Disclaimer: Nothing new here. I don't own ReBoot and I never will. That's all there is to it.
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Queen of the CrashedBy
The 18th Angel (aka DaemonFan)
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Chapter 1001- Betrayal
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As soon as Exabyte vanished, Dot ran to where Bob lay. Nearly all of his energy had been burned away and he seemed more dead than alive, lacking even the strength to raise his head.
"Bob!" She held his head in her lap, forcing him to look at her. "Stay with me Bob! Come on!" Even as she spoke, the effort seemed useless. Her husband, the Sprite she loved more than life itself, the man with more life in him than anyone she had ever knows, was deleting before her eyes. And there was nothing she could do to stop it.
"Let me."
Looking up, Dot saw the mysterious figure in brown robes standing over them. A hand reached up and pushed back the hood of the robe, revealing the pretty face of a teenaged girl with dark blue skin and gold hair.
"Who are you?" Dot asked.
The girl ignored the question. "I can help." She said, stretching out a hand over Bob's chest. Before Dot could agree or disagree, the girl sent a stream of the same gold light that had forced Exabyte to retreat into Bob. Dot would have protested, but the instant the blast struck Bob he began to look better. His bitmap quickly returned to its regular opacity. After only a few nanoseconds of contact, his eyes fluttered open and he sat up slowly. The girl broke off her energy beam and smiled at him.
"You'll be fine now." She said happily.
"Thanks." Bob said, standing up with Dot's help. "But...who are you?"
"You don't recognize me?" The girl looked hurt. "I know I look a little different now, but come on! I would think you'd know your best friend when you saw her!"
Bob squinted, seeing the girl as if for the first time. "...Glitch?"
"See, that wasn't so hard." Glitch smiled and helped Bob to his feet.
"But...how?"
"Beats me." She shrugged. "Last thing I remember is getting pulled out of your hand, then I woke up here."
"Are you sure you're all right, Bob?" Dot asked.
"He'll be fine now." Glitch assured her. "We have the same code, after all. Healing him is a snap."
"What about Clash?" Bob asked, looking around for the big robot. "Did you...I mean..."
Glitch shook her head sadly. "There was nothing I could do. I'm sorry."
Bob stared at the blackened ground where Clash had been, where Hack and Slash had given their lives to save his. And then his friends were on all sides, assuring themselves that he was safe. He could hear Dot sobbing quietly next to him. AndrAIa held Dot tightly, a few tears escaping her eyes as well. Matrix took out his aggression on a large rock, screaming as he kicked it far out to C. Mouse and Ray stood nearby with Turbo, their heads bowed in respect for their fallen comrade. Even Daemon seemed subdued, her icy exterior cracked ever so slightly. All of this registered in Bob's mind, but only peripherally. He couldn't tear his eyes away from that one charred patch of earth. Sadness gnawed at his heart, a sadness that wasted no time turning to despair. He had faced evil before, and every time he and his friends had emerged victorious. But not this time.
He had failed again. Two innocent, heroic lives had been extinguished in a heartbeat. And now the most destructive creature in the history of the Net was loose, soon to return and finish them all off. This went beyond very bad. As far as Bob could see, this situation could only have one conclusion. The End of the Net had begun.
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The war room was nearly silent, every Sprite and Binome present hanging on the words of those who spoke. The only other sound came from Enzo. Hack and Slash had been the closest thing the boy had had to friends, even after returning to their original, singular form. Upon news of their deaths he had broken down sobbing, but hastily reigned it in. Clearly some idiot had put it in his head that crying was not manly. Matrix just hoped that he wasn't that idiot.
Go ahead and cry kid. That's what you're supposed to do when it hurts.
"Do we have any clue where Exabyte went?" Matrix turned his attention back to the issue at hand. Enzo would handle adversity as well as he always did, which was considerably better than Matrix had in similar circumstances.
"None." Phong said. "It is as if she simply vanished into thin air."
"Well that portal, if you could call it that, led to the web." The girl who claimed to be Glitch spoke up. "I could still sense that much."
"Which brings us to the sixty-four thousand unit question." Bob said. "What happened to you four?"
As near as anyone could tell, the four Keytools had become Sprites. While Glitch put herself in the central area of the war room, the other three stood near the back wall, observing the situation. Copeland had become a tall, middle-aged man with long white hair and pale orange skin, his brown robes gave him the look of a hermit or holy man. The other two seemed more like Glitch, though older. Surge wore his bright red hair in wild spikes, contrasting with his pale aqua skin. He looked like a punk rocker. Navi has a similar look about her, with long dreadlocks pulled out of her face into a ponytail. She would have seemed more conservative than Surge, but the piercings in her nose and eyebrow gave her away. Glitch seemed to be the youngest of the group, and something of a rebel, given how the others reacted to her outspoken attitude and eagerness to put herself amongst the Sprites.
"We'll need to run some tests." Welman said, examining Glitch with a medical scanner. "But it would appear that their contact with Exabyte's decompression program triggered a similar effect in them."
"So they've been decompressed?" AndrAIa asked.
Welman shook his head; or rather, the robot remained still while the Null within wagged its front half side to side. "It's not quite that simple. After all, they were never compressed to begin with. Their source code seems to have been altered somehow, they appear to have absorbed part of Exabyte's code, though again I can't be sure without more extensive tests."
"So run them." Matrix said.
"No." Copeland spoke up. "You're not running tests on any of us. We're leaving."
"But..." Turbo began.
Copeland held up a hand, silencing him. "I am sorry, my friend." He said. "This is where our paths diverge."
"But we need your help." Bob protested. "Exabyte is out there. She..."
"We can't give you the kind of help you need." Surge said.
"We have seen the power of the Unnamable One firsthand." Navi said, favoring them with a look of sympathy. "This is a battle that cannot be won."
"So instead you are going to run away." Daemon had been silent up to this point, content to analyze the situation from outside of the conversation, now she turned a cold look on the Keytools. "You're going to run and hide from her, just like you ran and hid from me. You are cowards."
"No." Bob said. "It's not cowardly to escape a losing battle." He turned to Copeland. "I hope you can find someplace safe. I really do."
The other man nodded and pointed to an empty corner of the room, opening a portal there. He stood next to the shimmering vortex, joined by Surge and Navi.
"You first Glitch." Copeland gestured to the portal.
"No."
"What?"
Glitch looked up at her elders. "I'm not going." She said firmly.
"Don't be basic, Glitch." Navi suddenly sounded like an ordinary girl trying to reason with a stubborn little sister. "We need to find a way to cure...this." She gestured to their Sprite-like bitmaps.
"Why?" Glitch shrugged. "I kinda like it."
"We have a responsibility to our people, Glitch." Copeland said. "Or have you forgotten?"
"We also have a responsibility to assist the Guardians." Glitch snapped back. "Or have you forgotten?"
"I'm not going to ask again."
"Well that'll make this go a lot faster." Glitch replied. "I made a promise, just like you. I swore to keep Exabyte imprisoned *for all time* not just until she got loose. Go wherever you want. I intend to stay right here until we figure out how to put her back or destroy her for good."
Shaking his head in exasperation, Copeland stepped into the portal, followed closely by Surge. Navi hung back, her eyes pleading with Glitch, but the younger woman stood firm. Finally Navi nodded resignedly.
"Take care of yourself." She said. Then she stepped into the portal and vanished.
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Terabyte could feel the harsh data of the Web pulling at her, trying to find a crack in her armor. A normal Sprite would have degraded to nothing without protection. Even with her armor, Terabyte felt uncomfortably hot as the Web tried to burn her. So she was understandably surprised to see a Sprite floating unprotected right in front of her, seemingly immune to the data that churned around her.
"Welcome, my child." The woman said, opening her arms and reaching out to Terabyte.
The half-virus hung back warily. Her battle with the Destroyer was still fresh in her mind and she had no desire to get mixed up with another unknown virus.
"Who are you?" She demanded.
"Do you not recognize me?" The woman replied, her soft voice echoing despite the emptiness around them. "How can that be, when you have suffered so much to set me free?"
Suddenly, recognition dawned on Terabyte's face. She rushed forward, ready to claim her reward from the Great One. But even as she approached, Exabyte's expression changed. Her serene smile transformed into a look of confusion which quickly gave way to disgust.
"What is the meaning of this?" She demanded.
"What do you mean?" Terabyte asked, confused.
Exabyte leaned down to examine her more closely. "What are you?"
"I...I don't understand..." Terabyte said.
"You're no virus." Exabyte said.
"I am." Terabyte insisted. "I am a virus."
"Half at best." Exabyte sniffed. "You reek of Sprite."
"I set you free. You told me to set you free."
"Sadly my senses were somewhat limited in that form. If I had known what you were, I would have found a different servant rather than be indebted to a worthless half-breed."
"No." Terabyte said, forcing her anger back down, willing it not to erupt again. "Not you, too. You can't do this to me again! You owe me! You promised!"
"True." Exabyte mused. "I do owe you my freedom. And for that, I'll allow you to continue existing. Provided you remove yourself from my sight immediately."
"But...you promised..." Terabyte said, holding back tears.
"Wake up, girl. You served your purpose. Now have the decency to leave quietly. If I have to look at you for much longer, I may forget my obligation."
"I'll kill you!" Terabyte screamed, charging.
Exabyte barely blinked, deflecting Terabyte's hastily constructed energy beam, blocking her punches, and grasping her neck with one powerful hand.
"If this is how you want it," she said calmly, tightening her grip, "I am more than happy to oblige."
"Who goes there?" From the corner of her eye, Terabyte saw a group of Web Riders, a scouting party, approaching with weapons raised. Exabyte turned to assess the new threat, providing Terabyte with all the opening she needed. Raising a fist, she summoned all of her power and put it behind a single punch that would have shattered stone. As it was, her attack barely left a bruise on Exabyte's cheek, but it was enough. Terabyte felt the grip on her neck loosen. Wriggling free, she didn't wait for Exabyte to respond to the attack. In a nanosecond, she created a portal to the first system she could find and stepped inside. As she hastily closed the portal behind her, Terabyte saw the goddess striding forward to meet the Web Riders.
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"They're right you know." Glitch said after her fellow Keytools had departed. "We can't beat Exabyte."
"You did a pretty good job." Bob said.
Glitch shook her head. "She just woke up, she's still not at full power. That's why she left."
"Of course!" Phong said. "She retreated into the Web to gather her strength."
Glitch nodded. "And if I remember Exabyte at all, that won't take her very long."
"Explain that to us again." Matrix said. "You were around when Exabyte was imprisoned?"
"Of course." She said. "The four of us provided the power for the command that compressed her. We also held the codes that locked her in. That's why she needed us to escape."
"So how do we put her back?" Dot asked the question that was on everyone's mind.
"I don't know."
The uncomfortable silence settled over the room again. It was Mouse who finally spoke up.
"Well Ah'd say we got some preparin' to do." She said.
"Agreed." Turbo said. "Bob and I can go back to the supercomputer, convince the Collective to send every Guardian we can spare to Mainframe."
"But that will leave us defenseless if Exabyte returns while you're gone." Welman pointed out.
AndrAIa nodded. "And don't forget that Terabyte is still out there. What if she decides to come back?"
"You will not be defenseless." Every eye turned to Daemon. "I will remain in case she returns. If Glitch will assist me, I believe we can repel either attacker."
"Oh marvelous." Matrix said. "Let's trust our fate to her."
"At this point Matrix, you have little choice in the matter." Daemon said.
"She's here to help." Bob assured them once again. "I don't know why...but for some reason I trust her."
"All right." Matrix said. "But I'm staying to keep an eye on her."
"Don't worry." Turbo said. "We should be back by next second."
"Let us hope there is still a Mainframe left for you to return to." Phong said quietly.
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"How are you feeling, my child." Phong asked.
"Like I've had my ASCII kicked." Disa said, getting out of bed weakly and booting back into her uniform. "Oh that's right; I have."
Disa's wounds had healed remarkably well. Her bruises had all but faded, though her arm remained in a sling and she would wear a scar above her left eyebrow for the rest of her runtime. Still, she had suffered no permanent damage and no file corruption. In time, she would recover fully.
"What have I missed?" She asked.
"I am afraid things have taken a turn for the worse." Phong replied.
"Enzo?"
"He is fine. But..."
"Terabyte?" Disa asked.
"There is more at work here than Terabyte I am afraid." Phong said. Perhaps you should come with me. They had turned toward the door when a bright orange flash lit the room. Out of a small web portal stumbled a girl covered in dark blue armor. As the portal closed behind her, the girl's helmet disappeared, revealing green skin, dark hair, and an unmistakable metal crest. Terabyte stood still for a moment, then doubled over in pain, grabbing a nearby hospital bed for support.
"Home...sweet...home..." She growled before passing out on the floor.
Phong's eyes widened in alarm.
"Oh dear..."
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TBC
