NOTES: Kaya, the Grandmaster belongs to deviant CarlottaStudios from YouTube and DeviantART!
Episode 55 - Overload!
Part 4 - Hacker Hunt
Kaya was right. After the lights had come back, several holograms of the Dark Ace appeared and attacked Aerrow, while the oven Junko was using simply exploded in his face, and the targets Finn had to shoot at suddenly began to charge at him.
The training grounds became huge chaos. Stork hid under his desk to protect himself from harm. Radarr ran towards Kaya and Piper and hid between the latter's legs.
"Radarr, take care of Piper for me, while I deal with this mess, okay?" - the girl asked him and he nodded.
The Grandmaster ran to a small room and picked up some weapons. Then she ran around the place, destroying nearly everything in her path and wreaking quite the havoc in the process, but it was the only way to save everyone.
Aerrow was still struggling against all those holograms in his training ground. The Dark Aces had all jumped on him and were pressing him on the ground.
"Great... I never thought I'd see the day when I'd be pinned down by a pile of Dark Aces..." - he complained as he tried to get out of that situation, but in vain.
Kaya ran to him and jumped, swinging her staff in the air and releasing a large wave of energy that caused an explosion upon contact, sending all those holograms flying. Then she landed on her feet and shot at the hologram generator, destroying it and preventing more holograms from appearing.
"Are you okay?" - she helped him up.
"Yeah." - he put a hand on his head as he got back on his feet - "What's going on?"
"Someone must've invaded the city and hacked the security system." - she told him.
"Could it be a Night Crawler?" - he asked.
"I don't know. We'll find out later, we gotta save the others first. Here, take this." - she tossed one of the weapons she was carrying to him since he had lost his swords in that mess.
It was a greatsword. That was quite a heavy weapon, so it was much slower than his blades. He'd have to adapt to that. He charged towards Junko, who was struggling against a crazed stove that tried to pin him down. He swung the weapon, slashing the stove in half. The wallop smiled at him, grateful for the help.
Kaya ran to help Finn. She knocked the dummies to the side with her staff, then shoved her hand in the middle of the mess of mannequins and broken stuff to pull the sharpshooter out. He breathed heavily as he stood up after being pulled by the collar on his shirt. For a second he thought he'd be buried alive. The two looked to the side as they heard Stork scream.
The merb was hiding under the table and two huge bookcases literally "walked" to him, broke part of their shelves and began slamming them against the table, trying to break it. The green pilot screamed in fear as he squeezed himself under the table to avoid one of the shelves injuring him when it pierced the table like a blade.
But his despair didn't last too long. Soon, Junko charged with his knuckle busters and punched one of the bookcases, which made it bump into the other one, causing both to fall in a domino effect style. Stork got out from under the table and sighed in relief. Kaya smiled at how they looked out for each other, she was also glad everyone was alright.
"What do we do now?" - Junko asked.
"We gotta find the intruder." - Aerrow said.
"Sure, let's follow his tracks!" - Stork said sarcastically - "Oh, wait, we have no idea of where he's been to find any."
"Actually, I think I have an idea." - Kaya told them as she approached holding a map - "The intruder must've been here." - she pointed in the map the exact location of the manhole the Night Crawler had really used - "This grate gives access to a passage that leads to the general control panel room. It's the only way this person could've hacked the whole city that way."
"Do you think he left clues behind? He's been so careful, I really doubt it." - Piper commented.
"True. But there's something we all leave behind without noticing: scent." - the Grandmaster said - "And I happen to have successfully taught Radarr to read auras through a scent. He can find the correct scent even without having ever smelled it before." - she gestured to the mission specialist, and he saluted, showing he was ready for his duty.
"Great, now we need a plan to catch him." - the leader said.
They all began discussing something. They had to formulate their strategy fast: that intruder could escape at any moment. And worse yet, he could take the Reignition Stone away if he was indeed a Night Crawler.
In the room from the ruler's building, Sibexr tried to figure out what to do while Henny and Orion watched him.
"I found the virus, but I can't destroy it. It keeps replicating itself!" - the man said.
"Is there anything we can do to help?" - the Warmyan asked.
"Unless you're a tech expert, I'm afraid there's nothing you could do. This is probably the worst hacker attack we've had in centuries." - he told her.
"Maybe we could go look for help, then." - she suggested - "There might be someone that can lend a hand."
"Yes, that's a good idea." - he said, then they both gasped as they saw holograms coming out of the circuits in the walls.
They were images of Night Crawlers that walked towards the three, reading themselves to attack. Orion growled at them, then swung his hardened tail at them in an attempt to slash them, but they dematerialized to avoid the blow, surprising the three. Henny looked worriedly at them until an idea occurred to her.
"Orion, use your light explosion!" - she shouted.
The Xeedwox opened his mouth and let out a blinding blast of light. The light was so intense it consumed the holograms, making them disappear.
"It actually worked!" - Sibexr was impressed, but the joy of being impressed didn't last long.
Soon other Night Crawler holograms appeared again, over and over. And over and over they were blasted by Orion and consumed by the intense light from his attacks.
"We can't do this forever. Orion's gonna run out of energy eventually." - she urged the man to think of something.
"I'll have to overload the building, then. It'll fry all its circuits, preventing them from appearing again." - he said as he started typing codes in the control panel - "There. It's set to overload in five seconds, so get down!"
He jumped towards her, knocking both to the ground as Orion shielded the three with his wings. The whole building began short-circuiting and letting out light explosions on the inside. After the process was finished, the two humanoids stood up, Henny waving her hand around to push the smoke aside while coughing a bit.
"I think that did it." - she said.
"Yes... Too bad I didn't have time to make a back up of all the information in this building, though. I lost a lot of things..." - Sibexr was upset.
"I'm sorry. At least we're safe." - she tried to comfort him.
But her words suddenly meant nothing when they heard something beating on the doors of the building: those were the security robots and they were trying to get inside!
"Not for long... We have to get out of here!" - he warned.
"Right! Orion, break that wall!" - she pointed to one of the walls, and the Xeedwox charged at it, destroying it with its horns.
She and Sibexr climbed on him, and he took off at the very moment the guards managed to break through the door, so they made a narrow escape.
"That was a close one." - the ruler said.
"We better get to the Grandmaster's training grounds quick." - she said as Orion sped up, flying in the night sky.
In Kaya's building, the girl sat with Piper near the corridor. Both meditated.
"Alright, to filter the vision, you have to focus on only what you need to see. And that's where the luck comes in." - Kaya explained - "If you focus too much, you'll lose your normal vision, while if you don't focus enough, you won't filter anything. And the problem is: how much you must focus depends on each person's eyes. I can't see with yours... So there's no way to tell you how to do this..."
"Understood. I'll try anyway." - Piper said as she concentrated.
"Master Kaya! Piper!" - Henny shouted as she ran towards them.
"Henny! Glad to see you're okay. Let's talk somewhere else, Piper needs to be alone, so she can focus." - the girl said.
"What happened to her?" - she asked.
"She had a problem with the aura whisperer practice, so she has to go through this to finish her training." - then she looked to the side and saw Orion and the ruler of the reign walking towards them - "Oh, you brought Sibexr here."
"Yes, we came looking for the others, we need help. The reign's been..." - Henny told her.
"Hacked. Yes, I know. We just had a small issue with the equipment here." - she said as she gestured to the completely wrecked training grounds.
"Woah! A small issue? This looks like a battlefield after a war." - the Warmyan was quite surprised.
"Well, I had to destroy everything." - the Grandmaster shrugged.
"Just like Sibexr..." - she said in a low tone - "Ah... Where are the others?"
"They all went out there to find the intruder. They were heading to the grate protecting the access to the main control panel." - the little girl said.
"What? But it's dangerous! The Hooded Shadow made rampant holograms appear out of every circuit!" - Henny warned.
"Well, we dealt with all the holograms here without any problems. They should be fine." - Kaya assured her.
The Warmyan blinked.
"Really? Wow... I mean, when we were attacked in Sibexr's office, those holograms seemed to be so smart, phasing out to avoid Orion's attack." - she mused - "We only managed to escape because I told him to use light blasts, so the holograms'd be consumed. And that bought Sibexr sometime to overload the building."
"WHAT?! They know how to phase in and out on their own?!" - the Grandmaster shouted worriedly from the top of her lungs.
Henny just nodded with a kind of scared expression in her face. Now that was sudden.
"This is bad..." - she said with a serious tone - "We gotta find them now! I haven't trained them against that kind of enemy yet!"
"I'm going with you." - Piper said.
Everyone suddenly turned to her. She stood there smiling, her eyes open and her irises shining. Kaya nodded and they all went outside.
Aerrow, Finn, Junko, Stork, and Radarr sprinted in the sidewalk, trying to get to the grate. What they didn't know was that where they were running on was one of the moving paths that had been turned off because of the virus. But once it found them, it turned the path on.
Suddenly the ground began moving in the opposite direction they were walking, which made them all fall on the floor and be dragged backward.
"Everyone, get out of the sidewalk!" - Aerrow shouted as he rolled to the street, the others doing the same - "We better run in the streets."
They kept running until an electric holographic wall appeared out of nowhere right in front of them. Aerrow was the first to stop, but Finn and Stork didn't do it in time, so they bumped into him, pushing him towards the wall. He stared quite scared at the wall which was inches away from him, then sighed in relief, until Junko came and bumped into them again, finally pushing him into the wall and electrocuting him. When he jumped backward, he came out smoking a bit, then he glared at the wallop.
"Oops, sorry." - the flight engineer said.
Aerrow dusted himself off while Radarr came running. Soon the sky knight wouldn't be the only one that got shocked: Radarr slipped on the extremely smooth ground, sliding towards the wall and crashing into it. He came back smelling like barbecue. His fur was very burned and he was smoking a lot. His face showed he was clearly pissed off.
But their problems were about to get even worse as Night Crawler holograms came from the ground. The way the holograms appeared scared Finn, Stork, and Junko, who pulled the first two into a hug, nearly breaking their spines. Aerrow pulled his swords out and began fighting the enemies made of light until he realized they were dematerializing to dodge every single one of his attacks.
"How can I beat something I can't even touch?!" - he shouted angrily.
"We'll show you how!" - Henny yelled to him.
They all looked at the sky: the Warmyan was flying with Orion and she had brought Piper, a man they didn't know and Kaya with her. The last one was flying in the form of a Mynall bird. The Xeedwox landed near them, and Piper and the ruler climbed down, then the creature let out a very bright light blast, making all the holograms disappear.
The guys cheered, glad they had some back up with them.
"C'mon, let's not waste time! Follow me, I know a shortcut." - Sibexr said, and everyone followed him without question.
"Who's he?" - Aerrow asked.
"That's Sibexr, ruler of Techne Reign." - Kaya told him as she flew by him.
He smiled. Good, at least they weren't following a complete stranger. Who knows what could happen if they were...
They all got to the grate very quickly. Sibexr knelt on the ground and pressed his code, but the grate immediately responded with "access denied".
"It's locked and I can't open it with my admin code." - he said.
"Let me crack it open." - Junko said as he activated his knuckle busters and punched the grate with all his might, which Sibexr watched with his eyes wide open. The punch nearly hit him!
That didn't seem to do a thing, though, only trigger the alarm the virus had set up, making more Night Crawler holograms appear.
"Use your light blast again, Orion!" - Henny shouted.
The Xeedwox blasted the holograms another time, trying to stall them so the others could figure out a way to open the grate.
"What now? We don't have much time." - Finn urged.
"Overload it." - Stork and Sibexr said in unison, which made them blink and look at each other.
The ruler typed a few codes, which set the system to overload in 5 seconds.
"Everybody, down!" - he shouted.
All jumped on the ground, covering their heads as the grate exploded. Now all Junko had to do was pick the useless piece of metal up and throw it away, granting them their passage.
"Since we overloaded the security system of the grate, the traps from the ladder are offline, so we can climb down." - Sibexr told them as he climbed it down.
Everyone followed him until Henny noticed something.
"Orion won't fit." - she said.
"I think neither will I." - Junko commented as he struggled to unstick himself.
The others stared at them hesitantly.
"It's okay, keep going. We'll watch over this entrance until you get back." - the wallop said.
The ones that managed to go through the hole of the grate kept running down in the sewers. More holograms appeared, so Piper and Kaya stepped in: they had crystals that could create explosions of light, so they destroyed all of the Night Crawlers made of light.
"Nice move!" - Aerrow said.
"It's called Flare. Kaya and I worked on it when we found out the Night Crawler holograms couldn't be destroyed by weapons." - Piper told him.
They kept running until they made it to the control panel door, which was left open, so they just entered the room. At that, Radarr picked up the scent, since the Night Crawler had spent a fair amount of time there, so he finally found his aura. He chirped, signaling everyone that he had managed it.
"Radarr found the intruder's scent!" - Aerrow informed.
"We still have to solve the problem with the compromised security system, though." - Piper said.
"But we can't let him get away either." - the sky knight responded.
"No, we can't, especially because he has the Reignition Stone with him." - Sibexr told them.
They all gasped.
"We gotta go after him now!" - the redhead said urgently.
"You won't get too far. With that virus dominating the system, all doors will be locked for you. We have to take the system back." - the ruler said.
"Alright, then let's split up." - Kaya suggested - "I'll stay here with Stork and Sibexr to protect them while they try to hack this virus. The rest will follow Radarr and go after that guy."
Everyone nodded in agreement and proceeded with their parts of the mission.
Aerrow, Piper, Finn, and Radarr ran in the sewers, then they found a closed gate in the way.
"We have an obstacle in our way." - the leader said in his communicator.
"I know, I'm working on it." - the merb said as he typed in the control panel - "There, that should do it."
The gate opened in front of them.
"Thanks, Stork." - he said as they all kept running.
The carrier pilot and the ruler worked together to find the virus. Stork managed to find something else, though.
"I found him." - he said, then Kaya and Sibexr approached.
The pilot showed video footage in real time of the intruder after he had finally managed to gain control of the security cameras.
"Guys, the intruder is trying to escape to the docks!" - Kaya said in the merb's communicator.
"Follow this green path Stork is going to highlight for you!" - she warned them.
They saw a green light illuminating the path and went straight into it. Radarr could feel the scent was disappearing since the Night Crawler had not gone through that shortcut, but he could still feel the aura, because he had managed to identify a direct link to the source of the aura, so they were indeed getting closer to him.
Not long later they managed to catch up with him. He was trying to open a grate that led to the docks.
"Freeze!" - Aerrow shouted.
The Night Crawler stopped moving.
"We got you now!" - Finn aimed his crossbow at the dark soldier, ready to shoot if he were to cause any trouble for them.
The Night Crawler simply stood up with his hands in the air, where they could see.
"It's been a long time since an enemy last sighted me." - he said while he turned around.
The four blinked. He was yellow-eyed! What was that supposed to mean?! Well, that didn't matter at the moment. They just had to retrieve the Reignition Stone from him.
Aerrow and Finn stared at each other. Time to execute their plan. They both shot at the Night Crawler, making him dodge to the opposite side of Aerrow's shot, so when Finn's shot made a curve, it hit him in the leg. But there was more: Piper had given Finn some icer shards, which froze the soldier's leg on the ground.
Aerrow charged at the enemy, while Piper levitated Radarr with her arm and threw him towards the Night Crawler as well. The animal reached the distracted enemy first, then it climbed on his head and held firmly, to block his vision and keep him stunned. When the sky knight got to them, he launched himself at the crystal, grabbing a good hold of it. His weight made the Night Crawler's grip on the crystal slip, so Aerrow managed to retrieve it.
Radarr jumped from the soldier's head as Piper blasted the enemy with a Flare from a Solar Crystal. Night Crawlers would normally have resisted the light after their upgrade, but in that case, it was the pure light of the sun being intensified by a Flare spell, so it was much more effective than a normal blast of light.
His armor was weakening so he had to run away. He ran towards the grate and blasted it open with a firebolt crystal empowered by an enhancement crystal, then he jumped and fled. The four Storm Hawks weren't 100% pleased for letting him escape, but at least they had managed to take the crystal back from him.
They made their way back to the control panel.
Stork and Sibexr were working on solving the issue with the virus, which was the last problem left. They had managed to track it down, but their attempts of destroying it were not having good results until they finally overwrote part of its code, which caused it to delete itself from existence. But that didn't seem to change things.
Their short commemoration was interrupted by a message that was triggered by the virus' destruction.
"It seems you've managed to destroy my virus. Too bad it won't change a thing. By the time you took the virus down, it had replicated itself so many times that the original virus was no longer needed to keep controlling the system. Your efforts mean nothing."
Yep, definitely, a message written by Cyclonis herself. Kaya and Sibexr stared at the screen with worried expressions. But Stork didn't really look that bothered.
"A virus with a failsafe... Fascinating..." - he said in thought.
"Stork, this is not the time to be impressed by the enemy!" - the Grandmaster scolded him.
"I never said dooming news was a good thing, though. But we still have a very slim chance to recover the system." - he told her.
"I'm going to overload the security system. That way we can keep most of the data intact." - the ruler said as he walked towards the control panel and typed a few codes.
"No! Don't do that!" - Stork warned - "The virus already infected the other sectors of the system. If you overload the security now, the other sectors will overload as well and cause most of the city to be destroyed!"
Sibexr immediately backed away from the panel before finishing his setup. That was close! He had almost doomed everyone in the city!
"So what can we do now?" - he asked dismayed, he couldn't think of anything.
"There's one thing: we have to purge the whole system." - the merb said.
"WHAT?! No! That'll destroy all the data we've stored all this time! All the information about our history and what we found out. Everything we know would be destroyed!" - the ruler shouted.
"I know... But the information's already been infected. I can't make a clean back up. And even if I could, there's so much data that it'd be impossible to fit anywhere else." - Stork showed him several files, all corrupted by the virus - "I'm sorry, but this is the only way. The virus is already destroying the data you have as we speak. It's stealing information and giving it to Cyclonis. We can't let that happen."
The ruler stared at the ground angrily. He couldn't just throw everything away like that. But... There was too much at stake. The safety of the citizens was compromised, they had to act now.
"Fine... You can purge the system." - Sibexr finally allowed the pilot to do his job.
The green guy typed several codes and managed to start a countdown for the purge. After 5 seconds a message warning the purge was about to start appeared. Then, everything went black, the lights were out and the whole reign went silent for a second, then everything was turned back on and they could see a blue screen initializing the system.
"Welcome to the core system of Techne Reign. Here you can store all the information you gather, configure security protocols and several other functionalities. Read the command list for more details. You may begin to use the new system now." - a voice from the computer said.
Sibexr just fell on his knees, feeling defeated. Everything was gone... Forever... It was like mourning all the information they lost. And what a loss... Probably the greatest loss of knowledge in history.
But something could still amuse him. Aerrow, Piper, Finn, and Radarr arrived and showed him the Reignition Stone.
"Here, we did it." - the sky knight said, showing the crystal.
In fact, that was the real one, no imitations like he'd expect from one of the dark soldiers. The ruler picked the crystal in his hand, smiling sadly.
"Well, I guess we can start from zero again... Even if we might never fully recover from it." - he said.
In the morning of the next day, the Storm Hawks had packed things up to go back to their journey.
"I'm sorry for making you lose all that data, sir." - Aerrow apologized.
"It was quite the price, but it was definitely worth saving the lives of my citizens." - Sibexr said - "Thank you, Storm Hawks, for saving my people. I want you to know that I'll join the alliance. Techne Reign will send forces to aid you in battle."
"Thanks. But take your time to fix the damages that Night Crawler did to the reign. We don't want you to be vulnerable." - the sky knight said.
"We will. We're already planning a new security system. We'll use everything we've learned today to make it hacker proof. And we'll have experts monitoring all the time." - he told him - "I just need someone to watch over the Reignition Stone until we find a new place for it. We don't really trust our machines anymore."
"Orion and I will stay to guard the crystal." - Henny said.
"Huh? But Henny! Won't you come with us?" - Piper asked.
"Not this time. It's been really fun traveling with you, but Techne Reign needs help, and we can't hold you guys back." - the Warmyan told them - "Keep going, Kaya will help you guys. She knows a lot more than I do about the Greatland. I'm sure she'll help you much better than I can."
The Storm Hawks frowned in sympathy. They were going to miss those two.
"C'mon, guys. You still have to train. We gotta get to our next stop as soon as possible!" - Kaya shouted excitedly.
They all climbed aboard the ship along with her and waved farewell to Henny and Orion as the Condor took off from the ground, heading towards its next destination, going for a new adventure that waited for them.
The yellow-eyed Night Crawler watched the Condor leaving the docks. He snarled at that and flew away, disappearing in the distance. They were going to pay for that.
NEXT EPISODE:
Episode 56 (parts 1, 2, 3 and 4)