Chapter Four: Minor Glitches

            Urd stared blankly at the screen readouts that had apppeared on the datascreen of her Yggdrasil terminal. Peorth had been right when she had said that all traces that were even close to that signature she had shown them were gone. You can say about Peorth waht you want – but when she does a job, she does it right, Urd mused.

            She'd been searching the database of the world computer for hours now, and she decided to give up when an idea sprang into her head. She typed in a command and cross-referenced a search phrase. Urd's green eyes widened as she read the file that appeared in the screen. Before she could fully read it, it vanished and was replaced with what seemed to the Yggdrasil system administrator to be a ton of garbage. She quickly purged her screen and used it to return to the temple.

            The TV set began to glow, and Urd pulled herself out of it. She quickly sought out Peorth and Belldandy's rooms. When the three goddesses sat together in Peorth's room, they shot the goddess of the Past inquiring glances. Urd started pacing up and down before the other two goddesses as she thought about how to explain her findings.

            "Well, Urd, what is it? Did you find anything in Yggdrasil's database?" Belldandy finally asked. Her sister shook her head. "Then why did you call us in the middle of the night?" Peorth demanded.

            Urd stopped walking. "I didn't find anything regarding the signature you showed us. But I did find something. Since you said you couldn't get a reading on Tom's Yggdrasil signal, I tried to open his file. There wasn't anything special in it," Urd paused dramatically. "Except for a cross-reference to another person." Urd shuddered at the thought.

            "Peorth, have you ever heard the name Tomaas Riatavin?"

            The goddess of Forever gasped. "What..."

            Urd grimaced. "I couldn't make out the connection between these two – the file vanished almost as fast as it appeared."

            Belldandy looked confused. "Do you know that man?"

            Both goddesses nodded. "Yeah," Urd said. "In a way," Peorth added. "It's a long story. It's...not a story you might want to hear," the goddess of the past told her sister. "Why?" Belldandy asked, her cheerful expression turning worried.

            "Remember the man who would always stay beside Celestine when we played? The man who would always be there?" Urd sighed.

            "Yes."

            "You remember him as my mentor, like Celestine was yours. His name was Tomaas Riatavin. And it wasn't a good end, either."

            "You mean he-"

            Urd shook her head violently at her sister. "Do you remember my graduation ceremony? How he wasn't there?" Both Peorth and Belldandy nodded at that.

            "He wasn't there for a reason – father sent him away."

            "What? What did he do?"

            Urd gently laid a hand on her sister's shoulder. "Now that is something you shouldn't know. I can tell you he did nothing wrong, though. Don't worry about it." She shared a meaningful glance with Peorth. Belldandy nodded and left the room to resume sleeping.

            When she was sure Belldandy was out of earshot, Peorth leaned over to Urd. "Are you sure? I mean, Tomaas was a long time ago, and I'm not sure whether he really was immortal, or just long-lived." Urd nodded. "Absolutely. There's no mistaking him."

            "And the file vanished as soon as you opened it? That's strange."

            "It didn't vanish, it seemed to be corrupted. It just started filling up my screen with rubbish," Urd sighed. "If it is Tom, hel'll have to explain a lot." Peorth arched an eyebrow. "I agree."

            Before either of them could say anything more, the phone started to ring. Urd floated out and got it. "Hai, Morisato residence?" "Urd-sama? Is Peorth-sama there?" Urd arched an eyebrow. "Crono? What is it?" The young goddess's voice sounded distressed.

            "Urd-sama, I need to talk to Peorth-sama – all hell is breaking loose up here! We've got trouble keeping Yggdrasil running, system resources seem to vanish, and files are deleting themselves!" Urd didn't need to hear more. "Peorth!" she hollered. Whent he other goddess arrived, she handed her the phone. Peorth listened intently for a moment, then leapt back into the stockroom where Keiichi's camera lay.

            Urd sighed and left a note for the others, then followed her.

            When she emerged form a datacreen in the Yggdrasil control room, Urd found that Crono had not been joking. The room looked like hell. Goddesses were running around blindly, trying to slavage whatever possible. Urd headed for a control station, and called up a system scan. She swore as she read through the increasing number of infected files. "What in the devil's name...?"

            "Urd!" Peorth's voice called. "come over here!"

            The goddess of the Past followed the call. "Peorth, do you have any idea what is going on here? It looks like Yggdrasil has gone on a self-destruct code! It's purging its own memory and crashing our system resources!" The head of Yggdrasil nodded slightly. "I may have a slight idea of what is happening," she said and called up a diagnosis on a file. "This file has been infected with a virus. You're right, it is purging Yggdrasil files – but it's doing so selectively."

            "What?"

            "Something or someone is deleting all files associated with..." Peorth trailed off.

            "With what, Peorth? Talk!"

            Peorth cringed slightly from the tone of the other woman. "It is purging all files associated with the Megami no Kenshi and the Gate of Time."

            "Huh?" Urd looked confused.

            "The Megami no Kenshi are a secret order of warriors. Only a handful of people know about them. The Gate of Time..."

            Urd interrupted her. "Aren't they mythical?"

            "Far from it. Think back. There were a handful of them you met. And as for the Gate of Time..." Peorth sighed. "There is only one connection between the two."

            "Tomaas Riatavin?"

            "Exactly. Whatever was in his file when you opened it, has sliced a virus into Yggdrasil. Someone obviously didn't want us to find out about something that's going on."

            "All right. How do we get rid of it?"

            "I don't know. We could just wait till all files are deleted, but I don't want to sacrifice the information unless absolutely necessary."

            "Then let's get to work!" Urd cracked her knuckles, sat down at the command console, and began typing furiously.