The Viral Guardian Series

by Stellar Raven

One of the most bizarre self-insertion fics ever written. The main cast belongs to Mainframe Entertainment. Kit Maxel, Backslash Interface, Electra Prompt, TimeSprite and Chu belong to themselves. Everyone else is mine.

12. Air's Art

Author's Note: A tip of the hat, please, ladies and gentlemen, to Chu herself, who helped make this chapter what it is today.....her poor spelling and grammar notwithstanding....

Just kidding, Chu.... mostly...:P

The Viral Guardian Series

Chapter 11: Air's Art

(AKA Chu's Tale)

With a flash, a shining silvery orb appeared directly in front of Dot's Diner. A Sprite stepped out, then immediately jumped back to dodge an oncoming hovercar. She made a mental note to reprimand the Search Engine who had transported her here; the middle of the street was NOT an appropriate place to be dropped off.

Running a hand through her snow-white hair, she looked both ways and crossed the street, entering the Diner.

Mainframe had changed quite a bit, but the inside of the Diner was almost identical to the way it had been when she left. She grinned, showing off her short, sharp fangs, her red eyes glinting in the light. Home sweet home.

Something was off. She normally went unnoticed until she called attention to herself, but the bell above the door should have given her away. She glanced up. Ah, that explained it. The bell appeared to have been blasted off. She'd have to have a chat with Dot about that, the girl had promised her when she bought the place that she'd take good care of it.

Removing her purple cloak and hanging it on the coatrack by the door, she crossed the room and sat down at the bar. Then, to draw a little attention, she slapped her hand down on the counter.

A few heads immediately turned towards the source of the noise. A few stared quizzically for a moment, wondering why she'd done that, and still others blinked to make sure their eyes were working properly. After all, it wasn't everyday one saw a Sprite with peach-colored, green-tinged skin.

One head...a large, square one...simply stared in astonished surprise for a few moments.

"Madame!" Cecil said. "Eet is you! You est returned to Mainframe!"

"Stating the obvious, aren't we?" Chu grinned. "It's good to see you again, Cecil. Have you and Ms. Matrix been taking care of my Diner?"

Now the robotic sever looked embarrassed. "We 'ave been trying, madame. Ze System, she has been in chaos for ages."

"Yes, I heard. All that trouble with Daemon."

A hush feel over the Diner, many binomes wincing, others huddling in terror.

"Sor-RRY," Chu said, looking around at all the terrified stares that were aimed in her direction. She'd forgotten how skittish Binomes tended to be. Turning back to Cecil, she asked, "So, where is Dot, anyway?"

Cecil straightened his tie. "Ms. Matrix ees a very busy person. Surely you do not imagine she spends ALL her time at only one of 'er many eestablishments?"

"No, I suppose not."

"Neverzeless, I eemagine zat if you wait 'ere long enough, she will turn up."

Chu nodded. As Cecil scooted off on his track to tend to another table, she looked around at her old diner. Her eyes fell on the booth next to the door. There was one thing that HAD changed...in the old days, that booth was almost never empty. Her best customers, The young Guardians Backslash and Kit, Dot herself, her little brother Enzo, Electra.....and the weird one, what's his name....they would always be crammed onto the benches, happily chatting about whatever, spending all their allowances on snacks.

Those were the days.

* * *

Jareth peered down at the city below, from his position atop one of the towers that supported the Gilded Gate Bridge, the bridge that connected Lost Angles to the city of Mainframe. It had been almost two months since Megabyte's latest invasion of the Principal Office, two months since Electra had been deleted. Well, two months from his User-time perspective. Who knew how long it had been in virtual time. The two didn't seem to mesh, and he'd never been able to get it all straight.

He sighed, dangling his feet over the edge of the platform. Two months, and he'd barely left this tower. What was the point? Mainframe just wasn't any fun anymore. Not without Hex. Not without Electra. Sure, he could stir up some trouble of his own, but Bob and his friends would just set it all straight again, they always did. And Matrix would probably shoot at him.

Jareth tinkered briefly with the possibility of going down, just to bug Matrix. The idea certainly had its merits. But no, too much trouble for not enough fun.

"Unit for your thoughts?"

Jareth spun his head around, not moving the rest of his body. Delta was hovering in the air behind him, her long yellow hair billowing out behind her in the wind. She glided forward and landed gracefully on the tower.

The Virus scooted over, even though the platform was more than large enough for the two of them to sit comfortably.

"Come on. This isn't like you."

Jareth switch to a puzzled mask.

"Okay, I know, I just got here and I barely know you, but I've heard stories. You're supposed to be this legendary troublemaker, and you've done almost nothing but stand here on this tower ever since I got into town."

"Yeah, I know."

"Come on, let's have some fun. Let's go blow something up. You Viruses enjoy that, right?"

"Ordinarily, I'd jump at the opportunity, but.....I just don't feel like it." Jareth replied, turning his green stained-glass eyes back to the town below.

"No? What if we blew up Bob's car?"

"It might as well already be scrap. It doesn't work."

"We could go fix it for him. Imagine the look on his face when he goes to start the engine and it actually starts."

Jareth chuckled. The first time he'd laughed since......since. He glanced back over at Delta. She was smiling slyly at him, obviously trying to cheer him up. And it was working, damn her. He'd had a good funk going.

Before he could say anything, a vidwindow popped into existance, making that really cool noise that vidwindows make when they pop into existance. Dot gazed levelly out at them. "Jareth, could you please meet me at these coordinates?" She asked. "I need you to have a look at this lamppost."

* * *

"Well, you spoke the truth," Delta said. "It's a lamppost."

"Or at least it used to be," Jareth added, looking over the scarred and twisted metal.

"I asked you here, Jareth, because this isn't the first thing to turn up slashed," Dot said. "There are similar slashes on the outer wall of the P.O., on the dumpster behind the Diner, And in half a dozen other places around the System. Binomes have been turning up missing. It's been going on for seconds now."

"I haven't heard anything--" Delta began.

"We've been trying to keep a lid on it," Dot explained. "We don't want to cause a panic, especially since people are just now starting to calm down about Daemon. And with Megabyte still on the loose...." She let the sentence hang there. Clearly, it wouldn't take much to spark off a riot.

"And this concerns me, because....?" Jareth asked.

"Because this metal was clawed," Dot replied, pointing to the deep gouges in the steel. "Clearly the work of a Virus. But it's not Megabyte's style...nothing to gain, and these marks indicate claws that are too slender and elegant, not the mechanical style his have. Timesprite doesn't have claws, and since Hex and Electra....left us, I have to assume...."

"I see. Well, it wasn't me."

"Can you prove that?"

"Yes, he can," Delta said, examining the scratches. "Count the scratches."

"Four scratches to a slash," Dot replied. "Which means four fingers to a hand. The stigma of a Virus."

"Right, but count Jareth's fingers."

Puzzled, Jareth raised his hands, fingers spread so as to be easily seen.

Dot blinked. Jareth had four fingers on his left hand, like a Virus, but his right hand proudly sported five fingers, in the manner of a normal Sprite. "Nine fingers. I never noticed that before."

"Neither did I," Jareth replied, turning his hands over and examining them. "But then, I can't count."

"I don't know whether this is good news or bad," Dot said. "On the one hand....no pun intended....we know Jareth's innocent..."

"Umm...."

"Er....of this particular offense. However, this means we have an unidentified Virus running loose in the System."

"Oh, yeah," Deltra remarked dryly. "That's MUCH worse than the identified ones."

Dot wasn't listening, she was busy dialing a number into her organizer. "Bob? We have a problem."

* * *



Dot walked into the Diner, the place she'd asked everyone to meet. For a moment, she was puzzled by the absence of the ringing sound made by the bell above the door, but then she remembered that Jareth had blasted it off some time ago. She'd been meaning to have it replaced, but with all the recent troubles, she hadn't been able to find time.

Dot looked around the Diner. Most of the patrons had been asked to leave, except for a few of the more stable regulars. Bob had arrived, as had Matrix, AndrAIa, Ray, Hack, Slash, and Backslash. They all looked up as she entered, waiting for her to speak.

"Dot! There you are. I've been waiting all afternoon."

Dot blinked, astounded, as Chu strode up to her, her red eyes twinkling in the lights, her skin the same eye-defying peach-green as it had been the last time she'd seen her. Dot wondered how in the Net she could have possibly missed her.

The others were gazing at Chu in equal surprise; it was clear that they hadn't noticed her either.

"Chu! I...well, it's good to see you again. Why didn't you call and tell me you were dropping by?"

"And spoil the surprise? Never. What happened to my bell, Ms. Matrix?"

Dot opened her mouth to respond, but someone beat her to it.

"I did," Jareth answered, entering the Diner with Delta following close behind. "It was annoying me."

Chu narrowed her gaze at him. "That bell was solid ditanium with genuine gold filigree. It was imported. Cost a good 500 units."

Jareth switched to an intrigued face. "Isn't that a bit extravagant for a neighborhood diner?"

His tone was familiar. Chu tilted her head to the side. "Don't I know you?"

"After all the times you made me wash dishes, I should certainly hope so," Jareth said, feigning offense, crossing his arms and turning up his porcelain nose.

Dot stepped in. "We don't have time for this. Has Bob explained the reason for this meeting?"

"He said you'd explain the details, sis," Enzo said from one of the booths.Dot hadn't seen him, either. But at least he was small, and partially hidden by the back of the booth. Chu had no excuse.

"There's a Virus in Mainframe," Dot said.

Jareth feigned surprise, switching to a shocked mask. "A Virus? In Mainframe? No!"

"Keep your trap shut, or they'll be one less," Matrix snarled.

"If you insist, but there's not much point...it's usually shut, doesn't stop me from talking, does it? You know, I'm still trying to work out exactly where the sound comes from when I talk...it sounds like it's coming from inside my head, but it can't be, because..."

"Jareth...."

"....there's no opening for it to come out, unless maybe it's coming out my ears, and if it were coming out my ears, how would I hear? Can the same opening listen and talk at the same...."

"Jareth...."

"...time, or do you think I have an opening somewhere that I haven't found yet? You know, that didn't come out at all the way I wanted it to....maybe if I knew where it had come out I could have..."

"JARETH!"

"Yes, Dot?"

"Okay, here's the plan," Dot said. "We'll split into four teams and search the System by sectors. Delta, you're with Matrix. Check out Kit's Sector. Bob, you and AndrAIa search Pearson's Data Dump and the docks. Ray, you're with Hack. Search the industrial sectors. Backie, you're with Slash. Check the area around the Principal Office. Any questions?"

"Yeah," Delta said. "Why pair us off the way you did?"

"She's pairing off the ones who have scanning abilities with the fighters," Jareth responded. "If you have to divide your forces, you should evenly distribute the skill sets between the teams, so if anything happens to one team, you don't lose everyone with one particular skill set. Basic tactics."

Everyone stared at Jareth blankly.

"What? I didn't sleep through EVERY class at the Academy."

"Okay, get going," Dot commanded. "Report in if you find anything."

The teams filed out through the double doors of the Diner.

"What about me?" Enzo asked.

"You're staying here where it's safe."

"And me?" Jareth asked, before Enzo could start complaining.

"You're staying here to guard us," Dot replied, gesturing to indicate herself, Enzo, Chu and Cecil.

"Ah." There was a pause. "Mind if I order a snack?"

* * *

"So," Delta said. "Can you detect anything?"

"What do you mean, me?" Matrix asked, as he and the lavendar-skinned Search Engine strolled through the streets of Kit's Sector. "I thought you were the scanner?"

"Please. I am SO the fighter." Delta made a few jabs at the air. "You're the one with the eye."

"I'm the one with the Gun. YOU'RE the Search Engine."

"Fine, we'll both search, and if we find the--" Delta stopped herself just short of saying the word "Virus", noting the Binomes walking down the sidewalks all around them. "...the thing we're looking for, we'll both fight it. Sound okay?"

"Fine," Matrix replied, his eye swiveling around in its socket and glowing a bright red.

"Ooh." Delta's eyes widened. "Do that again."

"No."

"Doesn't that feel weird? When it spins like that? I mean, Doesn't it, like, tingle, or something?"

There was a pause.

"Sometimes," Matrix replied.

* * *

Enzo watched in astonishment as Jareth polished off the last of his ice cream sundae.

"I always wondered how you eat through that mask."

"Nothin' to it," Jareth quipped, spinning around on his barstool to face Dot and the others. "Any word yet?"

"No," Dot said, frowning. "I was hoping they'd have found something by now."

"You know what we should have one day? An Easter Egg hunt. I haven't been on one of those in a long time. I..."

Jareth suddenly grabbed at the countertop, barely stopping himself from sliding off the barstool.

"Jareth?" Enzo asked. "You okay?"

"I...umm....not really..." And the black-clothed Virus collapsed in a heap.

Enzo bent down to help him up.

"Enzo, don't touch him!" Dot snapped, snatching him away.

"What's happening to him?" the small Sprite asked.

Jareth's outline was pixelizing, blurring, shifting in an out of focus.

"I....I don't know. Just stand back."

The blurring abruptly faded, and Jareth stood up.

"Jareth?" Dot asked cautiously.

"That....was a trip."

Dot froze. That voice hadn't been Jareth's.

The Virus turned, his mask displaying a devious, plotting expression. Now that he was facing them, Dot could see that he no longer wore dyed-black Guardian armor beneath his coat, but rather loose, billowing black clothing. The clawhorn was gone, he instead wore a triangular piece of gold metal around his neck on a chain. He no longer had ears, there was instead a small, upward-curving, hematite-colored horn on either side of his head. And his hair, instead of being neatly tied back into a ponytail, was now wild and untamed.

"You're...Lore, aren't you?"

"Give the girl a prize." Lore jumped up onto the countertop, perching like a gargoyle. "So. Who shall I shred first?"

"You....wouldn't just delete a few Sprites, right?" Enzo asked nervously. "Not very impressive. Wouldn't you rather go stir up some trouble for the System? Wreak some havoc?"

"Eh, that was more my sister's gig. Me, I get off on carnage."

"Umm...but...where's the fun in that?"

"The fun, little one, lies in the slashing. It's in the shredding of flesh, the snapping of bone and tendon, the listening to someone try to scream as his lungs fill with his own energy. It's in the look in a Sprite's eyes as he breathes his last, just before he fades into nothingness. There's nothing quite like it." Lore extended his long, bladelike claws.

Dot's eyes widened as the claws grew from his fingernails. Long, slender, elegant....and four to a hand.

"That...umm...doesn't sound very chaotic," Enzo said, still apparently trying to bluff his way through this.

"Oh, it can be. The trick is to find creative new ways to butcher people. Allow me to demonstrate," Lore continued, hopping down from the counter.

Enzo took a frightened step back.

"Relax, little one." Lore switched to a grin. "This is going to be fun."

"Hey!"

Lore spun around...and there stood a Sprite he hadn't noticed before. He couldn't imagine how he'd missed her, not with that color scheme...a sort of pinkish-green, with white hair and red eyes. She tossed something at him, and he deftly caught it.

He glanced down at it. It seemed to be some sort of small, mechanical rodent. It was making a whirring sound, much like a fishing reel, its mechanical legs working, its long tail gradually retracting back into its body.

"Interesting," the Virus said, glancing back up at the Sprite. "What is it?"

Chu raised an eyebrow. "All the fun you can handle."

Lore glanced back down at the device in his hand, just as the tail pulled completely back into the casing.



* * *



AndrAIa waited patiently as Bob floated in the air above the Data Dump, his eyes half-closed. Finally, he sighed, floating back down and coming to rest next to her on the sidewalk just outside the fence.

"Nothing?"

"Nothing," Bob confirmed. "I could scan again...."

AndrAIa's head suddenly whipped around, facing in the direction of the Diner.

"What is it?" Bob asked.

The Game Sprite shook her head. "Nothing. I just...thought I heard something."

"What did it sound like?" The blue-skinned Guardian asked.

"An explosion," AndrAIa replied matter-of-factly. "Probably just Jareth, getting into trouble like always."

* * *

Dot coughed as the smoke cleared, grateful that Chu had pulled her and Enzo back behind the shelter of the bar. The explosion, confined to a small space, had sounded much larger than it was, but there was no denying that the Diner would need considerable remodeling after this.

"Enzo? You okay?"

"I'm fine, sis."

"I'm great, too, thanks for asking," Chu said, climbing to her feet.

"Thanks for saving us, Chu."

"We're not saved yet," Chu replied, peeking out over the bartop. "He's gone. Which either means my chu deleted him, which I doubt, or that he wandered off in search of something easier to kill. Funny, if I recall, Jareth always enjoyed a challenge."

"That wasn't Jareth," Dot replied. "That was Lore."

"BIG difference," Enzo said."

"Excuse me," said a muffled voice from somewhere in the rubble behind Enzo. "But could one of you please get me out of zees?"

Enzo turned around and fished a slightly battered Cecil out of the pile of broken ceiling tiles and fallen insulation, as Dot dialed a few numbers into her organizer.

"Calling the others?" Chu asked.

"Yes, for a quick briefing. This was supposed to be a discreet hunt for an unknown Virus, but the rules have changed. Again."

"Ever notice they seem to do that a lot when Jareth's involved?" Enzo asked, dusting the soot off Cecil's screen.

* * *



"Anything yet?" Matrix asked.

Delta let her eyes fall half-closed. "No viruses...but....nothing else, either."

"What?" Matrix asked, but even as he asked it, he realized that everything seemed eerily quiet. He looked around, his cybernetic eye buzzing. The street was deserted except for the two of them. It had gotten darker, too, the skies overhead were as clouded as they normally became when a Game Cube was about to drop. Intermittent flashes of electricity flashed across the sky.

"Where did everybody go?" he asked.

"I have no idea. But I wish I were there, too," Delta replied. "Creepy."

The two walked along in weary silence for a moment.

Abruptly, a harsh screeching sound filled the air. Both sprites spun around to confront the source of the noise.

A black-clothed figure was walking along behind them, dragging a single bladelike claw along the wall of the adjacent building, creating a shower of sparks, the claw against the concrete making the noise they'd heard. When he saw that they'd noticed him, he stopped and brought the claw around in front of him.

"Jareth? What are you doing here?"

The figured chuckled, his emerald green eyes shining out at them.

Another flash of lightning illuminated the street.

Matrix's eyes widened, as did Delta's. This wasn't Jareth. He looked very similar, but there were subtle differences...the short, silver horns growing from the side of his head instead of ears....the absence of the Guardian armor beneath the long, flowing trenchcoat...

"Lore," Matrix growled.

"Lore?" Delta asked, confused. "Can't be."

"Ohhh, but it can," Lore jeered. He took a few steps forward. His walk matched his attitude: sinister, yet the walk of someone who was thoroughly enjoying himself.

"The weather your doing?" Delta asked.

"One of the advantages of being a Virus like me is that you can order your own scenery according to mood." The black-masked Virus snapped his fingers, and rain began to fall.

Matrix held his hand out to his side, and Gun detactched itself from his hip and shot into his grip.

"Ah-ah-ah," the Virus said, wagging his finger, his mask grinning widely. "None of that."

The Gun shot out of Matrix's hand and into Lore's. He held it up, like a child inspecting a new toy.

"What does this button do?" he asked, the innocent tone in his voice not even close to covering the micheviousness. A blast shot forth from Gun's barrel as Jareth fiddled with it, ricocheting off the walls of the buildings lining the street.

Delta raised her arm, a nimbus of purple light surrounding it. The blast struck against a ghostly wall of energy, shattering into harmless sparks before it had the chance to do much damage.

"Aww....you're no fun." Lore tossed the Gun back over his shoulder carelessly, letting it fall to the pavement. Then, cackling, he leapt forward, claws extended.....only to find himself contained in a bubble of violet energy, suspended five feet off the ground in mid-pounce.

"Got 'im," Delta said, both arms raised now, eyes narrowed in concentration.

Matrix held up his hand, and Gun shot back through the air to him. He caught it deftly. "How long can you hold him?"

"Long enough."

Lore abruptly ceased struggling, calmly turning to glare, grinning, at Delta.

The Search Engine saw the look, and swallowed nervously. "Or not."

Lore snapped his fingers, and the bubble exploded with enough force to lift Matrix and Delta clear off their feet, both Sprites landing unceremoniously on their bitmaps.

Lore sauntered over and picked Delta up by the throat. Ignoring Matrix, he lifted her into the air, and, extending the claw of his forefinger, he raised it up to her nose.

"Do you have any idea what I'm going to do to you now?"

Delta couldn't answer, not with that bony white hand closed on her windpipe.

"No? Didn't think so. Shall I tell you, then? Well, why not. I, little Sprite, will slice you open and re-arrange your internal...well, external by this point...organs into alphabetical order. And then.....if you're lucky..." he switched to a grin. "I'll delete you."

"Virus!"

"Hmmmmm?" Lore turned his head completely around, to see Matrix standing behind him, eye glowing a fierce crimson, Gun levelled at his head.

*BANG!*

Just as Matrix fired, Lore vanished, his mask spinning off in a random direcion. Instead of Lore, the blast struck...

"Delta!" Matrix jumped forward and caught the Search Engine before she fell to the ground.

Delta stumbled forward, arms clutching her stomach. She looked up at Matrix's stunned expression, then down at Her hands, stained with her own energy.

A demented chuckle echoed throughout the street.

Then everything went black.



* * *

Inside the Principal Office, Phong tended to the minor bruises and scrapes that Dot, Enzo, and Cecil had suffered in the explosion at the Diner.

Abruptly, a vidwindow popped up. Dot was relieved to see Matrix's face, even if he did look so concerned; some sort of interference had prevented her from reaching him when she vidwindowed the others.

"Phong!" Matrix cried. "I need a med team, now! It's Delta..."

Phong immediately wheeled over to a console and made arrangements for a medical team to start heading towards the Renegade's location.

"What happened to her?" Dot asked.

"I...well....sort of....shot her."

"What?!"

"It wasn't my fault!"

"Who's was it?" Dot asked accusingly, then answered herself at the same time her brother did. "Lore's."

"Listen to me, Matrix, There's something wrong with Jareth--"

"There's ALWAYS something wrong with Jareth."

Dot couldn't argue with that, so she didn't try. "Just try to capture him, not delete him. Okay?"

Matrix grinned. "You'd be proud of me, sis...that's exactly what I WAS trying to do. Delta would be long gone by now if Gun had been set to full power."

"I'm sure she'll thank you for that when she recovers," Dot said, a relieved smile on her face. Just then, other bodies began moving in the background behind Matrix.

"Med team's here. Gotta go." And Matrix closed the window.

Enzo, who'd been eerily quiet, abruptly turned and addressed Chu. Dot started....once again, she'd forgotten that the strangely-colored Sprite was there.

"What are you?" Enzo asked.

"What?" Chu looked down at the young Sprite.

"What are you? I mean, you can't be a normal Sprite. Not with the things you do. I mean, like that thing where you disappear....well, not really disappear, but they way everyone seems not to notice you...and that bomb you threw...where'd it come from?"

Chu and Phong exchanged a glance. Chu nodded.

Phong turned back to Dot, cecil, and Enzo."I suppose you deserve to know the entire story," he said. "It all began many, many cycles ago....when I was a young Sprite...."



* * *

The Past....



The young Sprite was lounging on the fountain in the middle of system's public square, idly watching a couple of younger sprites playing tag, and listening to his best friend Apple babbling about some sort of levitation device that his dad was working on to enable quicker travel.

He stared into the energy fountain, watching it form mesmerizing spiral patterns and soft ripples. His eyes were just starting to close when he felt the world drop out from under him.

SPLASH!

He flailed around for a moment, trying to figure out what had happened, before regaining his bearings. He sat up, the energy in the shallow fountain not quite coming up to his chest, and blinked his eyes a few times to clear them. He looked straight into Apple's glaring face.

"Oh, I knew you weren't listening! You fell asleep," the accusatory tone and the sharp poke in the ribs that accompanied it cleared out the last of his confusion.

"Hey. You pushed me didn't you?"

"What, who me?" Apple took a step back trying to look as innocent as possible.

"You did. You little sneak."

"Well I had every right to. You fell asleep!"

The Sprite clambered out of the fountain, splashing energy all over, just as Apple turned and ran. He tried, with only partial success, to wring out his clothes, then made to take off after him....when the sirens went off.

He stopped and looked around in confusion. What did that noise mean? He racked his mind for any mention of that blaring noise in any of the history files that he was so fond of reading. He shook his head and looked around. The other children were looking around in confusion, as were most of the adults. The sky had started to turn a strange color, the air seemed charged and oddly quiet.

The adults were now ushering their own children into the safety of their houses.

He wondered if perhaps he should go indoors, too. But it was a rather long way back to the dojo where he lived with his uncle. His parents had been deleted in an unfortunate file crash when he was only two cycles old, and Commadore, the command.com of the System, placed him with his uncle, who had raised and watched out for him ever since. That was fifteen cycles ago.

No, he decided. He would stay and see what happened.

The sky was now a deep purple, and starting to shimmer strangely. He was the only one still standing in the square. The sirens were still blaring, and looking up, he saw a strange shimmering purple cube appear directly above the fountain.

It was beautiful, and yet somehow incredibly menacing. He gazed up at it in awe, watching the scintillating colors play across its surface as it started to descend. He felt himself falling into a trance as it descended.

Something tugged at the edge of his memory. He DID know what this was. He had been .4 when he had met him. A strange Sprite, wearing some sort of battered bluish armor. He'd said that he came from a ruined system where the...the young sprite scanned his memory for the term that the Sprite had used...Gamecubes, that was it....where the gamecubes had one day started landing. An unending stream of them. They had torn the sky, and made the energy seas bubble, and then began redning apart land, buildings, and sprites alike. The damage had become so bad that the system had started to fail.

Using information from an old legend, the residents had tried to create a tear in a last ditch effort to save themselves. Only a handful managed to escape before the system crashed.

The blue-armored sprite's stories had frightened the children of system. Their parents, with the aid of the Command.Com, had driven him away, assuring everyone that he was completely random and that he spoke nonsense.

But this was it, exactly as the old sprite had said, it was happening here. In this System.

A wash of terror stuck him, his eyes widening, as he remembered another detail: Anyone who was standing under the Gamecube when it fell disappeared and was never seen again. When the cube lifted, after it had wreaked its terrible destruction, the sprite or binome that had been caught by it was always gone without a trace. Nothing ever remained but a cube shaped hole in the ground...and a few energy-sucking parasites.

He looked at it. It was close now, directly above him. He started running, but it was much too close, was falling too fast.

He screamed as the shimmering wall descended in front of him, around him. He shut his eyes tight, awaiting the end, as the Cube touched the ground with a soft THUD.

* * *



The present...

Bob sighed as Dot's Vidwindow closed. "It's always something."

"Bob...Look." AndrAI pointed off into the distance.

Following her finger, the Guardian saw that the skies above Kit's Sector had darkened over with clouds, randomly illuminated by flashes of purple lightning.

"That's got to be Lore." Bob rose up off of the ground and began to float toward the sector. AndrAIa opened her Zipboard and followed.

Before either of them had gotten anywhere near Kit's, a spinning black object shot away from the darkened sector and made a beeline right for them.

"Ack!" Bob stopped hovering and dropped, the projectile tearing right through the air where he'd been hovering. A michievous cackle filled the air as Bob floated back up to his previous altitude.

The object turned around in midair, spun closer, and, with a blinding flash, revealed itself to be Lore, his long coat morphed into an enormous pair of black-feathered wings.

"Hiya, Bob!"

"Hello," Bob said cautiously.

"Jareth?" AndrAIa asked. "Are you in there?"

"Oh, I'm sorry....Jareth's not in just now. Would you like to leave...." Lore switched to his 'Bloody Murder' mask. "...A message?"

The Virus snapped his long, bony fingers, and AndrAIa's zipboard shot out from under her, flying straight into Lore's grip.

"AndrAIa!" Bob dived, hoping to catch the Game Sprite before she hit the pavement below.

Lore cackled for a moment, then paused contemplatively. "So....no message, then?"



* * *

The Past....

He stood very still, waiting to be deleted, wondering what it felt like, if it felt like anything at all. He stood like that with his eyes screwed tightly closed for what seemed to him like seconds.

Nothing happened.

He opened one eye, vaguely annoyed at having put that much terror into the thought of deletion and then being made to wait for it.

He saw a riot of colors and shapes. There were a number of Small furry creatures with long snouts, and a soft breeze that gently wafted past, smelling of spices and greenery.

Was this what deletion was like? It wasn't remotely what he had expected.

He opened the other eye and looked down. One of the small creatures was curled around his ankle. It was cute. He reached down and picked it up, it crooned softly sniffing at his hand.

"So," he mused to himself. "Since I don't really think this is deletion, I wonder where I am. Do you know?" He patted the little creature, which gazed back at him with large crystalline eyes. "No, I don't suppose you can talk."

He looked around. He was standing at a crossroads, in what appeared to be the middle of a forest. There were trees of all different colors, and about a dozen of the little animals like the one he was holding. The sky was a soft pastel blue and there was liquid dripping slowly onto the ground.

He laughed and the critter in his hands jumped. It was he who was dripping, he still hadn't dried off after his fall into the fountain. Could it really have only been a few moments before? It seemed like a lifetime ago.

He placed the small animal carefully back on the ground and double-clicked his icon to reboot to a dry outfit.

Instead of the outfit he'd wanted, a large wooden shield and a spear appeared in his hands. A rather heavy furred hat slipped down over his eyes as he started in surprise. These were NOT part of his wardrobe. He tossed them onto the ground, sputtering as the weight of the hat pressed on his damp hair, causing the energy to trickle down onto his face.

He scowled. For User's sake, why didn't rebooting dry hair?

He sat down on the ground, shucking a couple pieces of armor that he had missed the first time, and started fiddling with the strings holding his hair up, trying to remember why it was that the students at his uncle's dojo had to wear their hair long. Something about having to tie it up every few minuets teaching patience, he decided. If he ever got back to system he was cutting it short, no matter what uncle said.

A loud BOOM, and a scream, startled him out of his grumblings. Without thinking, he leapt up and took off in the direction of the sound to see if whoever had screamed needed help.

A moment later he crashed into her rounding a corner, and they both went sprawling into the undergrowth.

"Ouch," he rubbed his elbow, which had struck a tree branch on the way down. Brushing himself off, he started to stand up. The girl with whom he had collided grabbed his arm, pulling him back down and motioning to keep quiet.

"Err, sorry about that, are you alrigh…"

She clamped a hand firmly over his mouth just as another form came hurtling around the corner and stopped just feet away from where they were crouched.

It was another sprite. He was wearing a green tunic and holding a nasty looking toothed sword, so large that he really should have fallen over.

He turned around angrily, glaring up and down the path, but not giving the trees lining it a second glance.

Uttering a loud growl and a string of indecipherable gibberish, he continued on down the path in the opposite direction from which he had come.

The girl stood up and brushed some leaves and twigs out of her hair and off her clothes.

"I'm real sorry you had to get caught in the middle of that, but that idiot has been chasing me all day. By the way," she said, reaching out her hand, "My names Epoch, who are you?"

"Phong," the Sprite answered, shaking the outstretched hand and getting pulled to his feet in the process. "Nice to meet you. But why is he chasing you?"

She shrugged. "Who knows what goes through a Users mind? Near as I can tell, he just likes running around and stabbing things."

"Did you say User?"

"Yup, what's wrong? You look upset."

"But...aren't the Users the one who created the System? Why would one of them be trying to delete people?"

A look of confusion passed over Epoch's face. "System? What's the System?"

"This is, isn't it?"

"This is the Game."

A piercing howl came from a ways down the path.

Phong jumped. "what was that?"

"Funny, he shouldn't do that...unless he's re-found our trail."

"Oh, that makes sense. He probably found the sword and shield that I dropped earlier...and the strings out of my hair. You screamed before I had a chance to put them back."

"Why do you need strings in your hair?"

Phong shrugged. "Something to do with obsolete discipline forms."

Epoch clearly decided she was happier not asking about it.

* * *

The present....

It was funny how things seemed to slow down, AndrAIa thought, as the windows of the building shot past, not five feet away from her. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see that Bob had his hands full with Lore. No help there. And the pavement was coming up at her very, very fast.

The Gamesprite snatched the small cyllindar from her belt. She flipped the switch on the side, extending it into a razor-sharp trident. Whirling the weapon around, she jammed it into the side of the building, trying to use the jagged head of the weapon at the best angle to catch the vertical surface. The Game Sprite was slammed quite hard against the building, and she struggled to keep her grip on the shaft of the trident. Sparks flew as the blades cut a deep furrow into the solid wall. Someone was bound to complain about the damage...but it did the trick; when AndrAIa finally reached the sidewalk, she was falling slowly enough that the impact was only badly jarring instead of fatal.

Shaking it off, she glanced up into the sky, wishing that her eyesight was as acute as her hearing. She narrowed her eyes at the small black form darting around in the air.

With a flick of her fingers, she extended the fingernails of her right hand, then aimed them at the sky.

"Hold still...."

The black form paused in its movement across the sky.

AndrAIa's eyes widened. "I didn't expect you to actually listen."

And, launching them so hard that the recoil stung clear down to her elbow, AndrAIa fired the toxic spines into the air.

* * *

"Leaving already?"

Before he'd gotten anywhere near AndrAIa, Bob found himself being telekinetically grabbed and flung back up into the air.

Regaining his equilibrium, he turned mid-air and fired a golden globe at the emerald-eyed Virus. When it struck Lore, it expanded, sealing him in a sphere of transparent amber energy.

Bob glanced down and prepared to dive again to rescue his friend, but he'd lost sight of her...wait, there! A small shower of sparks, running down the side of one of the buildings. That was her.

Abruptly, a large, sprite-sized sphere of transparent amber energy rocketed across the sky and struck Bob. Rather than enveloping him, it simply struck him, making a sound not unlike that of a basketball hitting someone upside the head.

Lore was lying on his side in the air, wings flapping lazily, examining his claws in boredom. He theatrically let out a yawn.

Bob glared, and began firing ball after ball of golden light at Lore, doubling the amount of energy he put into each, attemtping to recapture him. Lore darted through the air, dodging Bob's attacks, giggling like a loon the whole time, occasionally pausing to taunt the Guardian.

"Missed me! Missed me again! Whoops! One more time. Damn, Guardian, your aim's worse than your haircut."

As Lore paused to deliver the one-liner, a spray of six-inch-long needles lanced through the air. One of the caught the Virus in the leg.

"Aiyye!" Lore pulled it out, glared at it, then glared down at the ground.

Bob tried to take advantage of the distraction, firing another orb at the Virus, but Lore saw it coming and blasted it, popping it like a bubble. He switched to his most ferocious mask.

"Okay. Over this now." The black-clothed Virus raised his arms above his head, a massive ball of dark green energy forming between the four-fingered hands.

Bob braced himself for the blast, but it never came; the sphere dissipated as Lore seemed to lose his balance, almost falling out of the air, his wingflaps becoming erratic. Lore shook his head, vanished into his mask, and went spinning off across the sky.

Bob sighed, then went floating down to check on AndrAIa.

* * *

The past.....

A short time later, they were sitting at a small table in a room in Epoch's cottage on the outskirts of the town.

After their escape from the bloodthirsty User, Phong explained about how he had ended up wandering the Game's forest paths. Upon hearing that he was lost and didn't know how to get home, Epoch decided to take it upon herself to make him as comfortable as possible.

She was currently explaining the political and monetary systems of the Game, to which Phong was listening raptly...and a bit incredulously.

"So, the people here really don't care of you just walk in and out of their homes?"

"Nope"

"And the kingdom, which consists of this little village, and a large amount of very dangerous forests and mountains and swamps, is ruled over by a king that no one has seen in...how long?"

"Decades."

"Decades? What's a decade?"

"Ten years."

"Years?"

"She explained about time, and he felt that sense of panic returning.

"But a second is a very long time," he said.

"No, it's a very short time. For example, this sentence took several seconds to say."

"But if that's true, then even if I do get home, it'll be long after I left."

She looked concerned. "Well...maybe seconds here aren't really the same as seconds there?"

"I hope not," he said, allowing himself to be consoled.

A bell rang.

Epoch looked startled. She walked over to the far wall and picked up a small square, which she then strapped to her wrist and started poking.

"What's that?" Phong asked.

"It's a datastreamer, almost all sprites here in the Game have them. Urgh, he's earlier than normal."

She walked out the door leading to the front room. Phong got up and followed.

He froze as he reached the doorway. There was the User from earlier, standing in the middle of the room. Had it followed them here?

He started to shout a warning to Epoch, but paused. She was calmly talking to it.

Apparently coming to an agreement, she walked over to a shelf and picked up a small box, which she handed to the User, who abruptly turned and walked out.

Phong walked out into the room. "What was that all about?"

"He was buying weapons."

"Not trying to delete you?"

"No, I'm at home now."

"Why should that make a difference?"

"The user only attacks things in the wilderness."

"That's kind of odd."

"Really? I thought it was normal. I guess I should be more thorough in my explanations. Neither of us really has much of a frame of refernce."

"Good idea."

They both went back into the backroom and sat down at the table again.

"And while you're at it, you can explain to me why you would sell something THAT violent weapons, of all things."

* * *

A number of what Epoch called days had passed. Phong was wandering aimlessly around the town, he had been assured that it was safe, and he was bored. After the excitement of the first "day" he had discovered that it was actually incredibly dull in the game world.

It turned out that Epoch was the owner of a weapon shop, one of four that the town had.

He wondered about the redundancy of that, but didn't press the subject. Apparently, she as a gamesprite was required to sell weapons to anyone who asked. She had scolded him mildly for leaving his own lying in the forest.

She also ran what she called a minigame, called bombbomb, that involved much and a large circle and striped walls, all of which he found confusing and carefully avoided.

Every few days the User returned for new weapons, but other than that almost nothing had happened since his arrival.

He missed Apple, and his uncle, and was simultaneously wondering if they were all right and walking down Main Street for the twenty third time that day when it happened. The sky started flashing and then everything went dark for a moment. When it cleared, all of the townspeople had changed position.

Epoch checked her datastreamer for the third time. Three more hours gametime before he made it to her store. She sighed and went over her lines, and mentally added in a few comments of her own. The User was absolutely terrible at the level, seventeen days after this one, he kept getting reset, and had to come back to her shop over and over. Not that she minded that much. She sighed and checked the mirror to make sure she looked just right. Then turned to greet him as he opened the door.

"Good day sir, this is the weapons shop, we have all sorts of unique and wonderful weapons for you to purchase, or, if you would prefer, you could also play the bomb game…" She smiled, but then froze. That was not the User.

She rechecked her datastreamer. No, he had another hour before he would come here.

Who was this person? He wasn't supposed to come into her store. Only the User and the boss were supposed to come into her shop. Well, them, and two random villager sprites, but that wasn't till after the village was destroyed in the third chapter.

"You can't be in here. It's not in the script!" She glared at him, hoping that he would get the message and leave. He didn't.

He just looked at her in confusion. "Epoch, what happened?"

She jumped. How did he know her name?

She looked more closely at him. Young man, yellow skin, black hair, strangely dressed, quite handsome. Almost as much as the user.

Something tugged at the back of her mind. Actually he did look familiar…And then it hit her. Phong!

"I remember now! Err...what…?"

He rapidly explained to her about the flashing sky, the blackout, the moving villagers, and her own strange reaction.

"Hmm...that is odd. I wonder why that happened. Oh, I know!" A light bulb flashed over her head, which Phong gaped at. Epoch shooed it away. "Ignore that, it happens. That must have been a restart!"

"A restart?" Phong looked doubtful.

"Yes, it happens when…"

Just then the User walked in, ahead of schedule. Phong sighed and went back into the backroom to wait. He had gotten used to the fact that everything else got put on hold when the User entered. Epoch and the User once again went through their little show of weapons selling and buying.

After he left, Phong walked up and tapped Epoch on the shoulder.

"You were telling me about restarts?"

She blinked, looking puzzled for a moment, and then nodded.

"A restart is when the User dies," she said. "The User is very important to our world. It's his mission to find something that will stop something bad from happening."

"Any bad thing in particular, or just something generally bad?" He had heard this part before, her memory seemed to be a bit off today.

She shrugged. "Anyhow, if the User dies, then the game restarts at day one. Everything that happened before the User died gets reset with it. For example, you know how I was in the forest when we met? Well, that was tomorrow. Or will be."

Phong nodded, absorbing this information. "So this happens every time the user dies?"

"Yes."

"And I'm assuming the townspeople will have trouble remembering me, too?"

"Most likely. Everything restarts time, treasure, the stock of all the shops, and even the memory of all the Gamesprites."

"Short lives you people have."

She shrugged.

"And this will just keep repeating, over and over again?"

"Yes it will." She gazed at the wall thoughtfully, Then back at his face. "Actually...it might not."

"What might not?"

"Repeat continuously."

"Why is that?"

"I heard somewhere that the User has a limited number of lives. He can increase the number by beating dungeons, but its still a finite number."

"Ah," Phong smiled, "Now were getting somewhere. So what happens when he runs out?"

"I don't really know. Game Over, I think."

"What does that mean?"

"I don't know."

They spent a number of days, and two more reset cycles, discussing "Game Over" and what it might mean. They even went around all of the other townspeople and asked their opinion,, which was fairly pointless, since most of them could only repeat the same innane phrase over and over again.

Finally, they decided that, given the fact that their world reset every time the User died, it might not be a bad idea to get rid of the User permanently. After all, no one actually knew what the bad thing actually was that he was always fighting. For all anyone knew, the User could have made it up.

Thus far, the User had almost always made it to something called Level Seven before he died, which was on day eighteen and afforded him the chance to get an extra life or two by the time he was killed. Therefore, he would have to be killed before then. The problem was that, by the time the villagers remembered this, it was too late in the Game and the User already had his extra life.

Apparently, Phong was the only person who kept his memory intact during a restart, so it was left up to him to kill the User. That, and the fact that he didn't seem to be bound by silly game rules....such as not attacking people in town.

Given the options, he agreed.

* * *



The Present.....

"I like the Apple green bubblegum..."

"Slash...."

" Y'know I like to call it Radioactive bubblegum because it's brightbright green and it never loses it's color or flavor."

"Slash..."

"Hack keeps telling me 'Slash. No Bubblegum can keep it's flavor or color forever, Sooner or later it's going to go white' But no! I've seen the proof! It goes slightly Yellowish but it never loses that Green color!"

"Slash!"

"Eh, yes, Backslash, sir?"

Backie paused for a moment. "How do you CHEW gum, anyway?"

Just then, a number of Binomes stampeded past them, knocking Backslash over. Slash caught him before he hit the sidewalk.

"Ow! Thanks, Slash."

"Where are they going?" Slash asked.

"Away from something."

"What?"

"Let's find out."

Following the trail of scampering, panic-striken Binomes, the two discovered Lore, calmly sitting atop a pile of...

Slash covered the glowing panel that occupied the place where his mouth would have been, had he posessed one. "I think I'm gonna be sick."

Backie's eyes were wide, and his dark green skin was several shades paler than normal. "Right there with you."

A pile of cubes, obviously taken from several dozen binomes, lay in the center of the street. The heap was vaguely arranged into the shape of a chair or throne. Several of the still-attached limbs were twitching slightly, a number of eyes rolled in their sockets. The streets still ran with their energy, it covered every available surface, staining the pavement and flowing into the sewer grates. The black-clothed Virus lounged atop the throne, his mask a malicious grin.

"You...you deleted them?" Backslash was stunned. Obviously, Lore was a Virus, but somehow Backie had still been thinking of him as his relatively harmless Viral Guardian self. This gruesome act had blown that impression clear away.

"Deleted? Oh, no, Guardian. They are all very much still ali-" The Virus twitched. "-processing. Would you paint a portrait only to see it burned? Would you write a great novel, only to shred it before it could be read? Of course not." Lore rose up off the pile, floating in the air. He gesture towards the pile. "Do you see what I have done? A symphony I have created of flesh and blood, of pain and fear. This...this is life itself, Guardian, for never is a creature as truly alive as when every cell screams in obscene agony. Can you imagine it? Every nerve firing, burning....alive. You won't have to imagine for long, mind you. You'll soon be experiencing it yourself."

"They're....still processing?"

"Yes! I wouldn't dream of depriving them of this, the greatest affirmation of their existance. You can see it in their eyes...the one that still have eyes, that is....you can see the pain, the fear...for they all know that the only thing maintaining them is my will....a single thought, and they cease to be...Have you ever seen it, Guardian? Have you seen the look in the eyes of the dying, the look in their eyes as life leaves them, leaving behind nothing but an empty shell that soon dissolves away into nothingness?"

"You're insane!"

"Clearly. But you have to admit, I'm good at it. Imagine....everything that these binomes are....they're experiences, their memories, their lives, their souls...gone, in an instant. I'll even unmute them, so we can hear the screams....they're screaming now, see, but I thought I'd dial it down so we could have this chat."

Backslash shook his head. "No..."

"No? You mean that I should leave them like this? To spend the rest of their days in such agony? Pretty cold, Guardian. No, I'm dying to hear the crescendo....and I'm sure people will complain when traffic starts to back up. We ARE in the middle of Main Street, after all."

Lore floated around until he was facing the gory mess, his back to Backslash. The Virus raised his arms dramatically. "And...Action!" He cried.

The screams echoed across the entire System.





* * *





The past...

Epoch checked her datastreamer for the fourth time. Three more hours gametime before he made it to her store. She sighed and went over her lines, and mentally added in a few comments of her own. The User was absolutely terrible at the level, seventeen days after this one, he kept getting reset, and had to come back to her shop over and over. Not that she minded that much. She sighed and checked the mirror to make sure she looked just right. Then turned to greet him as he opened the door.

"Good day sir, this is the weapons shop, we have all sorts of unique and wonderful weapons for you to purchase, or, if you would prefer, you could also play the bomb game…" She smiled, but then froze. That was not the User.

She rechecked her datastreamer. No, he had another hour before he would come here.

Who was this person? He wasn't supposed to come into her store. Only the User and the boss were supposed to come into her shop. Well, them, and two random villager sprites, but that wasn't till after the village was destroyed in the third chapter.

"You can't be in here. It's not in the script!" She glared at him, hoping that he would get the message and leave. He didn't.

Instead, he leapt behind the counter, and, grabbing one of her display weapons, crouched down and yelled, "Tell me when he gets here!"

"Who?"

"The User, of course!"

"Why?"

"So I can stop him before he gets any further."

She squealed. No no NO! This was all wrong, did this strange sprite mean to hurt the handsome user? "Get out of my shop! The user is nice He's kind and polite and handsome and always plays my Bombbomb game!"

He looked at her pityingly. "So…your not gonna help me?"

She grabbed a club that was sitting on the counter, and prepared to clobber him with it. She had half a notion that she could protect the User by hitting the mean yellow sprite.

The User walked in, and something clicked in her mind.

The strange sprite ducked as the User walked up to the counter

"Phong!" Epoch yelled, and the User looked around in confusion. This was not what was supposed to be happening here.

Just then, Phong leapt from behind the counter and impaled the User with his sword.

The User collapsed, and everything flashed and went black.

* * *

Phong was standing outside of Epoch's weapon shop, sword held innocently behind his back. The User would be here any moment.

He had done this numerous time now, and was getting quite good at user killing. He had used almost all of the weapons in Epoch's store at least once now, as well as catching the User on the way one time and pushing it off a cliff.

Epoch sat at the side of the path a few feet away. The User was taking his sweet time getting here today. He had had time to jog her memory, as usual, and after a brief explanation she had decided to help. As the weather on day one was nice, and because it was against the rules for her to fight inside her shop, they were waiting outside.

The user approached warily, it seemed he was starting to anticipate this attack, as he had been getting steadily more creative and difficult to kill.

The User spotted them and drew his sword.

Phong grinned. Yes, the User was definitely getting jumpier. Who would have guessed he had so many lives?

Just then one of the small furry things that he had seen just after arriving in the game, scurried up. It was the first time that Phong had seen one of them since first arriving.

It ran right over the User's feet.

The User paused, apparently he hadn't seen these creatures before. Epoch and Phong both leapt into action, not about to waste the opportunity.

Phong scored a hit, but not a lethal one. The User darted back and pulled a bottle out of its backpack, downing the entire thing at a gulp. His wounds visibly healing, the User charged straight at Phong, sword raised.

Phong ducked aside as the User's sword slammed down where his head had been moments before. He stabbed at the user, who let out a yelp of pain before giving Phong a solid kick in the ribs and readying his sword to strike again. He never did, there was an explosion that sounded distressingly familiar and a lot of smoke, and the user fell down screaming.

Phong did a double-take. It hadn't been Epoch that had screamed that first day, just before he crashed into her. It had been the User. He couldn't help laughing at that mixup.

As the User struggled to get up, Epoch threw something at him which resulted in another explosion, and when the smoke cleared, the User was lying flat on his back, dazed.

Smirking, Phong took a step forward, bringing to the user's side. Raising his sword, he thrust it down, directly into the User's chest.

The sky flashed, but instead of turning black, everything went red.

The smile dropped off Phong's face, and he looked around in surprise. Epoch was standing there, holding the strange furry creature in her arms and looking scared.

Phong realized that she had always reset when the sky flashed, and so had never seen it before. He started to tell her not to worry, that this was normal, when a loud voice announced, "Game Over," and everything started to melt.

He glanced down at himself. He was the only thing not melting.

This was wrong.

Epoch was screaming.

This was very wrong.

It wasn't resetting. It was...deleting?

What had he done?

His mind whirled. Why wasn't he melting? What was different about him? He was from outside of the game. He wasn't a gamesprite. He had a different icon than the gamesprites had.

That was it! It must be! Could he fix her icon?

Unclipping his icon He ran over to her and touched it to hers.

"Fix!" He said. Nothing happened.

"Repair! Transform! Copy! Oh for User's sake, do something!" He screamed at it. "Can't you download my non-gamesprite-ness into her icon?"

He blinked. The Icon had flashed at the word download.

He held up his icon and said very clearly, "Download her data into my icon," and doubleclicked it.

And then She was gone.

He looked wildly about. Had it worked? Would it save her? What if he had done the wrong thing? What if she would just have reset, and it was he who would disappear? What if the Game Over was like a system restart, and it was just cleansing anything that didn't belong, like himself? Would it now it would take her with it? What if...?

He never finished that thought.

He was standing in the middle of the system square, With the massive form of a purple Gamecube quickly retreating into the sky.

He looked around, the sky had returned to its normal color, and the square was exactly the way it had been when he had left. Had he left? Suddenly he doubted that any of that had really happened. aybe Gamecubes caused hallucinations?

His vision blurred, and he dropped to his knees. He saw his icon, still clutched in his hand. It shimmered and changed into a Game icon for a nano, then back again. Had he imagined that? Or was it proof that everything he'd experienced had just happened? He pinned it back onto his shirtfront, which he noticed had returned to what he had originally been wearing.

It was the last thing he noticed before everything went black.

* * *



The present...

"Ahh." Lore breathed a deep sigh of satisfaction. "Wasn't that great?"

"No!" Backslash replied.

The street was now empty. All the binomes had been deleted, and not a trace of them remained. Only Lore and Backie now stood in the street. Slash was standing on the sidewalk, quietly watching, evidently waiting for a directive.

"No?" Lore said, sounding surprised. He turned to face Backslash, his mask displaying a look of astonishment. "Ah, but Guardian, I have just enriched your life! For what have we in life, if not experiences? Now, you can honestly say that you've experienced something you never had before."

"What about all those Binomes you just deleted?"

Lore switched to an amused expression. "I'm fairly certain that none of them had experienced that before, either."

"This isn't funny!"

"Yeah!" Slash cried. "Not funny."

Both Virus and Guardian turned to stare at him.

"You wanna let the big boys talk?" Lore asked.

Slash hung his head. "Sorry."

"Now, then," Lore said. "Shall I try to top myself, Guardian?"

Backslash removed the small cylinder from his belt. He flipped the small switch on the side, and a blade of solid light sprung forth from the end.

Lore held out his hands. Green lightning crackled between them, taking the form of a scythe. He switched to a grin, and began chanting,

"Silly creature, dressed in blue,

Try to do what you must do.

But know this, friend, you will not win.

Blunder and stumble. Let the fun begin."

He cackled maniacally, swinging down with the curved energy blade.

Backslash parried with his saber, blocking Lore's scythe and countering with a sideways slash, intended to cut Lore off at the waist. Lore jumped back, then stabbed foreward with the butt end of the scythe's shaft, catching Backie in the ribs.

Backslash's armor absorbed most of the impact, but it was still a solid enough blow to knock the wind from him. Lore strode foreward, raising his scythe above his head, preparing the bury the blade in Backie's skull....when a barrage of laser fire caught him full in the face.

Lore fell back with a screech as Slash rolled into the street, cannons emerging from his wrists where his hands had been. One of the guns pulled back into his wrist, to be replaced instantly by his hand. He helped Backslash to his feet.

Lore switched to a scowl, stood, and brushed himself off. Glaring at Slash, he raised his arm and clenched his fist, as though grabbing something in midair.

As he did, the concrete below Slash's wheel flowed like clay, rising up and taking the shape of a massive stone fist, grasping Slash and holding him immobile.

"Hey!"

"Wait your turn, Tin Man."

A familiar whistling filled the air. Lore spun, raising his hand....just in time to telekinetically stop the flight of five long, sharp spines. AndrAIa stood before him, trident in hand.

"Always with the interruptions," Lore complained. "How can anyone be expected to work under such conditions?"

With a wave of his hand, Lore send the spines flying back at AndrAIa. The Game Sprite dived aside as the toxic barbs ricocheted down the street. Snatching the starfish from her hair, she flung it at the Virus.

Lore laughed. "Do you honestly think you can..." He stopped short, as though puzzled, reached around with his right hand and felt his upper arm. A single, horizontal slice ran across the sleeve of his coat. His long, bony fingers came away stained with energy. "You cut me. You actually cut me." Lore began to giggle, and it quickly grew into full-fledged psychotic laughter.

AndrAIa suddenly found herself being listed up off the concrete by her throat. She clutched at her neck, tryng to break the invisible hold that was cutting off her air supply.

Lore's coat morphed into a massive pair of black, feathered wings, and he flew forward until his face was inches from hers. He ran his foreclaw down her cheek.

"Little Sprite of turquoise hair,

emerald scales and orange hide.

Little Sprite, one has to wonder

what pretty colors lie inside?"

"Get away from her!"

Lore turned. There stood Matrix, Gun leveled at his head.

Lore shook his finger at him. "Now, now....you remember what happened last time you did that."

Matrix shook with anger. "Let her go."

"Okay." Lore made a negligent wave of his hand, and AndrAIa fell to the pavement, gasping for air. Matrix ran to her side. "Are you okay?"

She nodded, hand still massaging her neck.

"Aww. It's a Kodak moment," Lore chuckled.

Matrix whirled, again aiming his Gun at the Virus.

"Tech--containment field!"

Lore was instantly wrapped hear to toe, wing to wing, in pencil-thin tendrils of energy.

Backie lowered his Keytool. "Put away the Gun, Unc--Matrix," he said. "We're supposed to take him processing, remember?"

Matrix didn't react for a moment. He stood frozen, firearm poised to blow off Lore's head. Then he relaxed, holstering Gun. "I remember."

"Come on. Let's get him to the P.O."

The field holding Lore shattered, whips of energy flying everywhere. Lore stretched lazily, then began brushing himself off. "Sorry. Don't think I can make it. I've got plans, you see. So many things to create, so little time."

"Oh, Lore?"

Lore's head came up to see Bob hovering in the air above him. Before he could react, Bob let fly a shower of golden sparks, directly into Lore's face.

Lore screamed, clutching at his mask. With a flash, he vanished into the polished porcelain surface, which went spinning off into the sky.

"After him!" Matrix called, but before the mask had gotten far, it seemed to lose its balance, weaving unsteadily through the air. Matrix's cybernetic eye zoomed in to give him a better view, and as he watched, the outline of the spinning mask blurred, pixelized, and finally, in a flash, transformed into a slim form, wearing black Guardian armor.

Still spinning, it fell to the ground below.

* * *



The Past.....

When Phong awoke, he was lying on one of the cots in his uncle's dojo. For the second time that day, he wondered if he had dreamt his whole adventure.

He chided himself, it wasn't a day, it was a cycle.

He sat up and looked around. He wasn't in his own cot. He was in one of the large guest rooms, and he could hear his uncle's voice and a few others on the other side of one of the paneled paper walls to his left.

Realizing that he was the topic of the hushed discussion, he listened intently.

"I don't understand."

"Well, were all glad that we got at least one of them back."

"He's the only one?"

"Yes."

"Didn't that stranger...what's his name...Say that no one ever returned from those box thingies?"

"Yeah, but I'm not going to complain about him being wrong."

Phong smiled, recognizing his Uncle's voice.

"Is it true that the place where we found him was the only box that left without destroying anything?" (Another familiar voice...possibly one of the older students of the dojo)

"Amazing, isn't it?"

"But still, do you think he'll ever wake up?"

"He's been out for almost three cycles."

"Did the Command.Com find out what's wrong with him?"

"Not yet. I'm expecting a vidwindow soon with the results of the scan," his uncle replied. "After that binome couple found him, he seemed pretty torn up, that box was there for almost two cycles. It's amazing that he survived."

"We don't know that for sure yet."

Phong heard the familiar sound of a vidwindow opening.

"Ah there it is, what did I tell you?" his uncle's voice said.

He recognized the command.com's voice. The vidwindow was quieter than the people speaking had been, and he had to strain to hear it.

It was saying that his energy was low, but that commadore thought that he could...

And that it just needed... and to bring him to the Principle Pffice for...

Phong stopped trying to hear after that. He wasn't learning anything, just getting frustrated.

Shortly thereafter, the transmission ended and the vidwindow closed with its signature 'zip' sound. He heard footsteps, and his uncle entered the room. He looked surprised to see Phong awake.

"Oh thank the User, how are you feeling?"

Phong contemplated actually thanking the User, after all the times the User had tried to delete him.

"Phong?"

He realized that he hadn't answered. "I'm alright. A bit tired."

"Well don't worry, Commadore has learned what's wrong, and can make you all better in no time."

"So...what is wrong?" he asked, exasperated, when his uncle made it clear that it hadn't occurred to him to volunteer any more information.

"Oh, well, I'm unsure of the exact details. You can ask Commadore when your feeling better."

After a small argument, and Phong's assurances that he could walk just fine, they set off for the Principal Office, his uncle as well as a number of other students hovering around him as if he was going to break.

He was finding it increasingly annoying, and told them so, which only made things worse. By the time they got to the principle office he was ready to start lashing out at them all.

Thankfully, Commadore came out to meet them as they were approaching the door, and he seemed willing to treat Phong like a person rather than a crystallized energy sculpture.

"Come in, come in, so glad you could make it." He was ushered inside. Commadore's jovial roar made it sound like he was attending a party rather than an unknown procedure.

"So...what's wrong with me?"

"Ah, well, do you know that you are the only sprite that has been caught in one of those purple boxes and come out again?"

"Yes, I overheard uncle talking about it. And they're called Gamecubes."

"Really?"

"Yes. Remember? The sprite that was here ages ago said that was the name for them."

Comadore paled a little, everyone was aware that it had been his idea to send that sprite away.

"But you still haven't told me...," Phong began.

"Yes of course. Well, it seems that your data has gotten partially corrupted while you were under the box…err, Gamecube. But since most of your data is still alright, we can just use the uncorrupted data in your system to get rid of the corruption."

Phong stopped walking. "You cant do that."

"Of course we can, my boy."

"No," he paused trying to work out how to explain that it was Epoch that was stored in his code, not some kind of corruption. "When the gamecube landed, I was transported into the Gameworld. It's completely different from the System. And anyway, there are people there and..."

"Nonsense, lad," cut in Commadore, "The gamecubes are hardly large enough to fit entire worlds inside. I'm sure it was just a dream."

"I considered that, but it wasn't. I made friends with one of the people in the game, and when the game started to dissolve I loaded her data into my icon to stop her from dissolving too."

One of the students snickered. "Oh, so it was a girl you were dreaming about."

"NO!" He cried. "Her name is Epoch, and she's a person, a Sprite, same as we are, from inside the Game. Not some kind of corrupt data. Purging her data would be like deleting her. You can't do that, there must be some other way."

His uncle looked at him sternly. "You do realize that if you aren't fixed soon, you could be delourself? This is quite a story you are asking us to believe. Are you sure you want to take that risk?"

"Yes."

"Then I trust your judgement."

"You can't honestly be accepting the child's nonsense," Commadore growled. "He's corrupted, and delusional, and I wont have an unreasonable deletion on my conscience because of some half-baked imagining."

Uncle rounded on the Command.com. "Now see here, I've raised phong since he was .2. He has always proven himself to be a rational and responsible young sprite, and if he says there's another sprite that we have to save and that he's willing to risk his own code to save hers, then I believe him."

Commadore bristled, but then gave in. "Fine. I'll scan him for any proof of what he says, but if it turns out to be nonsense like I'm sure it is, then we're purging him. Got it?"

Both Phong and his uncle nodded agreement to the compromise.

* * *

It was five cycles later, and Phong felt like he just might welcome deletion.

He was lying on a table in an empty room in the principle office. He had been poked, prodded, scanned, screened and examined in more ways than he had previously thought possible.

But it had proved effective. They had finally had to admit that what he told them, at least as far as the separate code in his Icon went, was true, and had started working on a means to extract it undamaged.

One of the binomes working at the Principle Office had just been in to tell him that they thought they had found a way. He was relieved to hear this, and would go to the room that they would use for the procedure, just as soon as he could muster the energy to do so. Taking a deep breath, he struggled to his feet, but, once again, his surroundings dimmed and he felt himself falling.

When he awoke, he was lying in the cot in his room in the dojo. He was exhausted, disoriented by the change in surroundings, and starting to get terribly peeved by the fact that his surroundings changed every time he fell asleep.

One of the younger students entered, took one look at him, and ran out of the room.

He muttered to himself about people seeing ghosts and unfriendly greetings. The kid's reaction was just starting to worry him, when his uncle walked in, followed by the student, Who quipped, "see, I told you he was awake."

"Why, so he is. It's been quite a while. Do you realize, Phong, that you have been asleep for over thirteen cycles?"

Phong shook his head. At this rate, the next time he slept he just might wake up and be 2.0.

Pushing that notion to the back of his mind, he inquired about Epoch, who it turned out, was still processing, if only barely. Apparently, her code was seriously degraded, probably as an affect of having melted so far before he figured out how to save her. Whatever the reason, it was that degradation which had been making him sick, because her code was trying to use his to repair itself. Everyone assured him that he would get better now that they were separated.

Epoch was presently in an energy cell, which, one of Commadore's assistants, carefully explained to Phong, was because in her condition, she wouldn't survive outside. She wasn't conscious, but they were looking for ways to repair her.

There was something strange though...there had been something else which had escaped when they extracted her code, which had instantly disappeared.

Phong had a good notion of what it was, which went a long way to explaining why the next time he was seen, he was in the Principle Office, and had been, for quite some time, wandering up and down the corridors, babbling about furballs.

It was Apple who found him first, and after listening to a rather odd explanation, joined Phong in walking up and down the PO's corridors, whistling and babbling about furballs.

After a while uncle went looking for the both of them.

Then one of the dojo students.

Then the student's parents.

By the time the missing people caught Commadore's notice, the Principle Office was absolutely crawling with sprites and binomes all babbling about furballs and periodically whistling.

He started yelling at them all, his voice booming over the intercom, ordering them to immediately stop and explain themselves.

Every single person did so, slowly and patiently.

And Commadore promptly sent them all home and locked the doors, all the while mumbling about furballs and nonsense.

And then he tripped over one.

It was small and cute and fluffy, with two large crystalline eyes and one long piggish snout, and it had squeaked when he trod on it.

He yelled at it too.

The next morning he handed it to Phong in a box, and asked, "Is this what you and all those people were looking for?"

Phong opened the box, and peeked inside. "Yes, this is it."

The creature purred and leapt onto his head, where it curled up and immediately went to sleep.

"What is it?" Asked Commadore, who after stepping on it and telling at it, had had to chase it down three levels before he could catch and box it.

"I don't know, shrugged Phong. "But I do know it's from the game."

And he took it home with him.

* * *

At first Uncle was worried that it might be dangerous, but after getting Phong to describe in detail all about the creature and how he knew about it, and also anything else he could think to ask about the world of the Game, he made a suggestion.

Phong agreed that it was worth a try, and, quite surprisingly, so did Commadore.

Being that the furry creature was from the Game, just like Epoch, they blended its code into her own to fill in the bits that had, as Phong put it, melted.

It turned out that the furball, too, was suffering from deterioration, but since it had a less complex code, it wasn't showing the same signs that the Epoch was.

They succeeded in fixing the holes in her code, but ran into another problem. It seemed that the System compression sweeps weren't willing to accept her. They had started doing sweeps, one sector at a time, and Commadore informed everyone gravely that if she were to be in one of these sectors when that happened, then she would be viewed as unformatted clutter and deleted anyway.

The sweeps were getting steadily more frequent as a result of the damage that the continuing stream of Games was causing. And, although the PO hadn't been swept yet, it was only a matter of time.

Phong opted to put her back into his icon for safekeeping, now that she wasn't going to cause him any more damage.

* * *



The Present...

"This way," Bob said, leading the way through the tall grass.

"I remember this place," Backie said, as the group made their way through the field, searching for the fallen Guardian. "This is the field where we first found..."

The part stopped abruptly. There, lying on the ground, unconscious, was Jareth, the original Jareth, clothed in dyed-black Guardian armor.

"Vuja de," Backie whispered. He knelt down, and using Tech, did a quick scan. "He doesn't seem to have been hurt too badly by the fall. He's just out cold."

Bob knelt next to him, raising his hands. Soft, warm, golden light began to shine from his palms, playing over the User-Guardian's body. Jareth stirred.

"Erm? Hey..." He sat up, blinking groggily. "Why am I?"

"You mean, where are you?" Backie asked.

"No, I mean, why am I? The last thing I remember was recombining with Lore. I should be safely tucked away inside my Viral Guardian self's psyche. Instead I'm here."

Backslash helped Jareth to his feet.

"Thanks. So, if I'm here, does this mean Lore's on the loose again?"

The others exchanged a glance.

"Let's go back to the P.O., Jareth," Bob suggested. "Phong can explain all this best."

"Yeah, we don't really understand what's going on, either," Matrix added.

Jareth nodded. "Okay. And maybe he can answer one more question for me while he's at it."

"What's that?" Backie asked.

Jareth held up his right Bracer, upon which sat a strangely designed Keytool. "What am I doing with BuBBleJet? Where's Electra?"

* * *

"Ah, yes," Phong said, checking his scans. "I see the problem now."

"Well? What is it?" Dot asked.

Jareth listened vaguely, evidently still dealing with the news about Electra. He picked up a small object from the table and began fiddling with it listlessly.

"It appears that combining with another file format is not as smooth a process as we thought," Phong replied. "Jareth and Lore did not combine properly, and the codes are fighting for dominance. Bob's attempt to defragment Lore seems to have shifted the tide, as it were, in favor of Jareth, forcing Lore into remission. For the time being."

"So what happens now?" AndrAIa asked.

"I believe I can stabilize his--"

Phong stopped, startled, as Jarth's hand came down, a razor-sharp scalpel cluched in its grasp. Matrix hand shot forward, catching Jareth's arm before he could stab the elderly Sprite.

"Jareth! What's wrong with you?" he asked.

"I..." Jareth stared at his own hand in surprise. "I don't know why I did that."

Phong gently took the scalpel from Jareth and returned it to the supply cabinet.

Everyone in the room was staring at the User now, keeping his or her disance.

Backslash spoke up. "I think the traits are crossing over."

"What?"

"Lore kept lapsing into User-speak. Using words like 'blood' and flesh'...do those mean what I think they do, by the way?" Jareth nodded. "Just checking. Anyway, I think some of Jareth's traits crossed over to Lore, and vice versa."

"So I got his impulse to stab things. Joy."

"As I was saying," Phong continued. "I believe I can stabilize his code. It will take some time, however, to modify the Principal Office's equipment."

"Meantime, why not finish your story, Phong?" Dot suggested.

Phong glanced at Chu.

"You might as well," she said. "You're almost to the end anyway."

* * *

The past...

It had been over two seconds since the Games had started to fall. They had caused massive damage in that time. Almost two thirds of the System had been damaged so badly that it was no longer considered habitable. Phong was now a permanent member of the Principle Office staff, all of whom were working steadily more frantically to find a way to stem the mass destruction. Most of the population was gone. The sky was now a permanent swirling dark gray, and in the last few cycles the frequency of the falling Gamecubes had doubled. He still carried the unconscious Gamesprite in his Icon; they had never found a way to make her System-compatible, and after a while they had far more pressing concerns to deal with than one lone sprite.

Phong walked amongst the rubble of what had once been the system square. The fountain was now cracked in many places. The sparkling energy was long gone, and there were charred spots and fracture lines crisscrossing the ground. He knew that people weren't supposed to go outside unless absolutely necessary, but this had been his favorite place in all of the System before the Gamecubes came. He still found the quiet relaxing. Despite the damage, it was still better outside, away from the sense of doom and muted horror and despair that had settled over most of the remaining population of system.

And anyway, it might comfort some of the binomes to be told they were safer in their homes, but he knew better than to think that anywhere was more protected than anywhere else.

Despite debating the point for many cycles, the ruling council never had worked out why it was that Epoch's Game was the only Gamecube that had left peacefully, or returned its victim. He had insisted to them that it was because he had killed the user. But they found that a bit far fetched.

A fact that he had to laugh at, considering some of the reasons that they had come up with before they banned him from watching their meetings.

Everything from electrostatic whorls to the idea that there were mystical LAN lines flowing around the fountain that were protecting it. That one had been given up when the second Gamecube that landed on the fountain blew it to rubble, along with a small group of Binommes who had subscribed to the LAN line theory and set up tents in and around the fountain.

Considering how long they had spent bickering and messing up the square, he wasn't really all that sorry for them.

The sirens were going again. He wondered how long they would last this time. Some of the boys at the dojo had started betting, on that as well as on which sector would be hit next. He had a good sense for it, and a long win streak, so they weren't betting against him any more.

He wondered about that. Maybe it was because of the time he had spent in the game. He sat down with his back against a large chunk of the fountain wall, and opened a notepad window. Writing was relaxing, and he though maybe Epoch would enjoy reading about what had happened while she was asleep...Even if he did have a tendency to writ haikus rather than actual journal entries.

This time it was about one of the cobblestones, which was reflecting in a most interesting way, but he couldn't quite get it right. He was so focused on the pebble at his feet that he completely failed to notice the third gamecube descending on System square until it touched the ground with a whoosh.

* * *

Everything was black, but for once he felt certain that it had absolutely nothing to do with his vision.

He scrutinized the room in which he was in and decided it was rather poor, as far as accommodations went. The room was large, black and square, and he had no trouble at all believing that this one could fit inside the vicious purple box that had fallen on him.

He walked around it a couple times. It had a large clear window in the middle that stretched between the floor, ceiling, and two of the walls, bisecting the room neatly and cutting off his access to the other side of the room. On the side that he could examine, he found a small rectangular shelf with a raised even cross and a small oval in the middle, and he could dimly see one just like it on the far side. But that was it, no doors, nothing else but the window and the shelf.

He circled the room a couple more times, then stopped again at the shelf. He climbed up onto it to get a better look. Who knew? Maybe there would be something written on it that he had missed. As he righted himself, however, his heel tapped the raised cross and the shelf lurched. He scrambled to keep his balance, then looked around warily for anything else that he might have set off. Nothing happened. It was absolutely silent, save for the sound of his own breathing. After a few more nanos of furtive glares at the wall and window, he went back to looking at the shelf beneath his feet, which he was beginning to suspect was actually a platform. He cautiously tapped the cross again and once again the platform lurched. He tapped again and nothing happened. Had he broken it?

No, that wasn't it. He had tapped it in the center that time. The other two times it had been one of the edges. Yes, that made sense. He tapped each edge in turn, gradually learning how to operate the platform. This was all well and good, but it wasn't helping him get out of the room. He examined the oval that was the only other thing on the platform. It actually did have writing on it. It said START.

He puzzled over that for a while, but as he couldn't make heads or tails of it, he decided to tap that too.

Suddenly music started playing and a disembodied voice announced,

ROUND ONE

LEVEL ONE

And someone appeared on the other side of the room.

Phong stared at him, and groaned. The User. He was dressed differently, and was holding some sort of orb, but that lunatic plastic grin was unmistakable.

As he watched the User mounted the platform on his own side.

The User threw the orb.

It shot right through the window withought resistance and Straight at Phong, who gasped. He was attacking him again. Phong jumped off his platform.

He landed with a thud, just as the voice stated:

ROUND TWO

LEVEL ONE

Nothing moved

After a while, Phong realized that they were waiting for him to get back onto his platform, and, seeing nothing else he could do, he complied.

START

This time, when the orb came hurtling towards him, he hit the cross and neatly dodged out of its way. It hit the wall behind him and disappeared, reappearing in the users hands.

LEVEL ONE COMPLETED

ROUND ONE

LEVEL TWO

Phong wondered if he was supposed to just let it hit him. Shrugging, he decided it was worth a try and braced himself.

To his surprise, it bounced off of his shoulder painlessly, with a bing sound, and went flying back towards the User, who also placed himself directly in its path, bouncing itback at Phong. He was too surprised by this to react, and it went whizzing over his head.

The voice came again,

ROUND TWO

LEVEL TWO

He couldn't decide if that was supposed to be a good thing or a bad thing, so started alternating dodging and getting hit.

By the time the voice announced LEVEL EIGHT COMPLETED, he had gotten quite good at both. The User had been looking steadily more annoyed as the game progressed through the levels.

Phong straightened and waited for the orb to come at him again, but nothing happened.

After a moment the User jumped off of his platform and walked over to the window.

Ah, probably to congratulate me for working it out, thought Phong, who followed suit and walked up to the window to accept the User's apology.

The User held up his hand and writing appeared on the window. It said CHANGE OPPONENT.

Then the User walked back and remounted his platform.

A bit put out by this, Phong retreated to his own and climbed up, and waited. And waited.

The writing on the window was still there, and Phong started to fume. How was he supposed to change opponents? There was no one else there. And it wasn't as if he could just make people appear the way he and the user had. Or could he?

He still had Epoch stored in his icon and this was a Game, so....why not?

He tapped his Icon. "Upload--Epoch."

And she appeared in front of him, blinking in confusion.

He quickly summarized everything that had happened since leaving her Gamecube. And mentally applauded her for accepting it all with relative equanimity.

"And he asked for me to play? But I don't know this game."

"That's ok. Neither do I."

"Just stand on the platform and move around."

She gave him an incredulous look, then tapped her left arm and grinned. "Oh, I get it."

He seriously doubted that, but asked anyway. "Get what?"

"How to play the game."

She held up the small device on her wrist, which was blinking and spinning excitedly.

That was right, her datastreamer. It gave info about what she, as a Gamesprite, needed to do to interact with the User.

She explained as she climbed onto the platform and hit the start oval, which she pointed out was actually a button.

ROUND ONE

LEVEL NINE

"The idea is to try to hit the opponent's wall with the ball, while stopping him from doing the same to yours by placing yourself in between your wall and the ball."

She ducked reflexively and covered her face as the ball came her way. It struck the wall behind her.

ROUND TWO

LEVEL NINE

"Umm...Not like that. I figure that There are ten levels. If the ball hits our wall twice, then the User moves up a level. If it hits the User's wall twice in one level, then the User loses and the game ends."

The ball bounced back and forth between Epoch and the User a number of times, making its bing bong sound each time it struck one of them, then skidded under the User's platform and reappeared in Epoch's hands.

ROUND THREE

LEVEL NINE

Phone hadn't realized that it did that.

After another speed volley, the voice announced level nine to be completed.

Then round one, level ten quickly followed by round two, level ten. Phong hadn't managed to keep track of who had scored that last time, and when the next hit was against Epoch's wall, he almost fainted. But then, the voice announced a third round, and he realized that round one had been hers.

The round seemed to go on forever. Both Epoch and the User seemed to be giving it their all. The User seemed to be tiring; his movements were starting to grow sluggish. But then, he sent it zooming up to the top of her wall while she was still at the bottom. She stomped on the far edge of her cross button and sped towards it. She reached out and just barely grazed it with the tips of her fingers. It spun for a moment, then very slowly arced back into her wall.

The disembodied voice announced,

LEVEL TEN COMPLETE

USER WINS

And everything went out of control.

The music started again, and the room went from black to green to red to yellow and started flashing in steadily faster rainbows, everything was spinning, there was the sound of explosions, the User seemed to be dancing, Epoch was screaming but he couldn't hear her over all the other noises, she was talking to him and then the User was shaking his hand and then it disappeared and Phong felt his body tingling, he looked down and saw sparkles flying off of him and thought with horror, this time I'm the one melting. It really is deletion for me this time it…he was almost completely transparent now

"Help me, Epoch...someone..."

And then suddenly, everything was quiet. The room was back to normal.

Black walls, hovering platforms...there was the User standing on the other side of the window on his own platform, waiting expectantly.

And Epoch standing in front of him.

And someone else, that hadn't been there before.

The stranger looked at Phong, then at Epoch.

"This is the sprite you were talking about?"

"Yes, it is."

"And he's a System sprite, not a Gamesprite?"

"Check the icon."

The stranger looked Phong over, his eyes stopping on his icon.

"Ok. I believe you."

He turned and mounted the platform on the wall, and began a fierce volley against the User, who looked different than Phong remembered.

He looked at Epoch. "What's going on? Who is that? Didn't the user win? Why is he still here?"

She threw her arms in the air. "Hey, one question at a time. That sprite over there is Echo Matrix. He's something called a Guardian, apparently, they are trained to play games. He says that when a Guardian stops the User from winning the Game it stops the Gamecube from doing any damage."

"I knew it!" Phong grinned.

"Um...anyway the user did win, and you told me that you saved me before by loading my data into your icon? Well, I returned the favor. This is a different User. The twelfth different one, in fact."

"Twelve Users? How long was I out for?"

"Quite a long time."

"I've beaten a couple of the Users, but then new ones just take their place. There have been other people playing too, when I beat the User, they disappear. Echo says that that's because I'm a game sprite. When I win, I go with the Game, but they stay in the System. He's the first Guardian I have ever met though. No one else ever understood what was happening."

"So I'll go back to my System?"

"Well, actually, no. You'll go to Echo's System Mainframe when he wins, because that's where the Gamecube is right now." She looked embarrassed. "It's been a very long time, Phong, unless your System's residents figured out how to beat the Gamecubes, they might not have survived."

"Even uncle?"

"He'd be very old by now."

"So why am I the same age?"

"Because you don't age when you're in stasis in an Icon."

"But what about you?" He looked at her. Her clothes had changed, she was now dressed like the User on the other side of the room, as was the sprite Echo, but other than that she seemed to be the same age.

"Why aren't you much old--"

Just then the disembodied voice broke in.

"GAME OVER."

Epoch took a step backwards and waved farewell, smiling.

Abruptly, Phong was standing in the middle of a city of some kind, watching the retreating form of the Gamecube.

Standing a few feet away was Echo, who was now wearing blue armor that Phong found strangely familiar. Epoch was nowhere in sight.

"Where's Epoch?"

Echo walked over and put his hand on Phong's shoulder. "She left with the Game."

"What?"

"She's a Game Sprite, she belongs in the Game. So it took her with it."

* * *

Epoch smiled. It was good to know that he had gotten out safely. That he would be able to live outside and not face the deterioration of losing Games to the Users.

She looked around, waiting for the new User. After all, she wouldn't be conscious again unless the Game had landed somewhere new, and that meant a User had dropped it there.

Aha, there he was. Make that SHE was. This User was female.

She wondered if there would be a challenger this time. Sometimes, there wasn't. And she occasionally played when that happened, or when the imported challengers were too confused or scared to play.

There was a shimmer in the middle of the room. That must be the new opponent. Maybe it would be another Guardian, they often stopped to speak to her once she managed to assure them that she wasn't a threat, and they had been getting more common recently.

The shimmer solidified into a sprite.

Well, he was wearing armor, but the Guardian armor was blue, this sprite's was black with silver engravings.

He looked at her and grinned. "Wanna play?"

She smiled back. "Actually, your playing against him," she indicated the user.

"Aw," he pouted, "but Users are oh so very boring. And anyway, he's on the other side of that wall. Not at all sporting of him." He giggled.

Epoch shrugged. "Yes, well neither is trapping me in this room for eternity."

He looked startled. "This bothers you? Why? Don't you like it here?"

"Not especially. This isn't my Game, you see."

"No? Then how, pray tell, did you get here?"

"I was brought here in the Icon of a System Sprite."

"That can be done?" His eyes lit up at the idea.

She blinked. They had lit up literally, his eyes were glowing a soft golden.

His expression turned somber. "So if that can be done, why haven't you left here?"

She sighed. "Because System Sprites that have learned to play the Games are all scared of Game Sprites. And those who haven't belong to Systems that will probably crash in only a few seconds. And being trapped in one of those is even worse than being here."

He smirked. "Well, in that case, I propose a trade."

"What sort of trade?"

He tapped his icon, "I recently acquired this nifty accessory from a former playmate. You teach me how to use these things for interesting tricks, like Gamesprite transport, and I'll take you with me when I leave."

Epoch thought about it for a while, then nodded.

"Wonderful! I knew I liked you."

So she explained all that she knew about Icons and their uses, as well as careful instructions on not downloading anything that was damaged. Then, he clicked his own, and she disappeared in a swirl of light. As soon as she had completely vanished he stepped through the window and neatly sliced the User into small, bite-sized pieces.

* * *

The man in the black armor leaned back and idly watched the retreating purple base of the gamecube. That had been fun. That Icon thing was proving to be far more useful that he had expected.

That reminded him. He gave it a sharp tap, and a young female appeared in front of him.

She looked about herself as if expecting something to attack. She probably wasn't far off.

He performed a sweeping bow. "Welcome to Acer, my dear. Home sweet home."

"And they don't perform System Scans here?"

He almost collapsed laughing. "No, I don't think the residents would appreciate that."

She looked relieved.

Hmph, all the threats here and that was what she was worrying about? He shrugged. "Unfamiliar place," he said. "You care to stick with me for a while? I'll give you a guided tour."

She smiled, "Yes, please. By the way, I'm Epoch."

"A pleasure," He curtseyed this time. "Epaeon at your service." And guided her off down the winding streets.

She didn't stay there long, after a while she heard mention of a place called Mainframe, a name that she recognized. Apparently it was dual-cored, and coveted among the virals because of that. It was also well protected. There were more Guardians there than anywhere other than the Supercomputer. And the virals were planning a sneak attack.

She wasn't really interested in the attack, but she convinced them to let her tag along. After all, it was going to be fun to watch. There were a number of viruses that were going to go along, purely as spectators and mischief-makers. What was one more?

The trip involved a series of hops between different Systems. They never knew what hit them. But after a while, they drew the attention of the Guardian collective. One cycle, without warning, they attacked en mass, many of the virals were wiped out, most fled back to Acer. in the end she was the only one that made it. The only one that wasn't hunted or attacked. After all, she wasn't a virus, she was just a poor innocent sprite. And no matter how many scans or tests they ran on her at the checkpoints, no one could disprove that. Even if there was something wrong with her icon.

The funny thing was that when she did finally make it to Mainframe, it was purely by accident. She had been captured by a particularly stubborn Guardian who was set on proving that she was a virus, somehow or other. He was just stopping off in Mainframe to deliver a message to the dual Command.Coms before going back to the Supercomputer and placing her somewhere contained.

In the meantime, however, Phong had acclimatized to his new system remarkably well. His previous experience in his own P.O. served him well, and he quickly became a trusted member of Mainframe's Principle Office staff.

Therefore, seconds later, when current Command.Com, eventually passed away, he was considered best capable of handling the responsibilities of the position.

And although still young, he was very dedicated, and with the help of Mirror, the Command.Com of the other city, he was handling everything smoothly and efficiently.

Until the Guardian appeared with Epoch in tow.

He had given up thinking he would ever see her again, only shortly after he had come to terms with the fact that he would never return to System. It had been a number of seconds since then, she belonged to what amounted to a different life.

And yet.

"Epoch?"

She looked up, and her eyes grew wide.

"Oh, my...Phong is that you?"

The guardian seemed taken aback. "You know this virus sir?"

Phong blinked. "Virus? That's not a virus. She's a sprite, an old friend."

"Are you sure?"

"Do you have any proof that she's a virus?"

"Not yet, but...once I get her back to the Supercomputer, I'll be able to prove..."

"Don't be silly, she's a sprite. And you can save yourself the trouble and just leave her here."

"But...but..."

"Now what was the message you were to give me?"

The guardian stuttered for a moment, then helplessly shook his head, handed over a small package and slowly walked out the door as if in a daze.

Phong returned his attention to the girl that had been left in his office.

"Epoch, I never expected you to get out of that Game...if I'd known that it would take you with it, I would have loaded you back into my icon. Mainframe doesn't scan nearly as often as System did, and I looked into ways to stop the scans from deleting outsiders. Mainframe has a registration system and, oh you were right about System, I had the Guardians check it out for me, its been offline for seconds and...and..." He took a deep breath, "I did miss you, you know."

She smiled, "I missed you, too. I wondered if I had done the right thing by leaving you to that Guardian."

"Oh, nono, you had no reason to worry about that, Echo was a good choice, he and his wife Mirror are wonderful people. After I got here they took me in, almost as one of there own children. Everyone here has been very good to me."

"I'm glad to hear that."

"But what about you, Epoch? What happened, how did you get out of the Game?"

"I hitched a ride on a friendly virus."

"A friendly Virus?"

She grinned. "They've been surprisingly nice to me, considering."

"Considering that you are prey to them? No wonder that Guardian thought you were viral."

She chuckled and conceded the point. "By the way, I'm called Chu now."

He looked at her curiously. "Why Chu?"

She pulled up her right sleeve, revealing a neat little row of those mouse-shaped explosives that she had used on the User in her own world. "They're called chus, and after I blasted a few of the more agressive viruses with them, so was I. I've kinda gotten used to the name."

He shrugged amicably and then waved his arms in an expansive motion.

"Very well, then, Chu, welcome to Mainframe."

After that, Phong registered her as a resident and Chu made her home in Mainframe. She tried to open a new weapon shop, but that was amazingly unsuccessful, and after a few other failed business attempts, she finally settled on a cozy little diner. And she was quite happy with that.

She lived in Mainframe for many seconds before she was again interrupted.

It was a Codemaster's fault. He had come strolling into the System one day, not even looking for her. It had just been a passing comment in front of one of the early morning customers...About her being from a game.

But that was enough. Now he was scared of her. He had known her for seconds, hung out at her diner after school when he was a child, and later for coffee after work, and now, suddenly he was scared of her.

It hurt, but there was nothing she could do about it. She had to leave before he felt threatened enough to tell the rest of Mainframe.

So, she sold the diner to one of the more promising young people, said a sad goodbye to her friend Phong, and stepped unnoticed into the next outgoing portal.



* * *

The present...

"And I've been roaming the Net ever since," Chu finished. "System to System, up and down the dial."

"Sounds like fun," AndrAIa said.

"It's a living," Chu replied. She tilted her head. "You're a Gamesprite, too, aren't you?"

"That's right."

"You would be welcome to stay in Mainframe now, old friend," Phong said, as he tinkered with a small device. "Game Sprites are no longer feared as they once were."

Chu considered for a moment. "Thanks, but I find I enjoy life on the road."

"If that is what you wish."

"Oh, I'll stick around for a while. Just not for good."

With a snap, the final component fell into place. "it is done," Phong said. "Are you ready, my child?"

Jareth hopped down off the bench. "Yup." He looked around. "So long, guys. Phong, Dot, Backie. With any luck, I'll never see any of you again."

Backie cocked his head, looking at the User strangely.

Jareth waved the look aside. "You know what I mean."

Phong aimed the emiter at the end of the device at Jareth's Icon.

"Hold still."

* * *





"You sure you're okay?" AndrAIa asked.

"Never better," Delta replied. Then she winced. "Okay, so I was better before I had the massive scorch mark across my abdomen..."

"I SAID I was sorry," Matrix said. 'What more do you want?"

"I can give you a list, if you want to make it up to me..."

"I'm sorry, but not THAT sorry."

As a group, the party walked out of the P.O...and stopped short. Amassed in front of the building was a group of Binomes, ones and zeroes, all of which let out angry screams as the Sprites exited the P.O.

It wasn't hard to tell at whom the screams were aimed. If the cries of 'Viral menace' hadn't tipped them off, then the signs, emblazoned with black masks covered with red slashes, would have.

"Jareth," Bob said quietly. "Just ignore them."

"Ignore who." Jareth's mask was expressionless. "Come on, I want another sundae."

The Binomes drew away, either in disgust, fear, or some combination of the two, as they walked through the crowd.

"So, Chu," Dot began. "Do you have a place to stay, or--"

THWACK!

"Oww!" Jareth clutched at the back of his head.

"Jareth? What--"

"Eh!" Jareth raised a hand, silencing Backie's questions. He glanced at the ground.

A chunk of concrete lay at his feet, stained red.

Jareth withdrew his hand from the back of his head and looked at it. His hand, too, was stained with his own blood.

"Someone just threw a rock at me."

"How like Someone," Delta said, examining the back of his head.

Bob started to step forward, but Jareth held him back.

"Nono...no, thank you, Bob. I think these people want to speak to me."

"All right...just....don't hurt them," Bob replied.

"Much," Delta ammended.

"Okay, people," Jareth said, arms outstretched. "What's up?"

A barrage of rocks came his way, only to halt midair before him.

"Yeah, that's what I thought you were gonna say. Is this about all those Binomes Lore killed?"

"You--" one of the Binomes began, accusingly.

"Am not Lore. I remember killing those Binomes. And I remember enjoying it." He shook his head. "But I'm not the one who did it. I'm the one keeping that person locked away, and you should all be thanking me."

With that, the rocks fell to the ground, and Jareth turned on his heel and continued on his way towards the Diner.

The others followed.

The group of Binomes stood silent for a moment.

One of them kicked sullenly at the ground. Suddenly, a sparkling object on the ground caught his eye. He pounced on it, then held it up to the light. A marble? No, it was definitely some sort of crystal ball, about two inches in diameter.

Smiling, he tucked it into his pocket. It was bound to be worth something.

* * *



About halfway to the Diner, AndrAIa finally spoke up.

"You know, I'm proud of you, Jareth. That was very big of you," AndrAIa said. "I actually kind of expected you to blow them all up."

Jareth shrugged. "Well, you know...Even I had to grow up sometime."

No sooner were the words spoken then a massive explosion echoed through the air.

Everyone but Jareth turned back to see the plume of smoke spiralling towards the sky in the distance.

Dot glared sharply at the Viral Guardian. "Jareth!"

Jareth switched to a grin, and continued walking. "Well, what do you know. Guess it's not that time yet."