Connection Terminated: Vertigo
One Hit
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23: 31, SEA rebel base, somewhere in the middle of the sea
Wesley's hand grabbed Kai by the throat, slamming his back to the wall. "You son of a bitch! You compromised the security of my base with your reckless order to attack the new Frame hangars!" He yelled angrily before delivering a quick punch across Kai's face. "Hey, Wes! Cool it!" A few other SEA rebels approached their leader and pulled him away from Kai, who presently rubbed his throat while his lip curled into an angry slit. "You know what? A lot more troops of mine could have been saved if you just sent reinforcements!" He shouted back and Wesley once again struggled against his comrades to rip Kai apart. "YOUR troops! I don't give a damn where you send those soldiers of yours!" Wesley retorted and Kai's hand balled into fists, his teeth gritted. He shook his head and calmly walked away from the infuriated SEA branch leader. "My soldier's priority is A.L.E.C, not your troops! Remember that, Hiwatari!" Wesley shouted one last time before removing the grasp of his fellow SEA rebels and walking off to the control room of A.L.E.C
23:31, Somewhere in Russia
Inside the dimly lit reconnaissance room of the government's main base, Ivan paced the room as the world's best and most highly paid team of trackers struggled to acquire a lock on the seemingly intercepted trace they had placed aboard the rebel vehicle. "Anything yet?" He asked calmly and the masked leader of the team turned around to face his employer. "No sir. There seems to be a problem with the sending of information." The tracker said quietly and pointed to the screen, where the cursor that should be hovering over a specific location was moving erratically across a relatively wide area. Ivan shook his head and barked a quick order. "Divert 70% of all power to the recon station!" He shouted just as Jex walked in to the room, twiddling a cellular phone in his fingers. "Sir, Ice and Blaze have a lead on the armor." Jex said calmly while observing the reconnaissance team work feverishly at the computers. Ivan whirled around, his jet-black cloak swirling around him, as Jex tossed the cellphone to him. He caught it with one outstretched hand and quickly placed up to his ear.
00:03, A.L.E.C Control Center, Virtual World
Trygator deftly manipulated the paper-thin ethereal screen that controlled the A.L.E.C setup, sliding icons here and there with her left hand while the right one spun holographic dials around. Her fingers tapped in a rhythmic sequence into a glowing panel, causing the white haloes surrounding the incomplete body of A.L.E.C to slowly grind to a quiet stop. A few dozen more windows popped up on the display and she accessed each one simultaneously, pressing them together to form one big report on the current figures on A.L.E.C. Trygator's eyes narrowed as she scanned the report, noticing an abnormality in the energy distribution level. She looked up suspiciously at the body of Alec, as the program was nicknamed, and stared at the boyish features of the yet to be finished project. "Weird . . . Hey, Dragoon! Come over here and check this out!" Trygator yelled to the blue-haired bitbeast, who was typing away a code into a terminal similar to hers. Dragoon looked up from his work and jogged over to her display, expressing the same look of doubt on his face. He scratched his head and separated the energy distribution report from the others. Trygator sighed and opened up a dialogue window with Emily as Dragoon began fixing the problem. "Emily, there seems to be a slight fluctuation in the energy distribution levels of Alec. What do you think happened?" Trygator asked as Dragoon, evidently perplexed by the problem, struggled to find a solution to the glitch. Emily, who was apparently nodding off to sleep in front of her computer, shook off her exhaustion and began typing away on her keyboard. Her left eyebrow was raised too as she skeptically observed the report and began hacking away on the keyboard again. "I don't know. Alec seems to be acting independently . . ." The American replied nervously and keyed in a system override function that could only be accessed from the real world. "This is strange . . . I already activated a system freeze command . . . Anyway, it's just a small bug in the program. Alec will be ready for the testing at one o clock."
00:54, Somewhere in Russia
"Damn it! Can't you people get the trace working?" Ivan shouted angrily, pounding the wall with his fist. The leader, his eyes narrowed under the goggles, stared feverishly at the giant monitors while punching in code after code of access lines. The reconnaissance tracker slammed his fist into the desk, rattling the ice-cold coffee mugs on it, before rapidly keying in an extremely complex command to more or less estimate the average location of the rebel base. After a few more seconds of intense keypunching, the team leader threw up his arms and shook his head in defeat. "The trace is dead. We'll try the hacking system." He said calmly and barked some orders in German to his fellow trackers. They nodded, mumbling something in the same language, before entering a stream of commands into the computer. Hundreds of bright green lines appeared on the monitor, filling it up by the second as 24 fingers crunched keyboards.
01:02, A.L.E.C Control Center, SEA rebel base, somewhere in the middle of the sea
"Look who showed up." Wesley said coldly as Kai entered the makeshift laboratory where a few dozen of the more important people in the base had converged to view the test run of Alec. Kai ignored him and walked over to Mariah, shoving away her shoulder as he positioned himself to watch the start up process. "Hey! Can't you be a bit more considerate?" She complained and Kai smiled thinly in reply while Emily tapped in the sequence to commence the trials. "We're starting."
Driger whistled at the sight of the white haloes turn an iridescent green, grinding to a slow but complete stop. "Everything's okay on this side of the pillar, Ray." Driger sounded off, pressing down on the virtual earpiece on his head. He looked up at the haloes, disappearing into little particles, as Alec was lowered to the ground.
Ray listened intently to his bitbeast and gave the thumbs up to Raul, who presently pressed down on a red activation trigger. "The test run is now officially underway."
Alec's eyes shot open, revealing light brown irises, as he slowly rose to his feet. Alec had a small build, with features that were reminiscent of a normal twelve-year old boy, with the exception of the completely silver hair he had sliding down the back of his head. He turned to the relatively skeptical and frightened Driger and a small innocent smile crossed Alec's face. "Unless I am mistaken, you are Driger, correct?" A voice that betrayed his appearance with its mature tone asked politely and Driger nodded quickly. "How did you know?" The white tiger bitbeast asked, not bothering to hide his amazement and the super-powerful program smiled again.
"By matching your energy levels, composition and physiology with that of information in my current database and by scanning the aura you emit even in this virtual world. All facts would point to the conclusion that you are the white tiger bitbeast known as Driger."
Driger gave a low whistle and scratched his head before walking over to another one of those ethereal panels to start up the combat tests. His finger slid an access code onto the main program, causing a narrow semi- transparent corridor to enclose Alec in a space with a dozen captured government combat programs.
"What the hell is that? Shoot it down!" Alec's eyes flashed a fiery red, raising a small hand to the programs that had opened fire on it. The bullets immediately skidded off an unseen wall, peppering the wall behind Alec with smoking holes. The government troops huddled together, piling their massive rifles on top of each other as they formed a concentrated line of fire at the seemingly omnipotent Alec. Alec's hand crushed into a fist and somehow imploded all of the government program's weaponry.
Driger took a step back, stunned by the ruthless display of force that such a small and insignificant-looking thing could do. Or maybe it was because of the splitting headache that was slowly ripping apart his self, forcing him to fluctuate between his regular white tiger form and his humanoid figure. Waves of energy were pulsating from Alec, slamming into Driger with the force of an earthquake that would register a 10 on the Richter scale.
Alec took a few steps forward, dismissing the grenades being thrown at him with a casual wave of his left hand. His lips were glued together in a cold thin line as he approached the first, somewhat terrified program, seeing as there was no other word to describe the sudden drop in the program's moral. His right hand clutched the throat of the unfortunate government soldier and crushed it, warping the data streams that appeared into a jet-black submachine gun. A crazed flash passed through Alec's eyes once more as virtual ammunition flew out from the gun, ripping through second program that was foolish enough not to get out of the way
Ray collapsed onto the floor, dropping from his seat as a pulsating pain seared through his skull. "Ray!" Mariah exclaimed worriedly and rushed over to his convulsing body, being pushed away by Emily, who immediately checked up on the fallen comrade. A look of genuine worry appeared on Emily's face as she bit her lip and stared meaningfully at a few Central China rebels. "Get me some medical equipment from Osiris now! He's slipping into a coma!" She yelled as Mariah was practically sobbing on Ray's chest. Mariah looked up at Wesley, who was blandly staring at the screen showing Alec's battle. "Do something! You can't let him die!" She pleaded and Wesley turned around, a cold frown plastered on his face. "Our priority is A.L.E.C. I'm sorry." He said, trying his best to conceal his emotion.
Like his master on the physical plane, Driger's form was fading away to nothing as the pulses that were coming from Alec tore his existence apart little by little. Dragoon materialized beside Driger, kneeling over to check the bitbeast when a burning sensation blasted every fiber in both his physical and digital bodies. "Something's happening . . . Activate the system override . . ." He croaked before clutching his throat and slumping beside the already unconscious white tiger bitbeast.
"Hey, Tyson!" Max said in surprise, getting up from checking out the now comatose Ray to watch Tyson utter a cry before falling to his knees and collapsing into shudders on the floor. Emily stood up and stared at the screen, where Dragoon and Driger were dissipating, losing the fight against whatever was attacking them like their masters in the real world. Her eyes narrowed and she watched Alec carry up another hapless government victim with that same demented look before slicing off the program's head.
"System override now!"
Alec threw away the drained figure he had just beheaded callously and raised up his hand toward the last three soldiers that were hiding in the corner of the corridor. The three suddenly were covered in a bright light as Alec's now blood red eyes narrowed in concentration. A gigantic explosion rocked the entire control center as the three programs' data was transposed into streams of hyper-unstable codes, shattering the corridor into tiny smithereens. Alec turned to the two weakened bitbeasts that lay unconscious on the floor, bending over to pick up the submachine gun it had crafted from the data of one of its victims when a shock ran through his system and promptly knocked him out.
1:31, Somewhere in Russia
The German tracker shouted a curse in his native language as the hacking system registered an overwhelming wave of pure energy before suffering from a system overload and exploding in the face of the tracker team. Ivan, watching everything with apprehension clicked a button at his hip before shouting an order to clean up the mess and set up the secondary reconnaissance room for future use. "I want all Locust Frames and the anti- Frame weapons in the Indonesian, Philippine and Malaysian command centers ready for battle in less than 4 hours!" He shouted and stormed out of the room with a determined frown on his face as he walked over to the secondary recon office. "Whatever caused that massive energy spike, it will be mine."
1:40, Infirmary wing, SEA rebel base, somewhere in the middle of the sea
Tyson and Ray had slipped into comas and so had their bitbeasts, who had exited the virtual dimension and were residing in their unused beyblades once more in a near death state. Kai leaned against the doorway to their room, thoughts about the freak accident running through his head. He muttered a curse under his breath, frustrated for not coming up a logical explanation, and walked over to a sleeping Mariah, who had stuck beside the one she loved even though Kai himself had suggested otherwise. Kai shook his head and carried her up to the unused bed, covering her with a blanket before staring at her with a worried expression. "I've lost too many soldiers to this base, you're too valuable to lose right now." He muttered before walking out of the room and heading to his quarters for some well-deserved shuteye. "Enjoy your sleep, Mariah. It might be the most we'll be getting for a while."
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One Hit
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23: 31, SEA rebel base, somewhere in the middle of the sea
Wesley's hand grabbed Kai by the throat, slamming his back to the wall. "You son of a bitch! You compromised the security of my base with your reckless order to attack the new Frame hangars!" He yelled angrily before delivering a quick punch across Kai's face. "Hey, Wes! Cool it!" A few other SEA rebels approached their leader and pulled him away from Kai, who presently rubbed his throat while his lip curled into an angry slit. "You know what? A lot more troops of mine could have been saved if you just sent reinforcements!" He shouted back and Wesley once again struggled against his comrades to rip Kai apart. "YOUR troops! I don't give a damn where you send those soldiers of yours!" Wesley retorted and Kai's hand balled into fists, his teeth gritted. He shook his head and calmly walked away from the infuriated SEA branch leader. "My soldier's priority is A.L.E.C, not your troops! Remember that, Hiwatari!" Wesley shouted one last time before removing the grasp of his fellow SEA rebels and walking off to the control room of A.L.E.C
23:31, Somewhere in Russia
Inside the dimly lit reconnaissance room of the government's main base, Ivan paced the room as the world's best and most highly paid team of trackers struggled to acquire a lock on the seemingly intercepted trace they had placed aboard the rebel vehicle. "Anything yet?" He asked calmly and the masked leader of the team turned around to face his employer. "No sir. There seems to be a problem with the sending of information." The tracker said quietly and pointed to the screen, where the cursor that should be hovering over a specific location was moving erratically across a relatively wide area. Ivan shook his head and barked a quick order. "Divert 70% of all power to the recon station!" He shouted just as Jex walked in to the room, twiddling a cellular phone in his fingers. "Sir, Ice and Blaze have a lead on the armor." Jex said calmly while observing the reconnaissance team work feverishly at the computers. Ivan whirled around, his jet-black cloak swirling around him, as Jex tossed the cellphone to him. He caught it with one outstretched hand and quickly placed up to his ear.
00:03, A.L.E.C Control Center, Virtual World
Trygator deftly manipulated the paper-thin ethereal screen that controlled the A.L.E.C setup, sliding icons here and there with her left hand while the right one spun holographic dials around. Her fingers tapped in a rhythmic sequence into a glowing panel, causing the white haloes surrounding the incomplete body of A.L.E.C to slowly grind to a quiet stop. A few dozen more windows popped up on the display and she accessed each one simultaneously, pressing them together to form one big report on the current figures on A.L.E.C. Trygator's eyes narrowed as she scanned the report, noticing an abnormality in the energy distribution level. She looked up suspiciously at the body of Alec, as the program was nicknamed, and stared at the boyish features of the yet to be finished project. "Weird . . . Hey, Dragoon! Come over here and check this out!" Trygator yelled to the blue-haired bitbeast, who was typing away a code into a terminal similar to hers. Dragoon looked up from his work and jogged over to her display, expressing the same look of doubt on his face. He scratched his head and separated the energy distribution report from the others. Trygator sighed and opened up a dialogue window with Emily as Dragoon began fixing the problem. "Emily, there seems to be a slight fluctuation in the energy distribution levels of Alec. What do you think happened?" Trygator asked as Dragoon, evidently perplexed by the problem, struggled to find a solution to the glitch. Emily, who was apparently nodding off to sleep in front of her computer, shook off her exhaustion and began typing away on her keyboard. Her left eyebrow was raised too as she skeptically observed the report and began hacking away on the keyboard again. "I don't know. Alec seems to be acting independently . . ." The American replied nervously and keyed in a system override function that could only be accessed from the real world. "This is strange . . . I already activated a system freeze command . . . Anyway, it's just a small bug in the program. Alec will be ready for the testing at one o clock."
00:54, Somewhere in Russia
"Damn it! Can't you people get the trace working?" Ivan shouted angrily, pounding the wall with his fist. The leader, his eyes narrowed under the goggles, stared feverishly at the giant monitors while punching in code after code of access lines. The reconnaissance tracker slammed his fist into the desk, rattling the ice-cold coffee mugs on it, before rapidly keying in an extremely complex command to more or less estimate the average location of the rebel base. After a few more seconds of intense keypunching, the team leader threw up his arms and shook his head in defeat. "The trace is dead. We'll try the hacking system." He said calmly and barked some orders in German to his fellow trackers. They nodded, mumbling something in the same language, before entering a stream of commands into the computer. Hundreds of bright green lines appeared on the monitor, filling it up by the second as 24 fingers crunched keyboards.
01:02, A.L.E.C Control Center, SEA rebel base, somewhere in the middle of the sea
"Look who showed up." Wesley said coldly as Kai entered the makeshift laboratory where a few dozen of the more important people in the base had converged to view the test run of Alec. Kai ignored him and walked over to Mariah, shoving away her shoulder as he positioned himself to watch the start up process. "Hey! Can't you be a bit more considerate?" She complained and Kai smiled thinly in reply while Emily tapped in the sequence to commence the trials. "We're starting."
Driger whistled at the sight of the white haloes turn an iridescent green, grinding to a slow but complete stop. "Everything's okay on this side of the pillar, Ray." Driger sounded off, pressing down on the virtual earpiece on his head. He looked up at the haloes, disappearing into little particles, as Alec was lowered to the ground.
Ray listened intently to his bitbeast and gave the thumbs up to Raul, who presently pressed down on a red activation trigger. "The test run is now officially underway."
Alec's eyes shot open, revealing light brown irises, as he slowly rose to his feet. Alec had a small build, with features that were reminiscent of a normal twelve-year old boy, with the exception of the completely silver hair he had sliding down the back of his head. He turned to the relatively skeptical and frightened Driger and a small innocent smile crossed Alec's face. "Unless I am mistaken, you are Driger, correct?" A voice that betrayed his appearance with its mature tone asked politely and Driger nodded quickly. "How did you know?" The white tiger bitbeast asked, not bothering to hide his amazement and the super-powerful program smiled again.
"By matching your energy levels, composition and physiology with that of information in my current database and by scanning the aura you emit even in this virtual world. All facts would point to the conclusion that you are the white tiger bitbeast known as Driger."
Driger gave a low whistle and scratched his head before walking over to another one of those ethereal panels to start up the combat tests. His finger slid an access code onto the main program, causing a narrow semi- transparent corridor to enclose Alec in a space with a dozen captured government combat programs.
"What the hell is that? Shoot it down!" Alec's eyes flashed a fiery red, raising a small hand to the programs that had opened fire on it. The bullets immediately skidded off an unseen wall, peppering the wall behind Alec with smoking holes. The government troops huddled together, piling their massive rifles on top of each other as they formed a concentrated line of fire at the seemingly omnipotent Alec. Alec's hand crushed into a fist and somehow imploded all of the government program's weaponry.
Driger took a step back, stunned by the ruthless display of force that such a small and insignificant-looking thing could do. Or maybe it was because of the splitting headache that was slowly ripping apart his self, forcing him to fluctuate between his regular white tiger form and his humanoid figure. Waves of energy were pulsating from Alec, slamming into Driger with the force of an earthquake that would register a 10 on the Richter scale.
Alec took a few steps forward, dismissing the grenades being thrown at him with a casual wave of his left hand. His lips were glued together in a cold thin line as he approached the first, somewhat terrified program, seeing as there was no other word to describe the sudden drop in the program's moral. His right hand clutched the throat of the unfortunate government soldier and crushed it, warping the data streams that appeared into a jet-black submachine gun. A crazed flash passed through Alec's eyes once more as virtual ammunition flew out from the gun, ripping through second program that was foolish enough not to get out of the way
Ray collapsed onto the floor, dropping from his seat as a pulsating pain seared through his skull. "Ray!" Mariah exclaimed worriedly and rushed over to his convulsing body, being pushed away by Emily, who immediately checked up on the fallen comrade. A look of genuine worry appeared on Emily's face as she bit her lip and stared meaningfully at a few Central China rebels. "Get me some medical equipment from Osiris now! He's slipping into a coma!" She yelled as Mariah was practically sobbing on Ray's chest. Mariah looked up at Wesley, who was blandly staring at the screen showing Alec's battle. "Do something! You can't let him die!" She pleaded and Wesley turned around, a cold frown plastered on his face. "Our priority is A.L.E.C. I'm sorry." He said, trying his best to conceal his emotion.
Like his master on the physical plane, Driger's form was fading away to nothing as the pulses that were coming from Alec tore his existence apart little by little. Dragoon materialized beside Driger, kneeling over to check the bitbeast when a burning sensation blasted every fiber in both his physical and digital bodies. "Something's happening . . . Activate the system override . . ." He croaked before clutching his throat and slumping beside the already unconscious white tiger bitbeast.
"Hey, Tyson!" Max said in surprise, getting up from checking out the now comatose Ray to watch Tyson utter a cry before falling to his knees and collapsing into shudders on the floor. Emily stood up and stared at the screen, where Dragoon and Driger were dissipating, losing the fight against whatever was attacking them like their masters in the real world. Her eyes narrowed and she watched Alec carry up another hapless government victim with that same demented look before slicing off the program's head.
"System override now!"
Alec threw away the drained figure he had just beheaded callously and raised up his hand toward the last three soldiers that were hiding in the corner of the corridor. The three suddenly were covered in a bright light as Alec's now blood red eyes narrowed in concentration. A gigantic explosion rocked the entire control center as the three programs' data was transposed into streams of hyper-unstable codes, shattering the corridor into tiny smithereens. Alec turned to the two weakened bitbeasts that lay unconscious on the floor, bending over to pick up the submachine gun it had crafted from the data of one of its victims when a shock ran through his system and promptly knocked him out.
1:31, Somewhere in Russia
The German tracker shouted a curse in his native language as the hacking system registered an overwhelming wave of pure energy before suffering from a system overload and exploding in the face of the tracker team. Ivan, watching everything with apprehension clicked a button at his hip before shouting an order to clean up the mess and set up the secondary reconnaissance room for future use. "I want all Locust Frames and the anti- Frame weapons in the Indonesian, Philippine and Malaysian command centers ready for battle in less than 4 hours!" He shouted and stormed out of the room with a determined frown on his face as he walked over to the secondary recon office. "Whatever caused that massive energy spike, it will be mine."
1:40, Infirmary wing, SEA rebel base, somewhere in the middle of the sea
Tyson and Ray had slipped into comas and so had their bitbeasts, who had exited the virtual dimension and were residing in their unused beyblades once more in a near death state. Kai leaned against the doorway to their room, thoughts about the freak accident running through his head. He muttered a curse under his breath, frustrated for not coming up a logical explanation, and walked over to a sleeping Mariah, who had stuck beside the one she loved even though Kai himself had suggested otherwise. Kai shook his head and carried her up to the unused bed, covering her with a blanket before staring at her with a worried expression. "I've lost too many soldiers to this base, you're too valuable to lose right now." He muttered before walking out of the room and heading to his quarters for some well-deserved shuteye. "Enjoy your sleep, Mariah. It might be the most we'll be getting for a while."
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