A/N: Here is another chapter! Thanks to Mistrevar for all the help and the betaing. Yes, in canon it may be longer than ten years (eleven or twelve, or more), but in this fic, it's about ten years since the Alpha Incident. That makes Netto and Forte roughly the same age, with Forte being a few months older. Just random trivia I'll let you know.
Also!
Unwilling Partners got more fanart! Check out my profile for the links (FFnet) and the archive (DA. The link is in the comment at the bottom) and praise these artists for their kindness!
And now, onto the next chapter, which is slow, but will reveal things. Happy reading!
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He wasn't sure what drove him to the conclusion that Netto and Forte were hiding in the clock tower, but when he had seen the old building from his hospital room, the hunch that he had gotten that instant felt right. And now that he was standing in front of the small service entrance, that certainty became stronger.
The old wooden door, dulled with age and weather, was slightly ajar with the iron lock that usually kept it closed hanging broken from the handle. If the situation had been different, maybe he would have thought it to be the doing of a vandal, but after the recent attacks and troubles with materialized viruses, he highly doubted that even the common criminal would be stupid enough to go out just to break into an old clock tower.
Enzan stepped forward and opened the door with his left hand, almost cringing at the loud creak that seemed to boom into the abnormally silent city. For a moment he didn't move, looking around to see if someone had noticed him, then, as he saw no one but Blues, he stepped inside.
The room that greeted him was empty, with only a couple of crates sitting against the far wall, and covered in a thick layer of dust. There were no windows, and the only sources of light came from the open door at his back and from the top of the tower. It was clear that no one had used the place in years, not even maintenance service seemed to be needed for the old clock, but when his blue eyes turned to the ground, Enzan paused.
No one had been there until very recently.
The dust on the ground presented a single line of footsteps, unclear and staggering, as if the owner was struggling in his walk and couldn't use his left leg. Through the dim light of the sun that managed to filter inside through the door, Enzan followed the track's lead and came face to face with a wooden staircase nestled against the walls. From there, it was too dark to see the details of the trail, but the boy didn't care. All he needed was the knowledge that Netto was upstairs.
"Blues," Enzan turned around to face his navi, who had been following him around using the Materializer that doctor Hikari had given him. He still had to get used to the new feelings, Enzan had seen him touch the wall repeatedly to feel its details when he had woken up after two days of sleep, but the navi was ready for any order coming from his operator.
The two's gaze met briefly and there was no need for further explanation as they started to climb the stairs. Enzan, still not fully recovered from his exhaustion, was slower than usual and by the time they reached the top, he was panting slightly as he observed the hatch door above him.
It was open and the light filtering from above illuminated the almost vertical steps leading to the top floor, showing that the dust there was heavily disturbed by the passage of someone. For a moment Enzan stared at it, transfixed and wondering how much Netto had struggled to get up there, then, not wanting to waste any more precious minutes, the boy shook his head and climbed the last steps in haste.
The room he found himself in was as empty and dusty as the rest of the old building, with the only difference that the sun was filtering through the transparent white glass of the clock. Large bronze gears, nestled near the wall, were spinning slowly and at each shift their tick tock broke the eerie silence rhythmically with their low and deep tone.
It would have been a normal sight if it wasn't for the black shape laying in front of the clock, unmoving and unaware of the new presences within the room. He was on his right side, facing away from the light, and his body was covered with dirt and dust, meaning that he hadn't cleaned after walking in the sewers and had been resting in that position for days.
As he saw him, Enzan felt time stop for a single moment and his heart race with worry. Even if he was not going to admit it out loud to anyone, Netto was his friend - probably his best one- and seeing him like that troubled him. Then the stillness was broken as he rushed to the unconscious boy and kneeled in front of him, Blues doing the same, but on his other side.
When Enzan placed a hand onto his friend's shoulder, he relaxed a bit. He could feel Netto breathing, although it was slow and shallow to indicate that the boy was deep into unconsciousness. His blue eyes then turned towards the wounded leg and he frowned upon seeing the ragged cloak enveloping it.
Netto had done all he could to treat it, but not being an expert and probably being too tired to put real effort on it, his 'bandage' presented holes where the gash could be seen. The boy had tried to keep it sealed with the use of paper tape, as there was no needle and thread in the first aid kit laying near him, and blood had dried, creating a cloth that had stopped the loss of blood.
But that wasn't what worried him the most. The flesh and black skin-like tissue around the wound was turning a sickly color in a clear sign of an infection taking place. Enzan had to turn away in disgust at the sight and looked at Netto's pale face, noticing that, although it was still his face, the purple streaks on its sides and the shapes of his eyes were what really made everyone believe that it was Forte, and not Netto, who was standing in front of them.
"We have to take him back to SciLabs," Enzan eventually murmured, almost as if he didn't want to disturb his friend. His eyes looked up at Blues, and the navi had no need for further explanation to carefully pick up the unconscious boy, careful to not hurt him further with wrong movements.
As they stood up and quickly made their way through the hatch door and down the stairs, Enzan started to wonder if SciLabs was the best place to take his friend. He knew that Netto's father and the others would protect him, but there were always those who would try to harm him anyway, and Dark Mu surely had agents hidden inside to keep tabs on all their movements. Netto wasn't a paranoid kid, but if he had not trusted the place as a whole when he sent his first message, maybe there was a good reason.
That thought brought Enzan to a sudden stop as he came to the realization that there weren't many people they could currently trust, or places really safe from their enemy's reach. That was the main reason why Netto had come here instead of returning to SciLabs.
"We can't take him back to SciLabs," he spoke out loud, stopping Blues a few steps further down than he was and making him turn around slightly to regard his operator with confusion. "There might still be people that could try to eliminate Forte, and it's too far away from here. Dark Mu might attack us even in broad daylight."
And IPC was even less safe than SciLabs. There were just too many people working in the building, and for all he knew, Dark Mu might already have some spies within his company already.
His eyes then looked at the comatose boy Blues was holding and he had a sudden idea. Yaito Ayanokouji was one of Netto's close friends and she would never turn her back to him. And after seeing that trespasser laying on the infirmary bed within her mansion, Enzan knew that she would have a doctor at hand and a good security system to protect them.
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Yaito Ayanokouji was a girl that didn't waste time when there was something to be done. That was why, after being rescued from the underwater base by Enzan and that mysterious black navi, she had Meiru and Dekao come every day and browse the net in search of anything that could help them find their missing friend.
It was during one of these meetings that the bell of the front gate started to ring insistently, annoying the trio until the security camera caught sight of Enzan, Blues and an unmoving familiar dark shape in the navi's arms. The boy's expression and body stance was unnaturally tense when he started to talk with a butler, going so far as to show him his badge of NetSavior to gain quick access to the mansion.
The trio looked at each other with confusion for a second before curiosity took over and they stood up from the couch they had been sitting on while they let their navis browse the net from the tree house's super computer.
Logging off their navis and loading them into the Materializers that they had kept from their latest adventure was a quick task. Reaching the mansion where Enzan, Blues and the black navi were, however, took them longer than they wished for.
The ruckus they made when they entered into the room where the NetSavior had been accompanied surprised both him and his navi, making them almost jump into a fighting stance, and eye them with suspicion before realizing who they were.
The first thing that Yaito did was to take a few steps towards the two and glare at Enzan with her arms crossed, while her navi and the others remained behind her to watch the scene unfold. "What is happening here?"
The white haired boy looked at her in the eyes, then cast a quick glance at Meiru, Dekao and the three navis before turning his eyes onto the young girl in front of him. "No time to explain," he declared calmly despite the tension lingering in the room. "He needs help. Now."
As Enzan turned his head to look at the unconscious navi that Blues was holding, Yaito followed his gaze and quickly forgot what she was going to say. The black navi, the same that she and her friends had seen in SciLabs and in the underwater base of Dark Mu, had his leg badly wrapped with his cloak, which was dirty with dust and blood.
She had to take her eyes away from that and turned to look at her navi standing right behind her, her left hand rubbing her upper right arm for comfort. One of the few things that made her queasy was seeing a large amount of blood. "Glyde, can… can you take care of this?"
Sensing her distress, Glyde stepped to the side and motioned for Blues to follow him through the door. "Yes, Yaito-sama," he wasn't entirely sure how he was supposed to take care of a navi that was losing blood, but he supposed that a human doctor would be a good start.
Enzan nodded, signaling Blues to go on without him, then turned his attention back to Yaito and the others. There was the soft click of the door closing when Blues and Glyde left, but other than that, the silence filling the room was heavy and long.
That is, until he sighed and turned around to look out of the window, idly wondering if he should really tell them everything. Still, Yaito had offered her help without demanding an explanation before accepting, and as Netto's closest friends, they deserved to at least know.
"This is supposed to stay secret," he started, voice calm and collected. Even if he had his back turned to them, he could feel five pair of eyes turn around and stare at him in anticipation. "The less people know, the better. I don't want to think how Forte would react with a bunch of unknown people wanting to see… him. And with kids traveling back and forth from the mansion will give Dark Mu a golden occasion to infiltrate."
"Enzan," it was Meiru that spoke. Yaito was still trying to recover from seeing so much blood and all she was doing right now was staring at the back of the boy in front of her. "We understand. We won't tell anyone."
Enzan remained silent for a while, then nodded and turned around to look at the others in the eyes. "The… black navi we carried here," he started, motioning the door with his head. "That's Netto."
At first there was silence, the three kids and two navis too confused and shocked to say something, then emotions exploded. Dekao screamed his unbelief with a loud "No way!", Meiru brought her hand to the mouth to stifle a gasp and Yaito just stared at the NetSavior like he had grown a second head.
"I… I knew there was something… familiar about him," Meiru started, her voice muffled by her hand. She was feeling terrible at the moment. Netto was her best friend, but besides a vague feeling of familiarity, she had been unable to recognize him. "But I would have never guessed…"
Enzan could understand her feeling. Netto had apparently changed enough that he had fooled everyone into thinking that he was Forte. As Yuichiro had informed him after he woke up, it was only by chance that Cossack saw Netto's face and recognized it on a photo doctor Hikari kept in his office. And it had been only thanks to Paladin's words that he had discovered the truth himself.
"Netto is the black navi?" the large boy was still having troubles believing what he had just heard. He had seen the navi only two times, and in both, he had felt the oppressive powers coming from him in waves. "You're kidding, right?"
Who replied to that question wasn't Enzan, but Yaito, who had started to recover from her shock of seeing that much blood. "It's obvious that he's not kidding, Dekao," she said before taking a deep breath and straightening her dress in an effort to calm down her nerves. "But I believe that is not the point right now."
Her eyes looked into Enzan's and she nodded, finally understanding the real reason why he had come to her. Hunted by Dark Mu night and day, Netto needed a place to rest where the security was high and people were few. IPC's main building, SciLabs and even the NetPolice headquarters offered the first, but not the second.
"What I'd like to know, however," she resumed speaking, feeling more confident as time passed despite still having the memory of Netto laying limp into Blues's arms clear in her mind with a large wound on his left leg. "Is why you didn't tell us sooner. From what I've heard from the rumors in the net, Netto came back to SciLabs some time ago…"
Enzan's eyes became thoughtful for several seconds, then he hummed gently. "No one knew it was him until a few days ago," he replied. Forte would never trust a human with his problems, especially if it concerned his life, and Netto, being Netto, would never force someone to do something they didn't want to. "By the time we realized, he had fled the battlefield."
Dekao frowned deeply, confused and shocked. "Why would Netto keep his comeback secret? Doesn't he need help?"
Blue eyes narrowed and Enzan almost growled at the large boy's questioning. The main reason why he didn't really want to tell them the truth was that it brought many questions that he had to answer. "Forte doesn't like humans," he replied quickly as he started to walk towards the door. He had to find Blues, know how Netto was doing and then warn doctor Hikari without alerting Dark Mu. "I don't know how he did it, but Netto has found a peaceful coexistence with him."
As he left the room, silently followed by three kids and two navis, Enzan decided that he should have doctor Cossack come too. Being Forte's creator, he would be able to help in figuring out how the two were cross fused without a Dimensional Area.
Three days of almost incessant searching for his son had nearly brought Yuichiro to his knees. Despite being sleep deprived and running on several mugs of coffee alone, however, the man was still bustling back and forth within the main lab of SciLabs. Rarely would he stop and lay down for a few hours of rest.
Not even Cossack, who was doing his best to catch up with the technology within the room and logically figure out where his son and the boy he was stuck with had gone, was having much success in persuading the younger man take a long and deserved sleep.
While the two parents were trying to locate their kids' whereabouts from the lab, Meijin had taken his car and was checking out several places that could provide a good shelter for Netto and Forte. He had checked the warehouse district, the park, several disused buildings and a few other places that he had forgotten even existed.
But no matter how much the three wanted to find the missing boy and navi, their efforts were so far fruitless. The two were nowhere to be found.
"Enzan is out of the hospital," Meijin informed the two men sitting at Yuichiro's desk with what looked like the third cup of coffee in front of them. Netto's father had heavy bags under his eyes, dropping shoulders and his slightly arched back screamed how much the man needed to sleep. "He said he was going to check a place before coming back, but he didn't say where."
Yuichiro nodded, one hand moving the cup to the side so he could glance down at the unfolded map on the desk. There were a lot of blue circles, red crosses and brown mug prints on it, indicating that it had been used a lot recently. "How is he doing?"
Meijin took a seat next to Cossack and sighed, lifting his glasses with his right hand to rub the bridge of his nose. He was tired and a good half of his mind was wondering how the two men in his company could persist without decent sleep for so long. "Doctors said that his right arm was almost broken, but besides that and a case of exhaustion and sore muscles, they decided to let him go without too much of a fuss. And he has Blues with him, so I'm not too worried."
There was silence for a few seconds, until the young man opened his bag and took out an old and dirty folder. "He did ask me to pick this up from the front desk of NetPolice's headquarters, though," he commented as he placed the bundle of files on top of the map. "He said I shouldn't show this to anyone but you two at the moment. I haven't read it yet, but I have a good hunch on what it might be."
His eyes glanced at the man sitting next to him through the lenses of his glasses and saw him look down at his hands folded on the desk. There was an aura of sadness coming from him, but at the same time there was a spark of hope in his eyes. Hope that the navi he had created could finally see the truth, accept it and find peace.
"Like father, like son," Cossack smiled at his words, unable to stop the bubble of happiness that was growing each second he thought that maybe, just maybe, Forte had read those files. Enzan hadn't said anything about that, but Netto had been there that night for a reason. "Your son is a good boy, Yuichiro."
Yuichiro looked at the older man with confusion for a couple of seconds, then his tired brain caught on and he smiled. Leave it to Netto to find a way to make everything right. "You have to thank my wife," he replied with a faint chuckle. "She is the one that grew him up."
In one of their brief moments of lack of worry, the trio laughed heartily. "Yes, but he does have your hero complex," Cossack's rebuttal was quick, and Netto's father scratched the back of his head in embarrassment. "I think that is a genetic trait you and your son have in common. Might do Forte a lot of good."
"If the two have been stuck in a Cross Fusion since Netto has gone missing, I think that almost three months of peaceful coexistence is a good result," Meijin was going to say something else regarding the unknown kind of permanent Cross Fusion when the doors of the lab opened with a faint swish.
The trio sobered as they watched Rockman walked towards them, trying to act calm and avoid rushing. He was not doing a good job, and when he finally reached the desk, he looked at his creator with eyes brimming with joy and fear. "We have to go," he whispered, only loud enough for the three men to hear him. "Now."
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The drive from SciLabs to the Ayanokouji's mansion, with only a quick stop to the Hikari's house to get Netto's mother, lasted roughly half a hour mainly because Meijin had to refrain from going above the speed limit and burning a few red lights. But if the young man at the wheel was impatient, his four passengers were beyond nervous.
Cossack, sitting on the passenger seat next to him, was as calm as ever and was looking out of the window with pensive eyes at the scrolling city. Haruka and Yuichiro, sitting at the back were as silent as the older man and holding each other's hands, glad that their son had been found, but at the same time worried about his conditions.
Rockman, sitting at Haruka's right, was feeling so guilty that he hadn't spoken at all since getting in the car. He was supposed to protect his operator, and know him as well as twin brothers would know each other, so why had it been Enzan to be the first to find Netto? He had nothing against him, or better, he was glad and thankful that he had found his operator, but what kind of navi was he that he was unable to think like Netto would do and figure out where he had hidden?
As he and the other three passengers kept thinking to themselves, Meijin drove past the open gates of the Ayanokouji's park-like garden and stopped right in front of the mansion's entrance. For a moment no one dared to move, but when Glyde opened the door to let Cossack out, everyone woke from their stupor and hurried out of the vehicle.
"Welcome to the Ayanokouji's manor," the navi said politely with a bow. "I wish the circumstances were different, however. If you would like to follow me, I'll take you to Netto."
As no one wanted to waste time with idle chat, they quickly started walking through the mansion's corridors. Glyde led the group, walking at a slightly quick and even pace, Meijin taking the rear of the group with Doctor Cossack next to him and Yuichiro and Haruka taking the middle. The man was helping his wife walk, whispering gentle words to her and reassuring her that their son would be fine.
They didn't have to walk for long to reach a room where Glyde invited them to sit down on the comfortable couches while he went to get Enzan. When he walked out of the room, the group was left in total silence for several minutes before the aforementioned boy walked inside and regarded them all with calm eyes.
"I found him in the clock tower. Unconscious, but alive," he said when he saw five pair of questioning eyes looking right at him. No one ever spoke a word, but their eyes easily told him that they were expecting him to tell them everything he knew. "I haven't seen the wound in detail, but it looked bad and infected. Netto is currently under the care of doctors employed by the Ayanokouji's family, and they will be able to tell us more when they are done treating him."
After those words faded into silence and everyone fully understood the situation, a weak sob filled the air as Haruka hunched over and started to cry. Her hands flew to her face as she tried to hide her emotions from view, almost as if she was ashamed to show how scared and desperate she was after enduring three months of not knowing where her son was.
She was enveloped into a reassuring hug by Yuichiro, who started to whisper reassuring words to her as she cried on his shoulder, unable to refrain herself anymore. The man looked up from his sobbing wife and caught sight of Cossack, sitting on an armchair near the couch.
The man was good at keeping a calm exterior, but Yuichiro knew that he was being as scared and worried as everyone else deep down. After ten long years of being separated from his son and the first chance he got to meet him again, Forte was on the brink of death. But his eyes had a confident shine to them. A shine that gave him hope.
"Haruka," Yuichiro's voice was soft, but the woman in his hands looked up at him, one hand wiping her tears away from her eyes. "Netto will be fine. He's not alone in there. Forte is with him."
The woman nodded, but returned laying her head against her husband. Thanks to Yuichiro's words, she had stopped crying and was now just cuddling with him, hoping and waiting to receive good news.
After giving a silent nod of approval to Yuichiro, Enzan walked up to Meijin, who was sitting on a chair near the wall, and greeted him with another nod. "Have you found what I asked?"
The young man grabbed his shoulder belt bag and laid it on his lap, patting it. "It's in here," he said with a small smile, knowing exactly what Enzan wanted to do with it. He didn't know the whole story, just small pieces here and there, but that was enough to make him guess that the boy was going to use the file to bring justice where it was expected. "We didn't have time to read it, or to make a copy of it, though."
Enzan nodded and waited as Meijin opened his bag and took the old folder out to hand it to the boy. "I'm sure Netto knew the risks when he went out to look for this," he said softly, grabbing the bundle and observing it with sharp blue eyes. "He doesn't like injustice."
He had only been able to see some parts of the files contained in the folder while Netto and Forte quickly read them, but they had been enough to make him decide that he would not let go unpunished who had framed two innocent people.
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Waiting for almost five hours now seemed nothing in comparison to seeing his son laying on a bed, unconscious and face pale. But Yuichiro felt the need to be strong for everyone else, especially his wife, who was now sitting next to the bed and was holding one of Netto's hands in hers, stroking it reassuringly, not minding at all the fact that her son was looking so different than usual.
The doctors had said that the cut had been deep, almost reached the bone, but hadn't cut any main vein and they were sure that the coma the boy was in had helped in limiting the blood loss until the wound clotted as best as it could because of a slowed heartbeat rate. True to their professions and the contract with the Ayanokouji's family, the medical team hadn't asked how or why a young kid was dressed as a navi and had a large cut on his leg, but they had been baffled as blue mist had started to appear as soon as they had unwrapped the old bandage and blood had started to pour out again, eventually turning into blue mist itself as soon as it landed on the bed.
The medics had cleaned and stitched the gash up, dressing it with clean bandages and letting Netto rest on his right side so he would be able to breath better. Forte's helmet, as much as intimidating as it was, it was in the way of a good rest if Netto laid on his back.
Administering to him some antibiotics for the infection, however, had been troublesome as they were unable to take off the suit to locate a vein, as if it was an integral part of his body. In the end they had to inject a dose under the two layer of skins, one fake and one real, and hope that the body would absorb it correctly and fast enough to stop and make the infection recede.
Placing a hand onto his son's left arm, Yuichiro narrowed his eyes in determination despite being tired and sleep deprived. Netto had been treated well, but the doctors had stated that they were unable to do more than what they had already done. They had tried to administer vitamins and liquids to the boy with an IV setup, but after a couple of hours of suturing, they had noticed that it brought no apparent benefit. Almost as if it wasn't enough.
They had no answer to that, but maybe he had one…
He could remember the blood fading into data, Netto's ability to stay awake and not eat for more than a couple of days without feeling tired or hungry and he could remember his lethargic movements and weakened appearance when he pushed himself too far. And how he had recovered some when he had eaten food.
This was no normal Cross Fusion, and not just because it seemed to be permanent and was active outside a Dimensional Area. "A symbiotic relationship…" the idea was farfetched, but it made sense in his tired mind. Even if he didn't know why.
And if that was right, Netto would be unable to get better until Forte was treated too.
"Haruka," he spoke softly as he placed his hands on her shoulders and made the woman turn around to look at him. She looked tired and had red eyes and dark bags under them, but there was a strong glimmer of hope in them which gave the man a rush of energy that he thought he didn't had. "Netto is fine now, why don't you take a rest?"
The woman turned her head to look at her son for a few seconds before nodding. Netto had grown a lot recently, had become mature despite his young age, and had saved the world a few times with the help of his friends. She was sure that he would be back up and asking for curry sooner than anyone expected.
"Alright," she said, smiling at her husband as she stood up and placed one hand on Netto's exposed left arm. He was warm and there was a sense of strength coming from him that made her believe in him and the unknown navi he was tied to even more than she had done after hearing the story from Yuichiro. "I'll take a rest. But you should do the same."
The man blushed at her sweet smile, and found himself looking down at the ground in embarrassment. He had been so busy looking for their son that he hadn't taken good care of himself. "Alright, you win," he commented as he accompanied his wife to the door and opened it for her.
Outside, everyone huddled around the two and started to talk together, asking how their friend was doing, if he was awake and if there was something they could do. "Netto is alright at the moment," Yuichiro replied as soon as the chattering died down. His brown eyes then looked at Glyde, standing beside the small frame of Yaito, and nodded his head in a silent greeting. "Could you please lend a room to my wife?"
The navi bowed politely and stepped to the side, in a clear sign that he wanted Haruka to follow him. "Of course," he replied with a smile and a glance of approval from his operator. "Please, follow me, Mrs. Hikari."
Yuichiro watched the two walk away, then turned to face Cossack, his smile fading to be replaced by a serious expression. An expression that the older man recognized instantly and replied to with a firm nod. There was work to be done, and two boys in need of their help.
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Two days later and all Yuichiro could do was sit at the table to stare out of the window while he stirred his coffee. In front of him, scattered on the table without a real order, several sheet of paper with equations, graphs and coding that was making even him have a headache.
Cossack truly knew what he was doing even after ten years of not practicing his art in navi coding.
He gave a gentle sigh and turned tired eyes towards the bed in the corner. After he and his colleague had established for sure that Netto and Forte had a symbiotic relationship and that the human boy was alive only thanks to the navi's power, they had moved them to the tree house where they could work faster thanks to the super computer housed in it.
"It feels like ten years ago," he mused, his brown eyes glancing at the man sitting on the other side of the table. Cossack was examining a complex code he had written down on a piece of paper and was tapping the pen on the wooden surface in a slow rhythm. It was a habit that helped the man to concentrate. "No matter how much I work to get better, I'll never be as good as you are."
Cossack looked up at Yuichiro and smiled. "That is not true," he replied, momentarily forgetting what he was doing to give the younger man his full attention. "I may be good at creating navis, but you came up with the Cross Fusion and the Synchro Chip. I'd be lost without your help."
He motioned the scattered papers on the table with a hand and sighed deeply. "I would have never gotten this far without your help. Nor I would have ever thought about a symbiosis," he shifted papers and tapped one in particular. "From the scans we did, Netto is providing a 'base' for Forte to exist in the real world, while Forte is creating a Dimensional Area to actually appear in."
Then there was the fact that in normal Cross Fusions, the navi data simply enveloped the operator, lending him its strength and abilities. What Netto and Forte were sharing was a true fusion of human flesh and data, and that was the reason why the boy's blood faded away as soon as it left the confinement of the Dimensional Area around them. At the moment, they had no idea where the human ended and where the navi started.
The scan had also picked up a metallic alloy that at the moment they couldn't analyze, but was not be something that was used in objects of the every day life. It was present a bit everywhere on Netto's body, but it was within Forte's navi emblem that there was a large concentration of it. It presented a lot of elements contained in the same metal used for the Synchro Chip, but the rest was unknown to modern science.
Since finding about that unknown metal alloy, Meijin had done all in his powers to find what it was. His search had brought him everywhere in the net and last they had heard from him, he was checking a museum and some really old relics in the nearby city.
"Why would Dark Mu want to do this to Netto and Forte?" Yuichiro suddenly asked, his eyes returning onto the still black form on the bed. "And how they did it, anyway? Synchronization is an essential part in Cross Fusion… how could they force one on two people that had no synchronization?"
That was a part that he could not understand. Maybe it was because of the "Code" that Dark Mu wanted back so badly, maybe the unknown metal, or maybe both, but without a further analysis and a good look at Forte's core program he was unable to determine what did what. He wasn't sure how the navi would react to their invasion of his privacy, or to the presence of his creator, but he could not figure another way to help the two out of their problem.
His train of thoughts was broken when the door of the large tree house opened with a soft creak. "What if it wasn't supposed to be this way?" Enzan asked as he walked towards the table and the two men. Blues and Rockman were right behind him, and the three had heard Yuichiro's question as they returned from their latest patrol around the large mansion. "What if someone else was supposed to fuse with Forte?"
"Dark Mu's Emperor," Yuichiro spoke for everyone. They knew nothing about him and what he did after he ran away from the authorities, but it was clear that he had an obsession with getting Netto and Forte back. "He was the one supposed to get in a permanent Cross Fusion with Forte."
Enzan nodded as he sat at the table and gave a quick glance to his friend on the bed. "NetPolice's headquarters had sent him to check out why there was a leaking of electric current in a disused part of the warehouse district. I think that's when he got in the way of their plan and ended up being the one cross fused with Forte."
While Blues remained close to the door to act as a guard, Rockman walked to the bed and sat next to it, his back against the wall. "I can't remember," he started, drawing the attention of everyone to him. His eyes were not moving away from his operator, hoping to catch a glimpse of him moving. "I've been trying to remember all this time, but nothing comes back to mind. I remember getting to the warehouse district with Netto-kun, but from there on, memories are sketchy, until I come to a blank."
The next thing he could remember after that black out was regaining consciousness in SciLabs, with Yuichiro and Meijin looking at him through a screen with a relieved smile on their faces. They had told him that he had been found laying under a shelf, the PET's circuitry half melted and with Netto nowhere to be found. Whatever had happened, the power surge that had hit him had been powerful enough to damage the PET, and that PET had been built to withstand a lot.
"It can't be helped, Rockman," Yuichiro was looking at the blue navi with a kind smile. He would have gone to him and helped him up from the floor, but the man was feeling so tired at the moment that if he got up, he knew he would never go back to the table. Be it because he collapsed or because he decided to finally sleep. "I've checked your memory myself. They are… gone."
A pity. If Rockman could remember, everyone would have probably figured things out sooner. But Yuichiro couldn't blame him. The navi had been really lucky he hadn't died in whatever it was that had happened during that fateful mission.
The silence that fell into the room after that was deafening, but no one tried to break it, too deep into their own thoughts. Then there was the distant sound of screeching tires and everyone looked up at the window that faced the direction of the mansion and main gate. And idly noticed that the day was already turning into evening.
A few minutes later, Meijin walked through the door, holding a box in his left hand and closing the door behind him with his right one. "It wasn't easy to get it out of the museum," he said as he walked to the table and set the wooden container on the table. He was careful on opening it and taking the small object out. "But I think it might help us find some answers."
Enzan walked closer and cast a quick glance at Rockman. Despite not moving from his spot next to the bed, the navi was paying full attention to what was going on at the table. "A bowl?" he asked, eyeing the tool with narrowed eyes.
The bowl was made of a dark colored metal and it had a simple design save for the strange symbols carved on the outside. "It's made of the same metal alloy we found in Netto," Meijin explained. It had taken him almost two days to track down the item from the net and then convince the director of the museum to lend it to him. "And many experts believe that it originates from Mu."