.HackRelapse
A .Hack fanfiction by Renfro Calhoun
Disclaimer: I claim ownership of no aspect of Project .Hack.
Notes: Takes place during Outbreak. Parentheses indicate thoughts, brackets are for writing or text. Okay! We're back in business! Sorry for the long downtime; stupid Midway and their once-in-a-lifetime awesome action/horror game... er, I mean... technical difficulties! Um, jet lag! I had surgery! No habla Engles!
I need to learn how to lie better. sigh And grrr... stupid fanfiction.net removed certain characters from my updates. Now my email addresses look all silly and condensed! CURSE THEM!!!
Oh, in other news, I won $250 in Vegas and gave only $50 back. hugs his shiny new FFXI-pwning video card Yay, Vegas!
Chapter 24 - Mutual Isolation
-----------------------------
"So that was him?!"
BlackRose nodded as she led Kite back through the maze of alleys and sidestreets, past empty shop stalls and static, unbreakable jars and barrels. "I'm almost positive. The name of that man, 'Hoerwick', he's the one who created Fragment. That was Harald who we saw."
Kite exhaled slowly, absorbing the information as he answered with some of his own. "And at the end, 'Tanaka'. I told Dean about him a while ago, and last night he told me that he was involved in 'The World', as well." He paused, trying to remember more, and quickly succeeded. "He combined some of his own programming with that of Morganna to get her to work in 'The World'."
"I see." She brought a hand up to rub her chin thoughtfully, her eyebrows creased in concentration. "So he helped those men find Harald. I heard he was missing for years, but it seems he knew where to find him."
Thinking back to the foreign dialogue that they had witnessed, Kite moved behind BlackRose, and issued the command to match her pace. "I'm going to follow you for a second, I want to check something."
"Got it."
Freed from movement controls, he opened the log menu and scrolled back up to the incident, watching as lines of color-coded text sped down his display, visible to his eyes only. A page back, and he smirked; the log interface had recorded the words spoken by the apparition, and had even taken the liberty of highlighting those that were in other languages. A blank spot sat where the speakers' names should have been, but the text appeared as normal otherwise.
A push of two buttons activated the game's translation feature, which quickly identified the text as German and altered it to fit his native tongue, albeit with slight differences in diction and prose. He took a breath, then addressed the Heavy Blade leading him. "Those men in black were police," he explained. "They wanted him to put down the gun and come out... they must have been working with Tanaka to find him."
"Wait a minute," she said. "If the police found him, then why has nobody heard about it? Wouldn't it be on the news or something?"
Taking control once more, Kite stepped up next to BlackRose and looked at her strangely. "What do you mean?"
"Don't you know? Everybody on the board keeps saying that he disappeared years ago, and that no one's seen him since." She glanced at him, brow still furrowed. "Don't you think if Cyber Connect, or the police, or anybody knew where he was, they'd be trying to get him to help solve all this?"
His eyes widened, the question unanswerable in his mind. "Yeah, you're right. If they found him, why do they say he's still missing?"
"Something's not right here. I don't think those were cops at all. Maybe we better hurry."
She doubled her pace, not yet running but faster than a leisurely stroll. Kite joined her, letting her silently guide him towards the boat landing.
(It's all adding up... that vision I saw, the note we found, these 'ghosts'... Tanaka is behind Morganna somehow, and also behind Harald's disappearance.) Idly, he scrolled through his inventory, removing the note from his pocket and reading it again to refresh his memory.
[They are coming for me. By the time you get this, I will be dead, but not by their hands. I know now what happened to her, what you did to her. I can try, but I do not know if I can stop her. They want her because they know what she can do... because they made her what she is. Through you. Guilt is meaningless. Responsibility is all that matters now. I ask only this of you: do not let them take her.
- 3/17/2010]
BlackRose looked on. "That's the note from before..."
"We found it in that one room... I think Harald was trying to send it to Seijiro, but he didn't know that Seijiro had turned him in."
"The date could be anything," BlackRose pointed out. "When it was written, when it was sent. Maybe it has some other meaning, too, something that happened on that day."
"I don't know," admitted Kite, "but I think I know a way we can find out." Falling behind BlackRose, he pocketed the note and engaged the auto-follow program once more. "Keep going, I'll mail Dean."
-
[From: Kitetheworld.com
To: DStollismailserv.net
Subj: More on Tanaka
Dean,
I just found out; Tanaka was involved in Harald's disappearance. I saw some kind of recording earlier; men who appeared to be German police captured him, and one of them thanked Tanaka for his help. I'm still not sure about what happened, but I'm pretty sure Seijiro knows what happened to Harald. Check it out if you get the chance, I think we're onto something here.
- Hiroshi]
-
"I'm back. I think we should... huh?"
Kite blinked as he looked around, confused by their new surroundings. Although the walls and floor were the same that had decorated the streets of the unfinished section, where he now stood was obviously impossible. Perhaps by the fact that they were now in a large square enclosure, not unlike any number of dungeon rooms he had seen before.
Or perhaps it was because this 'room' had no exit.
Kite cocked his head at BlackRose, worry entering his voice. "What happened?"
"I-I... I don't know!" she stammered. "We were heading the right way, when all of a sudden I entered this place. When I went to turn back," she gestured to a blank wall, "the way out was gone."
He scanned the area cautiously, drawing his blades in anticipation. "It's just like a dungeon... I think there's something in here."
"I can't see the map anymore." Replacing confusion with hostility, BlackRose removed her gigantic sword from its sheath, gripping it firmly with both hands. "Whoever's there, come out and show yourself!" she bellowed, narrowing her eyes.
A light began to gather at the opposite end of the room, obscuring that portion to almost-invisibility; something within took the shape of a man - arms, legs, a body and head - and as the light faded, the outline grew in definition.
Kite inhaled sharply. "It's him again..."
To his surprise, the apparition spoke up, appearing to address him directly. "I remember you," he said in a deep, echoing voice. "Both of you. Lambda: Capricious Astigmatic Pilgrimage."
Lowering her weapon slightly, BlackRose called out. "Are you Harald? Harald Hoerwick?"
He looked at her, his face flat and expressionless. "I suppose so."
She peered at him, all anger lost to newfound curiosity. "Huh? What's that supposed to mean?"
"There's so much I don't understand," said 'Harald'. He took a step forward, heavy shoes falling to the cobblestone street with a firm clop. "He only told me enough to go after her. Not what to do if I failed, or how it all began. Nothing."
"Her? Do you mean... Morganna?" Kite asked tentatively, putting away his weapons. Slowly he approached, followed by BlackRose.
"Yes." He turned away, facing a point that Kite guessed was the other exit. "Even he wasn't sure why Morganna behaved the way she has; so long ago, he knew that she, herself, had been corrupted, twisted... but he didn't know how. Only that she was. That's when he made the 'key'. Or... so I've been able to gather."
"I don't understand," said Kite. "What are you?"
"Harald tried to 'speak' with Morganna by... copying himself into 'The World', in a sense. Making a virtual representation that would find and stop Morganna, on its own, without risking his own life by interfacing directly with the game."
"So he created you?" asked BlackRose.
"Not exactly. The plan failed; I don't know exactly what happened to him... it, when it encountered her, but I do know that the program was splintered, scattered throughout 'The World'." He paused for a moment, a lag in the latency of their connection. "I am... a portion of that program."
"I've heard there was a broken man, at a field that can't be reached," said BlackRose. "Was that another like you?"
"Yes, and no. Harald tried to create a fully realized self in the world - literally, an artificial intelligence. When it was broken, the fragments all took away some pieces of the whole. Specifically, memories."
"Then those ghosts we've been seeing," began Kite, the pieces coming together in his head, "the voices, these are all memories of a program that Harald created?"
"I believe so."
"Then what about you?" he asked again. "How is it you can respond to us?"
'Harald' sighed, his shoulders sagging. "Like I said, there's much I don't understand. I think I'm some sort of cognitive algorithm - the part of the AI that could 'think', so to speak. I've been trying to find out what happened ever since. I didn't remember anything, not even why or how I was here, but the more I saw, the more I learned." He looked up at Kite, his eyes surprisingly weary and downtrodden. "But I don't 'remember' these things, I just know them."
"Do you know what actually happened to the real Harald?"
"I saw the same image you just did, but I can't be sure." He gulped. "I doubt those were police that found him."
Kite glanced over at his partner. "Looks like you were right, BlackRose."
She briefly smirked, a moment of pride that quickly fell away to her persisting curiosity. "What about what happened to you?" she asked. "Do you know that?"
"I think so... I don't know what happened during the actual confrontation, but following my separation... she began searching for the memories, trying to erase them. I've been looking for them too, to find out what, exactly, Harald intended for me to do here, how he planned to stop Morganna."
He gulped, and suddenly reached behind his back. "But she did something to me... altered my code, my priorities, I don't know. Something keeps happening to me."
Feeling suddenly ill at ease, Kite rested his hands on the hilts of his short swords. "What are you talking about?"
"That party you saw earlier," he said, his voice becoming more hurried, as if nervous, or even frightened. "They weren't running from the memory. They were running from me."
BlackRose gasped, reaching for her blade. "You mean..."
His arm twitched, as if he was fighting some hidden urge to move it. "It's happening again... you have to stop me. This isn't me, but she's still trying. She wants to stop people from finding her, from saving her."
Kite felt his pulse rise, heart beating at a frenzied pace. Sweat beaded on his puppeteer's palms, causing the controller to loosen in his hands. "Saving her?"
"It's Aura!" he suddenly shouted. "Help her, it's all about her now!"
Without warning, his arm curled around, now holding the same revolver that the memory had, only pointed straight between the Twin Blade's eyes; 'Harald's' index finger curled around the trigger and began to squeeze.
"You have to kill me!"
- End of Chapter 24
A .Hack fanfiction by Renfro Calhoun
Disclaimer: I claim ownership of no aspect of Project .Hack.
Notes: Takes place during Outbreak. Parentheses indicate thoughts, brackets are for writing or text. Okay! We're back in business! Sorry for the long downtime; stupid Midway and their once-in-a-lifetime awesome action/horror game... er, I mean... technical difficulties! Um, jet lag! I had surgery! No habla Engles!
I need to learn how to lie better. sigh And grrr... stupid fanfiction.net removed certain characters from my updates. Now my email addresses look all silly and condensed! CURSE THEM!!!
Oh, in other news, I won $250 in Vegas and gave only $50 back. hugs his shiny new FFXI-pwning video card Yay, Vegas!
Chapter 24 - Mutual Isolation
-----------------------------
"So that was him?!"
BlackRose nodded as she led Kite back through the maze of alleys and sidestreets, past empty shop stalls and static, unbreakable jars and barrels. "I'm almost positive. The name of that man, 'Hoerwick', he's the one who created Fragment. That was Harald who we saw."
Kite exhaled slowly, absorbing the information as he answered with some of his own. "And at the end, 'Tanaka'. I told Dean about him a while ago, and last night he told me that he was involved in 'The World', as well." He paused, trying to remember more, and quickly succeeded. "He combined some of his own programming with that of Morganna to get her to work in 'The World'."
"I see." She brought a hand up to rub her chin thoughtfully, her eyebrows creased in concentration. "So he helped those men find Harald. I heard he was missing for years, but it seems he knew where to find him."
Thinking back to the foreign dialogue that they had witnessed, Kite moved behind BlackRose, and issued the command to match her pace. "I'm going to follow you for a second, I want to check something."
"Got it."
Freed from movement controls, he opened the log menu and scrolled back up to the incident, watching as lines of color-coded text sped down his display, visible to his eyes only. A page back, and he smirked; the log interface had recorded the words spoken by the apparition, and had even taken the liberty of highlighting those that were in other languages. A blank spot sat where the speakers' names should have been, but the text appeared as normal otherwise.
A push of two buttons activated the game's translation feature, which quickly identified the text as German and altered it to fit his native tongue, albeit with slight differences in diction and prose. He took a breath, then addressed the Heavy Blade leading him. "Those men in black were police," he explained. "They wanted him to put down the gun and come out... they must have been working with Tanaka to find him."
"Wait a minute," she said. "If the police found him, then why has nobody heard about it? Wouldn't it be on the news or something?"
Taking control once more, Kite stepped up next to BlackRose and looked at her strangely. "What do you mean?"
"Don't you know? Everybody on the board keeps saying that he disappeared years ago, and that no one's seen him since." She glanced at him, brow still furrowed. "Don't you think if Cyber Connect, or the police, or anybody knew where he was, they'd be trying to get him to help solve all this?"
His eyes widened, the question unanswerable in his mind. "Yeah, you're right. If they found him, why do they say he's still missing?"
"Something's not right here. I don't think those were cops at all. Maybe we better hurry."
She doubled her pace, not yet running but faster than a leisurely stroll. Kite joined her, letting her silently guide him towards the boat landing.
(It's all adding up... that vision I saw, the note we found, these 'ghosts'... Tanaka is behind Morganna somehow, and also behind Harald's disappearance.) Idly, he scrolled through his inventory, removing the note from his pocket and reading it again to refresh his memory.
[They are coming for me. By the time you get this, I will be dead, but not by their hands. I know now what happened to her, what you did to her. I can try, but I do not know if I can stop her. They want her because they know what she can do... because they made her what she is. Through you. Guilt is meaningless. Responsibility is all that matters now. I ask only this of you: do not let them take her.
- 3/17/2010]
BlackRose looked on. "That's the note from before..."
"We found it in that one room... I think Harald was trying to send it to Seijiro, but he didn't know that Seijiro had turned him in."
"The date could be anything," BlackRose pointed out. "When it was written, when it was sent. Maybe it has some other meaning, too, something that happened on that day."
"I don't know," admitted Kite, "but I think I know a way we can find out." Falling behind BlackRose, he pocketed the note and engaged the auto-follow program once more. "Keep going, I'll mail Dean."
-
[From: Kitetheworld.com
To: DStollismailserv.net
Subj: More on Tanaka
Dean,
I just found out; Tanaka was involved in Harald's disappearance. I saw some kind of recording earlier; men who appeared to be German police captured him, and one of them thanked Tanaka for his help. I'm still not sure about what happened, but I'm pretty sure Seijiro knows what happened to Harald. Check it out if you get the chance, I think we're onto something here.
- Hiroshi]
-
"I'm back. I think we should... huh?"
Kite blinked as he looked around, confused by their new surroundings. Although the walls and floor were the same that had decorated the streets of the unfinished section, where he now stood was obviously impossible. Perhaps by the fact that they were now in a large square enclosure, not unlike any number of dungeon rooms he had seen before.
Or perhaps it was because this 'room' had no exit.
Kite cocked his head at BlackRose, worry entering his voice. "What happened?"
"I-I... I don't know!" she stammered. "We were heading the right way, when all of a sudden I entered this place. When I went to turn back," she gestured to a blank wall, "the way out was gone."
He scanned the area cautiously, drawing his blades in anticipation. "It's just like a dungeon... I think there's something in here."
"I can't see the map anymore." Replacing confusion with hostility, BlackRose removed her gigantic sword from its sheath, gripping it firmly with both hands. "Whoever's there, come out and show yourself!" she bellowed, narrowing her eyes.
A light began to gather at the opposite end of the room, obscuring that portion to almost-invisibility; something within took the shape of a man - arms, legs, a body and head - and as the light faded, the outline grew in definition.
Kite inhaled sharply. "It's him again..."
To his surprise, the apparition spoke up, appearing to address him directly. "I remember you," he said in a deep, echoing voice. "Both of you. Lambda: Capricious Astigmatic Pilgrimage."
Lowering her weapon slightly, BlackRose called out. "Are you Harald? Harald Hoerwick?"
He looked at her, his face flat and expressionless. "I suppose so."
She peered at him, all anger lost to newfound curiosity. "Huh? What's that supposed to mean?"
"There's so much I don't understand," said 'Harald'. He took a step forward, heavy shoes falling to the cobblestone street with a firm clop. "He only told me enough to go after her. Not what to do if I failed, or how it all began. Nothing."
"Her? Do you mean... Morganna?" Kite asked tentatively, putting away his weapons. Slowly he approached, followed by BlackRose.
"Yes." He turned away, facing a point that Kite guessed was the other exit. "Even he wasn't sure why Morganna behaved the way she has; so long ago, he knew that she, herself, had been corrupted, twisted... but he didn't know how. Only that she was. That's when he made the 'key'. Or... so I've been able to gather."
"I don't understand," said Kite. "What are you?"
"Harald tried to 'speak' with Morganna by... copying himself into 'The World', in a sense. Making a virtual representation that would find and stop Morganna, on its own, without risking his own life by interfacing directly with the game."
"So he created you?" asked BlackRose.
"Not exactly. The plan failed; I don't know exactly what happened to him... it, when it encountered her, but I do know that the program was splintered, scattered throughout 'The World'." He paused for a moment, a lag in the latency of their connection. "I am... a portion of that program."
"I've heard there was a broken man, at a field that can't be reached," said BlackRose. "Was that another like you?"
"Yes, and no. Harald tried to create a fully realized self in the world - literally, an artificial intelligence. When it was broken, the fragments all took away some pieces of the whole. Specifically, memories."
"Then those ghosts we've been seeing," began Kite, the pieces coming together in his head, "the voices, these are all memories of a program that Harald created?"
"I believe so."
"Then what about you?" he asked again. "How is it you can respond to us?"
'Harald' sighed, his shoulders sagging. "Like I said, there's much I don't understand. I think I'm some sort of cognitive algorithm - the part of the AI that could 'think', so to speak. I've been trying to find out what happened ever since. I didn't remember anything, not even why or how I was here, but the more I saw, the more I learned." He looked up at Kite, his eyes surprisingly weary and downtrodden. "But I don't 'remember' these things, I just know them."
"Do you know what actually happened to the real Harald?"
"I saw the same image you just did, but I can't be sure." He gulped. "I doubt those were police that found him."
Kite glanced over at his partner. "Looks like you were right, BlackRose."
She briefly smirked, a moment of pride that quickly fell away to her persisting curiosity. "What about what happened to you?" she asked. "Do you know that?"
"I think so... I don't know what happened during the actual confrontation, but following my separation... she began searching for the memories, trying to erase them. I've been looking for them too, to find out what, exactly, Harald intended for me to do here, how he planned to stop Morganna."
He gulped, and suddenly reached behind his back. "But she did something to me... altered my code, my priorities, I don't know. Something keeps happening to me."
Feeling suddenly ill at ease, Kite rested his hands on the hilts of his short swords. "What are you talking about?"
"That party you saw earlier," he said, his voice becoming more hurried, as if nervous, or even frightened. "They weren't running from the memory. They were running from me."
BlackRose gasped, reaching for her blade. "You mean..."
His arm twitched, as if he was fighting some hidden urge to move it. "It's happening again... you have to stop me. This isn't me, but she's still trying. She wants to stop people from finding her, from saving her."
Kite felt his pulse rise, heart beating at a frenzied pace. Sweat beaded on his puppeteer's palms, causing the controller to loosen in his hands. "Saving her?"
"It's Aura!" he suddenly shouted. "Help her, it's all about her now!"
Without warning, his arm curled around, now holding the same revolver that the memory had, only pointed straight between the Twin Blade's eyes; 'Harald's' index finger curled around the trigger and began to squeeze.
"You have to kill me!"
- End of Chapter 24