No header notes, but I stuck an exasperatingly long footnote down at the bottom. It's 11 but I got threatened within an inch of my life if I didn't post. Here's to 64 oz. of soda today. And Asamiya for creating this world I'm trying to wreak havoc in. Let's slip the dogs of war!

// \\



In the darkness of space, the three unidentified mecha remained that way, settling into a line as if silently gloating over the expended batteries of the Nadesico Aestivalis before them. Sabutouta was fairing in his situation much better than Ryoko, who was currently hurling venom at her unhearing opponents. He, on the other hand, was sitting quietly in his cockpit, no less angry but not interested in wasting resources. The rest of the pilots quietly floated behind their superiors, their inexperience having drained their resources faster than either Saburouta or Subaru.

Saburouta was about to try calming Ryoko if for no other reason than to save his own eardrums when both pilots noticed a flash of light bounce off of their opponents. Their advesaries immediately raised their weapons while every last Nadesico pilot twisted in their cockpit to see what had arrived unannounced. Just as suddenly as the new gamepiece appeared, Ryoko, Saburouta and their subordinates found their energy feed restored.

Ryoko glanced at the feed's signature, and upon not recognizing it spun to face her benefactor. She stopped dead, recognizing the Aestivalis perched on the nose of the approaching corvette. "N-nani? Akito-kun?"

Upon hearing Ryoko's comm transmission, Saburouta spun his Aestivalis around in time to see a familiar black mecha leap off of the nose of the Euccharis and hurtle towards them.

"Alright!" Ryoko cheered, "These temee are mine!"

A chorus of support from the re-powered Aestivalis of her shipmates was suddenly cut off when Tenkawa opened a screen in their cockpits. "Dame," he replied in infinite coldness. "These bastards will be destroyed by me."



// \\



Ruri stood silent, still facing McLaren & Makibi, as bad news continued to pour into the bridge. Too many systems had been lost to try to regain control from the bridge. "Communciations," she said finally, with a gravity Hari wouldn't have believed possible.

"H-hai," the officer responded.

"Sound all quarters. Emergency evacuation. All hands abandon ship. Lieutenant Makibi and Ensigns McLaren and Christensen will attempt to regain control of the ship with me from the core and evacuate with it if necessary. I repeat for the ship's record, all hands abandon ship."

Every member of the bridge crew understood every single word that their captain had spoken, and at this point they had all expected to hear it. Despite this, everyone within the bridge was mute with shock as the comm officer repeated the message on the emergency intercom system, one of the few fully functional systems left. The communications officer quickly carried out what she considered the most morbid order she had yet received, and then stood to evacuate with the bridge crew. She quickly walked to the door then turned, realizing that no one was folllowing her. "Let's go!" she yelled back at the bridge, stirring the shocked crew into motion.



// \\



"Akito-san," Lapis called to Tenkawa on a secure channel, "The captain of the Nadesico has ordered abandon ship."

Akito winced in his cockpit and quickly finished off one of his opponents. "Deploy batta to aid in corraling the escape pods. Apparently the Crimsons managed to get into Omoikane somehow."

"It would appear that you are correct. Also, the Nadesico has not sounded its emergency beacon."

"Forge their signature and signal for them."

"Hai."



// \\



Tobias and Ruri charged through the corridors of the ship towards Omoikane with a panting Hari close behind. They burst into the central core to find Mike connecting a second pair of IFS controllers to his chair. The trio stared blankly at him for a moment, noticing that he had performed the same operation on Tobias' chair as well. It was Hari who ended up speaking on behalf of them. "Ano.... nan desu?"

"Well, if we don't get control of the ship, we're going to have to ride down in this tub. That being the case, I for one don't want to ride down in a chair that's not bolted to the floor and that I can't strap myself into. And despite building a rather kick-ass system here, they only put two such chairs in the room," Mike explained, as understanding crept into McLaren's and Makibi's faces. The two looked at Ruri and blood immediately flowed into both of their faces as they both apparently thought the same thing.

"Hari," Tobias started, "You and the Kanchou take my-"

"Hell no," Mike cut Tobias off, "I am not gonna run the risk of riding all the way down to earth with your damn mane all up in my face. 'Sides, these emergency harnesses look like they'd be too small for you and me together."

Hari took note of the sizes of the room's inhabitants. As he realized that Mike was the largest person in the room and he the smallest, he resigned himself to his fate. He knew that his sense of resignation came from his desire to always be by Ruri's side, which at the same time was causing him a bit of jealousy despite the seriousness of the situation around them.

Ruri waited almost impatiently as Tobias settled into his workstation as quickly as he could. She had a good guess as to what Hari was thinking and was herself not entirely comfortable with the arrangement Mike had given them, even if the circumstances had switched Tobias' and Makibi's places. However, this did make sense and finding another solution would simply take too much time. The ship agreed with her line of reasoning as a rumble shook through the vessel, announcing its contact with the upper reaches of earth's atmosphere.

Hari quickly seated himself on Mike's lap and let the latter hurriedly strap them in as he began to take stock of Omoikane and the Nadesico. "Kanchou, Omoiikane doesn't want to seem to do anything."

"Omoikane is feeling threateneed, and has gone into a protective mode," Ruri responded as she began navigating with the second pari of IFS controllers attached to Tobias' chair. "Hari-kun, Mike-san, and Tobi-san, please try to gain control of the ship's systems without AI aid. I will try to calm Omoikane and persuade him to help us."



// \\



The Nadesico's Aestivalis pilots were a blend of calm and chaos. Ryoko, Saburouta and the few other almost-seasoned combat pilots were well-acquainted with emergency procedures and were execcuting them flawlessly. The younger pilots, most of which had decidedly not paid attention during drills, were quite effectively serving the cause of chaos and getting in the way of everyone including the Batta. Said younger pilots were fortunate to have the Euccharis feeding them power, as they were having extreme difficulty in tethering the escape pods together. The experienced pilots found themselves doing the lion's share of corraling lifeboats as they left the ship, grateful for the aid of Akito's Batta.

Akito watched in silence as the ship's shuttle disembarked from its home on the ship and manuvered to the front of the chains of lifeboats in order to be connected for towing them. "Lapis, do I remember procedure correctly that the shuttle contains the bridge crew in the even the bridge is not itself used as a lifeboat?"

"Hai," Lapis responded from inside the Euccharis. "However, from the transmissions between vessels it would seem that Hoshino Ruri, Makibi Hari, and the two computer engineers are still aboard the Nadesico."

"Saburouta reported that all lifeboats were accounted for," Akito pointed out. "Do they have any means of evacuating?"

"Hai," Lapis answered. "According to the vessel's schematics, the core and two adjoining crew quarters can eject as one massive escape pod, with emergency power and life support systems above and below the adjoining crew quarters.



// \\



"Omoikane? Omoikane, it's Ruri," Hoshino called through her IFS. "Omoikane, we need your help."

"Ruri-Ruri, I can't. There are unknown things attacking me, things which frighten me," the computer answered.

"I know, my friend," Ruri said. "We need your help to stop it in order to regain control of the ship."

"I'm afraid I cannot help much," Omoikane answered. "The virus is able to come between myself and the ship. When it does, it provides false data to me. I dare not trust any data I see, even data which you provide me with."

"I understand," Ruri said reassuringly. "Are any of your resources infected that you are aware of?"

"No, the virus only exists in areas which I do not require to maintain myself at this point. However, I can only continue to guarantee this if you perform a complete shutdown of my processes and then take my arrays offline."

"If this is the only way to protect you, then very well."

"Ruri-Ruri... be safe." Omoikane said.

"I will try," she answered as she began to terminate Omoikane's processes and writing him to disk.

McLaren looked down from his screens at the woman strapped into his chair with him when he heard a small, sad sigh escape her. "Kanchou, are you okay?"

She nodded slowly as she claimed the remaining hardwired screens Toby wasn't using. She paused for a moment then gave the other three in the room a summary of her conversation with Omoikane. Hari echoed her sigh, albeit for different reasons, when she had finished.

"So, we're on our own in-- Ow!" Hari suddenly cut off, jerking his hands off of his IFS controllers.

Mike looked down at the top of Hari's head and was about to ask what happened when he felt a surge of electricity rip through his own IFS. "Tober, what the hell is goinng on?"

Tobias jerked a keyboard tray towards himself and began keying furiously. "The virus has apparently realized Hoshino-san's shutting Omoikane down. It's feeding back any data input into it."

"Demo... aren't the controllers set up to filter things like that out?" Hari asked.

Tobias continued keying inbetween phrases. "The IFS have passive filters that take care of everyday stuff. This is actively creating feedback, so it looks like it fried the passive filters in a few seconds... aw, crap."

Ruri twisted slightly to look at McLaren out of the corner of her eye. "What is it?"

"The Image Feedback System is probably the only system on the ship that has to deal daily with feedback. If this could fry the safetys set up for the IFS--"

"It would have no trouble short-circuiting any other data input sources from the ship," Ruri finished. "Tobi-san, set up filtering algorithms to lessen the feedback. Hari-kun, Mike-san, cut off all input sources to the central computer and prepare to restart them once the algorithms are in place."

"What about you, Kanchou?" Hari asked.

"I will see if I can isolate and shutdown the infection manually."

"Kanchou, I heard rumors of how vicious Omoikane can be if threatened..." Tobias quietly began.

"I am aware that the virus may be the same or even moreso," Ruri calmly replied.

"Be careful, Kanchou."

"Tobi-san, I have no intention of being otherwise."

The group worked quickly and relatively quietly as the ship began to shake violently as it fell back into Earth's atmosphere. Tobias finally broke the silence with a muttered "Damn."

"Nan desu?" Ruri asked.

"If the Crimsons are doing this, my hat's off to them. I can't set up any filters that work for more than a few seconds. The infection has started modifying the frequency of the signal as it begins feeding it back, using some kind of random number generator I can't figure out. Manually filtereding the fedback isn't working either. This thing's faster than I am."

"Don't mean to eavesdrop, but Hari and I have more bad news," Mike called from across the room. "We can't get the input streams turned off. It's starting to fry circuits throughout the ship from what we can tell."

Ruri stopped momentarily in her fight with the core. "What are our coordinates relative to earth?"

Hari turned as much as he could in his belted-in posistion. "When the navigation functions completely died, we were headed southwest over the northern Atlantic. That was 45 seconds ago."

"Meaning we'll probablly be over the eastern United States pretty soon," Mike observed, then added, "unless we're accellerating."

Ruri returned her attentions momentarily to her IFS, ignoring the feedback charges arcing against her hands. "if the ship were to explode, based on best available data, there would be minimal impact to ecosystems and metropolitan areas."

Tobias tapped quietly on a keyboard for a few seconds. "I can confirm that the virus has not affected the self-destruct systems. Guess they wrote it to avoid that can of worms..." he finished, his voice trailing off.

Ruri sat silently for a few moments as she initiated the self-destruct sequences. "Hari-kun," she said as quietly as possible in the increasing din, "please confirm sequences and initialize countdown at two minutes."

"Hai," Hari said, working feverisly and ignoring the feedback as well. "Sequences confirmed, self destruct i two minutes... mark."

"Tobi-san, Mike-san, eject the core," Ruri commanded.

"Roger," the two replied, hands flying over controls. Concussions sounded and echoed throughout the core as the massive computer and its emergency systems loosed themselves from the confines of the ship.



// \\

Naze Nani Footnote:

Generally I can keep myself from doing this kind of crap, but this time I'm going to do it anyways because I think one of my limbs is a little shaky here. Hopefully the exposistion will make what's going on in the core make more sense than less.

FIrst off, what feedback is. I dunno how much electronic feedback is a part of everybody else's existence, but I grew up running sound systems in small auditoriums, so I've seen a little bit of feedback of the acoustic sort. Acoustic feedback is also the easiest to describe, because we've all experienced it. Say you're singing. Sound comes out your mouth and hits your microphone where it's converted to electricity. Yadda yadda preamp mixer eq fx poweramp blah blah it hits the speaker and gets converted back to acoustic energy. Mic takes sound and makes electricty, speaker takes electricty and makes sound. Now, if you stick the microphone in front of the speaker, what happens? Sound goes in the mic, out the speaker, back into the mic, back out the speaker, back into the mic, back out the speaker. If you've ever programed you know what this is - an infinite loop. If you haven't programmed, this is, well, a loop that's infinite. Anyways. So the sound which is going around and around the mic and the speaker ends up getting louder, and tends to settle on a single frequency, which creates the howling you hear. Now, a little feedback never hurt any piece of hardware. Hell, Hendrix might as well have had entire songs of nothing but feedback between his guitar and his amplifier (the execution's a little different, but it works the same way)

This applies to anything which has input and output. If you aim a TV camera at a TV showing the camera's image, you see the tv inside the tv inside the tv inside the tv inside the-- *OW* Thank you, whomever slapped me. Same thing with all the hundreds of you seen in a mirror maze or the three way mirror in the dressing room. They're all feedback. The same thing happens in electronics. However, all feedback involving electronics, if it goes on long enough or powerful enough, will start frying those electronics. In the mic example, you'll probably end up blowing the diaphram in the mic or the cone of the speaker (the paper part in most speakers)

"Fine. Shut up already. How the hell does this apply to Nadesico?" Okay. IFS. Image Feedback System. The manga takes it a step further with the React system. (only read through vol2 of the manga so far, hopefully i'm not stepping out on a limb with this as well.) These systems take input from the Aesti or the Computer and feed it back to the operator. Generally, you think of it more in terms of outputing to the operator, because feedback occurs when the output and input get skrewed up.

Now, a portion of the IFS appears that it might really be feedback. Such as you know that the Aesti is lifting its hand, and which would also explain why Aktio appears to have problems controling the recoil of his weapon when he first flies. Now, the manga raises the danger of this - if filters are not in place, then the system can feed back dangerous levels of information which the brain interprets as what the body is actually feeling and reacts accordingly. Yes, this is indeed exactly like the Matrix. With the exact same problems.

So, that leads to my opinion, that there are built-in safeguards in the IFS to prevent harmful levels from building up and causing damage to the operator (remember, in the sense I'm using, "operator" refers to pilot as well, not just the posistion of Computer Operator. What this virus is doing, essentially, is saying "you're sending me 3 millivolts? here, lemme send you 300 millivolts back. Not enough? How about 3000 millivolts?" (Okay, yes, yes, that's 3 volts.) And just like anything, if you send information the wrong way in a system, things often go kablooie.

So, hope that helps clarify my thinking behind what I have going on right now in the ship. I'm not an EE, so there's definitely room for error, but this is how I understand things, so. Hope you guys enjoyed this section, I got to both wreak some havoc and put people in embarassing situations, plus I've neither gotten them completely out of the woods, nor am I done giving embarassment to the characters I added in. Hell, what're invented characters good for if not to beat around a bit? I'm sure Jun would like it dished out to somebody besides him. Besides, I try very hard to be evil.