Crisis From Below!
Proxy's POV
"Go, Gaya Drake, the Universal Force! Destroy BrioGear Howling Guardian and end this lowlife!" A huge robotic knight, attached to a white robotic horse with wings, swung its weapons and stabbed my Synchro in the chest.
For those wondering what was going on, after the duel against Picaro, and the not so shocking reveal that Evan and Avice were the legendary duelists who created my deck in the first place, they accepted to give me real tutoring about how to duel instead of that crappy tutorial with the overconfident A.I. duelist. Because of that I was given a better form of training in the form of… dueling the same overconfident A.I. duelist. Actually, scratch that last sentence, I wasn't trying to duel against it, but to not lose on my second turn and I was falling miserably. So far I had lost twenty seven duels and had won zero!
Back to the duel, as I was saying, the powerful Fusion monster pierced through my Synchro monster's chest and blew it apart. I covered my eyes with my hands, but the power of the explosion knocked me off my feet and I was send rolling over the white floor of Evan and Avice's private LINK VRAINS server. I screamed and then my back slammed into one of the floating cubes that the server was full with. They all came in various sizes and had different functions, some could open to reveal a portal leading to a different part of the server, others had computers inside them, the A.I. I was dueling came out of a cube as well.
『Proxy LP: 700 – 1100 → 0 Hand: 1』
『Winner: Masou』
"Twenty eight." I muttered, the A.I.s winning streak kept on growing up while my self-esteem took another hit to the guts.
"You humans get more and more pathetic with each passing day." Masou laughed at me while sitting on top of a cube. "The last two could at least take a bit more damage that you, though they too were very pathetic. Hey, hey, you are a female specimen right? Why don't you give up on dueling and go doing something more lady-like, like playing with dolls? My calculations stated that the possibility of the existence of another female duelist with the capabilities of Miss Silver Star stands at zero point zero, zero, zero, sixty-seven percent!"
And that was when I stopped paying attention to the A.I. and walked over to see what PhantomFire - or Evan as I'm more comfortable calling him when we aren't in a crisis – was doing. He had several holographic screens opened before him and was entering different codes and commands, before him were two transparent cubes with Gloomy Ruby and Blaze Rose's bodies resting inside of them. He and Avice took their unconscious bodies from the streets of LINK VRAINS and put them in that server for monitoring and research.
"I'm not trying to sound ungrateful sir, but can't we change the A.I.s dueling mode from Hard to Normal? Maybe Easy?" I was really tired getting my ass handed to me by the machine and have the beating be followed by a barrage of warm insults. Plus that, I was a newbie so couldn't we start with baby steps first?
"The A.I. has always been on its easiest mode." Evan responded to me without breaking eye contact with the screens. "You are just too weak to beat it, but that isn't mine nor the machine's problem."
I put a hand over my chest, feeling my self-esteem getting beaten to death by chicken legs. "As… encouraging those words are… I find it hard to believe that I was dueling on Easy Mode. That thing would give even Playmaker trouble and we both know how skilled of a duelist he is. You know, being the hero of LINK VRAINS and all that isn't just for show."
"I would say that Playmaker is a second rate duelist on a very good day." I noticed how Evan narrowed his eyes while talking about Playmaker's dueling skills. "His dueling skills might be decent enough to beat a toddler, but this A.I. is made to challenge real duelists not some push overs. I mean, dear Ra, have you seen him how fast he burns through his hand for a single Link three monster? Give me his deck and watch me spamming at least three Link monsters using only two monsters!"
"I think I'm starting to see why Blaze Rose and Rocketeer disliked you so much." I muttered and sat on one of the nearby cubes myself.
Evan's expectations from a duelist were just monstrous, he wanted everyone to be either able to pull FTKs (It means First Turn Kills, Avice told me that!) one hundred percent of the time or they aren't worth the light of the day for him. Pretty ironic given how it took him three turns to beat Picaro and Blaze Rose in a Tag-Duel and that happened only after his Life Points dropped to 50, but I wasn't going to judge him like how he liked to do with others. I pressed my cube to float closer to that of the unconscious girls and ran a hand over the transparent material that separated them from us. It hurt me to know that they were in this condition because of the person that I used to call my best friend.
"How is the creation of a removal program going on?" I asked and turned back to Evan.
The man stopped typing on his holograms and grabbed the edges with both arms, leaning his head so that his hair was covering his eyes. It was a clue that things weren't going well. Asking that question was such a stupid from me to do. Evan and Avice had spent more time trying to find a cure than anyone else, for some reason they felt responsible because, well, I didn't understand it well myself, but they said that if they had acted sooner those incidents could have been prevented.
"This virus' coding is very similar to the one found in Blue Angel, it seems that Rocketeer has copied it, but the removal program that I copied from Playmaker could only work on exactly the same data sequence as Blue Angel's virus." Evan closed the holograms, which turned into a cube, then pushed it away from himself. "Using the data inside the arm I tore from Rocketeer's body, I was able to create a pseudo removal program that would stop the virus' secondary function of disabling the victim's organs from functioning. There isn't enough data to create a program that could completely remove it and wake up the girls."
"You aren't going to give up, are you?" I know that he spent a lot of his time trying to come up with a solution, but we couldn't give up on these Charisma Duelist, right? It wouldn't be right if we did that.
"Heh, never." Evan chuckled and leaned toward me, putting his hand on top of my head. He was five years older than me, so this felt like spending time with the big brother that I never had. "No matter how long it would take me, I'm going to find a cure for them, that's my responsibility after all. In fact… I think I know where we could find the data that we need in order to make a fully working removal program."
"R-really?" He could actually do something like that? That sounded amazing!
"Yeah, there is a part in the deeper area of LINK VRAINS were brokers of information, hackers and cyber criminals usually stay. SOL doesn't care enough about those criminals to try and ban them, so they are left on their own. There was once someone who had afflictions with the Knights of Hanoi, which he used to sell data about them. Zaizen had tasked me with protecting him during a period when the Knights tried to eliminate him and stop the leaking of data, but you could guess how well their little operation has gone."
I stared open mouthed at Evan while he explained everything to me. He was looking cooler and cooler to me the more time I spent around him. Or at least while he wasn't throwing insults around and calling people worthless.
"Great! Let's get there then!" I nodded eagerly and ran toward one of the cubes that could be used as portal. But something yanked me back before I could reach it.
"We are not going there today." Evan told me while holding me by the collar above the ground. It was embarrassing that he was able to keep me in the air like I was a rag doll.
"B-but, if there is the possibility to find what you need to get the cure, why don't we go there as fast as possible?" I couldn't understand his logic! Why did he tell me all that just then to follow with 'we aren't going'?
"You have been dueling straight for several hours without a break and I was trying to write new codes for twice that long." Evan told me and slowly set me back on the ground. "I agree that we must save the girls as fast as possible, but knowing when to fight and when to rest is a part of our job as well. There is no danger for their bodies to give up anymore, but if we remain logged in for too long without medical equipment, there will be lasting effects on our bodies. I know about people who had died online because they lost track of time inside LINK VRAINS."
"I-I see." I nodded to Evan. If we died while looking for the data it wouldn't help anyone, less to Gloomy Ruby and Blaze Rose, whose only hope was currently in the two of us.
"Good, then let's log out."
I nodded and the two of us pressed the log out button on our Duel Disks at the same time. My vision faded to black, then I opened my eyes again and found myself lying in my bed. I put my hands down and used them to support myself while raising up into a sitting position, but suddenly I felt a strong pain going through my back. In fact, my whole body tingled from the lack of movement I had in the last few hours. Never the less, I was able to force myself to stand up from the bed and head toward the door.
Taking the handle, I slowly turned and opened it opened. As I stepped outside, the sound of another door closing could be heard and I leaned my head to see Evan closing the door in the very end of the corridor. The boy noticed me and smiled before making his way toward me, I stayed there and watched him, while he raised his hand and put it on top of my head like he did in LINK VRAINS. Since I was a single child, I never knew that it could feel like to have an older sibling patting your head and though I always saw Elizabeth in the role of my older sister, we weren't related to blood or anything so it was weird to ask her to pat me.
"Come on, Avice is cooking dinner nothing." Evan told me and walked past me. For a moment, I forgot everything serious I had to take care of and followed after him with a careless smile.
The next day, I woke up very late, around 10 AM if not later, one of the positives of not going to school, though that didn't matter because today was Saturday, so even those who had school, weren't going to it today. When I walked into the living room, I found Avice sitting on the sofa with a laptop in her hands, writing something. She told me that Evan had some things to do today and would come back to take me for our special mission later today, so I had a few hours to waste fooling around.
After having breakfast, I headed out and walked toward the nearest bus stop. Den City was a huge place to be sure and the house I was living in was a bit too far away from the center that walking on foot to there could be seen as the more optimal option. Luckily, I didn't have to waste any of the money that Avice gave me for transport because while I walked down one of the streets, I found Kusanagi's truck parked near an edge. Strange, why did they change position now of all times?
Anyway, I walked over to the back of the truck and knocked two times on the door. There were several seconds of silence after which I hear something clicking and the truck opened with Kusanagi greeting me.
"Good day, Kusanagi." I greeted him and stepped inside.
"Good day to you as well, Roxy." He replied and closed the door behind me. Yusaku was already there watching something on the computer screens. "I didn't expect you to find the truck on your own. Unless Yusaku listened to me and warned you where we were."
"Sorry, that's a negative." I shook my head. "My house is two streets from here and I just happened to walk by. But why did you have to change the location? Did something happened that I don't know about?"
"Other than Yusaku trying to get me bankrupt, not much happened." Kusanagi replied and sat back on his chair next to Yusaku. "I came here to try and sell some hotdogs, warned Yusaku in case something shows up to know where he could find me, but instead he came here from the morning and I had to close for the whole day."
Yeah, I could imagine Yusaku pulling something like that, too bad for Kusanagi though since that wasn't a winning business plan that he was following there.
"Hey cutie!" I narrowed my eyes a little knowing who was the only person that would call me that, or to be more accurate, the only A.I. I turned to ask it what this was about, when suddenly out of Yusaku's Duel Disk jumped a small black humanoid with purple lines running down its body and made a pose. "Ta-da! What do you say, do I look cool!"
"Woah!" I clapped, the little Ai had a body on its own! "That's great! Did Yusaku made it for you?"
"As if!" Ai crossed its arms and turned his back to Yusaku. "He didn't even compliment me about it! If I were to hope on You-suck-o to do something nice for me I would be have been reduced to a Notepad program by now!"
I giggled at that and turned toward Yusaku. He wasn't paying any attention toward me as usually, but that didn't bother me. I took the last free chair in the truck and moved to sit beside Kusanagi, watching the two work and surf through the data they had acquired.
"So, does anyone know how Blue Angel is?" I asked them, trying to break the silence that was starting to form.
"I looked up in the hospital's data and found that she has awoken." Kusanagi told me and pressed some button that caused the screen in front of me to change and show some letters from the hospital's record – knowing Kusanagi, it was probably a private record as well. "She is going to be discharge by tomorrow. The other victims however…"
"I know." I sighed and leaned back in my chair. "None of them has woken up. The remove program that Playmaker won from Revolver could only work on Blue Angel, we will need a different one for the other victims."
"You seem to be well informed." Yusaku threw that line out and returned to pressing the keyboard.
Should I tell him that I'm now working in tandem with Evan and Avice? They didn't seem to be in good relations with Playmaker and he probably didn't like them as well because, well, it's Yusaku Fujiki that we are talking about here! I'm worried to tell him about my new partnership, would he and Kusanagi view it as a sort of betrayal, or since we are both fighting on the same side they wouldn't mind? I wanted to find out what they thought about that, but part of me was also scared that I might get kicked out of the group because of that. It will be what it will be!
"I'm currently helping PhantomFire and Silver Star to ending the saga with the Hanoi virus." I looked away from them and admitted it. "They also promised to teach me how to duel better. I'm sorry, but I had to do something about everyone else who got hurt from Hanoi's actions! You understand, don't you!?"
"Be careful."
"Huh?" I blinked in disbelieve. The two didn't even turn to look at me, their eyes were focused on the screens before them and nothing else seemed to matter.
Of course, that was how they were on a daily basis so it didn't surprise me so much their neglected attitude toward what I was telling them, as Yusaku's response. He didn't ask me question, nor tried to build some sort of logical bridges as to why I should have accepted the Greysons' offer and instead just wished me good luck. What the heck was going on? Did the Knights of Hanoi kidnapped the real Playmaker during the night and replaced him with some puppet that has his jerk-like attitude, but lacks anything else about Yusaku's personality. Well, given how far his personality goes, it probably would take Hanoi half a day to program a robot that acts exactly like Yusaku.
"Um, I don't think you listened to what I said." I rubbed my hands together nervously; they definitely haven't heard me clearly!
"You said that you found new people to be partner with." That was sort of what I said, yes… "So I told you to be careful because the Knights of Hanoi might be everywhere."
"So, wait. You aren't mad at me?" I asked him. "I mean, don't take me wrong, I will still be here to help you guys, but this is something important that I need to take care of."
"Don't worry." Kusanagi put a hand on my shoulder and nodded. "If we weren't busy looking for Hanoi, Yusaku and I would have helped you out with saving the other victims. Since we couldn't do that, it's good that at least you could."
Ah, yeah, they had a point there. This wasn't about dividing into groups, but about doing our best to protect LINK VRAINS. It didn't matter if I were with them or Evan and Avice, as long as our goals were the same, all of us would be allies! I smiled and nodded to Kusanagi; we would do our best to make Playmaker's job easier as well. I promise that we are going to do our best for everyone's sake!
"So, I got a few hours to kill. Do you need help with something?" I asked Kusanagi. Even though I wasn't good with technologies, I would make sure to give my best!
At the end of the day it turned out that I couldn't learn how to code properly for the life of me. After almost messing up some data extraction I spent the remaining time sitting on the chair – on a safe distance from the computers –watching Yusaku and Kusanagi working. After doing nothing for an hour, I finally couldn't take it any longer and excused myself before leaving. Also, let it remain between us only but I used the money that Avice game for transport to buy white chocolate.
"I'm home." I said once I got back to the house.
Leaving my shoes next to the door, I walked in the living room and found Avice still writing something on her laptop. She stopped for a moment and took a cup with some dark liquid in it from the table next to the sofa. The girl then turned her eyes toward me, looking at her green orbs that looked like they were filled with some sort of deep knowledge I quickly began to feel awkward around her. She must have realized it as well, but despite that Avice moved a bit to the side of the sofa and patted the spot next to her – she wanted me to sit down.
"Is this about… well, something?" I asked her and after some hesitation forced myself to sit down.
"No, I just thought that having some company while drinking my hot chocolate wouldn't be too bad." She shook the cup with the chocolate, making it move in waves inside. I tried to keep my eyes on her, but they always slipped toward her drink to watch her playing with it. "I saw some of your duels against the training A.I. It was horrible."
"Ugh." I groaned and threw my head back against the sofa. Why did they have to bring that up?!
"Not that it matters." Avice stuck her index finger into the hot chocolate and stir the liquid before licking her finger. Why was she acting so weird… "I want you to know that you will never be able to reach the dueling standard that I and my brother desire. No one ever could do that, so don't let us talking down on you to get to your psyche, ok? We are just horrible by nature."
I knew that last thing for a while now, but good that Avice confirmed it herself. That didn't make me feel less like a failure though. No, I didn't feel like someone who failed to do something, but as someone who has committed a crime! I was blindly believing that Rocketeer was a good guy and never noticed that he was connected to the incidents! He was a stranger, I should have been more careful trusting him, but I didn't!
"Despite your lack of knowledge and experience, you're the best student that we had so far." Avice smiled a little bit while she kept talking to me. "In fact, I would say the best that we would ever have. You are already understanding the truly important thing about your deck better than Blaze Rose and Rocketeer ever did. That makes me really proud."
"You can keep saying that but I don't think I understand anything." I replied. There was so much that I didn't know yet, I wasn't even sure if I would ever be able to learn it!
"Heh, that's because the lesson was pretty simple." Avice took a sip from her chocolate and set it down on the table. "United - that was how me and my brother faced every challenge that came before us. It was always us and our decks; that was everything we had. We were both prodigies and the more we won the stronger we became. Having the power, the possibilities that we had, it was an intoxicating feeling. We felt like Gods, would have acted as such as well, but there was something that still helped us remain level grounded. We both had something precious to hold on in the form of each other."
I listened silently to what she was telling me. It wasn't just their backstory, it was the story of my cards as well. I put a hand over the pocket where I held my deck and sighed in relief when I felt it there. Not because I was scared that I have lost it but… it was hard to explain it with words.
"The stronger we grew, the more or own decks began to change. It might sound strange, but our cards aren't like the rest, not even Playmaker's Cyberse monsters are as special and rare as our decks. They have a soul, the ability to evolve along with their user. I don't remember when it happened, but I remember that one day the ChronoDevil and Astral Angel cards that my brother and I always used just became ChronoGear and AstroGear."
"The archetypes changed on their own?" That sounded impossible to actually happen!
"They combined. You probably haven't noticed it, but all of our decks in addition to their separated archetypes fall into the combined archetype of oGear." Ah, yes, when she mentioned it I remembered that there were some cards in my deck that had only the second part of my archetype's name written on their effects. "That was ultimately what Rocketeer and Blaze Rose fail to understand. They both want to become the strongest for their own reasons, but neither of them wanted to listen when we told them that friendship and partnership are the most important power someone could have. There is an eternal truth in this world, Roxy. If you give a lot of power to a single human, he will eventually become power-hungry and turn into a monster."
"I understand that." I nodded. If you gave all the power in one person, they would want more and more until they finally destroy themselves, but if you gave it to several people, they would be able to balance each other out. "But doesn't it eat you from the inside to know that you gave a deck to someone who ended up betraying you? I mean, Rocketeer was my best friend in LINK VRAINS, I shared everything with him and he always helped me out when I needed him! I believed on those small acts and failed to see him for who he truly was."
"A Knight of Hanoi. A criminal. A killer? A monster that deserves to be put down, right?" I bite my lips when she began to list insults toward Rocketeer like that. Though she was right, he was a criminal and a monster that hurt innocent people, I couldn't bring myself to say that I'm agreeing with her. "To be honest, I didn't feel betrayed by his actions one bit. Was I hurt to see the decisions he made about his life? Of course! But we didn't gave him the TurboGear expecting for him to go out and do good think, save puppets, help elderly women to cross the street. Good and evil are subjective."
"If that's true, how am I supposed to know if my actions are right or wrong?" I asked her. "I want to do the things that are truly right!"
Avice sighed and then shook her head furiously. "Ah, I don't know how to answer to that! Nothing we do is going to be ever truly right. Every action we take is going to always have a positive and negative side. Just remember, nobody can tell you want you must do. If you want to blame yourself for trusting Rocketeer and are going to hate him for the rest of your life, so be it." Avice bit her lip for a moment and paused, then she put a hand on my shoulder. She looked me in the eyes and continued. "But if you believe that you could help him and make him see the mistakes of his ways, then you shouldn't give up on him just because others would."
I leaned my back against the softness of the sofa and thought about those words. I had no idea where I stood in all of this, let alone what I believed. All I knew was that I wanted to help Playmaker get his revenge so he could move on with his live, but I also wanted to help others because it was, well, the right thing to do! I had no personal grudge with Hanoi and Rocketeer, nor did I go through the things that Playmaker and Blaze Rose went through. I had a great life so far, unlike Blue Angel and I wanted to go back to it, not move to some perfect utopia that Rocketeer was dreaming of.
It was so hard to take a side, mostly because I never wanted to be a part of the conflict. I just had to stop thing about it and focus on other things for the moment. Looking at the clock wouldn't be that bad of a past-time until Evan came back home, right?
Just then, the front door opened and someone walked inside. Both I and Avice turned to greet as Evan walked inside in his black suit, but this time he also had sunglasses on.
"Come on." He told me and took off his sunglasses. "I couldn't get a clear reading on our target, but I have a general idea where we will be able to find him. I also input a location where the two of us are going to log in, so don't try to change it, ok?"
"Yep." I nodded and stood up to follow him, but Avice remained on her place with a small smile on her face. "Won't you come with us?"
"Sorry, but there are things on this end that have to be deal with as well." Avice replied and took her laptop. "Don't worry though, after all, you won't need more than one of us in order to deal with whatever you are going to encounter out there."
Well, I hoped that she was right. Despite them being 'legendary duelist' it took a lot of beating until they were finally able to turn the table against Picaro and Blaze Rose so excuse me if I felt a little unsure of their skills. Never the less, I followed Evan to the third floor. There was a large open area with series of doors on the left and right and a large metal wall right in front of us. Evan walked over to a growing blue circle in the middle of the room and turned back toward me, holding up his Duel Disk.
"I and my sister usually use the third floor as our Real Life base or a place to train and hold our… more important things, so don't mind it too much." He explained to me and the floor before him opened up and a slim metal table with two decks on it raised up to his waist level. "Well, never mind that. Let's do this!"
I nodded, he took one of the decks on the table while I pulled my own from my pocket. We raised our Duel Disk to our chests' levels and put our respective decks inside of them.
"INTO THE VRAINS!"
A warm light took over my body as I felt my body beginning to change. Or to be more accurate, my mind left Roxanna and entered Proxy. After just several moments, I could move my body again and a second later I was already logged in the server.
But the place that I came to was nothing like what I had expected. Unlike monster other servers, there was no sky her, just some extremely small white dot that was somewhere much, much above me. Instead of natural light (as natural as a light in a video game could be) this server was lighted by the large green orbs that were located on the higher levels of the metallic abyss that I was currently residing in, and some shiny billboards that floated over the buildings. Even from here I could tell that this was just a layer of the server I had logged into with many other layers probably staying above this one.
"It's it impressive?" The little boy that I meet on the day when Picaro first showed up walked up to me and crossed his arms behind his back. "If it wasn't for the fact that only cyber criminals and other scums like that were using this server, I would have made it my official residence inside LINK VRAINS instead of the boring personal server that I currently have."
I had no idea what exactly the kid was trying to talk with me about, but the talk about owning a personal server sounded awfully familiar to me for some reason. Then again, the same kid tried to play some mind games with me, telling me things that no one other than me should know about, so I had to keep my guard up now that he showed up before me again. The little boy's glance shifted from the metal buildings toward me and his lips curved up into a huge smile while his eyes stared at mine.
"Heh, you look confused." He pointed out the obvious, then sighed. "I guess it was my fault for not telling you about it earlier. I just hope that you won't get mad about it too much, but I'm PhantomFire."
Wait, wait, wait! What? I took another good look at the kid, his hair, the black and purple color scheme of his clothes and even the cat motive from PhantomFire's appearance were all present, but Evan's avatar was a twenty old man - sometime a demonic cat – not a little boy wearing oversized clothes.
"Is that really you?" I asked him. This wasn't a funny game, if the kid was trying to play me for dummy I would… I have no idea what I could do in fact.
"Yeah, a huge surprise I know." The kid smirked and then jumped on a metal cube before me, crossing his legs. "Someone like me can't just walk around LINK VRAINS and expect that no one is going to notice them, right? I designed this and my cat forms as ways to disguise myself while around unfamiliar people."
"That won't be funny if you are trying to play me up." I narrowed my eyes.
"Why must you be so troublesome?" little 'PhantomFire' sighed and jumped down, landing on his feet. "We got to find data needed to cure the victims of Picaro's virus and you lost twenty eight training duels yesterday. Does that prove anything to you?"
Beep!
"Are you serious?" So the kid did receive the one letter message that I just send to PhantomFire to test him.
I narrowed my eyes and gestured forward. I still didn't trust in that little kid, but the PhantomFire avatar that I expected to see didn't appear, so it was the best that I had at the moment. Although it would have probably been easier to prove his identity if he turned into his adult form for a moment and then back, I wasn't going to press that issue.
"Thank you very much." 'PhantomFire' fixed his hoodie a bit and walked past me, muttering something under his nose. I couldn't hear it clearly, but it was some comment about 'working with autistic people'.
I had no idea where we were going, but 'PhantomFire' seemed to be taking me down deeper into the server. The places that we passed were… questionable at best. Most of the avatars that we came to pass by were either robotic in appearance or looked nothing like humans at all. There were penguins, aliens, and all the weird stuff that you could expect. I could understand that taste for an avatar in a way, after all, if you are going to be a cyber-criminal the avatar you make shouldn't resemble your real self or be able to be connected to the real you in any way. This was the type of rule that even non-criminals followed in order to avoid getting doxxed.
Despite our 'regular' appearances no one seemed to be noticing us, or even if they did, no one cared. The deeper we kept going, the more curious I became about how 'PhantomFire' learned about this place. He said that there was a job from SOL Technology once before, but never gave any details about it and from back here it appeared to me that he was far more familiar with this server than someone who had spent the time to do a single job here.
"You never told me before, but what exactly is your connection to SOL Technology?" I asked. 'PhantomFire' knew Akira on a personal level and had taken work from SOL before, so there had to be some history between them.
"I'm running a small game company." 'PhantomFire' replied. "Most time I created original games, but there are times every now and then when we get asked to support the servers of some huge VR game like LINK VRAINS. I was asked to create a new defense software that would protect from cyber-terrorists like the Knights of Hanoi. I also made several others programs that were added to the game, so I'm sort of connected to SOL through this world's development team."
"So you had to design a program against Hanoi?" I asked him since that part caught my interest. "It seems that you failed to make it work, huh?"
"Don't get the wrong idea. The program was perfect and was able to stop Hanoi from entering the servers for a full three months. Unfortunately, there is nothing such as a perfect code. Even my program, as advanced as it was, had holes in it, and with those weak spots, there were also ways that Hanoi could create a counter program to suppress my defenses. I use the same defense program to hide my server from preying eyes and update it every chance I get, but when I suggested to do the same for the version officially used by SOL, they declined and told me that they didn't want me to mess with their game's defenses."
"Wait, SOL stopped you from helping them defend their own creation?" That sounded hard to believe for me. I thought they cared more about LINK VRAINS than this. Since no one from the staff had even tried to stand up to Hanoi before, I guess it shouldn't be that surprising.
"The Knights of Hanoi and SOL Technology are two sides of the same coin." 'PhantomFire' stopped and turned back to look at me. "They both hurt people and destroy futures. The only difference between them is that SOL hides behind the good reputation they paid others to make for them and gain profit for the victims they create."
"And yet, you still help them out." I pointed out. If SOL were such monsters, then why didn't he stop helping them and let their own evil drive them in?
"What do you expect from me to do? Turn against the people that pay me so much just because they killed a few people?" I froze at those words. Did he just compared money to human lives and choose the former? "Yes, it's true that I'm personality getting no benefit from helping you cure Gloomy Ruby and Blaze Rose, but make no mistake. I'm not doing things just because of the good of my heart. I never really cared about humanity before… never liked them either. I and Avice get involved only when things get so screwed up that only someone like us could make everything right again."
"So what? You won't get involved if one or two people get killed, but you are going to if the number increased to one hundred or two?" How could he be so negligent about peoples' lives? "That… That's just evil!"
The only reaction that my words were able to pull out of 'PhantomFire' was a raise of one of his eyebrows and a light chuckle. "Maybe from your point of view it's just like that. However, evil and good, wrong and right, those concepts are subjective."
Right and wrong were subjective? Avice told me those same words earlier today and I thought that I agreed with her, but to think that someone could accept the idea of standing to the side while people get hurt and killed as the 'right' choice… I didn't want to accept 'PhantomFire' moral, but there was a point in it. Since I got into this conflict I tried to divide the sides in two; the good side – me, Playmaker, the Charisma Duelists and etc. – and the evil side which was Hanoi at the time. But, the only thing that Playmaker is fighting about is his own revenge. The Charisma Duelists have no interest in helping others and some even turned against LINK VRAINS. Even SOL Technology would end up being no better than the enemies I fight against!
I thought that conflicts were easy to understand. One side was evil and had to be stopped, while the other were the good guys that had to defeat the first. But I had no idea which side was supposed to be good in this fight? If I were to divide us based on morality, everyone would be in the evil category. None of us was truly the good side in the conflict, everyone was willing to destroy anything that would come in their path just to achieve their own goals. I had no idea which side was supposed to be morally superior to the others!
"My, my, if this isn't a surprise." The masked woman that I saw working with Akira during the incident with Revolver and Picaro suddenly came from behind 'PhantomFire' and patted the little kid on the head. "I didn't expect to see you here."
"I got some work to do, Ghost Girl." 'PhantomFire' narrowed his eyes, but didn't try to stop the woman from playing with his hair. "The one who should be surprised to meet the other here is me. Why would you show up here and at a time like this?"
"Jeez, is that the way to talk to a beauty like me, little boy?" Ghost Girl asked with a strangely playful tone in her words and then did something I didn't expect, nor wanted to see. She pulled the little kid toward herself so that her, ahem, breasts were pressing against the back of his head.
"I never expected you to be a shotacon." 'PhantomFire' maintained an uncaring and bored expression on his face while the older woman held his limp body.
"Heh, I don't think that someone who uses a little boy as their avatar while their actual age is nineteen gets to call others such nicknames." I wasn't interested in whatever these two were talking about, but that was an argument winner right there.
"Maybe you should try to change your age as well. It might make you look appealing." 'PhantomFire' gloated.
"Seriously, insulting a woman's look like this. You are the worst." Ghost Girl let go of the boy and he jumped away from her, dusting the back of his hoodie for a reason I couldn't clearly understand.
"Maybe I would be gentler toward you if you didn't resort to using your look as a distraction every single time I meet with you." After dusting his hoodie, 'PhantomFire' walked over to me and caught my arm. "Otherwise, you are just calling for it. Also, you forgot to answer my previous question: Why are you here?"
"Let's just say that I got a love life outside of you and Akira." Ghost Girl winked and pressed her back against a nearby wall.
"So, since you are a hopeless internet dweller that means that everything you got is another job, huh?"
"Come on, why must you insult her every chance you get." I pulled my hand away from 'PhantomFire'. "She seems like a nice woman."
"That's because you are stupid." I felt an anvil falling onto my self-esteem. While I waited for going to this mission with Evan, I didn't expect to be put under verbal abuse.
"My, my, are you going to bully this girl now?" Ghost Girl asked playing with a lock of her own hair. "You are right that I got another job to do, but aren't you going to tell me why exactly you are here? With the girl that always follows after Playmaker no less."
"You know who I'm?" I asked Ghost Girl. We had never meet before so that came sort of nowhere for me.
"Don't mind her too much." 'PhantomFire' crossed his arms and walked forward, past Ghost Girl. "She is a bounty hunter, knowing things like this is a part of her job. She isn't targeting you or anything like this. Also, to answer your question, Ghost Girl, I'm trying to find a user known as Blacloud."
"Now, that's a surprise. My job was to steal something from him" Ghost Girl crossed her arms. "Maybe we could help each other out, hmm?"
"Even now, you are planning how to backstab me. Don't bother, I know how pathetic that guy is. He would be an easy catch even for you." I followed after PhantomFire as we walked out on a large street and found some huge factory in front of us with two drones guarding the front entrance.
"I think we must have taken a wrong turn somewhere." I told him, there weren't any other users around these parts. It was a dead street.
"We didn't." PhantomFire crossed his arms. "I was never able to catch up a strong signature on him, but I found data similar to the one from the time I had to look after that guy, so he could probably be here."
"How probably are we talking about? Ninety percent? Eighty? Fifty-fifty?"
"I wouldn't underestimate Blacloud if I were you." Ghost Girl suddenly walked between me and PhantomFire. "He has gotten himself some sort of hacker network since the last time you had to interact with him. He has gotten into a huge criminal, I heard that he is being chased by several companies for hacking and blackmailing them."
"So it's going to be one of the fun missions, huh?" A twisted grin formed on PhantomFire's little face and he cracked his knuckles. "Ok, let-"
Those were the last words from PhantomFire that I heard before something… happened? I heard an extremely loud noise that would have made my ears bleed if I heard it in real life and at the same time some powerful force pushed my body with unimaginable strength. Everything went black and silent for me after that point. After I opened my eyes again, I found myself lying on the ground with pieces of metal around me, a heavy smoke in the air and a ringing noise inside my ears. PhantomFire and Ghost Girl were both next to me, trying to force themselves to a sitting position. I did the same and found that the factory we were in front of was all in flames.
Looking closely into the fire, I saw two extremely tall silhouettes with long limbs walking through the destroyed building. One of them raised his hand and threw a ball of metal into the air. The round object hit the ground and rolled a few times before stopping to let me get a better look at it. I gasped and put a hand over my mouth – it was a human head!
The object stayed there for a few moments before it got covered in static and disappeared. PhantomFire's and Ghost Girl's lips began to move; they were saying something. My ears were still ringing so I couldn't hear them, but I already had a feeling that I knew what they were going to say. The head that I just saw was Blacloud's.
Even then, I didn't have much time to think about it, or move either because the two figures stepped out of the flames. Both of them had purple skin, which was mostly covered by a silver body armor that left only their wrists exposed. A blue core was present on each of their chests and their heads had triangular shaped helmets with dark grey visors. The two of them raised their arms, some sort of high tech blasters forming around their wrists. They were aiming at us!
I closed my eyes and held my arms around my head.
I felt my body leaving the ground.
A/N: I thought that it was a while since the last update, so here ya go! This is mostly a non-dueling chapter, so Iknow that some people won't like that, but I hope that the chapter overall would be liked. I originally planned to have the, should I call it 'main conflict' of this mini-arc start in this chapter, but later I figured out that it would get too long, and I didn't want to make another over 10k chapter after the last two ones, so this ended up being more of a prologue than anything else. I'm honestly starting to get tired of these A/Ns since people don't seem to be reading them that much anyways. I might end writing them all together and just put the responses to people's reviews here since that's what I'm more interested into.
Thanks to Arran17 and Ghost of Magic for favoriting this story.
Now the responses.
ThePLOThand: Actually, I would love to put Madolche and Ghostrick in one of my fanfictions, but I will have to say no about that idea. Reasons is that... well, I want that alternative deck to act like some sort of final-boss for Proxy. While yes, Rokkets and that Extra Link that Revolver pulled at the end of Season 1 are final boss worhtly, I want Proxy to face something different. Also I'm going to give a small spoiler there to everyone but that alternative Revolver deck won't be used by Revolver himself. The real user is going to remain a secret for now...
D3lph0xL0v3r: Well, Elizabeth never really had any reasons to duel. The only reason she did was because of her siblings and her desire to be accepted by them. By now Elizabeth has already outgrown that desire to be accepted so I really don't see a point in bringing her back. On top of all of that there is also the fact that I suck at designing Elizabeth's deck, so I don't want to give myself unnecessary headaches by trying to make a deck for her, again.
ScalchopWarrior: I don't see why you mentioned the two Phantomous. If it's because he was two monsters with that name, then well, he had two Phantomous in my story as well. If it's about him using them at the same time, then I agree that it was probably an overkill.
MusicianWish: As usually, I'm leaving your review for last since I have most fun responding to you, I never had such a lively fan as you before!
It shouldn't hurt you since Rocketeer is NOT a traitor. I did write it in this chapter as well that Good and Evil are subjective. Just because Rocketeer has a oGear deck that doesn't mean that he can't be a Knight of Hanoi. Officially, the oGear users have a neutral position on the whole conflict, so I believe that it could be said that you can be betraing someone if you were never with them. As it stand at this moment, they aren't a group but just a group of people each one of which follows their own dreams.
I'm indeed planning to make more duels with partners and teams, because those are my favorite type of duels. Of course, I suck at them, so I probably won't be doing them as often as I would have liked to.
I won't comment on your PhantomFire/Evan and Silver Star/Avice thoughts because of spoilers, but I will just say that neither Evan nor Avice like Playmaker. They both think that he is some brat with problems that doesn't know how to duel properly, yet is somehow the great hero of LINK VRAINS.
No worries, I understand if the actual card game isn't your strongest side, not everyone who likes Yu-Gi-Oh! Animes and Mangas is a duelist and vice versa. Finally, I want to give you big, Big, BIG thanks for being such a loyal fan to my story! I'm really loving responding to you and wouldn't mind if I got to chat with you some times!
That's the end of this chapter. Thank to everyone for reading this and hope you have a great day/night.
Diabolic Tracer Out!