Matrix and Enzo and their unique situation. How it happened, what it all means and where they go from here.
This chapter was inspired by a snippet of the conversation between Bob and Turbo after the fused Guardian partially cures the Prime. What if the they'd actually been talking about two COMPLETELY different things but didn't notice it at the time? From there Siren rode this puppy into the ground. This chapter is more messed up than the first one, going into depth about just what the FAQ is up with the two Enzos.
Here's the time scale again for reference sake. It comes in more handy this time around.
Nanosecond: one second
Microsecond: one minute
Millisecond: one hour
Second: one day (changed from cycle as originally used in other fics)
Cycle: one week (changed from week as originally used in other fics)
Minute: one month
Hour: one year
*start prog*
Within the first 5 minutes after the party Mainframe was back in to normal. Megabyte's old sector adjusted pretty well to not having an overlord to fear and the Tor no longer loomed in over the skyline. Except for that sector, Mainframe had been notoriously squeaky clean. But, crime still existed in some form, especially since they were now on the net again as an open system. The Crimson Binome's idea of honest work simply meant he and his crew didn't directly do the looting but instead participated in deep web trade. At least Mr. Christopher could stop whining about profit. The Saucy Mare 2's crew could swim in credit now.
Games came and went. Bob did his job as main Guardian in the same fly by the seat of his bitmap way as before, not letting his discovery get in the way of his duties. He justified this by the fact that the prime directive of all Guardians was to mend and defend. If one examined the situation objectively, Matrix (who was by all rights a Guardian) followed that despite what he'd become. Still the implications were processor blowing. To keep from having his head frag, he'd put it on the backlog and tried to forget. Still, Matrix saw the calculating looks he gave him and his younger brother.
The Diner had more business than ever. Cecil (it's pronounced Ces-zel!) ran the day to day operations but Dot still owned the place and dropped in for evaluations every other cycle or so. Her main job as command. com didn't allow Dot the same freedoms as running a business. Her responsibility shifted from raising her kid brother to raising her kid brother and running an entire system. Phong stayed on in an advisory role. It'd been agreed that the compression natural to the position wasn't really fair to dump on just one sprite. The pair organized a cabinet system with elected officials to keep things running smoothly.
A real wedding date was even set after much core searching and apologizing on both Bob and Dot's part.
The Matrix brothers had grown very close, a fact that everyone but Bob thought to be alphanumeric. Initially tension between the two threatened to create a rift in the family before a working relationship even got off the ground. Having long dialogues, hanging out together, just doing brotherly bonding type things.
If they only knew.
"I don't want them to be scared of me. Especially Bob and Dot. He's gonna tell her if they get married isn't he?" Enzo frowned sitting with this legs dangling over a wall, arms crossed. He too had noticed how standoffish his idol had become. "This bytes."
"I felt the same way. At first."
"It makes you not care?" The younger sprite's eye doubled in size.
"Well no but don't go random. It's like this, you care but it doesn't matter so much. I still love and care for Mainframe and everyone in it. It's home. Becoming a virus never changed that. Only what I'm willing to do in order to protect it did." Matrix pat his shoulder. Today's lesson still remained though. "We have to figure out something to disguise your energy discharges."
"I thought we had that covered, a smaller version of GUN." The child slowly rose and floated above his perch, hands behind his head.
GUN happened to be more than a weapon. It became part of Matrix. Rather convenient to fire energy from a weapon than his hands. Wouldn't do to have people they encountered while game hopping grow suspicious of them whenever they entered a system. It also became a favorite way to spread his code.
"Really think Dot's not going to flip out that I gave you a high energy weapon?" he raised the brow over his prosthetic eye.
"Hm...what about a keytool? I AM a cadet after all." He tapped his icon shifting into his uniform. His forearms both devoid of said device.
"Yes, a cadet who has yet to see the Supercomputer. Only graduates are allowed one. Everybody knows that."
"We both know they'll agree I'm a...special case. We both are."
"That's what I'm talkin about. Megabreath was good for somethin after all." His deep chuckle echoed through the halls streets of the ruined city. Several nearby nulls squeaked then fled.
Lost Angles became more of a ghost town without Hex there. The helter skelter energy fluxes and unpredictable tears didn't lend well to safety. Nor could the lack of control or defence against the massive null population be considered inviting. To these two however, it'd become their own private playground. A place to practice with Enzo's growing abilities without endangering the public and having to do some awkward explaining or just have a chat away from walls with ears. Matrix had given Dot his word that he'd "look out for the pipsqueak and everything would be frosty".
Not that the pipsqueak couldn't blast or petify anything that urked his neural pathways.
The nature of Matrix's viral code and infection could be considered a work of art. Or a scourge upon the net. Completely undetectable, it was impossible to tell if he'd done anything at all to the system. Another thing that kept Bob quiet; how do you warn people about something they can't tell is there? That you aren't even sure is there? Utterly indistinguishable from normal processes in an area or it's inhabitants. Instead of harming, the infection protected without interfering with free will.
Which made his actions and creation...puzzling. Viruses don't care about anyone or anything but themselves. Completing their function is their sole (with a healthy dose of ego) motivation; all Bob's theories hinged on the principle that therapy of some sort could redirect said function to something more positive. Overtime gaining sprite like emotion and such. His proven theory involved converting Viruses into sprites, as had been done to Hex. It hit a snag when she also proved the process could be reversed. Easily. Well easily for Hex but it could be done.
But the Brothers Matrix had been the flip side of that. Sprites that slowly took on traits that eventually converted them into Viruses.
What Matrix became happened as a result of a series circumstances that couldn't possibly be duplicated. Totally random events that would mean nothing on their own but added up yielded a Renegade Virus more powerful than Daemon could ever hope to be. But the seed for what he'd become had been planted long before the Webcreature incident. In fact, it had been there since Enzo'd been first compiled.
For this reason, both knew they'd stay pretty different even as the younger matured and gained more power.
Every virus Matrix encountered, he duplicated code from in order to evolve. Then deleted them. Every last one. Sometimes it was just their resistance to antiviral scans or programs. Other times, it was their powers. Back before any real structure to his Renegade format existed, Enzo still had this ability as a sprite. He just didn't know what it was. Proven by the fact that in his fear, he'd blanked out and turned Megabyte into stone that day. But his older brother let Bob think it was him. The only viral codes he'd aquired so far were that of Gigabyte's progeny. Including the Medusa Bug Hexadeimal had made back when their Guardian first arrived. The instinct to delete manifested as a deep hatred for viruses.
In his time under Daemon's 'control', the Renegade found out the reason by perusing the archives. Specifically the top secret files. Noting the Guardian Collective deserved every FAQing iota of error they'd gotten.
And making it kinda funny that by 'infecting' AndrAIa, Daemon gave him everything from and about her to finalize his vaccine and copy her coding.
Dipstwitch.
The conversation with Turbo during the war hadn't been taken in the right context. Bob thought the Prime meant he'd been assigned to a system with two wildly different viruses with the chance to prove his ideas weren't just misprocessed data he'd been spouting since freshmen hour. The sad truth? His ideas didn't get thrown in the recycle bin for lack of faith in him. Oh did it to hide the fact that they had their own theories for creating Next Gen Guardians. Able to act just like viruses but operate on the opposite end of the spectrum.
Mainframe was selected as the proving ground. And poor Pixel Matrix the incubator for the test subject. Their mother had always been a sickly sprite. A glitch in her PID interface made her prone to losing large quantities of energy for no reason. Dot's birth has been hailed as a User send. It took a whole 11 hours for her strength to recover enough to event consider a second child. And that's when it all went to Dell.
Barely enough minutes along to show, Pixel's sickness took a turn so bad, the only option was the diagnostic/repair sprites from the Supercomputer. Welman took care of little Dot while her mother went to get better so she could bring home her little brother. Alas Dr. Matrix received a vid window late one night with the terrible news that only one had survived. Little Enzo'd been born 2 minutes early.
The strain deleted his mother. This was the story he'd been told. Well a sugar coated version.
She actually died because their supposed treatments turned her baby into a parasite. Viral entities be they infected or the source of infection burn up a lot of energy when first created and sometimes for a long while after. The mother always transfers some in order to support the growing child but the amount needed for him to thrive couldn't possibly be produced by a sprite under normal circumstances. Pixel was legitimately sick when she arrived but her condition was used as a smokescreen for the inevitable situation carrying a viral anything to term would cause. The perfect candidate for software alteration just fell into their laps! The collective would be random to let a little thing like ethics or decency stop progress. They hooked her up to life support after it had been determined her neural net had cessed function to keep her body alive as long as possible and preserve the specimen.
The problems didn't end there. As an infant, the youngest Matrix was always hungry. He consumed more credits worth of energy than both his father and sister until he turned 02. Even then, he still ate more than other sprites his age for a while. His appetite gave Dot her idea for opening a diner. It didn't level off until just after the Twin City disaster. By then the whole project had been scrapped by Turbo. He didn't see any tangible results, just the potential for a race of beings that would bankrupt the Supercomputer before they were old enough to be useful.
When Enzo lost the game, those FAQers were glad they'd pulled the plug to avoid wasting resources. Or they might have been had Daemon not come to power by then.
Matrix snapped out of his musing when a tear opened up to his left. Without thinking, he fired a pulse from his left hand, stabilizing it into a portal. Displaying the last place he'd been actively thinking of. The Supercomputer in all it's majesty. A thought crossed his processor and his lip quirked upward with a devious idea.
"Hey mini-me? Wanna go on a little field trip? It'll be fun."
All had been quiet on the homefront for some time. Beautiful could act as his eyes and ears while he was away, as she always did. The game sprite wouldn't admit it but espionage gave her a rush. A quick brotherly outing wouldn't hurt.
He really hadn't had a chance to tinker with his newest upgrades after all...
*end prog*
It's so me isn't it?
BWHAHAHAHA!
(ahem)
Deep web- real 'secret' part of the net where all manner of shadey stuff goes down. The cyberspace equivalent of Knockturn Alley. Yes, I went there.
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