ZERO NETWORK TRANSMISSION
Rockman Zero/Rockman Battle Network
Chapter 2: Netbattle!
Authored By The Several


Ciel's bright red netnavi appeared with awesome display, shining saber in hand, aimed straight at his aquatic opponent. The crowd surrounding the battletop viewed the sight that had just happened with open jaws, mouth agape, too stunned to describe what it was that they had just seen.

Ciel, the owner of the netnavi, was just as awestruck.

But this bizarre entrance only made Ciel nervous. 'What kind of navi IS this? Broken… and then repaired in an instant! What did dad do to repair my navi anyway?'

Leviathan smirked at Ciel's new navi. "Pretty impressive opening there, reddie! I'd say your creator wanted a dramatic entrance. Out of 10, I'd give it a 15 for creativity."

"BUT," Leviathan suddenly spoke, eyes piercing, legs in the offensive stance, harpoon lifted to one side, "you'll not beat me with just theatrics! Come then… and dance."

'Such strength!' Ciel said as Leviathan swung the harpoon with a single hand. 'Lifting that huge weapon... and with one hand, no less! No wonder every kid in the school got beat! That's is no ordinary navi…'

"Stop panicking," her red navi suddenly said.

"H-Huh?"

Zero turned to face her netop. "Panicking doesn't help. If you aren't focused, you'll lose, and your navi will get deleted. Do you understand?"

"U-Um… Yeah," she said nervously. 'What is with this navi? Only known him for a couple of minutes, and already he's acting like a jerk!'

"Blah-blah-blah! Talking isn't going to get this battle underway, reddie," sighed. "Oh, and don't even bother asking that newbie netop of yours for help… She'll only slow you down! Heeheehee!" she remarked with hysterical laughter.

Ciel was nearly at the top of her boiling point now, and that insult is pushing her to the edge. With a swipe of her hand, she posed, PET readied for battlechip downloading. "That's it! She's one mean navi! I'm going to take her down!"

Leviathan. EXE laughed again, swinging her harpoon to her attack position. "Just try, daddy's little girl!" She then quickly boosts forward towards her opponent. BATTLE!

In an instant, Leviathan was beside the red navi and quickly swung her steel-blue harpoon. Ciel's navi quickly dodged, only to be surprised as Leviathan followed with a fist to his face that sent him flying across the digital arena. Zero skids across the floor with great friction as Leviathan backed up in the recoil.

"You underestimated me, reddie. I may use my harpoon for battle, but remember that the fists that carried that harpoon are mine," Leviathan said with a taunt. "Heh, didn't even need to release my Limiters. Is that it, newbie?"

"EEK! What happened?" Ciel shrieked, moving her screen to where her netnavi had landed to. As Zero got up, he looked onto the screen only to see Ciel bowing and apologizing constantly up and down. "I'm sorry! I'm sorry! I'm sorry! ...I-I wasn't ready yet…"

Zero ignored her and turned to Leviathan. "If you won't help me, then you'll be in my way."

Instead of apologizing, now, Ciel was really miffed. The other netbattlers swore they saw anger-smoke coming out of her head. First, her annoying opponent… and now, even her own navi is annoying!

"But you know," Zero continued as he looked to Ciel with a grin. "… I guess I could get revenge on her by myself."

"N-Not a chance! If you're taking her down, then I'll be helping you!" Ciel was really angry, but now she was also focused. Only several times in her life was she able to act so free and selfish, but it felt relieving… She didn't know netbattling was so exciting!

"You heard her, right?" the red netnavi says to her blue opponent. "I guess you'll have a challenge after all."

Leviathan gave a pout, a smug look formed on her face. "Hmmph. This will just be a complete waste of my time…"

Zero smirks loudly for Leviathan to hear. "Don't worry. I'm sure I can beat you within the minute."

Now, Leviathan herself was angry. "Why you… let's get this over with!" With a cry, Leviathan boosts towards her enemy as she did before.

"You, my owner," the red netnavi said out-of-the-blue.

"Y… Yes?"

"Clean yourself of all thoughts. Focus only on me and the battle," he explained, eyes closed as Leviathan dashed toward him. "Remember my name, say it out loud and command me…"

"…I am He, Zero. EXE."

"Zero. EXE..." Ciel repeated as the words echoed in her head. "All right, Zero…" She was about to give the order to evade when…

"Commencing!" Zero replied to Ciel's surprise. In an instant, before he was hit by Leviathan's huge weapon, Zero evades to the side, moving as if he was the wind himself. Leviathan was unfazed, however, and continued her relentless attack. Zero, like before, evaded swiftly and surely in unpredictable patterns. Teleporting right behind her, Ciel saw her chance.

Although confused, Ciel tried to shake it off and move on to the offense. "Okay… YoYo battlechip, in… download!" With a click, she inserted the battlechip to her PET's slot and downloaded the data onto the battle.

However, something unexpected happened. Instead of a YoYo, a strange energy boomerang appeared in Zero's arsenal!

"Shield Boomerang... release!" Zero declared, throwing the energy disk at Leviathan. Leviathan barely evades as Zero's weapon comes back to him.

"What? I've never seen a battlechip like THAT before!" Leviathan said, astonished.

Ciel felt the same way, but not just because of the never-before-seen-must-be-an-error battlechip, but because of the scene she was seeing her PET screen. Instead of the YoYo data being shown into the screen, the battlechip data is being replaced with a red battlechip data marked "ShldBmrng" – the zero weapon, Shield Boomerang!

Ciel looked with dread as the unexplainable happened, horror forming in her heart. '…What kind of navi did dad give me?'

Zero, on the other hand, instead of being distracted by 'petty things,' concentrated on the battle. Digitizing into existence his standard weapon, the Z-Saber, he leaped forward for a sword maneuver. With a clash, Leviathan's harpoon and his Z-Saber switched hits and parries with lethal continuation, where one false move could mean instant deletion. For some strange reason, Ciel felt like she was commanding all of his moves without saying a word. Like they knew what each other was thinking…

Deciding this was getting nowhere, Ciel decided to give chip-downloading another try, hoping that same thing would not happen again as it did with her YoYo chip. She took three 'CyberSword' chips from her pack, and downloaded them all in rapid succession to her PET.

Realizing an upcoming chip download, Zero steps back to activate the forwarding chip. His hand suddenly glowed suspiciously, and then charges for the kill. Leviathan guards with her weapon in vain, as the glow in Zero's hand was replaced with a level-3 charged Z-Saber slash! It cuts the harpoon in half, blasting through the aquatic guardian like a gale-forced blade. Leviathan was struck surprised, blasting her skidding across the digital floor with the overcharged force.

As the chips came out on the other side of Ciel's PET, it was, again, replaced with a different red chip.

Zero held the Z-Saber's tip to Leviathan's neck. As if with some invisible timer, Zero replied with a smug, "...One minute exactly."

'W…What power!' Leviathan thought as Zero released her, allowing her to retreat back a few steps. "W-Who ARE you? I... I feel like I've seen you before..."

"Zero, that was amazing!" Leviathan heard Ciel cheer, and the word triggered something in her memory.

"Zero... Your name is Zero. EXE," Leviathan remarked. She then laughed maniacally, getting both Zero and Ciel's attention

"W-What's so funny?" Ciel asked.

"It's... nothing," Leviathan said, summoning a new repaired harpoon from the ether. "You win, Zero. EXE... for now. Next time, without my Limiters, there will be no handicap to help you." In the next instant, she digitizes out of the battletop and onto the Internet.

Surfing across the network, Leviathan – though defeated – formed a smile across her face as she suddenly remembered something. 'My primary programming erased… For some reason, fighting had brought it back, but now I remember why… Now, I've seen what I've been looking for all this time! Zero. EXE... I'VE FOUND YOU."

"Hah… Wow…" Ciel said with a huff of breath and a sigh of relief. "My first win… That was intense! ...Wouldn't you say so?" she asked her new navi.

Zero looked to her with the same lifeless expression and looked away, saying "…Whatever."

"Hmpph! What a stubborn netnavi you are!" Ciel said a little miffed, but still satisfied with her first victory. She just wished she could have had a less-annoying navi…


The door to her house closed with a slam. "Dad! I'm home! And guess what? I just won my first netbattle with the navi you gave me!" Ciel screamed in excitement as she entered the kitchen.

She found Cerveau in the kitchen drinking the same cup of coffee. She noticed it was the same cup of coffee for a week now, and it's starting to get to her.

"That's wonderful, Ciel… but your face tells something different. Is something the matter?"

"W-Well," Ciel said, unable to explain clearly what happened during that battle. "This netnavi you gave me… How did you make him?"

Cerveau took one last sip from his coffee before he faced Ciel with an explanation. In fact, to Ciel, it looked like his face was more than eager to explain what scientific method he did to create him. Her dad was always like that. 'Uh-oh, dad's in one of those moods again... ugh, scientists..."

"Well you see, Ciel dear," Cerveau explained, "Zero. EXE is no ordinary navi… In fact, he is a netnavi resurrected from old data."

"You… resurrected… an old navi?" Ciel said with a question-marked head.

"Thaaat's right!" his dad said boastingly. "You see… I've always wondered about the separation between the 'order' and 'action' delay of the netop/netnavi symbiosis. When a netop gives the order, the netnavi follows that with the specific action. But because there has to be a delay to say that command, the efficiency is cut down."

With her dad's deep explanation using needless words, Ciel tried her best to keep up. Several meaningless equations later, Cerveau got to the point:

"…And so, using this system, I was able to recreate a netnavi out of old data… into a navi that can almost read the netop's thoughts!"

"WWWWHHHHAAATTT? So you're saying my navi is a mind-reader?" Ciel asked hysterically.

Cerveau looked weirdly at Ciel's strange surprised expression. "Um… yeah, that's the sum of it… What's wrong?"

"Dad," Ciel said more calmly, but felt like the calm right before a storm. "I know I'm going to regret asking this... Just what kind of old data did you resurrect my navi from?"

Cerveau scratched his head with a sweat drop. "W-ell… actually, I've tried dozens of times with other pieces of data but it never worked. So, I, uh... I kinda used a sample of an old mega-virus from the archives to create Zero's entire programming."

With that revelation, Ciel's mind began to drop slowly to darkness. "A-An old mega-virus... from the archives..."

"Yep. The Zero Virus to be specific," Cerveau asked as her daughter was about to explode. "Um... any problems?"

"DAD!" Ciel screamed, a voice that echoed throughout the entire neighborhood. "WHY THE HECK WOULD YOU DO THAAAAAT?"

To be continued…


NEXT CHAPTER: As Ciel's monumental scream comes to fade, it was now no longer a wonder to her why her downloaded chips became infected with the Zero Virus. But what is the purpose of the infected chips? And what's going to happen next to the strange netbattling pair? And is Zero ever going to stop teasing Ciel with that annoying jerky manner? (probably not)


Author's Notes: Thank you for the reviews, people! I'll try to get the next chapter up soon!