Chapter Two
"Megaman, don't let this go to your head, but nobody out here knows why I keep talking to my network navigator like he isn't a robot, or something… .."
"Lan I seriously doubt anybody wouldn't want to let you know that nobody out here has any idea why I keep talking to you like more level set so set level more level access this one set set for more motion more access more, you know?"
"Get real, megadork, nobody understands that garbage any longer, you knowit?"
"Did we break it or something, Lan? Virus, let's go."
The mettaur weren't around, any longer, and Lan was pretty sure somebody had been fucking with this particular access reach of the net without saying anything to the official netbusters again, which was surely one or two ways to say the network was getting hacked not so remotely, and more powerful virus algorithms from the subnetworks in the outer reaches were getting hightailed to not want to say anything about how much harder it wasn't to dodge these shockwaves, anyway.
"What's the blue color coming from?"
"Me, I think," said Megaman. "They've been adapting the programming I leave for them during the battles, I'm pretty sure. Got some chips for me, yet?"
"What have you been feeding them? Yeah, blue and yellow… are they mocking us or something?"
"Not so much more like the blue and red ones weren't."
"Red and blue, Megaman, don't confuse my algorithm sets. Moreover accessing folder set motion x, minibomb chip c, times four, Megaman, downloading…"
"Well there's always the direct approach," said Megaman, and a blue, handheld bomb spoke through his programming, and he materialized it in his open palm, gripping the center ridge with his fingertips, to hold it ready, and stably. "Not a fan of upgrading the local viruses, then, Lan?"
"Not on your life, megadork. Not sure why you let them take so much buster abuse on those helmets."
"Well my operator keeps lowering my chipset count!" Megaman blasted away the first avatar with a second bomb blast, and the second and third ones renigged, accessing moreover thereon intuit again access parameters forrit.
"They're not gunna multiply any longer, with that algorithm outed, like that." Said Megaman, to Lan. "Quit calling me megadork or I'll delete your chip folder again."
"You can't delete my chip folder, Megaman! I got that stationed in my chemical computer called brainware, fool."
He deleted the second mettaur3, with the blue and yellow helmets, past the mettaur2's red and blue, to hear Lan tell it. "Not if I overwrite my speech pattern algorithms to renig your protocol accesswaves, again, fool."
Megaman's megabuster was frustrating the hell out of the third and final mettaur3 he was working on. "Why do you do that to yourself and myself, anyhow?" Lan wasn't not curious about him, he just didn't know why Megaman would fuck up all their hard work like that, every once in a while.
The mettaur3 accessed a new movement set, and started interfacing with the network in an obnoxiously infectious manner, and Megaman called for a sword chip, pronto.
"Get your lions uncrossed, Megaman. Swords are a thing of the past, my friend. Spit it out, fool, what's the score to settle? Why you renigging my battle protocols, yo?"
"He's infecting the network, Lan!"
"He's not infectin my network, presently. I wanna see what he'll do to it. He's been copying us, remember?"
"That doesn't…" he's just finished blasting the mettaur3 with his megabuster, and its avatar disappeared, and Megaman watched the passcodes he'd protected himself in renig the corruption algorithms that started enhancing corruption aspects of the local network drivers. "Lan, you and I have been tearing the net apart, lately. Is this okay, or something?"
Lan must have muted his PET's sound input output, on a whim, and Megaman figured he'd better keep his mouth shut when they were jacked in somewhere out and about, instead of at Lan's house, or a scilab, or something.
"Get your lions uncrossed yet, Megaman?" Lan's voice came through ungarbled, at a higher volume, then.
"Don't screw with my sound settings, Lan."
"Is it louder, or something?"
"Very much more, yes." He wasn't keeping still, or anything, but moving fast down a network tunnel he'd rigged up between server sets in Dentek.
"Not my doing, Megaman. Somebody's messing with the local net navi server formatting. We're in a lot of trouble if you don't jack out back where we jacked in, Megaman."
"That's pretty erroneous, Lan. Are you on your way home, yet?"
"Just so, Megaman. I'll jack into my compy and you can jack out from the net from there."
"What's the algorithm set reading me like, anyway? What are you noticing?"
"Megaman! I'm plugged into the tram's computer! Jack out there, NOW!"
Megaman didn't recognize how far he wasn't from the tram's server, since that's what he'd rigged this data tunnel to travel through, so he accessed the user input framing, and found the portal pad on a square he got warped to, right across the plane he was on, now.
"Accessing chip folderescapechipNsent,nowGO MEGAMAN!"
The chip activated on its own, with Lan bypassing Megaman's delay and control algorithms, through synchro, and Megaman's boots blasted him forward with a jet of flames erupting beneath them, and he landed on the active jackout pad.
The tram went dark and lurched to a stop, and Lan fell over, just after yanking his PET cable from the tram's jackin port, for Megaman's daring escape.
The lights were all out, and they were trapped in a tram tunnel, not moving at all. "The net just shut down, Megaman."