More guards were coming in; she ducked for cover. Patrons screamed and the few who had remained indoors were running out the back. The bartender ducked down behind the bar. Starwell ran toward the back of the Inn, knocking over a table and taking cover behind it. "Gizmo, change into something else," she said in a low tone. "Maybe... a gun? Yeah, a gun!"

It whirred and then did as it was told. It became a shining steel pistol of some sort, which she aimed carefully as she peered above the table. She fired off a shot, blowing of the guards' heads off. She then fired a second shot, missing Bob's head by centimeters and shattering the front window. She blanched. "Oops," she gulped. "Sorry Bob!"

Matrix fired again. Something pierced his hand. A long arrow shaft stuck from the back. He dropped Gun, and pulled the arrow out.

Two more hit him, one in the thigh, the other in the stomach. His leg gave way, and he landed on his good knee.

"You are under arrest," said a surviving guard, a bow and arrow in the game-sprite's hands, "You will pay your fine or be sent to prison for five days."

Matrix growled something, and the game-sprite took that as a jail option.

"Matrix!" Bob yelled, as a brief flash occurred. Both the guard and Matrix were gone, downloaded somewhere else entirely.

Starwell fired another shot, missing once again. Her eyes went wide when she heard the voice of one of the guards, telling Matrix to choose between two options.

Now the guards were headed toward her.

"Aw crap!" She exclaimed. It suddenly dawned on her that if she had just gone outside or stayed out of the way, this wouldn't be happening to her right now. The one time that she should have run off and gotten away from the ruckus, she didn't. All because she'd wanted to prove that she wouldn't run away every time the action started.

"Gizmo," she sighed, "get back on my arm." The Keytool obediently returned to its default shape, and returned to her arm.

She yelped as an arrow struck her in the chest, then she looked up to see a guard staring down at her, his sword drawn.

"You are under arrest," the guard stated, reciting the same scripted game-dialogue as he had with Matrix. "You will either pay a fine or be sent to jail for five days.

Starwell bowed her head. "I have no money," she stated. She then squeezed her eyes shut, huddling the arm with Gizmo attached close to her chest, steeling herself for whatever was coming next.

Bob stood alone.

He didn't attack the game-sprite guards. It would more than likely impede his progress. By Glitch's standards, Starwell and Matrix were still in the city, just in a secure location.

He knew he had little time too. There was such a short time to cure both of them of the Lycanthropy. And he needed to find the cure.

So, he'd have to ask around.

And five days...

0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0

...With only two left.

Matrix woke. He was in a small dark room. The dull-colored stones in the walls and the floor were uneven and cold against his skin. He had been relieved of all his items, his armor, and his weapons. The only thing he had on was the tight in-game underwear that came with his ReBoot, and his icon. He wasn't even sure where Gun was.

He moved around his cell, observing his surroundings as he walked. Chains dangled from the walls, a partially broken wooden table stood nearby, and a small barred window at the top of the wall. He walked to the front of the cell. A firm push on the door confirmed that it was locked, and it wasn't the kind that he could simply bend or break with his strength or speed. He was stuck.

And just across from the cell, he found a familiar face.

Starwell lay flat on the ground, feeling frigid and somewhat stiff from having lain in one position for far too long. For a long moment she stared up at the ceiling, as if trying to remember who she was and where she was. She grunted as she rolled over onto her side, her eyes taking notice of her sole companion in the cell.

It was Matrix. It actually took her a moment to recognize him, mostly because he was no longer wearing his armor. In fact… he seemed to be in his briefs. She then became self-consciously aware of something. Her outer clothing had apparently been removed, leaving her in her bra and a set of skimpy panties.

Her eyes flew wide. She looked up at Matrix again and let out a little shriek as she sat up, wrapping her arms around herself as best she could.

She let out a scream. "WHAT DID YOU DO TO ME?!" she shouted at top volume. "WHAT DID YOU DO TO ME WHILE I WAS UNCONCIOUS?!" She scrambled backward across the floor until she bumped into the cell wall behind her.

"What?" Matrix blinked. Then he blinked again. He rolled his eyes, and sat down on a higher stone on the floor, high and large enough to act as a seat. "Like I would do anything to you while you're not processing."

Starwell didn't seem so convinced... yet. "Then what am I doing in my underwear?!" she demanded with a shriek. She was still too disoriented and stunned to think about what was going on rationally. "WHAT HAPPENED TO MY CLOTHES?!"

"Oh stop screaming…" Matrix grunted, annoyed by all the shrieking over nothing. "The game took them from you when you were loaded here." He unconsciously rubbed his neck. His normal green skin had darkened around that area. Just under his fingers, his neck glowed slightly, which dimmed repeatedly. After effects.

He glanced up at the window, momentarily wondering where Bob was at the moment.

Starwell was now huddled in the corner, ignoring the cold stone that bit into her back and chilled her skin as she used her knees and arms to try and conceal herself from view. Her eyes darted around.

Back in the real world it would have been against the law to put such a big, burly man in a room with a sixteen-year-old, especially in their underclothes. But once again, she was finding that things were very, very different here.

She was completely out of her element now, more than ever. The sprite side of her seemed to take a step or two back as the frightened Hannah took more of a forefront, even just for a few nano-clicks.

"I wanna go home," she practically whimpered. A single tear rolled down her cheek.

Matrix clenched his hands, his digits digging into his palms. Memories of Game-Jumping came back, the desire for home, and the hopelessness as he and AndrAIa had found one nearly desolated system after another.

He closed his eyes. "AndrAIa..." He wondered if he would be able to see her again after his code was recompiled.

Starwell sucked in a breath through her nose, trying to calm herself. Cut it out, she told herself. You know what happens in these RPGs when you get stripped of everything. Your character gets stripped. Literally.

She squeezed her eyes shut, then forced them to open. She glanced at Matrix just as he uttered a word. Or was it a name?

"What's AndrAIa?" she asked in spite of herself.

Matrix left his memories for the moment, and grumbled. He would have dismissed the young sprite, but not now. Even he knew that. "AndrAIa is a very good friend of mine," he spoke, "We've been through just about everything together."

"Oh..." Starwell licked her lips nervously, though she was beginning to get a grip on herself and her emotions. "You must miss her a lot right now," she commented thoughtfully.

"She is the greatest thing that's ever happened to me." Matrix glanced up toward the window, releasing a small breath through his slightly parted lips. If only she could be here with him now, if only he could touch her one more time…

Starwell's voice cut into his reverie. "All of my friends and family are... well, back home," she said. "I gotta get back to my Uncle's system before I can see any of them again." She glanced at the bite mark on her arm; it was definitely glowing a bit. "Yeah, if I see them again."

Matrix knew the feeling of homelessness. How he and AndrAIa had spent what to them had been a very long time. He didn't even realize that hardly any time had passed in normal Net time. The realization that he had grown up, and that Dot or Bob or anyone of his old friends and family had hardly aged, that was both heart lifting and crippling.

He scratched at his neck. He felt like he needed to gag. "I know the feeling."

"I don't think you do!" Starwell snapped, beginning to despair. She wasn't even sure how she'd managed to hold herself together this long. Maybe it was due to the fact that she had kept moving nonstop, plus there was Bob's positive attitude and encouragement. But now...

She seemed to forget that she was nearly naked as she stamped her feet and stood. The cold floor and wall were getting a bit too chilly and uncomfortable against her skin anyway.

"I don't even know how I got myself into this mess," she said bitterly as she marched toward the window. She craned her neck to look out, as if wishing she could catch a glimpse of home somehow, just once. "My Uncle told me not to touch anything, and now..."

Her voice faltered. Somehow it was finally sinking in that she could very well be stuck in this state for the rest of her life. Even if she got out of the game... what if she never found her way back to her Uncle's system? Or worse yet, what if he unplugged the conversion device so that she couldn't get back? Or what if he turned off his computer for a long period of time?

She thought of her parents. Would she ever see them again? Would she ever see her school or talk to her friends back home again? Despite what an annoying brat he was, she found she even missed her brother, Greg. She would far rather have an argument with him over his finicky attitude toward Hannah's cooking or the way he spent too much time on the Xbox than be stuck in this predicament.

Tears of anger and helplessness began to stream freely down her cheeks. "It's not fair!" she shouted, turning and marching toward the locked door. She slammed her fists against it. It hurt. She did it again anyway, just to get it out of her system. "I want to get out of here and go back to where everything is normal! I WANT TO GO HOME!"

She slammed against the door for good measure, then buried her face against it. She began to sob quietly.

"Screaming is not going to get you anywhere." Matrix leaned back, so that his back was against the wall. He crossed his arms, and let his eyes close.

Hannah/Starwell didn't even look at him. She put a hand over her mouth, attempting to muffle the sounds as she continued to cry. In truth, she was embarrassing herself a little now.

Come on, get it together, the rational part of her mind urged the part of her that just wanted to fall to pieces. At times, it almost felt like "Hannah" and "Starwell" were at odds with each other. It was possible that although she was now Alpha Starwell, the being that the matter-converter had made her... well, she was still Hannah. All of the memories and experiences from the real world, along with what made her human, were still a part of her.

Hannah did not belong here and she wanted to either completely freak out and abandon hope, or go home immediately. Alpha Starwell wanted to kick her in the tail shaft, tell her to get over herself, and get through this so that she could continue to learn more about this alien environment so she could find a way home.

That's the goal you're aiming for, Starwell told Hannah firmly in her mind. This was starting to make Hannah wonder if she would need to see a therapist after this; she was technically talking to herself inside her mind. Then again, everybody did that to some fashion. You are going to wait out these next five days, Starwell continued, because you have no choice. You can either act like a big baby and cower in the corner like a pathetic little thing, or you can pull yourself together and try to do something useful.

Hannah squeezed her eyes shut again, inhaling deeply and exhaling slowly. She wiped her eyes and her cheeks as a newfound calm and determination seemed to settle over her; Alpha Starwell was in control again.

"Okay," she whispered, pushing herself away from the door. She glanced at Matrix, then she began to pace the cell a bit just to move around and have something to do. Starwell no longer cared that she was nearly naked; she had grasped the concept that things were that different in the game setting. If she didn't care much when her characters got stripped in the games she played back home, why should she care here? Nobody was going to look at her or do anything to her, and she'd probably get her clothes and everything back once she got out anyway.

Clothes and everything...

Her eyes widened as she remembered something. She glanced sharply at her arm, realizing for the first time that her Keytool was gone. "Oh my gosh," she exclaimed, looking around frantically as if she might find it on the floor somewhere. "What happened to Gizmo?!" Her newfound calm was temporarily replaced with slight panic.

0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0

Bob was running outside of Whiterun, his armor chinking softly as he moved. It was a few errands for quest-giving game-sprites. Unless the game had levels, he wasn't supposed to activate them, let alone talk to them. It would have gone against his code. He managed to bypass that, however. He was trying to mend and defend the somewhat missing friends, and sometimes that meant you bent the rules a bit. This was about the only way to help them, at least to stop them from recompiling into something worse.

Glitch beeped and whirled. Bob stopped and asked, "What is it?" More beeps and whirls.

Then a different but familiar set of beeps answered.

"Gizmo?" Bob began to hurry toward the sound, trampling through some tall ferns and grass as he made haste.

0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0

Gizmo was not happy in the slightest. When Alpha Starwell had been placed under arrest and downloaded to another location, Gizmo itself had broken the game rules and rebelled against the notion of being stored in a memory block along with the rest of Starwell's and Matrix's confiscated inventory. The raw code for their equippable belongings had been placed in a memory buffer where they would automatically be retrieved and returned to Matrix and Starwell once their jail time was over.

However, Gizmo had simply freed itself from the memory buffer and ended up in a random location. For a period of time it simply sat there on the ground, crying out for a little while until it finally heard something promising.

Glitch, the other Keytool, was nearby. That meant that Starwell's current favorite ally, Bob, was also very close by. Gizmo shrieked shrilly, practically bouncing on the ground in an attempt to get both of their attention. Glitch responded readily, and Gizmo gave a burst of gratitude. It had been found! That meant that they could help Gizmo get back to Starwell.

Bob approached the grassy patch on which the Keytool sat. It practically bounced as he neared. "Hey, Gizmo," he greeted it as he picked it up. He then placed it on his other arm for safe-keeping. While the Keytool did not exchange code-possibly because it was Starwell's-it did rest easy. Sorta.

He already knew that it was peeved about him not going after Starwell right away. He couldn't, there was things to do at the moment and he wouldn't have to worry about Starwell or Matrix at the moment. They would be safe, for now. Long enough for him to find a cure.

Mostly, he had to convince himself. He could go in, guns or rather swords, blazing. But that wouldn't help anyone. He had to find a cure...