AUTHOR'S NOTE: I've been running an internet site for a while now entitled Enker's Tale. A dojin that outlines the character of Enker in the 21XX universe. For those of you who don't already know him, Enker is a Classic Megaman character who appeared in several games before vanishing. This Fanfic is set in the Battle Network series, and deals with the adventures of Enker.EXE and his NetOp Switch. For the time being it's a one-off, a pilot for a possible series if people think its any good. If so, comment or e-mail me and I'll wirte more.

ENKER.EXE – By Ben Warren.
-

Switch sat back in her chair and crossed out the answers to her maths question. This really wasn't her best subject, she'd spent the better part of an hour on this one question, and she just knew that everyone else was almost finished with their school work. Nibbling on the end of her pen, she carefully worked her way through the process of multiplication, and then subtracted the required amount. With delicate handwriting she wrote down her answer and proceeded onto the second question.

This would be a lot easier of they were allowed to use their PETs to work out the answers, but the teacher had decided that today they were going to rely on their own brainpower. This meant that Switch's Personal Terminal was tucked neatly in her bag, placed beneath the table.

Two gruelling hours later the bell rang for the end of school. People jumped up, handing their answer sheets back to the teacher before manically throwing their stationary into open bags and running out. Chatter filled the room as people filed out, and laughter could be heard. Everyone was heading to the local arcade she knew, off to Net Battle their Navis and to generally have a good time. A couple of her friends asked her if she wanted to join them for a meal down at the local take-out stand, but she smiled and excused herself. She had other plans.

Slower than the rest, Switch carefully packed her work away and headed for the door. She wouldn't be going to the arcade, there was no point. Her PET did not contain a custom Navi, and thought her off-the-shelf one was capable of being used in a Net Battle, the chance of it winning was next to nothing. The simplistic thing didn't have a shape or sex, didn't even have a voice. Occasionally she'd get teased by the older girls in class about it, but there was nothing she could do about it. Her parents had told her that she would receive one if she excelled in her grades this year, and her mother was fond of reminding her that this deal included getting a good grade in her Math classes.

She was a small girl for her age, with long blond hair tied back into two bunches and large green eyes. They didn't live too far from the school, and the walk home was uneventful. Slipping quietly into her house she registered that her mother was still out at work, and a note on the fridge confirmed that Dad had cooked her dinner and that it was waiting inside. Sighing she removed the plate full of mashed potato and what looked like meat, and sat down at the dining room table, her homework in front of her. She HAD to get this finished if there was ever going to be a chance of her getting a custom Navi of her own. Knife and fork in hand, she slowly began to eat whilst sh worked on the next problem on the list.

-

He had to keep moving.

Pain wracked his body, the attack had burned him badly, leaving him panting for breath, but he knew that if he stopped that would be it for him, he would be deleted.

Diving down through the net, tracked by an unseen enemy, he was forced to keep running. He had already changed data-streams several times in the hope of throwing off whoever was hunting him, but it wasn't working. Nothing he did was working. Pretty soon he would be out of tricks, and then he would have to turn and fight.

Ahead of him, the world exploded into a shocking burst of colour, throwing his hands up in front of his face he let out a scream of pain. Shrapnel and heat wracked his body, one arm dropping uselessly to one side. They'd set a trap for him, and like a blind fool he had walked right into it. Disorientated and confused from the explosion, he stumbled back.

In an act of desperation, he tapped into the closest server. Forcing an entry into the new system and disappearing from the net in a flash. Within this new realm things were soft and cool, it was silent and safe.

Unable to stay awake any more, he passed into unconsciousness.

-

Switch awoke to the sound of her PET bleeping. The strange buzzing noises sounded like a system reboot, but she couldn't imagine why that would be happening. Sitting up she realised that she had gone to sleep in front of her homework, the washing up from dinner still in the sink and her face lent against the dinner table. Reaching out she picked up her pet, untapping it from the house server and bringing the screen close enough to her face to see it properly.

There was no sign of her Navi, the little grey figure had vanished from the confines of her PET, but in its stead there appeared to be a strange figure, clad in gold and blue. Though upon closer inspection she realised that this new Navi was close to deletion. His left arm was fazing in and out of existence, and several patches of his armour had been blasted away. Switch gave a little gasp and ran a system analysis, this Navi had arrived from the net, but it didn't appear to have any owner data.

Carefully she began to run a restoration program. A small icon and taskbar appeared in the bottom right of the screen and began to tick down. Beside it another icon – this one requesting that a dummy-chip be inserted into the download slot. Carefully Switch reached out and found one, her mother kept a stack beside the phone in case work wanted her to save anything on the fly. Slotting it into the PET she narrowed her eyes and watched as the chip was uploaded with foreign data, and then ejected. Now it bore an image on the back, and bore the text 'battle chip – Mirror Buster.'

"Never heard of that one," she mused and slipped it into her pocket. Turning her attention back to the strange Navi, who was already looking better. Several patches of his armour were finished and the main fixing seemed to be centred around the fazing arm now. "Seven hours." She murmured to herself, and she reached out for her homework books and carefully stacked them back into her schoolbag. It was going to be a good long time before this Navi was going to be able to answer any questions about where he had come from, maybe she should do the washing up and go to bed. Any questions she had could wait until the morning. Besides, it was the weekend.

-

He blinked and woke up. Looking around he recognized his surroundings, but nothing else. Backtracking through his memory he was completely unable to recall where it was he had come from, or what he had been doing before the chase.

His whole memory before last night had been erased.

"You're feeling better?" the voice made him jump, it sounded like it was coming from all around him. A sweet voice, perhaps that of a little girl. A small window appeared in front of him, and he could see her peeking in on him. "You took a lot of damage last night, but I managed to run an complete regeneration of your body. You should be alright now." Her voice was calm, reassuring. She actually appeared to be concerned about him.

"I'm alright . . . I . . . thankyou. Where am I?" He asked, and stood up.

"Your data says that you came in from the net at about midnight last night." She pointed to another small video-file that popped open in a window and played out. It showed him arriving and passing out, but there were no clues there as to who he was or where he came from.

"I can't remember anything." He admitted honestly. "I think my data has been corrupted somehow."

Switch blinked and looked at him. "Your profile says that your name is Enker."

Enker, it sounded right. He nodded once. "Anything else?"

"Nope, sorry but the details are blank. Judging from your statistics though I'd say you're a combat-type Navi. Its odd, but your intelligence rating is also surprisingly high. I've got no idea what you're designed for with a spread like that."

Enker straightened up a little. He had a name now at least, this was a start.

-

"I've got a question." The Navi looked up at her from the screen of her PET, and Switch – sitting on her bed upstairs – tilted her head to one side.

"What?" she asked.

The Navi looked embarrassed, a strange sight for someone who had only ever used a standard designed one in the past – their facial expression was strictly limited and showed their lack of AI programming. After a moment he seemed to make up his mind about something and asked.

"I don't have any clue as to where to start looking for answers, is there anything else you know about me?"

Switch rummaged through her pockets and found the Mirror Buster chip, holding it up so is that he could see it from the screen. "Just this chip. The info for it was downloaded about the same time that you arrived." She blushed a little and looked at the screen. "If you want to stay a little while, just until you remember where it is you came from, it's fine by me. I've never had a Custom Navi before." She started putting things into her schoolbag, pausing with one hand on the PET, was it alright for her to take Enker with her? After all he really wasn't her Navi, but she'd need the PET for class. She explained the situation to him.

Enker blinked, surprised at the unexpected act of kindness. "Take me with you, I need time to think anyway."

Switch checked her watch against the hall clock, and cursed. She was late for school already and the teacher was going to kill her. Her coursework was due in today. Rushing out of the front door, she tucked Enker and her PET into the back of her bag and ran for it.

-

She made it in plenty of time, but was breathing heavily by the time she sat herself down at her desk at school. The other kids laughed at the state of her, her hair all matted and unkempt, and she did her best to ignore them. Pulling out her books and doing the best she could to straighten herself out, she could hear Evet Johnson, the girl in the seat behind her sniggering and making jokes behind her back.

All throughout class the insults kept coming, and from start to finish she tried her best to ignore them with little success. Cruel words about her looks, parents and lack of money where thrown around, mixed in with nastier tidbits that just weren't true.

Deep within the recesses of her bag, Enker sat listening, he'd given up trying to remember anything. Every time he got further than the pursuit he hit a wall of white that sealed off his memories from him. So instead he'd been putting his attentions into healing the last of his wounds, and learning a little about the world around him. From the sounds of things the little girl who rescued him was being given a hard time in school. Humans could be so cruel.

It wasn't until first break that things started to escalate. Evet made a comment louder than normal, and half of the class laughed at it. Poor Switch, red in the face from the humiliation, struck back with a jibe of her own, but it wasn't nearly as effective and ended up backfiring. Evet, by far the tallest and most pretty girl in class, was making a fool out of her, twisting her words into dumb comments and making inappropriate suggestions about her family.

"I'll bet that's the reason you don't have a real Navi." She trilled. "You're too poor to get one."

The girls around her tittered and pointed at Switch, whose eyes began to run with tears. Her parents worked hard to put food on the table, and they weren't the poorest of people. But this school was reserved for some of the most upper-class students in the country, and in comparison she just couldn't make the cut.

"Switch?" a small voice spoke up from her bag. "Switch?"

She wiped her eyes and pulled open her bag, looking in on her PET. Enker's face stared up at her, concerned.

"Challenge her to a Netbattle." He urged.

"But . . . you don't belong to me. I couldn't ask you to . . ."

"Do it, I don't mind." Enker declaired simply, "She needs to be taught a lesson."

Nodding her head once, Switch pulled her PET from the bag and held it close to her chest. Evet almost choked with laughter, unable to see the screen – she thought that Switch was going to challenge her with an off-the-shelf Navi. Fill of self confidence, the brat plugged into the desk monitor and stood back, waiting for her rival to do the same. Other kids began to crowd around. Net battling wasn't actually allowed in school but everyone did it. But to see Switch plug-in was a rare occurance. Rarer still that she was standing up for herself.

-

Enker sparked into existence in the combat arena and glanced around for his opponent, a tall female with slick black hair and blue armour stood in front of him. She seemed a little taken aback by his appearance, apparently expecting an easy win. His eyes narrowed, he'd show her.

In a blur of movement he dashed across the intervening space and swept daftly to one side to avoid a slice from the sword-chip that had been applied to Evet's Navi. Then, with three deft moves he took away her legs and knocked her backwards and out of the ring. The whole contest had only taken ten seconds.

Smiling, Enker looked up out of the screen at Switch, giving her the thumbs up. He'd done it.

-

The kids around the table cheered, Switch had won and without any apparent effort. Evet's mouth hang open and she simply gasped, unable to do anything but stare. Switch beamed, and plugged out of the monitor. "Thanks." She murmered." Someone patted her shoulder and invited her out after school to play, she nodded and agreed. Suddenly she was so popular with the class.

"No problem," Enker replied. "I only need a favor?"

"Anything." She promised.

"Can I stay here with you for a while longer? Just until I get my memories back?"

A wide smile spread across her face then, and she hugged the PET to her chest. "Of course you can, stay as long as you like. After all, you're my best friend."

Things had changed, and between the two of them the future looked bright. Despite everything, Enker's past and the mystery surrounding it – she felt sure that things would work out for the best.