Author´s Note: And here is part 2, the one with the BAMBAM *cough* uh... I meant action...

ENJOY and PLEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEASE REVIEW!

END OF LINE


/Interface (pt2)/

After a millicycle they had trudged round four clubs and bars, though, they hadn't found any recruits there.
Now they were in an establishment called 'Error-Prone', in which the music was played live like in the 'ProFilex', but on three different platforms instead of a stage. The sounds were harder here, since there were only two guitar players and a drummer and noone, who changed the music to something electronic sounding. Pure rock.
"Man, it's awesome here!", Susan said loudly. "In those 798 cycles you already live here on the Grid, you got to know this city way better than I did in my 1300! I've never seen such a bar here!"
He laughed. "Well, that's because you always hung around in the upper level, the snob-level!"
She curled her lips in faked sulky manner. "I'm not a snob..." She looked around, noticing that no program here looked like it was desperate since CLU's reign, noone who didn't put on a happy face. They wouldn't make a find here. Too bad. Susan would have liked to spend more time here.
There she spotted a guitarist, looking over to them interestedly. The sides of his head were close-cropped, in the middle was longer blond hair, falling to one side with each quick movement while playing. His eyes were surrounded by dark makeup, his circuitry colour was dazzingly blue, almost white.
"Kay!", someone of the dancing programs shouted, Interruptionen Susan's thoughts thereby. Kyto put on a seductive smile again.
"Do you want me to go to the bar in the meantime?", Susan asked.
"No, stay where you are. I'll be right back..." And he already disappeared in the masses.
Susan sighed, folded the arms in front of her chest and waited. She found it great that there wasn't payed that much attention on her once, indeed, but to be left alone all the time wasn't nice either.
She saw Kyto, who got lifted up to the platform of the guitar player, who had watched them earlier. She frowned. Had Kyto noticed it too that he had observed them? Was this a prospect for the resistance maybe?
Though, all of a sudden, Kyto grabbed the musician by the hair and planted a french kiss on him, which caused loud cheering.
'Why am I not surprised?', Susan thought and watched the two dancing in quite an erotic way, rubbing against eachother, while Kyto gave a few programs beneath him high fives.
As the guitar player ended this song, the audience applauded, screamed out of joy. Kyto laughed and hopped down the platform together with the musician, who had put his guitar down to the ground, which got picked up by another player, beginning to play a new song.
Kyto wound through the crowd and put his arm around the guy he had missed, as they reached Susan. "May I introduce: Sweep. Sweep, that's -"
"- the notorious Susan Gifford, I know.", Sweep ended Kyto's sentence with a smile, shaking hands with Susan.
"Nice to meet you.", she said friendly.
"Kay told me so much about you. Especially lately he just talks about how great you are and what a wonderful leader and so on..." Sweep raised a brow, looking at Kyto from the side.
"You can't embarrass me, don't even try.", he replied in a faked arrogant tone.
Sweep laughed and turned at Susan again. "How is the Blue Elite doing? Kay says you train them to the best fighters on the Grid."
Susan clenched her teeth imperceptibly. The structures and any other information of the resistance should be kept a secret. She punished Kyto with an angry look. "Does he?"
He swallowed and looked to the ground.
Sweep laughed. "See, i am able to embarrass you!" He turned around shortly, said: "Excuse me for a nano" and walked away.
And Susan was glad about it.
She narrowed her eyes to slits and hissed: "What's this crap?! You must not tell outsiders details about the resistance!"
Kyto gave her a guilty look. "I am sorry... But I swear Sweep is trustworthy! He's one of my best friends and would never leak something."
"I don't care! It's forbidden! I should throw you out of the resistance because of that serious mistake! You're so lucky that I absolutely have no desire to listen to Castor badger me to forgive you all the time. Besides, why did you tell Sweep anyway? I mean, were you like: 'Oh, by the way, Susan Gifford's resistance consists of three groups...' or what?!"
"No, of course not! I wanted to recruit him, make it tempting for him because he's such a good disc fighter... But he refused."
Susan furrowed her brow. "Why?"
"You know, he... doesn't take that stuff with CLU too seriously. He thinks as long as he's not affected directly, everything's in best order.", Kyto sighed.
"Sounds antisocial...", Susan mumured and put on a smile again, as she spotted Sweep approaching them with three drinks.
"Here you are.", he said, handing them the glasses. "It's on the house. The boss wants to see the VIPs pleased."
"Oooh, I'm a VIP." Susan grinned widely, sipped on her drink and the two others followed suit.
Then Sweep looked at Kyto. "Hey, did you hear that thing from Eliza? She's reputed to-"
"- live on the streets after the dismissal! Yes, Castor told me about it, it's horrible!"
"Where the hell does this guy know everything from? He doesn't even live in this level!", Sweep laughed.
Susan smiled. Hearing this name made her happy, particularly as she hadn't seen him in a while now.
As Sweep and Kyto kept bitching about programs, all of whom sounded like losers to Susan, she let her gaze wander through the bar. In thoughts she was far away, in the End Of Line Club, with Zuse. She'd be overfond of drinking something with him now, talking about the good old days. She'd like to dance with him, wouldn't even care if it wasn't the EOLC, but here in the Error-Prone. Having his arm around her waist, while she watched him looking around with dreamy but still attentive eyes and moving lightly to the music...
Suddenly something fetched her back into reality.
Three sentries came in at the entrance, looking around through dark visor of their helmets.
"Kyto.", she interrupted the conversation of the two quickly. Her tone sounded serious.
As they saw the approaching danger, Kyto murmured: "Shit..."
Sweep grabbed the two by their arms. "You see this corridor there next to the bar? It leads to the back exit."
They nodded, though before they could leave, he told Kyto in a seductive voice: "Show up again, Kaykay..."
Susan and Kyto hurried through the guests of the bar, reaching the long corridor Sweep has meant. It was filled with red light like most parts of the Error-Prone and at its sides stood several petting couples. At the back there was a door, whose rim was shining green, which meant that it was open.
Susan approached the door with determined steps, but suddenly the door flew open and two sentries entered.
She froze.
What should they do now? Susan would love nothing better than to simply eliminate the danger, but she couldn't in here. Firstly, there was too little space, so that civilians could get hurt possibly, and secondly it would look like she was the evil one here, which would soil the resistance's reputation. Running into the other direction again was no option either, since this other group of sentries was patrolling in the bar.
While Susan was desperately searching for possibilities of escape, Kyto preferred to act.
He squeezed Susan against the wall to her right and pressed his lips on hers. He clutched her wrists, so that she couldn't meet the reflex of slapping him. As Susan recovered from the first shock, she relaxed, just let him do as he liked. He opened his mouth, letting his tongue slide into her mouth, and slowly put his hands on her hips to pull her pelvis closer to his.
It felt so wrong, but so good at the same time. Susan banished the picture of Zuse from her mind and replaced it with Kyto's, how he sang and danced like earlier on the stage. Again she felt this tingling sensation in her fingers. The arousal stabbed her like a sharp pain and it increased with each movement of her hips.
And suddenly it stopped.
Kyto let up on her, looked into the bar, said: "Okay, they're gone." and strolled towards the exit. When he noticed that Susan didn't follow him, he looked at her in confusion. "Uh... Shouldn't we go now?"
She tried to collect herself again, cleared her throat and murmured: "Yeah... um... yes, let's go."
He held her the door open like a proper gentleman and she staggered outside, absorbing the fresh air and putting her face into her hands.
"Are you alright?", Kyto asked, laughing.
"Yes, sure. I'm just... tired..."
He eyed her with a grin. "Sorry, if I flustered you with my diversionary maneuver. I couldn't think of anything else in that haste."
Susan laughed in an embarrassed way. "No, no, it's okay! That was... a great... great... diversionary maneuver..." Then she took a deep breath, finally winning control over herself again. "But that's just between us, okay?"
"Why? You just said it was great." Kyto smirked. He liked it to confuse her that much. "I think it was very... effective."
Susan squinnied. "You enjoy that, am I right?"
Giggling, he strolled past her.
"Yeah, okay, I admit it was a good kiss. A damn good one. But it was just for the purpose of distraction, so please, let's forget about it and proceed to business, yeah?"
He nodded and followed her.
From the side she looked at the still grinning Kyto. She hoped that he really wouldn't tell anybody about this incident, since it was pretty embarrassing for her how she behaved. Besides, she felt quite guilty, also because the situation amused her as well.
"Tell me...", she raised her voice again after a short pause. "If that was just a diversionary maneuver... then the tongue wasn't absolutely necessary."
He kept looking straightforward and put his Arm around her shoulders. "Oh, you know, I call something like that 'make the best of the situation'..."
With a loud laugh she shoved him away.


After the incident in the Error-Prone, Susan had suggested to let it be for today and informed Salton through the communication console on her left forearm about their progress. He had asked for their current position, since he was in the lower levels as well, so that they could walk back to the headquarters together and talk about the subject personally, which they were doing at the moment.
"Do you think this program will follow your instructions?" Salton had his arms folded behind his back, like he did many times, and looked at Susan attentively.
"I don't know, Sal. But it was worth a try."
The man rubbed his chin lightly, looking to the ground. "I find it quite risky, though..."
"Without risk ain't reach anything, right?, Kyto piped up happily.
Susan agreed with a nod. "No risk, no fun!"
There someone shouted behind them: "Kay!" They turned around, laying eyes on on a chubby program running after them.
"Man, Kay is a real star. All that is missing now is the posing for the cameras, right? RIGHT?!" She let hear a panting laugh, looking at Salton, who just kept a straight face. "Oh man, you really have no sense of humor..."
"TeX! Sorry that I had to go, I was-"
The guy came to a stand in front of them, huffing and puffing. "Kay, they have... *cough*... I couldn't..."
Kyto frowned, worried, and supported the man. He exchanged confused looks with the others. "Hey, calm down. What's going on?"
"The sentries...", the program muttered, only to commence coughing badly shortly after.
Susan's stomach turned. Something had happened. Something bad.
She took a step forward and met the guy's eyes with a stern look. "What happened?"
He looked at her in confusion and stammered: "Oh my... You are Susan Gofford!"
"What happened, TeX?", Kyto strictly asked.
The program looked at him again. "The sentries said that there have been sightings of revolutionaries in the Error- Prone. But nobody said a thing, so they took Rezo and threatened to kill her if nobody wanted to give out information. Sweep and Aydar wanted to free her and attacked the sentries. They even derezzed one, but the others could overpower them and... and..."
Kyto had his eyes wide open, was too shocked to say anything, so Susan took over. "What then TeX? What happened then?"
He sighed. "They deleted Aydar and took Sweep with them. They put him into a recognizer and flew away... I wanted to tell you immediately, because I thought maybe you could pull some strings or..."
But Kyto didn't even listen anymore. He took a few steps away, holding onto a lamp post with his back facing the others. The umbrella he had held all the time, fell to the ground.
Susan observed him in worry, then turned to TeX again. "In which direction did they go? To the arena?"
There Salton raised his voice. "Susan, it is not our task to liberate dispensable programs from CLU's clutches."
Kyto turned around lightning fast. "DISPENSABLE PROGRAMS?!" He positioned himself in front of Salton, angrily looking him into the eyes. "Sweep is one of my best friends, you asshole! We have to rescue him!"
Salton remained calm. "I understand your desire to bring programs who are close to you to safety, but it is simply too dangerous."
"They will kill him! Even if he wins the games, they won't set him free and you know that!"
"Do you really want to gamble with the life of resistance fighters? A rescue operation has to be well planned in order to be successful, not carried out spontaneously. The chance that one of us would die in the process is at 70%."
"And the chance that Sweep dies if we don't do anything is at 100%!"
"Stay at factual level. One has to think of the needs of many instead of the one of individual programs. I am sorry for your friend, but the risk is too high. As long as he is no member of the resistance, his value within our range of operation is 80% less than-"
Kyto seized Salton by the collar of his suit. "You fucking bastard! You can't calculate the value of a program!"
"Kay, stop!", Susan hissed.
"It is alright, Susan. Though, this emotional outburst of SPEED leader Kyto confirms my theory that he is unfit for our team. Far too naïve, sensitive and egoistic..."
"Fuck you!" Kyto shoved him away and gave Susan a pleading look. "Susan, don't listen to him! We have to rescue Sweep!"
In the meantime Salton activated his communication console and let Bartik in on what happened.
"Susan.", it came out of the console and Salton held the screen, on which Bartik was to be seen, to her.
"Mhm?"
"Salton told me what happened and I have to agree with him. It's too risky to send out our troops now."
"I CAN'T BELIEVE IT! How can you all be so cold?! Susan, please, you have to-!"
Bartik interrupted him. "Kay, I'm awfully sorry, but if we went on a mission now without preparation, some of us would probably get killed! Think of MY friends who could die thereby. And they're YOURS as well. The whole thing is on too short notice. It would end in a massacre and eventually claim more victims, than it would if we did nothing."
With a furious movement Kyto edged forward. His eyes were filled with tears. "Susan, I beg you..."
Also Salton tried to get her attention. "Leader Susan, don't be swayed by-"
"SHUT UP, ALL THREE!"
Everyone hushed instantly.
Susan closed her eyes, furrowing her brows.
Kyto was breathing heavily after all this excitement. His hair was soaked with rain and hung into his face in thick skeins. He was strembling in every limb.
Susan let out a deep sigh and lifted her lids, giving Salton a determined look. "Salton, we need three good spies of your unit to trace this recognizer. Kay, one of the green elite shall get ready in case they need quick transport."
"Susan...", Salton sighed.
Her stern expression remained. "That was an order."


"Blue 1 to BRAIN. Do you see something?"
"Postive, Blue 1. Recognizer approaches target position."
The three requested spies hadn't taken long to find the recognizer. Unexpectedly, said recognizer did not go down the route to the arena, but somewhere else. Susan had reacted instantly and put someone from the White Elite on to hacking into the recognizer's system and calculating its planned route. This yielded the result that it was steering directly towards a specific place in the level of the solar sailers. Susan then mustered 3 from the Blue, one from the Green Elite, plus Kyto, and 2 from the BRAIN unit to discuss the rescue plan. Everything had to go down quickly, which is why she didn't accept objections, explained her strategy in detail and off they went.
The BRAIN-crew was sent to where they had perfect view over all connection ports of the solar sailers. They were connected to the White Elite guy who kept reporting the recognizer's current position to them and they forwarded that information to Susan then.
Led by Kyto and the other one from the Green Elite, she and her Blue Elite Team had sped through vents and finally arrived at the point predetermined by Susan, long before the recognizer was even close. From up there, a sort of scaffold, hanging high above a few solar sailers, they could not observe the recognizer's flight, which is why they constantly required information from BRAIN, however, they were directly above the point which the member of the White Elite had predicted as the landing point.
The plan was as follows: wait until the recognizer has landed, let sentries and captives unboard, start the blitz from above and eliminate all hostile units.
It was a good plan, the best one could come up with in such a short time span, but still Susan was worried something could go wrong. Of course she trusted her crews, especially her Blue Elite, who weren't the best fighters of the Grid yet, but certainly on their way to becoming just that. However, she had to acknowledge what Salton and Bartik had said. It WAS damned risky. Not only could someone from her troops die, but the fact that she could leave a track, which could lead CLU to her, worried her. Had she rushed it? Was all of this a big mistake? None of that mattered now. She couldn't stop it anyways. In case something happened, she'd have to live with it, which she was used to already.
Susan stood up from her squatting position. "So, guys.", she said in determined tone, turning to the 3 of the Blue Elite, the one of the Green Elite and Kyto. "You know what you got to do. As soon as I issue the command to attack, we jump down together. And again I warn you: Activate the upgrade NOT BEFORE you jumped, otherwise you'll make no headway."
Her troop nodded and got ready, limbering up and stretching. Susan looked to the spot again where they would jump down in a bit.
"Susan?" Kyto sounded rueful, almost whispered.
"Yes?"
He took a deep breath. "Thank you. That you put so much at risk... means a lot to me..."
She placed her hand on his shoulder with a smile. "It goes without saying. However, you better not thank me too soon. If I have learned anything from 'Her Fall', it is that you cannot completely foresee the future." She looked down again. "Besides, I don't do that for you. The main reason is that Salton is just wrong. It IS our task to rescue innocents from deresolution. The resistance stands for freedom for all programs, not only for its supporters. Overthrowing CLU does not only mean to fight against him, but above all to fight FOR the inhabitants of the Grid. It is essential that we never forget about this. It is essential that we are ready to die for others if necessary. I teach that at SWORD, that's why the Blue Elite isn't scared, not because they know that they're damn good fighters, no, but because they're aware that the system only functuions correctly if we act selflessly." Susan gave Kyto a stern look. "I endorse your outburst with Salton by no means. It was indeed very egoistic of you to demand of others to put their lives at risk for YOUR friend."
Kyto hung his head in shame.
Susan began to smile again."Still... you said something very important in your argument with Salton." He gave her a wondering look. "You said 'You can't calculate the value of a program'. THIS is also one of the things one should have internalized at the resistance. We are a community that lives after the rules of the Musketeers, my friend."
"The... what?", he asked cautiously.
She laughed quietly. "Forget it. Some User-story. Anyway, it says..."
There they already perceived the roaring sound of the recognizer. Susan turned around, so that all of the team could hear her. "All for one and one for all!"
The team gave her a proud nod, getting ready.
Susan whispered to Kyto: "That's just between you and me that this doesn't stem from myself, got it?"
He laughed and got in position.
The recognizer landed exactly on the foreseen spot. Two sentries got out. One had a luminous screen in his hand, tipping on it, until he obviously found the data he was searching for and pointed at a solar sailer container.
Susan frowned.
In that great hurry she didn't even ask herself why prisoners were brought to the sailers instead of the arena. Now it puzzled her. Did it have anything to do with the missing programs possibly? Or with the missing solar sailer? Or both?
Meanwhile the others dismounted the recognizer as well. There were 6 prisoners in total, Sweep in the middle, who now had to line up in a row and were gotten to walk through electric shocks.
Susan's team bent forward.
"Here we go...", Kyto whispered.
Though, Susan quickly raised her hand. "Not yet!", she hissed.
The programs looked at her in confusion.
"Susan, they are within reach!"
Kyto was extremely nervous, but she didn't even pay attention to it. Susan swiftly clipped an ashlar-shaped scanner from her thigh, activating it as she held it in front of her eyes, whereby she only saw the fluxes of energy, no walls, no various colours. Everything which was only lightly perfused with energy, thus objects of the environment, walls, the ground and everything of that sort, was displayed in black, a higher concentration of energy, like programs contained it, in white. Sweep and the other prisoners glowed less than the sentries. They were weakened. Susan let her gaze wander to the container the sentry had pointed at earlier and paused.
"I knew it..." She turned the device off. "There are programs in the container. And about 8 sentries behind it."
"What?" Kyto took the scanner out of her hand. "Dammit... What are going to do now?
"Blue 1 to BRAIN. No change of plan. We'll need a few transport vehicles, though." She addressed her team. "There are some more than we thought but that's irrelevant. We have the moment of surprise on our side. We will win." She took the disc from her back and the others followed suit.
"Attack."
And she jumped.
Her chute upgrade opened, she hovered forward, deacivated it again and landed exactly on a sentry, splitting his head with her disc. The others came towards her, but they got surprised by Kyto and her team. Susan ran over to the lined up prisoners and destroyed the orange glowing cuffs by which they were bound together. There a sentry darted at her, dragging her to the ground. Kyto and the others looked over to her in shock. While she was wrestling with the guy on the ground, she shouted: "Free the ones in the container, I'll take care of these ones here!"
Kyto nodded and called out to the team members: "To the container!" In set of five they ran into a few sentries, eliminating them.
Susan turned the tables, got to sit on the sentry and rammed her disc into his chest. There she suddenly heard the familiar buzzing sound and bend her back lightning fast, so that the tossed disc whooshed past over her. She did a kip up and instantly got attacked from three sides at the same time. She dodged, kicked one off his feet, cast a somersault backwards to escape an electric shock and hurled her disc right into the face of the sentry who'd tried it. Another came from behind, wrapping his strong arms around her and squeezed. Susan panted, as he pressed the air out of her and tried to free herself with kicks. Suddenly a scream sounded and the strong arms around her crumbled into orange cubes. Quickly, she turned around, spotting Sweep who had thrown his disc and caught it while running.
"Leg-up!", he shouted and Susan got into position.
He jumped into her hands with one leg, pushed off at full tilt and dashed the last two sentries to the ground, which Susan and he derezzed instantly.
"You're good.", Susan stated with a wide smile.
"Sweep!", Kyto's voice came from further afar. Sweep rushed over to him, running into a tight hug.
Susan turned around, put her right hand to the ground, whereby luminous footprints became visible, which disappeared when Susan squeezed a cube into the ground and made way for something different. A grin spread over her face, as she viewed the big letters of the message for CLU adorning the ground:

FREEDOM