.HackRelapse
A .Hack fanfiction by Renfro Calhoun
Disclaimer: Project .Hack and attached concepts and characters do not belong to me.
Notes: Takes place after the start of Outbreak. Parentheses = thoughts, brackets = writing. While Kite's player's name is made up, as far as I know Bear's real name is correct; I'm still iffy on his appearance offline, though, so any corrections or comments would be appreciated.
And on a more positive note, happy new year everyone! :)
Chapter 2 - Follower
--------------------
"Registration please."
Aged leather creaked as Dean flipped his wallet open, showing the appropriate identification to the officer before him - the nasal-voiced desk clerk who occupied the evidence locker, secure behind bulletproof glass, his voice muffled by the speaker. To his right stood another man, an older thin-faced officer in a light brown suit, receding gray hair and tired blue eyes, a slight bulge in the left breast of the suit concealing a handgun.
Another weapon caught his eye; the clerk presented a Glock 40, bolt back, chamber and magazine empty. "Do you have the case?"
Dean hefted the metal box, opening the drawer with his free hand and depositing the box within; he gave the drawer a nudge, shutting it, and nodded to the clerk. "Code's 4558."
"You understand we can't return the bullets to you, right?"
Dean glanced at his escort. "I know, lieutenant, I know. No big deal, I wasn't planning on using it anyway."
Masamoto smirked. "Nobody ever does."
A clunk was Dean's cue to open the drawer again. He reached in and snatched the box, now heavier with the pistol inside. After double-checking the lock, he took it by the handle and turned to the lieutenant. "Thanks, Lieutenant. Anything else?"
"No, that should be everything. Still waiting on the records from your precinct, but nothing you need to stick around for."
"Cool."
Masamoto led Dean back through the cold, pristine corridors of the police station, passing through an electronically-locked door leading to the main hallway.
"Never thought I'd be back here so soon," thought Dean aloud.
"Least you're not in handcuffs this time," Masamoto pointed out.
"True." Dean fell behind the lieutenant as he pushed through a set of double doors. "Although I have to say that this is one of the cleanest I've ever been in."
"Just had an inspection," he explained. "Losing those two kids put everyone on edge, and the chief's fixing to blame someone."
Dean nodded, remembering how the CC agents killed two cops who had accosted Shinji, and attempted to frame him for their deaths. His face fell, and he stepped up alongside Masamoto. "For what it's worth, I'm sorry about your men."
"Yeah," muttered the lieutenant. "Well, it wasn't your fault... if anything, we owe you for stopping the guys who did it." His voice dropped a notch or two deeper. "Just wish we could've gotten some solid evidence. Nothing we had on them tied them to Cyber Connect except their employment and Shinji's murder... neither of which helps in proving they were taking orders, at least not enough."
"They're not invincible," said Dean. "There's gotta be something you can nail 'em on."
As they reached the lobby, Masamoto stopped and turned to Dean. "Dean, I'll say this once; I understand what you're doing, and I respect that. If I had my way, we wouldn't even waste the paperwork on you. But you know as well as I do that faceless multinationals don't go to jail, and for very obvious reasons." He sighed. "Cyber Connect effectively owns the Internet; nobody anywhere is going to touch them without a bulletproof case."
"Yeah, I know, I know that." Dean lightly kicked at the floor, shoving his free hand into his coat pocket.
Masamoto gave a long, hard look at the younger detective, appraising him silently. He then said, "Listen, you know I can't let you break the law, but... if you find anything, or something happens, call me first, okay?"
Dean blinked. "Mas?"
Masamoto inched closer, turning away from the reception desk and facing the glass doors leading out. "You know and I know and everyone in this building knows that the whole thing stinks. It stinks and we can't do a damn thing about it, but maybe you can. Maybe you can find out something we can't, get someone to talk who won't talk to a badge."
"Planning on doing that anyway. I was hoping for a chance at some legit work for a change." After a beat, he added, "Well... work, at least. Guy's gotta eat and all." He grinned.
The lieutenant smiled. "Works for me either way. Good luck, Dean."
"Workin' on it," replied Dean with a wink as he turned to leave.
-
Grass crunched and shifted beneath his shoes, still damp from the previous day's rainfall. A strong breeze pulled through the expansive garden, rustling the trees and offering slight relief from the humidity - which was only made worse through the sun's intervention, hanging high in the sky with not a single cloud to interrupt its light.
Dean regretted bringing his brown leather jacket as he tromped through the outlying gardens surrounding the Meiji shrine, the garment doing much to trap the rising heat of his body against his skin; sweat started to soak into his blue shirt, and even his khaki cargo pants felt uncomfortable in the heat.
Needless to say, he also regretted forfeiting the choice of locale for meeting Bear offline.
Fortune gave him a break, however, when he came upon the target: a lone wooden bench, sitting at a T-junction for the walkway, about a hundred or so yards away from the shrine itself. Sitting on the bench was a man of moderate build in his forties, decked out in a simple jeans and t-shirt combo. His short, thick hair was of the same shade as the Blademaster, and he shared a similar facial structure as well - square jaw, sharp features, visible amiability in the eyes.
Slowly, Dean approached the bench. He removed a small post-it note from his coat pocket and squinted as he tried to read his own chicken scratches.
"There's no getting off this train we're on."
The man turned his head; spotting Dean, he smiled slightly and stood up, turning to face him. "No, there isn't," he replied. "Dean Stollis, I presume?"
Dean smiled back and nodded. "Ryo Sakuma. The man himself." His smile quickly vanished. "Why the cloak-and-dagger stuff?"
'Bear' threw a glance behind him. "Sorry. I've been having this funny feeling lately, like I'm being watched. I think something's going on."
Dean crooked an eyebrow. "Well, not that I didn't wanna try the code phrase thing myself, but what do you mean?"
"It started a few days ago, when 'The World' became corrupted," said Ryo. "Started seeing the same cars driving by my house - black, with tinted windows - and kept feeling like I was being followed in the game. When you contacted me, I thought you might've been one of them."
"What changed your mind?" asked Dean.
"Well, I thought about it; why contact me publicly for the information if you were trying to keep an eye on me? Thought you might be working for Cyber Connect at first, but then I figured if you were really corporate, you'd be a little less obvious about what you wanted."
Dean smirked. "Unless I was trying to fool you into thinking that."
"No, I wondered about that too, but it seemed like an outside chance at best. More likely you were government or something." Ryo hinted at a grin, which Dean returned.
"Eh, close enough. Used to be a cop. You watch a lot of spy movies, don't you?"
"Lot of movies, period," he replied. "Goes hand-in-hand with being a gamer."
"Heh heh... it does indeed." Dean shifted his weight. "So, what say we go for a stroll?"
-
"Uh... how much is a Coke?" he asked, his gaze shifting from the menu on the noodle vendor stand to the vendor himself - a gangly, thin-faced teen in a bright red-and-white uniform. While his weak grasp of spoken Japanese was slowly improving, the written language might as well have been invisible, a fact that the elder of the two quickly gathered.
"Relax, I"m buying," Ryo assured the detective.
"Yeah," Dean said. "You do your thing... where you talk to people and they understand you."
Sakuma bartered with the vendor as Dean slowly stepped away, hands in his coat pockets, eyes toward the heavens. "Mildly envious of that," he muttered, wishing he'd spent the extra thousand yen on the rest of the "Japanese for Dummies" audio tapes.
(This just keeps getting better and better,) he thought, going over the details the veteran gamer had shared with him. (Morganna... so she's behind all this. And I still have no idea what exactly she is, or what she's doing in 'The World.' well, aside from tearing the hell out of it.)
He gazed out across the pond before him, almost still enough to be mistaken for a mirror, the sun reflecting brilliantly off of it. On the opposite side, two men conversed, their reflections joining the sun, their movements perfectly mimed by the water. (Like he says,) he thought, (she had to be part of the original programming. This all seems to come down to that Epitaph of Twilight, but that still leaves the question of what it has to do with 'The World'. Was the game based on it or something? And why include an AI with that kind of power in a video game?)
A whistle from behind brought Dean's attention back to Ryo, who now stood nearby holding two bottled drinks, one of which he offered to Dean. "Here you go."
Dean smiled. "Thanks, man."
"You're welcome."
Ryo took a sip and started along the path again, and Dean followed. "Hey, you said something about a guy named Harold earlier," said Dean. "Tell me about him."
"Harold Hoerwick," said Ryo, "is the creator of Fragment, which he later sold to CC and it became 'The World.' He also claimed to be Aura's father when we spoke to him."
"Claimed to be?" Dean blinked. "You met him?"
"In the game," Ryo answered with an affirmative nod. "It was more like a recording of some sort, kept repeating himself." His brow furrowed. "Strange things... saying he was a bad father, asking us - or someone - to take care of Aura. He'd been sending messages out that we all assumed were about the Key of the Twilight, that's how we all came to find him."
Dean nodded. "I see... so he created Fragment, and that became the test version of 'The World'. And this Morganna tried to use Aura to..." he trailed off as he glanced to his side, seeing another pair of men standing several yards away, engrossed in conversation. He swore they looked familiar, but quickly shrugged it off.
"What's wrong?"
"Nothing, just thought I saw someone," said Dean with a shake of his head.
Ryo sighed. "Well, I'll be honest, there's still a lot about this that I don't understand. I don't know what Aura was intended for, either by Harold or Morganna; all I know is what Helba told us, that if Aura was corrupted then 'The World' would ultimately be destroyed. Or something to that end."
"Mmm." Dean frowned. "There's so little to go on. Every question you answer just brings up two more."
"Yeah. I can say this, though: Harold created Aura and 'The World', or at least the basis for it; either he's behind Morganna - and could tell us all about her - or he knows who is. No matter who's doing what, he'd be the guy to see."
"There's the rub, isn't it," Dean said, pausing to take a long swig from his drink. "Guy hasn't been seen for who knows how long."
Ryo stopped, a thoughtful look on his face. "Wait... there is one other thing."
"What's that?"
"When we met with Harold in 'The World', there was someone else who saw him first - the Wavemaster BT." He turne his free hand, gesturing to his side in emphasis. "She was in kind of a daze, said that we should escape as soon as possible."
"Yeah?"
"I wouldn't quote me on this," he started, "but it's possible she learned something else from Harold. Something he didn't tell us."
Dean cocked his head, peering quizzically at Ryo. "Wasn't it a recording?"
"Maybe the wrong word," said Ryo with a shrug. "Maybe a memory would be better... an echo. Needless to say it was... alive enough to respond, in a limited way. She may yet know more than she told us."
"I see... well, I'd heard about her from another one of your friends, so she was next on the list anyway. I don't suppose you could put me in touch with her?"
"I could try." Ryo took another sip from his Coke. "She's gotten a little reclusive lately, but I think I could get ahold of her for you."
Dean smiled. "I'd appreciate that. It might make finding her a little easier," he jokingly said.
Ryo spoke again, but his voice fell on deaf ears as Dean's gaze flew past Ryo and onto the two men behind them on the path, still several yards away. He finally recognized them as the pair that had he had spotted earlier by the pond, and again just seconds ago - two Asian men, dressed in unassuming clothes and neither with any remarkable features, save for the cellular phone that the left-hand man was currently speaking into.
"Dean?" asked Ryo, somewhat unnerved by the detective's descent to silence.
"I don't want to alarm you," said Dean in a near-whisper, "but we're being followed."
- End of Chapter 2
A .Hack fanfiction by Renfro Calhoun
Disclaimer: Project .Hack and attached concepts and characters do not belong to me.
Notes: Takes place after the start of Outbreak. Parentheses = thoughts, brackets = writing. While Kite's player's name is made up, as far as I know Bear's real name is correct; I'm still iffy on his appearance offline, though, so any corrections or comments would be appreciated.
And on a more positive note, happy new year everyone! :)
Chapter 2 - Follower
--------------------
"Registration please."
Aged leather creaked as Dean flipped his wallet open, showing the appropriate identification to the officer before him - the nasal-voiced desk clerk who occupied the evidence locker, secure behind bulletproof glass, his voice muffled by the speaker. To his right stood another man, an older thin-faced officer in a light brown suit, receding gray hair and tired blue eyes, a slight bulge in the left breast of the suit concealing a handgun.
Another weapon caught his eye; the clerk presented a Glock 40, bolt back, chamber and magazine empty. "Do you have the case?"
Dean hefted the metal box, opening the drawer with his free hand and depositing the box within; he gave the drawer a nudge, shutting it, and nodded to the clerk. "Code's 4558."
"You understand we can't return the bullets to you, right?"
Dean glanced at his escort. "I know, lieutenant, I know. No big deal, I wasn't planning on using it anyway."
Masamoto smirked. "Nobody ever does."
A clunk was Dean's cue to open the drawer again. He reached in and snatched the box, now heavier with the pistol inside. After double-checking the lock, he took it by the handle and turned to the lieutenant. "Thanks, Lieutenant. Anything else?"
"No, that should be everything. Still waiting on the records from your precinct, but nothing you need to stick around for."
"Cool."
Masamoto led Dean back through the cold, pristine corridors of the police station, passing through an electronically-locked door leading to the main hallway.
"Never thought I'd be back here so soon," thought Dean aloud.
"Least you're not in handcuffs this time," Masamoto pointed out.
"True." Dean fell behind the lieutenant as he pushed through a set of double doors. "Although I have to say that this is one of the cleanest I've ever been in."
"Just had an inspection," he explained. "Losing those two kids put everyone on edge, and the chief's fixing to blame someone."
Dean nodded, remembering how the CC agents killed two cops who had accosted Shinji, and attempted to frame him for their deaths. His face fell, and he stepped up alongside Masamoto. "For what it's worth, I'm sorry about your men."
"Yeah," muttered the lieutenant. "Well, it wasn't your fault... if anything, we owe you for stopping the guys who did it." His voice dropped a notch or two deeper. "Just wish we could've gotten some solid evidence. Nothing we had on them tied them to Cyber Connect except their employment and Shinji's murder... neither of which helps in proving they were taking orders, at least not enough."
"They're not invincible," said Dean. "There's gotta be something you can nail 'em on."
As they reached the lobby, Masamoto stopped and turned to Dean. "Dean, I'll say this once; I understand what you're doing, and I respect that. If I had my way, we wouldn't even waste the paperwork on you. But you know as well as I do that faceless multinationals don't go to jail, and for very obvious reasons." He sighed. "Cyber Connect effectively owns the Internet; nobody anywhere is going to touch them without a bulletproof case."
"Yeah, I know, I know that." Dean lightly kicked at the floor, shoving his free hand into his coat pocket.
Masamoto gave a long, hard look at the younger detective, appraising him silently. He then said, "Listen, you know I can't let you break the law, but... if you find anything, or something happens, call me first, okay?"
Dean blinked. "Mas?"
Masamoto inched closer, turning away from the reception desk and facing the glass doors leading out. "You know and I know and everyone in this building knows that the whole thing stinks. It stinks and we can't do a damn thing about it, but maybe you can. Maybe you can find out something we can't, get someone to talk who won't talk to a badge."
"Planning on doing that anyway. I was hoping for a chance at some legit work for a change." After a beat, he added, "Well... work, at least. Guy's gotta eat and all." He grinned.
The lieutenant smiled. "Works for me either way. Good luck, Dean."
"Workin' on it," replied Dean with a wink as he turned to leave.
-
Grass crunched and shifted beneath his shoes, still damp from the previous day's rainfall. A strong breeze pulled through the expansive garden, rustling the trees and offering slight relief from the humidity - which was only made worse through the sun's intervention, hanging high in the sky with not a single cloud to interrupt its light.
Dean regretted bringing his brown leather jacket as he tromped through the outlying gardens surrounding the Meiji shrine, the garment doing much to trap the rising heat of his body against his skin; sweat started to soak into his blue shirt, and even his khaki cargo pants felt uncomfortable in the heat.
Needless to say, he also regretted forfeiting the choice of locale for meeting Bear offline.
Fortune gave him a break, however, when he came upon the target: a lone wooden bench, sitting at a T-junction for the walkway, about a hundred or so yards away from the shrine itself. Sitting on the bench was a man of moderate build in his forties, decked out in a simple jeans and t-shirt combo. His short, thick hair was of the same shade as the Blademaster, and he shared a similar facial structure as well - square jaw, sharp features, visible amiability in the eyes.
Slowly, Dean approached the bench. He removed a small post-it note from his coat pocket and squinted as he tried to read his own chicken scratches.
"There's no getting off this train we're on."
The man turned his head; spotting Dean, he smiled slightly and stood up, turning to face him. "No, there isn't," he replied. "Dean Stollis, I presume?"
Dean smiled back and nodded. "Ryo Sakuma. The man himself." His smile quickly vanished. "Why the cloak-and-dagger stuff?"
'Bear' threw a glance behind him. "Sorry. I've been having this funny feeling lately, like I'm being watched. I think something's going on."
Dean crooked an eyebrow. "Well, not that I didn't wanna try the code phrase thing myself, but what do you mean?"
"It started a few days ago, when 'The World' became corrupted," said Ryo. "Started seeing the same cars driving by my house - black, with tinted windows - and kept feeling like I was being followed in the game. When you contacted me, I thought you might've been one of them."
"What changed your mind?" asked Dean.
"Well, I thought about it; why contact me publicly for the information if you were trying to keep an eye on me? Thought you might be working for Cyber Connect at first, but then I figured if you were really corporate, you'd be a little less obvious about what you wanted."
Dean smirked. "Unless I was trying to fool you into thinking that."
"No, I wondered about that too, but it seemed like an outside chance at best. More likely you were government or something." Ryo hinted at a grin, which Dean returned.
"Eh, close enough. Used to be a cop. You watch a lot of spy movies, don't you?"
"Lot of movies, period," he replied. "Goes hand-in-hand with being a gamer."
"Heh heh... it does indeed." Dean shifted his weight. "So, what say we go for a stroll?"
-
"Uh... how much is a Coke?" he asked, his gaze shifting from the menu on the noodle vendor stand to the vendor himself - a gangly, thin-faced teen in a bright red-and-white uniform. While his weak grasp of spoken Japanese was slowly improving, the written language might as well have been invisible, a fact that the elder of the two quickly gathered.
"Relax, I"m buying," Ryo assured the detective.
"Yeah," Dean said. "You do your thing... where you talk to people and they understand you."
Sakuma bartered with the vendor as Dean slowly stepped away, hands in his coat pockets, eyes toward the heavens. "Mildly envious of that," he muttered, wishing he'd spent the extra thousand yen on the rest of the "Japanese for Dummies" audio tapes.
(This just keeps getting better and better,) he thought, going over the details the veteran gamer had shared with him. (Morganna... so she's behind all this. And I still have no idea what exactly she is, or what she's doing in 'The World.' well, aside from tearing the hell out of it.)
He gazed out across the pond before him, almost still enough to be mistaken for a mirror, the sun reflecting brilliantly off of it. On the opposite side, two men conversed, their reflections joining the sun, their movements perfectly mimed by the water. (Like he says,) he thought, (she had to be part of the original programming. This all seems to come down to that Epitaph of Twilight, but that still leaves the question of what it has to do with 'The World'. Was the game based on it or something? And why include an AI with that kind of power in a video game?)
A whistle from behind brought Dean's attention back to Ryo, who now stood nearby holding two bottled drinks, one of which he offered to Dean. "Here you go."
Dean smiled. "Thanks, man."
"You're welcome."
Ryo took a sip and started along the path again, and Dean followed. "Hey, you said something about a guy named Harold earlier," said Dean. "Tell me about him."
"Harold Hoerwick," said Ryo, "is the creator of Fragment, which he later sold to CC and it became 'The World.' He also claimed to be Aura's father when we spoke to him."
"Claimed to be?" Dean blinked. "You met him?"
"In the game," Ryo answered with an affirmative nod. "It was more like a recording of some sort, kept repeating himself." His brow furrowed. "Strange things... saying he was a bad father, asking us - or someone - to take care of Aura. He'd been sending messages out that we all assumed were about the Key of the Twilight, that's how we all came to find him."
Dean nodded. "I see... so he created Fragment, and that became the test version of 'The World'. And this Morganna tried to use Aura to..." he trailed off as he glanced to his side, seeing another pair of men standing several yards away, engrossed in conversation. He swore they looked familiar, but quickly shrugged it off.
"What's wrong?"
"Nothing, just thought I saw someone," said Dean with a shake of his head.
Ryo sighed. "Well, I'll be honest, there's still a lot about this that I don't understand. I don't know what Aura was intended for, either by Harold or Morganna; all I know is what Helba told us, that if Aura was corrupted then 'The World' would ultimately be destroyed. Or something to that end."
"Mmm." Dean frowned. "There's so little to go on. Every question you answer just brings up two more."
"Yeah. I can say this, though: Harold created Aura and 'The World', or at least the basis for it; either he's behind Morganna - and could tell us all about her - or he knows who is. No matter who's doing what, he'd be the guy to see."
"There's the rub, isn't it," Dean said, pausing to take a long swig from his drink. "Guy hasn't been seen for who knows how long."
Ryo stopped, a thoughtful look on his face. "Wait... there is one other thing."
"What's that?"
"When we met with Harold in 'The World', there was someone else who saw him first - the Wavemaster BT." He turne his free hand, gesturing to his side in emphasis. "She was in kind of a daze, said that we should escape as soon as possible."
"Yeah?"
"I wouldn't quote me on this," he started, "but it's possible she learned something else from Harold. Something he didn't tell us."
Dean cocked his head, peering quizzically at Ryo. "Wasn't it a recording?"
"Maybe the wrong word," said Ryo with a shrug. "Maybe a memory would be better... an echo. Needless to say it was... alive enough to respond, in a limited way. She may yet know more than she told us."
"I see... well, I'd heard about her from another one of your friends, so she was next on the list anyway. I don't suppose you could put me in touch with her?"
"I could try." Ryo took another sip from his Coke. "She's gotten a little reclusive lately, but I think I could get ahold of her for you."
Dean smiled. "I'd appreciate that. It might make finding her a little easier," he jokingly said.
Ryo spoke again, but his voice fell on deaf ears as Dean's gaze flew past Ryo and onto the two men behind them on the path, still several yards away. He finally recognized them as the pair that had he had spotted earlier by the pond, and again just seconds ago - two Asian men, dressed in unassuming clothes and neither with any remarkable features, save for the cellular phone that the left-hand man was currently speaking into.
"Dean?" asked Ryo, somewhat unnerved by the detective's descent to silence.
"I don't want to alarm you," said Dean in a near-whisper, "but we're being followed."
- End of Chapter 2