Ethan was serving the damage to Gregar and Alias. Both of them had sustained severe damage, but nothing to serious. In Alias's case all his personality programs seemed to have remained unaffected. Gregar was a different story. The beast navi had a huge gaping hole in his chest. Seriously why does he always comeback with missing parts. First he barely had a face, then he lost his legs and tail, now his chest had hole big enough for mettaur to climb through.

The repair program was slowly stitching together the open wounds in their armour and stopped the flow of data coming out of Gregar. Both navis would soon regain consciousness, but they would be unable to fight or do anything until tomorrow morning. Ethan was extremely worried, Gregar and Alias may have been badly damaged, but they were here and being healed. Flare on the other hand, had not returned. She had brought back an injured Gregar and went to check on Alias, but Alias was back and she wasn't. He left the net connection on hoping she would return soon and in a better state than these two.

Flare was back to her original form. She was standing just outside the link to Ethan's PC, staring at the P-code in her hand. If Gregar's suspicion was right, then that navi was the new cybeast. She thought back to time when Gregar first met another cybeast, Falzar. The two of them had been fighting non-stop for weeks. The damage they caused had been so catastrophic, it had literally created a new type of hell on the net, the Underground. That place was created from the fighting of two cybeasts and the Officials used it to imprison them. Flare shuddered at the thought of what would happen if Gregar clashed within him. Another thing that had her off was how the navi, assumed she was Bass. He had acted as if met Bass, and for any navi to meet Bass and live to tell the tale was something unthinkable. As far as she knew only Serenade and Megaman could pull of such a feat, and they were as strong as you could get. She looked down at the P-code once more, that navi put his friends first, he may be more reasonable than she first assumed. She attached the code to her headband. It may be best for everyone if she kept this to herself for now, no telling what would happen if they found out. After making sure the code was properly secure, she stepped through the link.

Flare was greeted, with the sight of a relieved Ethan and two unconscious navis. "Your back," Ethan said. The NetOp was relieved to see her unharmed. "What happened?" he asked, doing a quick scan over her to see if she was injured. She looked over at Gregar and Alias, remembering the fight at the server. She recalled all the details of the fight she had witnessed. The two navi who attacked Gregar. Alias's multiple P.A. clashes. The destruction that resulted. The one thing she didn't mention was helping Arsenalman, or the strange beast navi, she would have to speak with Alias and Ethan about that later, hopefully, without Gregar being around.

The rest of the day, was spent with Alias and Gregar in the repair program, Flare tending to them and Ethan finishing the PETs. It was getting pretty late now and Alias and Grehar had finally regained consciousness. The two navis had tried to get out the repair program but was pushed back in by a gust of wind, they looked around to notice that there were four wind boxes surrounding them. The navis were initially confused at before Flare appeared by one of the wind boxes. "Glad to see your both awake. I wouldn't recommend leaving the Repair program till your all fixed up. The fans were Ethan's idea, he thought you guys might try to check out early." After she said the last statement both she and Alias looked over to Gregar.

"What?" the great cybeast asked.

"Nothing" Alias replied.He turned his attention back to Flare. "So when can we check out?" he asked her. He really didn't like being stuck in the repair program. He liked it even less having to share it with Gregar. He may not have know Gregar long, but if he remembered correctly, the last few times Gregar was placed in a healing program, he broke out of the healing program.

"Ethan said not to let you out until you're fully healed. You both sustained serious damage, you were bugged and pushed to exhaustion, and Gregar," the girl paused thinking how to phrase her words carefully," Gregar got his tail handed to him." she finished. It was obvious that the cybeast did not like the way she phrased her words.

"He only won because I was not using all my power."Gregar defended. Ever since his powers were taken, he was continuosly being belittled by everyone he came across. Bass, Searchman, those two navis and now Flare. He better get his powers back or his name as Cybeast will be tainted forever. His first instinct was to break free from the program and go into the net destroying anything in his path, but some small part of himself stopped him, reminding him of his current state and those who may be hunting him.

"You are not strong enough yet, Gregar," an unfamiliar voice rang in head. Gregat looked around confused as to who had said that. Great he had a hole in chest and now he is starting to hear voices. Maybe Ethan should check his head to make sure Bass did not take his sanity.

The remainder of the day was uneventful. Ethan been busy, working on the PETs. The fight at the shoppong server made him reconsider some design choices. The first thing he did was increase the PETs' memory by 50%. This would have allowed him to keep a repair program on each PET, to help heal any of the navis from anymore life threatening injuries they may get, and not slow down the normal auto heal if more than one navi occupied the terminal. He realized adding a bigger battery would have allowed the device to run on a higher performance, but decided to switch it for some solar cells. This way he could push the PETs to there limits and still recharge them right after, if the sun was out. He may still add a bigger battery later down the line. He also left the functions of the BOTs in them, if need be he could link all three together and temporarily boost all the navis power, if only for a short while. The only problem was that seeting up the connections would take him a few minutes, not something you would use on the run. The OS was suppose to be the best available at the moment so he hoped it would run efficiently. The PETs were made using all the knowledge he had gathered as a repairman from fixing so many before him and what his Uncle taught him. He may not be a Scilab scientist like his mom was, but he was sure she would be proud. It was getting late, and he already lost sleep the previous night, so he decided to call it quits for the day. He could test them out tomorrow when all navis were operational.

While Ethan drifted of to sleep Flare, Gregar and Alias were all busy discussing what had happened. Flare turned her attention to Alias. "Alias, I've been meaning to ask you this for a while, but I never got the chance. A navi is suppose to use Program Advance once with a loaded number of chips." Alias nodded his head in agreement." Then how can you do an advance twice without Ethan slotting in the necessary chips?" Flare asked. Even Gregar turned to look at Alias also curious as to how he could use the P.A.s twice in row.

Alias turned to them this was going to be a long night. He began recalling, what he did know to Flare and Gregar. "Ethan's mother, Ciel was very interested the idea of the program advance. She had seen first hand how a rogue programs on the net had caused so much destruction and how authorities had been so helpless to fend them off, the only thing that ever seemed to cause massive damage to such rogue programs were P.A.s . As you might habe guessed, she started to research them and how they worked. She found that the Program advance was possible, because a fragment of the data of each chip was left behind, and when these fragments were put together they would equal abilities equivalent to Giga chips. This was nothing new to scientists but she was determined to build on it. She developed a system. The Ciel system, and I admit the name does sound could. The Ciel system focuses on those fragments of code. It allows me to keep a temporary copy of the P.A. on me but it soon fades out of memory. Each advance is different and depending on the chips used would determine how much energy I need and the level of focus required. The hyper burst is one of the most common P.A.s available. It uses three Spreaders, which if you recall, are not so powerful or rare, so I can use it easily.

An advance with more powerful chips, would easily exhaust me and knock me out." he told them. Gregar looked at Alias, if what he said was true, then Alias was made to fight him. Flare took a moment to absorb all this, if he could recall the previous program advanve he used , then what happened to the soulsword when tried to use it a second time.

"Alias, but what was the SP caliburn then, if you recalled only used advances?" she asked.

Alias looked up pondering something for a moment, before responding. "I don't know exactly, the Ciel system was never perfected by Ethan's mother."

"Why not?"

"I don't know. My memories of that time are scrambled. The only thing that I recall is that the Ciel system focuses heavily on Program Advances and was built by Ciel alone. So as far as I know, I am the only one with this power." he finished. Both navis looked at each other, still a bit speechless from Alias's revealation.

Flare had listened to Alias intentively. When there discussion had finished, the three navis had all gone to there own corners of the PC, to enter sleep mode. Flare was thinking about all that had happened. If Alias's Ciel system or Gregar's cybeast power ever got into the wrong hands, then the chaos that would ensure would be unimaginable. So it was her duty to make sure her friends were safe. She may not be a fighter but she would not let that stop her. Still her thought kept drifting back to the buggy wolf navi she met earlier. Maybe he could help her, if things ever became to much. She let those thought player over as she enter sleep mode.

Elsewhere on the net, a swarm of red fire data was moving through the various servers, until it found where it wanted to go. The fire data moved into the hole in the area and entered the underground. Deep inside the underground various fire cycles began to spawn and ride around the dark abyss. Eventually the fire cycles fled from the area, and began spreading across various other networks around the world.

Author's note

This was more for character development and world building. Next chapter we get back in the groove and start busting viruses and maybe netnavis.