Crossed Circuits

DISCLAIMER: I don't own Dragon Ball Z or ReBoot.

CHAPTER 1: Arrival in Mainframe

Bob, Guardian 452, hero of Mainframe and the defender against evil threats, was in his garage back at Eight Ball Apartments, with his face obscured by the large, red hood of his beloved car, digging deep into his engine's bowels in an attempt to repair the classic 262 convertible which, as usual, to no one's surprise, was giving him a difficult time.

It's got to be a problem with the port rerouter coil, I'm sure of it! he thought stubbornly. Or maybe it's the axial interface plug? A distended turbo lock? Bad drivers? Ah, spam it! All the training in the Guardian Academy never taught me how to deal with this!

Sighing, Bob decided maybe it was time to give it a rest for now and head back on into the house. Maybe he could catch that new movie on IHS; The Last Guardian. As a Guardian, Bob was intrigued about the idea of only one Guardian on the Net against an army of viruses.

Bob shivered. On the other hand, maybe it's not such a great idea.

It had been five hours since Megabyte's ultimate defeat only several minutes after the start of his dreadful "Hunt." With some aide from the Codemasters and new revelations about the Keytools brought to light, the Mainframers were able to successfully thwart the insane virus from initiating a cascade reaction that would have deleted all of Mainframe and every Sprite and Binome in the system. Megabyte himself was taken to the Supercomputer to advance the research of the Guardian Collective's Viral Science Division teams, and for the most part, life among the denizens of Mainframe had since returned to normal.

Well, almost normal, anyway.

"BOB!" Enzo shouted through a vidwindow which had suddenly popped up in his apartment, and Bob nearly ran into the floating object.

"Is it Dot?" Bob asked, immediately concerned.

The young Sprite nodded with all the boundless energy of youth.

"Uh-huh. She's at the Principal Office. We need you!" Enzo said with an unmistakable air of urgency.

"I'm on my way, Enzo, just hang on!" Bob told the green-skinned boy as a determined expression flashed across his face.

Enzo nodded again, looking even more frenetic than before.

"Just hurry!" he cried as the vidwindow disappeared.

Bob ran outside to the patio and decompressed a zip-board, speeding off towards the Principal Office in the distance.

Milliseconds later, Bob could be found within the infirmary at the Principal Office, cradling a bundle of wrappings in his arms while Dot slept peacefully under the energy covers, and etched across Bob's face was an expression of pure, unadulterated joy as he gazed down upon the sleeping face of a baby Sprite. It was apparent she had inherited a lot from her father, namely skin color, which was of a light periwinkle shade of blue, but she'd also inherited her mother's black hair, chin, and nose. Bob practically radiated pure happiness as he held the tiny Sprite in his arms, simply content to just stare at her and enjoy the time he was spending with her like was no next second.

The door slid open and Phong entered.

"Ah, Bob, there you are. Still attending to young Pixel?"

Bob smiled. "Well, Dot's a bit out of it, so I figured, let her have some downtime while I get acquainted with my daughter."

As he said that last word, he positively glowed with delight. It was hard to believe that after everything which had happened throughout their lives, something as wonderful and bright as a new life could be here. It was almost like a dream to Bob after so many hours of agony and struggle. His time in the Web might never have happened in his mind.

Phong nodded, respecting this bit of wisdom.

"Would you care to hold her, Phong?" Bob asked him.

Phong shook his head, slightly disconcerted at Bob's idea.

"Oh... no, I wouldn't want to intrude," he protested.

"I insist," Bob said, smiling. "You're more than just this system's administrator, Phong, you're family to us."

"Well..." Phong was warmed by Bob's words, and he was slowly being swayed. "Very well, but not for too long."

Phong wheeled over as Bob handed the sleeping form of Pixel Matrix over to him. He stroked his long fingers across her face lightly, causing the little infant to wiggle her nose and giggle innocently in her sleep.

Bob laughed.

"I didn't know you were so good with kids, Phong."

Dot had apparently woken up, and was now watching the whole thing with an air of tired amusement.

Phong had the good grace to blush at Dot's words.

"Oh, well, when you have inputted as many cycles as I have, my child, you will be sure to quicktime a thing or two," he explained.

Dot smiled. "True."

Bob got up and walked over to her, wrapping his arm around her shoulders.

"Hey, how're you doing, Dot?" he asked, sounding concerned about her.

Dot shrugged a little. "Not too bad, just a little tired. When can I expect to be back at work, Phong?"

Bob chuckled. "That's Dot for ya. Even with a new daughter to look after, she still wants to work. You're hopeless, Dot."

She punched him in the arm in mock anger.

"Where's Matrix and AndrAIa, Phong?" she asked Phong.

Mouse and Ray had been out-of-system when Pixel was being born, and they were on their way back to Mainframe to see her, but before she'd nodded off, Dot remembered AndrAIa and Matrix were there.

"In the War Room, I believe, finishing up the latest system reports for this cycle," Phong replied.

"While we're on the subject," Bob said, sounding thoughtful as he rubbed his chin, "when is it gonna come time for Matrix and AndrAIa to start their own family like us? It has been five hours, after all."

"I told you before," came a rough voice from the door, "we're happy to keep things the way they are. We don't need to get married."

Matrix had entered the room, looking gruff and disinterested like he always did.

"They need you up in the War Room, Bob," he informed the Guardian without preamble. "We have a small situation."

"What kind of situation?" Bob asked, a frown crossing his face.

Matrix shrugged his massive shoulders. "I'll explain more when we get up there."

"All right, then," Bob agreed, moving over to the doorway.

"Wait up, guys, I'm coming too," Dot grunted as she tried to rise from the bed to follow them.

Before they could protest, Phong glided over to Dot and handed her Pixel, resting his hand on her arm as he said tenderly, "What you need now is rest, my child. Give your format time to adjust, and then you can be back up and working around the cycle."

Dot sighed, knowing Phong was right.

"All right, Phong," she said, sounding very unhappy with it.

With that little crisis resolved, Bob and Matrix left.

"What's going on?" Bob asked as he entered the War Room behind Matrix.

A CPU captain came up and saluted Bob, who gave him a curt nod and said, "At ease, Captain. What's happened?"

"Sir, as you know, Professor Matrix was running a few tests on the Gateway Command, but a few microseconds ago the energy readings of the Gate started spiking," the One Binome told him. "We don't know what's causing it and even the Professor himself is at a loss to explain the strange phenomenon. All we know, sir, is the amount of energy it's currently producing — if you'll please just follow me over here, sir..."

The CPU Captain walked to a console and typed in a command. A graph of the Gateway Command appeared on the main vidwindow, followed with a chart of various readings taken from the sensors.

Bob absorbed the data swiftly, and his eyes widened in total shock.

"That's impossible," he whispered. "Not even the Core generates that much power."

"There's something else, sir," a Zero Binome working at a computer terminal interrupted. "We've picked up some type of high intermittent virtual resonance pulse. It's scrambling all our sensors, sir, but from what little we were able to ascertain from that signal, it appears to be originating from somewhere outside of Cyberspace."

"What?" Bob exclaimed, now totally floored.

"There's no way!" Matrix agreed.

But further conversation was cut off when the War Room suddenly trembled underneath their feet. The System Voice rang out, cool and clear, like it always was. "WARNING, INCOMING DATA TRANSFER. WARNING, INCOMING DATA TRANSFER."

"Oh, no!" said one of the scientist Binomes. "Sir, there's an energy distortion forming around the city, it's surrounding us!"

On the vidwindows displaying images of the city, lines of energy shot across the sky like zaps of light.

"Can you pinpoint the point of convergence for the distortion?" Bob said.

A Zero Binome on the other side of the War Room called out, "Here, sir! It's hard to tell exactly where it's coming from and it appears to be originating from all around us, but the focal point for that distortion clearly intersects at one location — the Gateway Command."

"Dad!" Matrix said worriedly.

"Captain, patch me through to Welman!" Bob ordered.

The Captain pressed a few buttons on the control console, and the vidwindow's screen now filled with Welman's anxious face; or so Bob assumed, anyway, since it was hard to judge the facial expressions of nulls. The Guardian noted vaguely that they were all a good distance from the Gateway Command, and thanked the User that Welman had at least had the foresight to take that standard security precaution.

Before Bob could say anything, Welman launched into a report.

"All systems showing normal! According to our data, there should be no reason behind that buildup of virtual particles in the Gate!" he said, sounding immensely frustrated. "No residual flux charge, no increase or drop in the energy/ion containment fields, no static in the harmonic wavelengths, no nothing! It should all be working fine. All we did was upgrade the ping function!"

"Welman, get everyone out of there now, and that's an order!" Bob commanded, prepared for the worst. "We'll evacuate all nonessential personnel from the Principal Office, and leave behind a utility team. Maybe they can figure out why the Gate is —"

But a bright light from the Gate behind Welman interrupted Bob and with a startled cry of surprise from Welman and the research team the vidwindow went dead. A crackle of thunder assaulted Bob's eardrums and the floor underneath pitched, sending Bob and the rest of the War Room workforce flying to their knees from the force of the explosion.

"Dad! No! This can't be happening!" Matrix yelled.

"Calm down, Matrix," Bob said. "Glitch, get me a line. Put Welman through."

If you can, he added silently to his faithful companion.

To Bob's surprise and quiet relief, a picture of Welman Matrix appeared on the Keytool's hard surface.

"Welman, are you okay?" Bob pressed insistently.

Welman's nullsuit seemed unharmed, though the Professor himself sounded a little shaken up.

"Uh, uh, yes, I'm fine," he reassured the Guardian. "Uh, though I can't understand why —"

"Professor!" someone called him from off-screen. "You better come take a look at this!"

Welman turned to face the speaker — while he was doing that, Bob took the time to survey the War Room. The computer interfaces and vidwindows had all gone dead, but it looked like everyone was fully functional.

"Everybody all right?" he inquired.

There were murmurs of agreement, so Bob glanced back down at Glitch. "Professor, wha..."

"Bob!" the Professor's voice sounded urgent. "I think you'd better get down here! There's something you should see."

Bob exchanged a glance with Matrix, wondering what in the Net it could be.

"I'm heading down there! Clear the halls so no one gets in my way," the maverick ordered gruffly, exiting the room.

Bob followed him.

As soon as the two arrived in the Core Room, they knew something was wrong. A group of Binomes were clustered a few dozen feet away from the Gate, which was now completely shut down. Bob was relieved to see no one had been deleted or sustained any fatal injuries, but on closer inspection, he noticed every person in the chamber had on their features an expression of shock and awe as though they were gazing at a corrupted file.

Bob and Matrix ran over.

"Dad, are you all right?" Matrix demanded. It was not his function to act sentimental, except maybe to AndrAIa, of course, who understood him the best — and speaking of the Game Sprite, she was there, too, and had the same not-quite-believing expression on her face.

"I'm fine, son," Welman reassured him.

"What is it, Professor?" Bob asked, stepping closer. "Why did you call us he..."

But he trailed off suddenly as his eyes caught sight of... something lying amid the gaggle of onlookers.

It appeared to be a Sprite, maybe v.3.0 or older, and he wore a very strange clothing format. He had on blue a spandex jumpsuit with white gloves and boots. His skin was of a rich peach color, with pointy black hair which poked up around his head like a surrounding halo as well as hard features and an elongated face that gave it the look of a heart.

For a moment no one spoke.

Then, Bob at last broke the silence.

"Um, what is that?"

Yeah, decided to upload this again. Apologies for taking it down.