Everyone collected in Shiroe's office room in high spirits that evening and the feeling of expectation ran high. When everyone was settled, Shiroe looked at Purrcy. She smiled back in ears and tail. "I've set it so that only members of the guild Log Horizon can participate. You've got permission to set it now, too."
"Thank you," he said. Looking around the room through his round glasses, Shiroe settled into his usual head-of-guild and Master Strategist role. "I think it's time for Michael to tell us where he met Purrcy and why he's here."
"That's deep," Michael's lower baritone voice said from the side. With him as an addition to the room, he'd had to take Shiroe's desk chair and drag it over and fit it in where it would go. Everyone gave the Monk their attention. "Right then." He paused to get his bearings and find the beginning of his story.
"I've come from Minami. I'm a guard in Kazuhiko's department. I'm not Miburo. As a Navy man from the States I could only play when I had shore leave and they'd let me come play with them every once in awhile. Once I'd figured out the language and how to get around after the catastrophe, I went and hunted down Kazuhiko and asked for a job. Somewhere in the in-between Plant Hwayden was taking over. I'd already earned Hacker, so hid behind the guild tag of Miburo, then later Plant Hwayden when they made everyone take it, even all of Kazuhkio's men and him as well, but Log Horizon's the only one I've really taken on." The room was all ears. They'd turned the corner and come face to face with the most common enemy type they fought, and he was one of them suddenly.
"Miburo runs the city peacekeeping, including the prisons. Nasty places actually, but I suppose most brigs are. You know the 1HP rule?" Purrcy hadn't told the juniors so they were shaking their heads. "If you're down to one health point you can't cast spells, not even Call of Home," he said grimly. "The prisons in Minami work that way. Cells like Earth prison cells, only every prisoner is kept constantly at one HP." It was grim to consider it.
"I was assigned as a guard in the prison. Kazuhiko knew I was U.S. Navy and gave me special assignments. One of them was to guard KR when he went out on Soul Possession. Kazuhiko is the only one he trusts with his physical body. He has a special cell all his own so that if the creature he transfers psyche with is a bit too wild to be using an Adventurer body, it can't get loose and do damage. When he'd come down, Kazuhiko would call me up from the lower blocks and set me to watch over him. That's how I met Purrcy."
He gave a not so nice grin to Purrcy, and every eye turned to the calico felinoid. She picked up the story. "The juniors don't know this bit yet and it's all top secret, but you have a need to know now." They nodded promises to keep it that way. "I'm summonable. I created a spell to allow my patients and clients to summon me and the system, the world, decided that made me completely summonable, not just because of the spell. ...Rather inconvenient actually. It was one of my early lessons to make sure I specifically bounded my spells so that the world couldn't do things I didn't like - like that."
"I'd already learned most of my transformations by then, since they were protection I needed early on. KR was experimenting, trying to learn what new creatures the new expansion pack had dropped into this world with us. I'm not sure what modifications he made to the Summon spell to be more general for creatures not listed and unknown, but he happened to get me one day that I was 'werecat'. We were both quite surprised, as it was relatively soon after I'd created my Summon spell and was my first lesson in what had really happened to me at that time. He hadn't called a creature to create a contract that time - he just wanted to see what he could find. I wasn't pleased to be suddenly someplace I hadn't been before. I immediately chose to flee and did, though that in itself was a natural instinct to a summoned creature, and as suddenly as I'd been taken I was back. I quickly shifted out of werecat since that was the tag he'd seen and I figured he'd call me back on it if he was going to at all."
Purrcy shook her head. "I quickly found a Summoner and asked a lot of questions, since it wasn't my Class. I figured if he called me back and asked what a werecat was, like Marielle, I'd have to have something to turn into, so I worked on learning nine-tails. It has a lot of good obfuscation to go that way. Like - I could turn felinoid if I had to if I was also, or really, a nine-tails, and just hide my player status from him, or any other Summoner who happened to catch me again in the future. ...Which of course he did." Purrcy said wryly.
"I wasn't so lucky the next time, though I was better prepared. The next time he had properly done the binding circle and prepared the contract. Sadly, my levels were still low enough that, though I fought with every skill I had - Adventurer, Hacker, and werecat - it wasn't enough. I am actually one of his contracted Summons. It's one of the reasons I only stay in town for one day. I've already been here too long. He's rather capricious. Sometimes ignoring me for months and other times wanting to talk to me for weeks on end until I want to scream."
Purrcy looked at Shiroe. "The reason I know Michael is because at some point KR was bored, or something, and decided to do a Soul Possession with me. That was quite odd, really. I very much sympathize with Tetora." Tetora blushed and so did the rest of the men in the room, followed shortly by all the women. "Even worse, was that I was felinoid at the time of the transference, which I had been hiding from him until then, and in the ending stages of a surgery."
Purrcy sighed, crossing her arms. "He put me back to finish the work that needed to be done, barely giving me enough time, then summoned me to demand an explanation. I went as a nine-tails and explained that I used the felinoid form to care for the wild creatures of the region because of the usefulness of hands and fingers. He was never terribly satisfied as to why I used surgical methods instead of just magic, but I'm not required to tell him everything, just be obedient to the contract."
A finger tapped on her arm. "He does now call me first to see if I'm in the middle of a surgery before doing transferences, since he was rather frightened by that particular set of clients, so I can sometimes postpone him for a bit if I need to. He can't transform, so whatever form I'm in when he does the transfer is whatever form he has to live with. ...Another reason I spend most of my time outside as a werecat. I'm only felinoid when I have to be and then for as short as possible. ...And then the spirits started to appear in the cell and attack me - or rather KR's body that I was in." She looked back at Michael.
The burly Monk shifted and took back over. "When I wasn't watching over KR's body, Kazuhiko had me down in the specials section, once Indicus decided I was as trustworthy as Kazuhiko thought I was." At the name of Indicus the room chilled. "It was the level I'd been working for anyway, at his request. Most of the guards there were Indicus' special hand-picked guards and Kazuhiko wanted to know what was going on down there." Shiroe sat up, his eyes suddenly gleaming. Michael nodded. "He wanted me to find out what had happened to the Adventurers on the missing list. All of them were sent down there."
Michael rubbed his hands together, taking a breath. "Quon was down there a lot, and Indicus came to visit regularly. They have a special room down there they don't let guards into, except to deliver the prisoner of their choice and carry him or her out, and sometimes not even that much. There was a point where they had about five in a row that way. We carried them in and didn't carry them out. It got to be a bit nerve wracking even to the more hardened of the Adventurer guards. The People of the Land guards didn't care one way or the other. To them, the fewer Adventurers the better, really."
"A while after that event, I got called up to go watch over KR. There were enough guards in the specials section that I was allowed to go back up for that, when he needed it. I'm not sure what creature he summoned that time, but suddenly he was up and backing against the wall, then being beaten up by something I couldn't see. I went into the code realm and still couldn't see figures, but I could see code: Vengeful Spirit. So I wrote up something on the fly that I hoped would work and put a barrier around him...and me since I figured they'd come for me next. They eventually faded out and went away. When he got back I asked him why he might get attacked by Vengeful Spirits and he had no idea. So he summoned one. It hit him, but he couldn't talk to it, so I put the barrier spell on us again until it went away again. They don't have HP so they can't be knocked out, and neither of us had a way to drain MP, so we had to wait them out at that point."
"KR had work to do, so couldn't follow up at that time, but he came back when it was done and decided to call on his magical Caretaker creature to see if she could figure out why he'd suddenly become 'cursed' and get rid of them if possible. They wouldn't come, so he had to first figure out that they appeared when the moon was over the position of Minami in a particular arc." Shiroe's head came up at that as well. Most of the high level Overwritten he'd fought in and around Akiba were moon presence monsters as well.
"They still wouldn't come when the nine-tails was in the cell, and they only came to attack him when he was there or in the police station in general, not in other places around Minami. So he finally showed up a little before the moon time and did a Soul Possession." He looked at Purrcy. "It was actually the first time she spoke to me while in that cell, and it frightened the hell out of me since I thought KR's body'd been possessed by the Vengeful Spirit, since it had just hit her - him."
"I'd been keeping quiet," Purrcy said, "since I didn't need anyone else knowing what I really was. It had always been Michael watching the cell, though, so when I was hit by the Vengeful Spirit I asked him how he knew what it was and where. He wasn't sure how to answer the question, so I went walking in the code realm, found their code labels, his defensive spell on the both of us, and walked his rather unprotected line back to learn who he was. I was concerned since I'd only ever run into bad Hackers, but to find out that he was actually guildless...well, I decided to test him a bit as we went from that point on, but that came later..."
-:-:-:-:-
"So, Michael, I guess I get to experiment, then?"
Michael shrugged. "Guess so."
"Has he bothered to do the research yet on if anyone's ever heard about Vengeful Spirits before and how to go about dealing with them?"
Another shrug. "Don't know."
"Then tell him do it." KR's face scrunched in irritation. "Starting from scratch is the hard way, you know." Clearing the throat, Purrcy said, "Hello spirits. I'm actually not KR, so I'd appreciate not getting hit. I'm the nine-tails that was in here with him before. Will you talk to me, please?" A surprising benefit about being in KR's body, and there were very few of them, was that it naturally spoke Japanese, though she could speak English if she focused on controlling the mouth muscles. They backed off and didn't attack further.
She considered the code blocks for a moment, then faced one of them. "Can we experiment?" She quickly created a small spell that was based on the concept of a bit switch crossed with a stop light. When it appeared in the code realm the Vengeful Spirits moved around the cell to drift closer to it. That was a good sign. "I made it so you can change it, I hope. Do this to answer yes," She made the switch go "up". "And this to answer no," She made the switch go "down". On the up, a small green light could be seen in the room. On the down, it turned red. She watched what the spirits would do. After a bit, one approached it and suddenly it switched back to green. When the lights were flashing between their colors rather smoothly, Purrcy held out a hand.
"Okay. Wonderful. Now, we'll play twenty questions until you have to go home. Did you arrive on Theldesia at the time of the cataclysm?" Green for a long time, then a red, then a green. "Are you from the expansion pack?" Red. "Are you an Adventurer?" Green. It stayed green a long time as both Purrcy and Michael stared at it in disbelief, then growing horror.
Purrcy looked at Michael. He looked at her and swallowed. "You only show up here in the prison. ...Are you from the specials section?" he asked. The light stayed green. They waited to make sure. "All of you?" It stayed green.
"Ah...okay...," Purrcy said. "We see four of you, are there more than that?" It stayed green. "Give me the number in counts of 'no'." They counted nine red flashes of light, remaining on red at the end. Purrcy tapped her finger on her arm, thinking. "You only show up when the moon is overhead. Are you on the moon?" There was a pause and the light flashed between colors a few times. "Is that a warning?" Red. "Is it 'I don't know'?" Green. "You say you're Adventurers. Do you still have bodies somewhere?" Red. "...Disturbing." Green. Purrcy couldn't help but smile at that answer. It rather proved they were Adventurers. "Do you have a vendetta against KR?" Green, then red, then green. Purrcy didn't know what to do with that.
"Against the Council of Ten?" Michael asked. Green. He had to give a modern Minami politics lesson to Purrcy at that point.
"Damn Socialists," Purrcy muttered in English.
Michael stared at her. In the same language he said, "Where did you learn to speak English when you're a Jap creature?" Purrcy held as still as hunted prey. "And how would one know about Socialists?"
"I'm international?" she replied, hopefully.
He snorted. "And my momma doesn't know how to make apple pie."
"I don't like baseball?"
He laughed "Okay, I like you. But it still doesn't answer my question."
"Ask next time. Let's figure this one out first, Hacker."
It was Michael's turn to freeze. His look got wry. "Okay, deal. Make it sooner than later."
"Not hard. KR's going to have to do research and I'm going to have to come back after he's got it to give me." That she said in Japanese. He nodded. "Okay, spirits. I certainly understand why you're vengeful against the Council of Ten, though I don't know what happened to you. When you have information to give me on how to help you, then you can use this method to contact Michael. I'll leave it here," she moved the bit light location-wise to outside the cell where Michael could see it but up near the ceiling where others wouldn't see it so well. "Can you get to it over there?" The code blocks moved and the light flicked red then went to green and stayed there.
"Good. I need to know how to find where you are when you aren't in this room so I can come find you without having to be summoned or participate in the soul transfer spell. Spend some time paying attention to how you're getting here and what happens to you when you have to leave. I'll work on creating something a little more robust than a yes or no solution for the next time we talk." The light stayed green, but that was a bit ambivalent. An actual answer wasn't necessary either. "When you feel yourselves leaving, switch the light to red - that's no. When you come back make it green." That would at least tell them when they were in the room.
Purrcy's tail flapped in irritation on the ground - or it would have if KR had one. She just made his face frown as she crossed his arms, then sat cross legged on the ground. At least it was a body nearly her own size. If the balance of being human weren't just a little off from what she'd gotten used to in the felinoid body, it would actually be kind of nice to be human again...though she would really prefer a female body to a male one.
"So, Michael. If the Council of Ten is running the show, and is Socialist in nature, meaning they can do whatever they feel like, and the spirits are from the special section of the prison - which I assume this place is since it's got cells and guards - and they hate KR by extension, then it doesn't sound hopeful that KR is actually going to want to tell you or me anything." She looked up at him, "Even if you are a loyal Socialist Plant Hwayden member."
Michael nodded stoically. "Peons get told things last...or never."
Purrcy mumbled, "Orwellian," then sighed. "Well, if he wants me to continue to talk to them, I will. You don't have to tell him you know anything. Then he'll have to call me back to learn what I know and he can tell me to my face that I don't have sec...the right to know." She shook her head at herself. She'd gotten too relaxed in this place. She spent the next little while adding to her mirror sites and defenses with a few new traps and warning signals thrown in as well. Better to be safe than sorry with a Hacker guard watching over her.
She turned and looked "up" almost too late. She twisted sideways and got nipped, then squashed the bug hard and threw up a top shield and bottom shield at the same time as she sent off a reply volley, wide spread to hide the fact she was vacating. She didn't have only one hiding hole. She'd already learned that lesson: always have more than one fox hole. She also never carried her data with her. That was buried deep and hidden.
Just as she was lifted up by the neck, the light near the ceiling flashed red. "Go chase them, they're gone," she said, "and he's coming back." She was dropped and then she was in her own cat body in the branches of a secure tree. She sighed. Allied with a potential enemy, probably another American. And it was already too much information he knew right there. This was going to get very bad. She quickly worked on digging into her new fox hole and making four more with decoys. She still looked mostly dead when KR summoned her.
"Purrcy," the voice that had been hers just minutes before was casually commanding. She stayed lying on the floor, tail flat, nose on the ground, too. She did let an ear twitch. She was still coming out of the code realm, though she'd already left her fox hole so Michael couldn't know which one it was, nor where. A gentle hand was on her head. "I didn't realize it would become a fight. The guard told me they attacked by possession at the end." The gentleness didn't fool her. He really did believe she was just a dumb monster, for all nine-tails were intelligent, and was callous and casual with the creatures he summoned. She didn't like him. On both levels.
An inner code message flashed across her eyes. Don't tell him they're Adventurers. Yeah, right. That left it so they had no way to get him to tell them anything. Tell him they have a vendetta against Indicus but can only reach him. That was better. It was also better that Michael was willing to help other Adventurers...potentially.
She sent back, Can I tell him they are from the special section?
Not specifically, no. ...From the depths.
A healing spell went off and she opened her eyes. Summoners had some limited healing for their Summons to keep them going if they got too low in HP. She had been coding, and it probably technically did count as a battle. She wasn't sure if she should be grateful to Michael or not. If he hadn't come up with that excuse to save himself, her own lowered HP would have been questioned. It was his fault, though.
As far as talking to KR, that was done mind to mind for Summons such as nine-tails and "werecats" and was part of the contract. She raised her head, then pushed up laboriously to sitting, looking at her current HP count. She wanted to sleep, not give a report. [The four Vengeful Spirits are from the depths of this place where we sit. There is a person in this place they are angry with. It is unclear if it is you specifically or by association. I was unable to determine why the moon must be overhead for them to move.] Her ears drooped as she realized she couldn't have him do the research on how to get rid of spirits. He would expect her to know. [They can't leave this space. They are tied to it. I wasn't able to banish them. They are new to this world.] That was the best she was going to be able to get, most likely.
"From the depths of this place, and new, huh?" KR had a maliciously calculating look on his face. He raised a hand and a second healing spell went off. Purrcy's HP meter went to full, and she suddenly didn't like what look was on his face. "Go looking down there. Go as a werecat so they don't think you're intelligent enough to understand what you're seeing."
She wanted to scream at him. If he was the only Summoner on the Council of Ten, not only - "Begging your pardon, Lord KR, they won't let a cat or a nine-tails down there," Michael said. "That area is tightly restricted."
"Hmm," KR rubbed his cheek. He looked between the two. "Then, Purrcy change into felinoid. HackerM1, you'll take her down there as a special's prisoner. She can learn what we need to know while she's there."
Purrcy's ears went back in fear and dismay, though she'd already changed since that was a required order to follow. Michael was staring at him with wide eyes. "You know that all prisoners are kept at 1HP, right? Not even a Summon can do anything down there."
"She can watch and listen and learn. I'll call her back." Purrcy was not a permanent Summon. She had the standard four hour limit. It still didn't answer to the main problem.
Desperately she wrote to Michael, How is he going to explain to the Council of Ten that the only Summoner on it sent a Summon down to spy in that level on Indicus' workings?
"It's your neck when Indicus and Quon discover you've been snooping down there," Michael said, coolly moving to collect Purrcy.
"And why would they do that," KR said with smooth danger in his voice.
"Because you're the only Summoner they know who would do it...," Michael looked up at him, a hint of danger in his own eyes, "...since you're the only one who can get into this facility."
KR gave a grimace of complete uncaring. "She's going to be there in the guise of an Adventurer. Prisoners on that level disappear all the time. They won't know."
"Can a Summon come back from the dead?" Michael asked with coldness.
KR looked confused. "Why would Purrcy die?"
"Because the Adventurers do," Michael said as if he didn't care.
KR moved fast. He had Michael's arm in his grip and his face was angry. "Adventurers don't die."
Michael looked at him coolly. "Says the one who doesn't know what goes on down there."
"And you do?" KR said dangerously low.
"I've carried Adventurers into the workroom and had nothing to carry back out again. You're welcome to go ask Kazuhiko what he knows." Michael didn't back down, though he didn't flare up either.
KR waved a hand. "They show back up at the Cathedral."
"Maybe. But can a Summon if they decide she's the next experiment? And what will you do if they discover that she really is a Summon, not an Adventurer while they're experimenting?"
KR frowned, considering it. One thing Purrcy did have in her favor was that at the moment she was also his "pet" to some degree. At least, some might consider that being in her favor. She didn't, but it did give him some pause. "So you're a guard down there, too?" Michael reluctantly nodded. "Then you put her in and you watch over her. If it looks like they're going to take her, don't let them until her time's about up. Purrcy, if you get the opportunity to, change back and snoop around." He waved his hand at the two of them, ordering them on by gesture. There was no help for it but to walk.
KR let them get ahead, then followed them down. Since it was the same stairwell, they couldn't talk out loud, though Purrcy wasn't going to anyway. She did an excellent imitation of a prisoner that really, really didn't want to go where she was going...mostly because it wasn't an imitation. When the door closed above them to let them know KR had left the stairwell, Michael growled, in English, "Damn Japs." Purrcy's ear twitched, mostly because she'd heard it. "If they come for you, I'm killing you and meeting you at the Cathedral. Stay put over there, got it?, but in hiding."
You assume much.
He glared at her. "Monsters can't code."
She glared back. No. You assume I can leave once I get down there. It's protected by Hacker code. I've explored this whole building, being bored up there for hours. I can't even get down into this level we're headed to, and I've had the hours to try.
Michael immediately stopped. "Then you're not going in."
Purrcy shook her head. Summons must obey.
His eyes narrowed. "You're really both?" She nodded. "...Did you code it?"
A side effect I didn't account for.
He sighed. "Then put me on your friend list. If you need me, call immediately. I'll have Kazuhiko send down a distraction and come for you. If you can get out to the Cathedral, contact me immediately on resurrect. I'll hope the summon wears off and you get out that way. I'll stay at least that long." That worked for her, since it was the best she was going to get. When the friend listing was done, he opened the door to the bottom level of the prison and led her in. They wouldn't have been able to get through at all except he was a guard recognized by the code.
Michael took Purrcy to a cell he hoped no one would care to find her in, motioned for her to lie down and gave her an apologetic look. He hit her with Life Drain, a Monk's one-hit that automatically took all HP from the opponent except the final one. Being a Monk had been one of the reasons he'd been accepted into the prison, and down at this level. There was a continuously running Bard spell on the floor that drained HP slowly - just enough to always keep everyone at 1HP once they got there. It didn't affect the guards too much since they had high enough HP for it to not matter.
They met in the code realm. It didn't take HP to walk the halls, just to spell create. "You're awake enough to know if someone's coming, right?" she asked him. He nodded. "I'm not. I was already wiped out enough that to go to 1HP means I'm unconscious. How he thought I'd learn anything at 1HP I have no idea. I really despise him."
"No doubt. They're all nut cases." He agreed. He looked around at the shielding of the special's floor, not having done it before. She looked around the area, having wondered what was down here for some time now. She sent out warning gnats and fleas - tiny bugs that would alert her if the Hacker that had created this space showed up, and she kept very quiet about it. Their personal shields were protecting them where they were at the cell, but to move out of the specific area might cause trouble. She knew that if she were a Hacker and had made a space like this, she'd worry about someone being brought in that could take it down from the inside.
"What level Hacker does it take to create this?" Michael said after a bit.
"Either very high, or one with a lot of patience," she answered back. She was already carefully coding in that way herself. Since she could move in microseconds, the half-second she was getting before the HP drain went into effect gave her a quarter second's worth of 2 HP she could use to code, and she used it. She layered one bit on after another as if programming in machine language itself, setting it until it was self-replicating at the proper speed. She was creating a ladder, or a chute, to hopefully get her to freedom.
Getting in was impossible...she'd found the weakness on the inside, and there was a possibility it would get her out. She was definitely not going to leave getting out to chance or waste that many quarter seconds between now and two hours from now. Michael didn't even notice she was programming and hadn't seen the mini-bugs go out. Even he expected that she wouldn't be able to do anything at "1HP". That was just fine. She wasn't ready to trust him.
"Where's the room they do the experiments in?" she asked him. He turned and pointed. It glowed with protections as well. "Ouch. Not much gets out of that room, and nothing gets in, huh?"
" 'Bout right," he answered darkly. "Though apparently four of nine spirits did."
"Do you think the rest are still in there?"
"Or destroyed already."
"Good point. Now if I were still here tomorrow at moon time I'd be able to see if they arrive down here or outside this floor. I'm a little surprised they aren't locked in here."
"Good point. I wonder how they got out." He frowned and they both compared the spell protections on the smaller room to the ones on the floor until they had it figured out. The small room actually had hard-coded in a line about spirits, while the floor didn't.
"Sloppy," Purrcy said. "If they figured out spirits were in that room and put up protections, they should have known to put them on the outer one as well."
"They might not know." Michael said calmly. "It might have been an afterthought or a general list of everything for that room. The floor only really needs to be set on Adventurer level."
Purrcy nodded silently, still looking at various code, wary of traps. There wasn't much in the way of that, though. Not that she was going to relax, but it was mostly limited to barrier protections - in a big way. Sometimes coding worked like this. A Hacker learned one specific skill set and stuck to it. Sometimes. She was going to assume a very high level, very competent Hacker. She might stay alive that way.
She was also remembering to look up and down, now that Michael had taught her that other Hackers did actually think in three dimensions in the code realm. It was a three dimensional realm, but most Hackers moved in it as if they were walking on the earth itself. And if you ran into another Hacker it was actually pretty rare.
She finally returned to her cell, though not awareness, since it was a safe place to sit. She sat next to Michael instead of herself, though. He finally wandered over and sat down as well. "What are you doing?"
"Reading the history."
"How do you do that?"
She taught him and had him read it on the main entry door for clues. She was reading the history on the experiment room, wishing she could read inside without getting inside. Michael suddenly flew into his body and she hid in reaction, watching and listening. The main door opened and she saw the inspection codes flare then settle to green until the door closed and they went dull again.
She didn't have eyes to see in the base realm, but she could see the glow of the person that had entered. It had to be the same Hacker. His shields were impenetrable and thickly layered on - rather a waste, actually. It was possible to do it without that many layers. She read them from her hiding place, narrowing her eyes to focus in on the code layers, realizing that's what it was. Almost more as if he was a spell caster that just layered on each protection, one on top of the next, rather than actually coded.
Spells could be read in the code realm that way. It was possible this was not a Hacker at all, but an Enchanter or a Kannagi...or something new altogether. She very cautiously opened his status data, going through eleven mirror sites and a few worm holes for good measure. She kept it over him, too, not downloading it to anywhere, since she could see him. The flare blinded her. The room was keyed, but she'd captured the data before the blind happened. It had been whole-room and obviously acted as a 'barrier' against Hackers. So...he knew, or anticipated, reads on his data that he didn't want others to see, but he didn't know how to hide the data itself. That was rather telling.
The person was passing by closely. "KR's back then?"
"Yes, Lord Quon," Michael answered respectfully.
"What's he checking this time? Whether his favorite unicorn gave birth to his child or not?" Quon snickered at his own joke. Michael remained silent. It wasn't his place to say one way or the other, or to care. "I've got time for one today. Pull one out." Quon said casually and headed for the experimental room.
Michael moved to a different cell than the one Purrcy was in and opened it, pulling out a man who looked like he'd been there a long time - almost dusty. High level Adventurers could carry quite a lot, including other Adventurers easily. Michael slung him over his shoulder and walked up to Quon. Quon carefully opened the door to the experiment room. Purrcy watched the spell he cast to get it to open to begin with, then read as much data from inside the room as possible before the door closed behind Michael as he left it empty handed.
When he arrived back by her cell, he returned to the code realm. Purrcy appeared and put her finger to her lips, then handed him a very fine thread. She put her lips to his ear. "This will tell you what is happening to that man. Feed the data to yourself very carefully so that if there is trap data coming down the line you can filter it out early. I have other data to look at from inside the room."
He looked at her in shock, started to talk normally, then dropped to a whisper as well. "Y-your casting?"
She smiled and returned to her own work. He decided that the data feed was more important, like she knew he would, and went to work on letting it feed through. By the time Quon came out of the room and left without paying even Michael attention, they both had a lot more information than they'd had before. Michael interrupted her review, since his source of information was gone.
"Hey, can you get out of here? I'd like to take this up to Kazuhiko now instead of later. I'd take you with me except once you're read as having come in, you can't get out."
Purrcy blinked, then smiled and patted him on the head. "You can take me out if that's the only negating factor. Come inside and get me. Just hide me in your shirt."
He blinked at her then shook his head. He returned to his body and checked the area for other guards. There was only one other one in the other hallway on the other side of the experiment room, which was in the center of the floor and took up the center half of the hall. He opened the door quietly and walked over to her body.
For her part, she had partially entered her body. At the highest point of the HP drain cycle she drained him for just enough HP more and changed into a kitten. She slipped inside her anima, going unconscious in the process just as he gently picked her up in his now very big hands.
When she revived, she was being held in those same large hands and there were new smells she was unfamiliar with in the room they were in. Slowly she twitched ears and nose until she had placed where people were and likely races. "Purrcy, there's only about ten minutes of your time left," Michael told her.
She slowly uncurled, rolling onto her back to open her eyes and look at his now larger face in her view. She held up a paw. He bent down and she put her paw on his forehead and data dumped. Stay safe, she told him.
"You, too. Where's home really for you?"
Out in the wilds between here and Akiba.
"She says Eastal, Boss."
"Good, Good. Tell her to get to Shiroe of Log Horizon in Akiba, but to get to him clandestinely. He's got so many eyes on him that he should list as an Eye-Wart. Tell him what you learned here, try to get more info as you go. The more he knows, the sooner he can act."
"Who is he?" Michael asked.
Purrcy rolled onto her side and lay there. She was awake and full HP, but she still hadn't slept. The man across the desk looking at her was hard bitten, both in the character he'd chosen from the computer screen and in his eyes, an obvious high level warrior, of the Samurai Class. He looked at Michael soberly. "Shiroe is the Master Strategist who led the Debauchery Tea Party to and through the hardest of the hard quests on servers all over the world. I was part of that group. So was KR. ...And so was Indicus. Indicus hates him because she was also an Enchanter who went with us, but of the two he got the attention and was the better at strategy."
The man who came to that place. Is he a Hacker?
Michael answered her, Quon was a company employee, but a QA, not a programmer. ...But there are signs there is another Hacker here. Be careful.
Purrcy shivered, and Michael shifted his hold on her and covered her with one hand to warm her. Ask him...can I trust KR?
Michael hesitated just a little, then asked the question very quietly. Kazuhiko laced his fingers together and put them over his mouth, but left one opening for her to see his mouth move. With her cat ears and watching his mouth, she could just make out, no. "I think," Kazuhiko said quietly, "that he is doing his best...at playing the game until it's time to go home."
Purrcy blinked, then nodded. She understood. She bent her neck enough to lick Michael's hand. The finger closest to her head rubbed it and her ears moved to the pleasure standing. Michael. Just before I return, you must take me back down to 1HP. He froze just a bit. KR will summon me again. He has earned the skill Double Summon. He won't wait, even though it should have been obvious from the beginning that any creature at 1HP is unconscious. You must wait until very close to my time to return, but don't fail to do it.
Michael's shoulders slumped slightly and he sighed. He rubbed her head with his thumb. She closed her eyes and waited, then at the right time, nodded. There was a searing pain, then nothing.
-:-:-:-:-
"KR did call me and I was completely unconscious for nearly the full four hours recovering, even with his spell attempts to revive me. He nearly went storming after Quon and Indicus, or alternatively Michael. I just told him that from the time Michael had hit me to take me down to 1HP once we got to the special's section until I had just awoken I had known nothing but unconsciousness. He was extremely frustrated, but he'd earned what he'd gotten for not thinking that one through." Purrcy shrugged then sighed, rubbing her hand over her head.
"Of course, to get here I had to actually work my way back having been in Minami. It gets rather frustrating to have him call me when I'm half way, or even at the gate almost stepping over. ...Or rather it did get frustrating. He can still transfer since he knows me, but when I hit a high enough level, I got to choose whether I'd go or not. Most high level Summons will go just because they've learned to work with their master, even if they are nasty about it. I'm a bit stubborn and he gets frustrated so I go about forty percent of the time. Otherwise he transfers and won't let me go back for days at a time. I'm not sure that's worth it, though, for him."
Purrcy turned, "Nyanta, I'll let you know by visual clue when the transfer, or the summon, is going to happen. You can let him know you're present, or hide until I'm back, your call. If you eventually get to werecat transformation, you can let him see that and let him have a taste of his own medicine for making me have to sleep, eat, and piss from his body for days on end." She turned back to Shiroe. "I was hoping once I talked to Nyanta, he would introduce me to you, if he could. I wasn't expecting to fall into your lap from your tree."
Michael added his final summary, "After that time, KR wouldn't let me be the guard on his cell at the station. Something about how I wasn't supposed to have taken Purrcy down to 1HP really...which would have meant my job in that level and Kazuhiko needed me there more than KR did. He would still come in for other Soul Possessions, but he never did for Purrcy again."
Michael paused, his fist clenching a bit. "I continued to learn as much as I could, but eventually even that got dangerous as the Hacker that was there started to see the signs another Hacker was messing around. I wasn't as neat as Purrcy, though I was trying to be. Even the one example she gave me was extremely useful."
"Kazuhiko finally pulled me out and sent me here, as I said. Since we were supposed to get here clandestinely, I didn't come to you right away. Then came the quarantine, followed by the notices for the classes." Michael shook his head. "I was hoping...and was very glad...to see it was Purrcy who was the teacher. We played the roles set so that we could get in where we needed to be to get here tonight. When we're told eyes are on you, we assume Hacker eyes are included in that, so we play extra cautious."
"Is the rest of your story true, Purrcy?" Tetora asked.
"Yes. I've had two years to fit a lot of busyness into, and frustration as well," Purrcy said.
There was a pause and a sense of discomfort settled over the room. Finally Minori shifted and said, "Purrcy, your history -"
"- is just as readable as that room's was. I have to work hard to be careful, Minori-chan," Purrcy said kindly.
Rudy opened his mouth and Shiroe leaned forward and put a finger to his mouth as he leaned on his hand, as if he was thinking a thought. His eyes were on Purrcy and very sharp. Rudy's mouth slowly closed and the juniors all swallowed and tried hard not to look at each other. "Purrcy," Shiroe said thoughtfully, as if he had moved in order to make a comment, "what will you do if KR calls for you while you're still here?"
"Well, I did ask for you to come up with a statement for me to give him," she said casually. "And then I'll have to fight my way back, of course. It's one of the reasons I'm frustrated with the wedding planning taking so long. With every delay, it's a possibility that the delay becomes the additional number of days it takes to get back here."
"I think if it was a summon and he asked me, KR would think it was hilarious that I thought I'd be marrying Nyanta. He might even call to warn you that the foxtail lady is going to eat him - which I'm not, I promise. If I were such a creature, as I've already said, Shiroe passed the test and chose knowledge and wisdom over treasures. The contract was acceptable."
Shiroe's eyes sparked and he sat up, nodded, then sat back casually, folding his arms and considering what had been said and what he wanted to do about it.
-:-:-:-:-
"Purrcy, I understand that after two years of being alone in the wild, you'd be impatient to be married properly to Nyanta, but as your Guildmaster, and because I expect the two of you to be able to get back home, I need to be sure I take into account your futures. Many of Akiba's Guildmasters have become highly successful business men in their own right, and you've properly been making positive relationships with them. Your fathers would be disappointed in you, and irritated with me, if you didn't include them as guests for the wedding. Even if your mothers make you do it all over again, they can't complain if you've brought with you those additional contacts in the business world. If you're summoned, we'll wait. I haven't set the date yet and Calasin's tailors need time to make the dresses anyway. The food can be stored the day it's made and not be any worse for it no matter how long it takes. I hope you will bear it properly."
Purrcy bowed her head obediently. "Yes, Guildmaster Shiroe." Nyanta put a consoling paw on her arm.
Shiroe's attention left her. "Michael, what were you sent here to tell me?"
Michael nodded firmly and got down to business. "The next day, at moon time, Kazuhiko had me take the list of missing Adventurers up to that room. All four were on the list, and they were able to confirm the names of the other five. Apparently those four had been banished from the floor, but the other five erased while in the smaller room, so some education that changed things had gone on. I wasn't able to learn anything of significance from them other than that since I didn't have Purrcy to code anything more than the bit light she'd done."
"I did follow them that next time, not having time before, but all they really did was fade away. It was the data link to the man in that room while we were down there that gave me the most data. Quon cast a spell on him that held his body in place, so it couldn't disperse, then hit him in the head to kill him. The psyche or spirit came out of the body glowing, so I figure he has a spell running in there now to let him know when that happens. It wanted to go a specific direction, and Quon seemed to expect that. He cast another spell to prevent the spirit from going the direction it wanted to go and it stopped trying to go anywhere at all. Then he cast a spell that forced the spirit back to the body."
"Once he got it to 'overlap' if you will, he cast a binding spell to hold the two overlapped, then a healing spell and a resurrection spell followed by another healing spell, but the spirit wouldn't stay in the body. He kept trying various binding, shielding, and healing spells until he finally gave up in frustration, and cast a spell that destroyed the spirit and then the body. I'm still not sure if they're trying to circumvent the Cathedral, learn how they work so they can create one later, or just what - I couldn't ask, after all."
"I am excited, though, at what we found here the other day. Finding the life lines underneath the floor of the code realm and following them to the nexus to find cut lines looks to me exactly like what he was doing. Preventing the spirit from leaving that room seems like the cutting of the life line. The four who are in the building can't get up because their lines are cut, so they have to stay down here. I think the moon pulls them because that's where the nexus is attached. When it's overhead, they want to rise up to it and can't, like they are still stored in the lines underneath and the moon calls to them to come out of the lines. Something like that." Michael shrugged.
Purrcy shifted. "I would like to follow the cut lines up to the moon and see if by following the lines we can get into the server, or at least into the memory of the Adventurer that is there. If we can get up there, we might be able to match the correct cut cords and repair them so at least those four spirits can get back. We already know that the computer and the Cathedral restore the physical body automatically once the spirit arrives in that space, so they may be able to return. They'll probably be fiercely angry, if they remember what happened, but alive with a body is better than mostly dead, or completely dead like the others."
Shiroe frowned. "What about degradation?"
Purrcy shook her head. "I don't know. It's possible they could come back much lesser creatures, or even insane depending on what data got lost. Sadly, it becomes part of the experiment, but since they do remember they're Adventurers, I would rather try than leave them helpless. The only other kind thing to do is to destroy them also so they don't have to continue endlessly in the cycle they're in."
She paused, "I also have a theory...that the Overwritten and the Observers are like us. They were a first experiment, if you will, and they are now all spirits whose link to the physical was severed - like they were all destroyed and sent to their computer all at once, then the nexus as a whole severed. They've learned enough to figure out how to get over to our server and use the data in the expansion pack to regain a physical body and come back down here, but they can't use their own anymore because that link is gone for them now. Being able to get up there might help us to understand better what they are and how to either help or fight them."
Shiroe nodded, an interested look on his face. "I'll have my network keep an ear out for Overwritten sightings and let you know if one shows up close enough for you to get to."
"Thank you," Purrcy said.
"Can you repair the cords?" he asked next.
Both Purrcy and Michael shook their heads. "It's not code. It's more like the structure of the code realm."
"And magic works on it?"
"Apparently."
Shiroe considered a little longer, then pushed up his glasses. He leaned forward and the room became just a little chillier. "Purrcy."
She sat up a little straighter. "Yes, Guildmaster Shiroe?"
"Tell me. What is the physical equivalent location to the nexus?"
Her eyes went just a little distant. "The location of the main Japan server, the Maze of Eternity."
A major raid zone on Theldesia. Of course. It would take over a month to complete that dungeon...and Plant Hwayden had already sent three legion raid parties there and a fourth was currently trying yet again to defeat it. Shiroe had been tempted to create his own raid party to defeat it on more than one occasion. ...But Purrcy had already given him his solution. "Purrcy, tell me. How many cut lines are there?"
"Fifteen, Guildmaster Shiroe."
Shiroe rose and went to his desk, shuffled through the papers until he found the list of missing Adventurers he'd received from Kazuhiko. He took that and a pen to Michael, and handed it to him.
Michael took the list and the pen, then circled four names and crossed off five. He handed the list and pen back to Shiroe. That left the rest with an unknown location of their spirit and body. Shiroe looked down at the list, scanning those names and adjusting his glasses. "Purrcy, tell me. What is the current theory on the remaining six spirits?"
"That the line was cut sufficiently long after they were killed that the spirits are trapped in the memory on the moon server, unable to return."
Of course. That confirmed the basis for her theory on the Overwritten and Observers. "Okay. We'll go - after I've put together the final plan and preparations are complete." He looked over to Tetora. "While I'm working on that, you'll finish up the classes you're teaching, Purrcy. If we can get to the wedding before we go, we will. If KR calls you back, tell him I want you for the raid and he's to not call you until we're done."
"Yes, Guildmaster Shiroe."
"That'll about do it for tonight then." He didn't move, no one else did either for just a moment, then Purrcy and Michael both rose, bowed, and walked out. He sighed. Tetora shook his head.
Shiroe called up the guild hall permissions and changed them, locking those two in the building and everyone else out, locked the two temporary prisoners out of his office, ...and set the permissions on the safe-room code-and-scroll spell over his office to make it so they couldn't hear or participate in what was next. Then he said, "I had hoped they'd be able to stay. The history must be sufficiently difficult to block."
"Is that where you want me to start, Councilor?" Tetora asked.
"Yes," Shiroe answered, "but I have a specific thing related to that for you to do. Hold off for now." Tetora nodded.
"At least we know what the boss is now," Tetora sat back, contented knowing that much finally.
"I'd say it feels like a double boss, or at least two major fights to get to the end." They'd been waiting for over a year for the battle against Plant Hwayden to begin. Now they'd been invited to that dance by two obvious plants with a distraction that might help Adventurers in need. Shiroe nodded agreement to the assessment.
"Massive traps in both rooms," Touya complained.
"It's going to be hard to navigate, even with doing what they want us to do in the first room," Minori cautioned.
Naotsugu growled. "Hate having to give them what they want just to get what we want."
"We want it too," Shiroe reminded them. "It will be the biggest clue to getting home we can get. I'd say that reward is worth it to me."
"And...the reward from the second is myine - and well worth it," Nyanta said quietly.
"I'm glad you feel that way, Chief," Shiroe said with neutral calm. "You're likely to have the greatest difficulty in that battle of any of us." He settled back into his seat and looked at them all with calm sharpness. "Here's the outline."