of the Neko Virus since the previous encounter, grabbed a white cat from the floor and put it back into the large box with the others. "We don't have any Ratton chip left at the moment," he replied with an apologetic smile as he turned his attention to his operator. "And we need to keep the cats, I mean, the navis from running all over the network."
Netto stared at Rockman for a few seconds, then looked down at his body, confused. The brown fur of the suit felt real and he wondered why Meijin had gone to those lengths when he programmed it. "And the only way to keep them here was dressing me as a giant mouse?"
The head of the mouse-suit was currently resting at his feet and he looked at it in disgruntlement, still unable to comprehend its usefulness, not to mention why he was the one that had to play the part of the mouse. He blamed Enzan for it. Leaving him to deal with all this alone while he went out and hunted for the source of the virus outbreak...
Rockman smiled apologetically as he held up the large box with at least a dozen of cats that had once been security navis. "You'd rather hunt them down through the whole network than keep them here?"
The boy sighed again, feeling like he was slowly inching his way towards whatever kind of doom that was waiting for him at the end of this situation. "Alright, alright..." he muttered, grabbing the head of the costume and staring at it with as much anger as he could muster, hoping that it would just catch fire on its own. That way, he wouldn't have to go through with playing the part of the mouse and be assaulted by those cats that he was sure were going to multiply in number as soon as he started to run around...
Rockman put on the ground the box and watched as a white cat started to paw its way out of it, mewling all the way. "I just hope Dad can find a cure to this new streak of virus," he said, his voice filled with worry. "So far, only SciLabs's network has been affected, but if there is a true outbreak on the internet..."
He let the sentence unfinished, and Netto didn't need any further explanation. If the virus outbreak spread on the internet, he wouldn't have to deal with just a dozen or so of cats, but he would have to try and contain the damage of billions of mutated navis. That image was something that made him rethink about this plan and transform it from senseless and stupid to bearable.
"I'm ready," he muttered eventually, his voice further muffled by the giant mouse head covering his own. "So... what now?"
Rockman watched his operator with a mixture of worry and amusement as the boy shrugged, hopelessness evident in his voice. "Uh..." the navi took a pause to think about the next step they should take. The plan had been thought so quickly that the details hadn't been ironed out before actually implementing it. "Walk around?"
There was a moment where Rockman actually thought he had heard a growl coming from Netto, but dismissed it as soon as the cats in the box simultaneously homed onto the giant mouse. Their eyes shined briefly, remembering the navi how the lock on mechanism of a weapon worked, then, as one, they lunged at Netto with extended claws and fangs. They were attracted to the mouse-suit like bees with honey and the boy responded to the threat by turning around and running in the opposite direction, screaming something unintelligible against Enzan.
The chase continued for long minutes, with Netto collecting more cats as he kept running left and right in search of a place where to hide, until a familiar presence appeared into the network and sent Rockman on full alert.
Frame tense and ready to bolt into action, the blue navi let his eyes scan the platform he was standing on, ignoring the cry for help coming from his operator that was still trying to escape an even growing mob of digital felines. The presence, Rockman noted, was moving towards him at a fast pace, but not as fast as the person he knew could go. It was as if Forte was being more cautious than usual.
Yes, because the presence that had caught his attention was none other than the infamous Black Shadow, his strongest rival and enemy. Someone that needed all of his focus, strength and willpower to overcome. Before he could call for Netto and send him back to the real world, however, Forte appeared a couple of feet in front of him in all his... half cat glory.
With a long, bushy tail swinging nervously behind him that sent strands of ripped cloak everywhere. With soft and cute paws instead of feet and hands, ears that twitched at every small sound and whiskers that vibrated with each movement of Forte's mouth, Rockman was hard pressed to not laugh at the sight.
"Uh... Forte..!" the blue navi tried to greet the other with a smile, but it came out more of an awkward grimace than anything else. "What's up? It's not everyday you come out of the Undernet..."
The two stared at each other for a moment until the black navi hissed in displeasure. "Do you think I like this?" he asked, his tail swishing more and the fur on it standing on ends, making it even more bushy than it already was. "I'm here for a cure, and since you're not effected, I'll be taking it directly from you..."
Forte paused, seemingly struggling with himself until the tail froze in its movements. Every part of the black navi's frame became still and his red eyes shrunk until nothing but a black slit was visible sitting in the middle of the red. Then, unable to contain himself, Forte opened his mouth, as if to say something else, and let out a loud mewling.
"Give me that core of yours!" the black navi jumped into action, pounding at Rockman like a cat would do with a ball of wool. His claws extended, glinting in the artificial light and plunged into the ground where the other had been just a second ago. Forte remained crouching there, tail swishing once again as he stared at the crouched form of his enemy.
That is until something brown heading his way caught his feline-influenced attention, instantly making him forget why he was there in the first place.
Netto, after running through several passages, was finally returning to the main platform, gasping for hair. Although he still had the mouse head firmly on top of his, the suit was torn in places, with a glow lost who knows where, the tail missing the end and with a few cats hanging on the digital fabric. The boy was flailing his arms frantically to dislodge them, but to Rockman it appeared like he was merely waving white flags. Behind him, running mercilessly after their amusement in a large crowd that shook the ground and left scratches everywhere, the cats were meowing so loudly that it was a wonder the place was still standing.
Forte watched the boy dressed as a giant mouse for several longs seconds after he had ran past, then, being unable to resit to the pull, he bolted after him, joining the mindless furry mob and eventually taking the lead with outstretched arms and screaming to stop between a meow and a hiss.
Rockman would have considered it a hilarious sight if it wasn't for the fact that Netto was his operator, he was tiring out from all the running he was doing and that every single cat was in a mad frenzy over that costume. Somehow, now their plan didn't seem as brilliant as before...
But how to stop hundreds of craving felines without becoming a patchwork was something Rockman could not think of. "Netto-kun..." he whined as he watched his operator take a sharp turn at the end of the platform and run back towards him, the digital dust cloud behind him growing bigger and bigger as the seconds passed.
It wasn't until Netto was within a few hundred feet from him that Rockman noticed something very wrong with the suit he was wearing. Leaving out the fact that it had more tears on the fabric, that the tail had been completely torn off and that it was also lacking the left shoe, now the head was turned one hundred and eighty degrees, making it face the feline mob trailing behind.
And leaving Netto to blindly run around, crashing against Rockman a few seconds later.
Then it was total chaos...
The cats, finally seeing their target on the ground and unmoving, pounced like a big oceanic wave onto the two, mewling, hissing and scratching at anything that moved until priorities and a hierarchy of sort were established.
It took Netto and Rockman several long minutes to recover, and when they did, they took as long to sit up. The boy had lost the head of the mouse, which was now laying on its side next to him, forgotten by everyone but a dozen of cats curling on top and inside of it, purring and meowing in contentment.
"I thought I was going to die..." Netto muttered after a while, throwing the remaining glow into the large crowd of cats surrounding him and watching as some started to fight for the object. "This is all Enzan's fault..."
Rockman sat against his back, trying to ignore the fiery feline battling next to his left leg for a comfortable spot on his lap. "How can it be Enzan's fault? He's not even here..."
The boy grunted, eyes narrowing in frustration. "It was his idea..." he replied, eyes turning downwards to his lap. "But at least Forte hasn't bit my head off..."
Suddenly remembering the presence of the anger-prone navi within the network, Rockman looked around for the familiar black shape until his green eyes landed on the black cat curled on his operator's lap. It was slightly larger than the rest, had a very bushy tail and sported purple and gold markings on its body. If he could see its forehead, Rockman knew that he would see a blue cross on it.
"It looks like even Forte couldn't fight off the mutation..." he said as he poked the dark feline with a finger, earning himself four long claw marks on his hand. He retracted his hand and massaged the stinging wound, idly watching as Netto grabbed the fiery beast by the middle and made it curl back onto his lap once more before scratching it between the ears. "Although his personality remained somewhat the same..."
"Let's just hope Dad find that cure..." Netto muttered, trying to ignore the hundreds of cats surrounding him still mewling and occasionally fighting over something. "I don't want to spend the rest of the week in here..."
Although, the boy had to admit that Forte's fur was really soft and warm to the touch. Not that he would mention it... the black navi would never let him live with it...
.
.
A/N: This is a trade with Mecha-Shadow over at DA. Took me long enough... one year and several months to get it done. Had troubles with the plot, that was why it took so long, but I'm quite pleased with the results.
Also, remember, I don't have a beta reader so, even if I read my stuff a few times before posting, errors still escape my notice.