Disclaimer: Ok, I don't own .hack or anything from it save the characters I have created. Bandai owns the rest.

PG-13: I could probably get away with PG, but not sure just how violent it might get later, so better to be safe.

Author's Comment: So you know, all areas mentioned can be reached in the game and are to a great degree accurate.

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Kite turned now, his anger subsiding, and the bracelet having sensed it began to power down and return to its unseen state. Blinking and trying to believe what he saw before him was truly real; Kite stared up in awe at the white-clad figure of Helba hovering just above the floor.

This was a different Helba though. Usually when Kite saw her, she had a knowing, playful smirk across her face, almost like the proverbial cat that had just eaten the proverbial canary, but this time it was different. This time her lips were straight and taut, serious to the point where Kite was almost scared to even look at her. This wasn't the meddler Helba he'd met in Mac Anu not too long ago. No, this was Queen Helba, the super hacker, and from the way her body language was pulsing with power and contempt towards Liet just now, Kite wanted nothing to do with whatever Helba had in mind for Liet just now. What Kite did know though was that in all likelihood, it was not going to be pleasant.

And from the way he seemed to be trembling in fear as his form lowered to the floor, Liet knew it too. "Q-queen H-h-helb-ba. Please I…"

"Liet," Helba interjected in a firm, crisp, and quite reprimanding tone, "I'll ask you just once more, just what exactly do you think you are doing?"

Struggling to pull his composure together, and only slightly succeeding, Liet gulped and answered, "M-my Queen, I was trying to do what was best for this World, to keep the mission and its final goal as attainable as it can be."

Despite the visor of her headdress blocking any view of her eyes, Kite was certain that Helba was glaring at Liet just now with something far worse than daggers, spears perhaps. "And you think that by controlling Kite's acquaintances, manipulating his actions and attacking his friends you can achieve this?"

"My Queen, surely you must see it. This girl, she could ruin everything we've worked for, distract Kite from his mission, and lead to this World's demise! We must safeguard against this, no matter the cost!"

Just listening to Liet talk was angering Kite, and his right arm again began to pulse. Suddenly a hand touched his shoulder, and Helba's voice spoke out calmly, "Calm yourself little boy. You will not have need of that."

Immediately the bracelet shut itself down as Kite struggled to keep his anger in check. As he looked up at Helba once more, who was now standing directly besides him, Kite wondered how it was that she maintained that straight, taut expression. Surely she must have been upset, Liet's words must have been angering her as much as they were him. Yet her face was so… calm.

"So Liet, you would sacrifice this girl, her friends, and everyone around her for the sake of keeping the mission in order? So that one person stays on the path you see him following?"

"Yes my Queen, it is for the greater good! Of course their sacrifice is a burden, painful on all involved, but the good of all those people who visit 'The World', of all those millions who use the internet that this Wave threatens to shut down, those sacrifices must be made, and must be justified. If we succeed, all will be fixed, those in comas will awaken, and everything will be safe. However, if we fail, then not only will 'The World' be shut down and the coma victims lost, but the internet itself and all that it connects to will follow. To prevent such a catastrophe, what are a few sacrifices to protect the whole?"

"I see. So you have done all this for the betterment of humanity, to save lives and to maintain this way of life that humanity now enjoys."

"Yes my Queen!" Liet's voice began to become excited now, sensing a change in Helba's appearance. She was accepting his words, they made sense to her, and she was coming around to understanding and taking his side in this matter. "Breaking this girl's heart, keeping her from interfering with Kite and his mission, it is a small price to pay. Is this not why you had me keep an eye on her, to prevent her from ruining the plans we have so carefully laid out to save this World?"

Kite did not like where this conversation was going at all. Not only was Mycinity still lying unconscious on the floor, but now Helba was listening to Liet almost as if… she agreed with him. She'd been the one to have Liet follow Mycinity, and now she… "Helba! Is this true? You did all this?"

"No, I merely told Liet to observe her for the time being. Everything else has been his own work. Isn't that right Liet?"

"Yes my Queen. I saw what was happening, I tried to give this girl a chance to back away, but she ignored it. I knew something had to be done, so I did what I had to do, I did what was right."

"Right?" Helba stated with a sudden tone of amusement. "No Liet, what you did, was merely correct, from what information you perceived. Only history can decide what was truly right. I must say, that I never thought you would go as far as creating your own Data Bug, and unleashing it upon innocent players."

"But my Queen," Liet responded, a sudden tone of worry creeping back into his voice, "as I told you, it was necessary. Besides, the players would only have been comatose for a short time. This will be over soon enough, and everyone will be fine. After all, it would have only been two more people."

There was a silent pause, and Kite could literally feel the weight of the moment in the air, the tension building upon itself over and over again, fathomless in depth. Finally it all vanished as if it had never even been as Helba answered, "Tell me Liet, just how many people does it take before such a thing becomes evil and wrong? Perhaps ten, or a hundred, or a thousand even? How many more will you be willing to sacrifice like this in the name of what you think is right, what you think is just?"

"I…I…" Liet stuttered, thrown aback by this new revelation, desperation beginning to settle into his voice and body language.

Helba however continued on. "Did you even stop to think about how more coma victims might look to those at CC Corp, who are already thinking of simply closing the servers down? Did you think that more comatose people would make them keep the servers and our only chance of stopping the Wave open and accessible longer than before? Really Liet, this is something I'd expect from that pighead, but from you…"

The shock and desperation upon Liet's face were mounting as more and more damning reasoning poured at him from Helba. Yet the fanatical blaze in his eyes remained strong, as if he was clinging tighter and tighter to a rope that was his justification and beliefs, even as that rope burned ever and ever more about him. "My Queen, please listen to me. We must deal with threats, with dangers to the safety the system that-"

"And just who," Helba interjected, "do you think has become a threat to 'The World', to defeating the Wave?"

"My Queen, something must be done though, we must-"

"No Liet," Helba interrupted again, "you've done quite enough already. Now it is time for you to answer up to what you have done."

Panic streaked across Liet's face at the last remark, and glancing down at the frail, unmoving form of Mycinity on the floor, he noticed a slight movement and awareness. She was coming to, the mission was in jeopardy, she was like the Wave, damning and destroying to all that was good and just. He had to stop her, or else…

"She must be stopped, she can't be allowed…" Liet suddenly surged with power and lashed his staff towards the waking girl with the same energy that he had previously summoned. All it hit though was air as the golden rings of a gate out appeared about her and summoned her away by a mere tilt of Helba's staff.

The sight of his target, of the great threat that he needed to purge vanishing before his eyes, Liet let out a primal scream and went airborne, lashing out a pulse wave across the room. As it reached Helba however the pulse suddenly reversed its flow, and shot straight back at Liet, smacking into the surprised hacker and sending him flying back into the wall with a loud crunch.

As he pulled himself to his feet, Helba spoke out, "Please now Liet, don't make this hard on yourself. It will be far easier on you and everyone if you don't try to resist."

"You…you…" Liet breathed out, pointing his staff straight at Helba. "Don't you see, she's gotten to you, you've been seduced by her! She's infested you with her vile ways. Don't you see, she's making you help the Wave! You've fallen Helba, been twisted and corrupted by her lies and tricks! She must be purged; the righteous must not falter! I will stop her, even if it means I must go through you my Queen!"

Rising another foot above the floor, Helba spread her arms slightly, almost exposing herself to attack, then said, "Very well then."

A pulse emanated from Liet's staff, and then a bolt of light shot out of his staff towards Helba. Even as it left the staff, Liet's form vanished as he gated away, not even bothering to see the bolt be gated away suddenly by a wave of Helba's hand before it could even reach her. "Shaking her head and chuckling with a slight sigh, Helba simply muttered, "Boys." She too then gated away in pursuit of Liet, leaving Kite standing there alone with a still stunned BlackRose.

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Liet gated from area to area, jumping servers as he did so as Helba pursued him. Tracking her data flow, as masked as it was, Liet would launch blasts of energy, pulses and other enhanced attacks to where Helba would appear, gating away even as he did so before she would arrive, only to do it again at the next area, or skip one entirely to be all the more ready at the next.

The servers were a mass of data flickering this way and that, areas being accessed and exited within moments of one another, points jumping back and forth as they went. Liet knew he needed to stay on his toes, Helba would catch up eventually, and then it would get harder. From airborne above a grassy plain on the D Server to standing upside down on the ceiling of the third level of a dungeon on L Server, Liet moved with precise, determined intent, never faltering in his focus or discipline.

Then suddenly as he appeared atop a stone pillar in a snow-covered area on Q Server, something smacked into him from behind, sending him hurtling off the pillar towards the ground. Even as he fell though, his form vanished in another teleportation, this one to another area on the same server. As he arrived his staff came up to deflect a blow from Helba's staff, bolts of electric energy flickering off from the collision nearly zapping a trio of players in the nearby area.

Then they were gone, no more than a single blow landing each time or a quick blast thrown before they were off to the next area. At times a swing was made as each gated away only to actually finish and land in the next area, or even two more depending on the speed of the gating. At one point Liet's blast had misjudged and shot off beyond Helba, and even as they vanished from the dungeon the bolt struck the monster a pair of Blademasters were battling, surrounding it with strange, encoded numbering, then vanishing from existence as the creature was overwhelmed and deleted from existence, leaving the pair of players bewildered to say the least.

On and on it went, airborne and under the water, on ceilings and walls, the two clashed back and forth, sometimes timing and jumping ahead of the other to leave their adversary swinging at nothing but blind air. One such missed swing from Helba had sent a shockwave ripping across an area leveling several oddly shaped structures and the entrance to the dungeon.

Then the pair picked up the pace, throwing multiple attacks from both staffs and free hands, energy bolts and specialized viruses colliding and deleting each other, shockwaves blowing clouds and air from the immediate area, forming vacuum that sucked in all that it could. Twisters flung themselves upon the areas as they left, dying down minutes after, ground splitting open as pulses smacked into them with the force of a meteor, shaking the entire area as it did so and leaving strange floating data all about the massive craters. In one area where a pair of such blasts had collided, the field itself had actually been ripped and torn, creating an opening to a neighboring area of a different type, allowing passage between the two as a monster from the neighboring area quickly demonstrated.

Finally, as Liet entered a dark, raining area, swinging off a hard lash of energy from his staff as his arm raised to fire a follow up to counter Helba's impending volley, he noticed something strange as his blast continued on into the dark, lighting up the night sky as it collided and vaporized a small structure. He was getting wet. That should not have occurred, he should have gated away before the rain program could have taken effect and dampened his clothing. Yet here he was, still in the area.

Trying forcefully to exit, he still found himself unable to leave, and Helba was nowhere to be seen. Then, as if from the very air itself, Helba's voice rang out, "Well now Liet, I am growing very tired of this chase. It was not easy to guide you into this area, and I applaud you on it. However, as I said I am growing tired of this chase, and so this area has now been quarantined. It's time to end this, Liet."

As she finished, a crackle of thunder boomed ominously across the level.

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Kite gated into Dun Loreag with BlackRose in tow. It had taken him a few minutes to rouse her, and even now she was rather dizzy and trying to gain her exact bearings. Thus she simply followed Kite, having already joined his party.

As he reached the first intersection between paths out from the Chaos Gate, Kite spotted a shaken, struggling Mycinity trying to pull herself to her feet. A small crowd was beginning to form around her as more and more players gated back in from areas, telling strange tales of random acts of destruction, earthquakes and other phenomenon.

Running over to Mycinity, BlackRose close behind, Kite kneeled down next to her and nearly shouted, "My, can you hear me? Are you all right?"

Moaning painfully, a touch of annoyance as one who had just been woken up in the morning might make, Mycinity opened her eyes and turned her head to look up at Kite. "Kite? What happened? How did I get here? Last I remember was that crazy hacker guy hitting me, and then… it's all black. I had tried to move, to take off the goggles, but I couldn't. I seem to remember… falling, almost through nothingness, and then… I was here. What's going on?"

Smiling and taking a sigh of relief, Kite reached his hand out to her, and as she took it helped to pull her up to her feet. "I promise I'll explain everything once this is over. For now though, we need to find out where Helba and Liet went."

Mycinity blinked, then responded, "Helba? You mean the hacker Helba?"

Kite nodded slightly, glancing around for some sign of them, or something. "Yes, she's fighting Liet right now, she protected you from him."

"But… but I thought…"

"My, this is not the time. Just trust me on this, Helba is on our side… I think. Now quickly, join my party." Mycinity complied.

Heading back off towards the Chaos Gate, Kite paused and stared up at it, hoping to gain some insight from the rotating circle, but finding none. Then an annoyed male voice from behind him said, "Damn that woman. What does she think she's doing?"

Kite spun around, and looked up at the face of Lios, the System Administrator. A smile coming to Kite's face, something quite rare when it came to seeing Lios, he said, "Lios! You're here! Do you know where Helba is?"

"Now that her and that other crazy hacker have stopped dancing around the servers I do. She's over on the S Server, in S Ancient Promised Battlefield. But I wouldn't-"

"Thanks Lios!" Then before Lios could object or say anything more, Kite and his party had gated off to S Server.

As he and the party arrived in Fort Ouph though, turning to access the area, Kite found the entry access denied. Then from behind him again, Lios stated, "I tried to tell you, the area's been locked out and quarantined. Even I can't get into that area now. No one can get in or out until that damned woman lifts the quarantine."

Growling and grinding his teeth together, Kite sighed. He needed to get there, to help her if necessary. If nothing else, to see her in action. For the longest time Kite had wondered just what Helba could actually do inside 'The World' and now here she was, battling it out with another hacker and he couldn't even see it. No, he had to try something.

Then, something happened; the bracelet began to pulse. Moments later several virus cores fell into place almost on their own, and the Twilight Bracelet activated, lifting Kite and his party up and pulling them in through the newly formed portal, breaking through the barriers as they went. This wasn't a normal hack though, they were moving far faster than usual, with far greater force, as if some unknown being was pulling them along. Without warning the exit portal opened and the trio were spit out, landing face down in the mud.

Lifting themselves up onto their hands and knees as the rain began to soak in on their costumes, Kite looked around into the darkness, wiping mud from his face. A clap of thunder echoed from above, then another. Suddenly a bolt of lightning struck a nearby tree reducing it to ash. Jumping back, nearly knocking over his rising companions in the process, Kite glanced around as another thunderous clap went off.

They were here, he knew it. The area was tingling with energy; the very raindrops almost seemed to explode upon impact. Another clap of thunder echoed, and another. That's when Kite glanced up into the sky, and his mouth dropped wide open.

Flashing in and out of sight as they clashed high above the area terrain, Helba and Liet were doing battle. Lightning crackled all around them, fields of energy flying this way and that as they collided, staffs cracking together again and again before the force drove each back, circling and maneuvering amongst the storming clouds before coming back together.

Stray lightning vaporized another tree, causing Mycinity to cringe as she too now stared up at the epic clash. "Kite, is it safe to be here?"

"Never taking his eyes off the battle, Kite replied half-heartedly, "Probably not. I suggest you find cover. This is amazing."

Mycinity waited for a short minute for Kite to make a move towards a tree or some place that resembled cover, but he just stared up into the rain, totally ignoring the splattering wetness on his face as the titans dueled. Finally BlackRose grabbed Mycinity's arm and began to drag her away; realizing that Kite had no intention of going anywhere. While BlackRose wished more than anything to stand with Kite just now, she had a feeling that with the amount of protection his character data had upon it, he might very well be the only one in this entire area who was safe.

Meanwhile, high above the commotion of the new spectators, the combatants paused in their clash, squaring off as the thunder continued to crash around them. From down below, it might have appeared as if the two were having words, but it was not so. Neither spoke or made a sound, and neither needed to. They both knew everything that they needed to; it was too late for such vague conceptions as words and dialog. It was now war, one that 'The World' had never seen the likes of, and both knowing this, sensing the moment, grinned at one another.

The moment gone, the pair charged in at one another, Liet coming across hard with a horizontal slash that collided with the force bubble surrounding Helba, only to come back and deflect a similar blow from Helba's staff as it met his own force bubble. Staffs then collided at their medium, meeting and sending a shockwave off that blew the rain around them away in an explosive ball before the environmental programs within the area could respond to compensate, leaving the two hackers in complete dryness for a handful of seconds. In that few seconds blows began to trade, first a swing for a shoulder, followed by another for the knee. A spin and a swipe for the back by Liet was next, which Helba easily deflected countering with a thrust that Liet dodged by placing a kick against his own staff, using it like a wall to flip in midair over and around the attack. Three-quarters of the way through the flip, Liet kicked off the very air and spun around with a flying round kick, his foot glowing yellow as he did so. Colliding with the force bubble, the kick for a moment almost seemed to penetrate, but ultimately was halted. Not before the sheer force though sent Helba hurtling down towards the ground, Liet diving down in pursuit.

Still looking perfectly collected and calm as she plummeted headfirst towards the ground, Helba grinned, then looking up at the incoming Liet hurled her staff straight at him. As Liet twisted in midair to dodge, the staff suddenly halted and shook, as if it had actually collided with a solid surface. The result was a shockwave the shot out at the immediate area about it, colliding with a surprised Liet who was sent flying off nearly out of control in another direction as he made his own trip towards the surface.

Turning in midair, Helba seemed to slow in her descent more and more until she touched down gently on the branch of a tree. Raising her hand, gate rings appeared around both it and her staff, and a moment later she was once again holding her trusty weapon, and turned to stare off towards Liet's position.

Liet meanwhile had made a slightly less graceful landing on the roof of the dungeon, his feet sinking into the roof a foot or two before he was able to fully balance himself. Chuckling slightly to himself as he saw Helba rise in the distance from her branch, his eyes more than capable of spotting her and her data movements through the storming blackness, Liet leapt up and spinning quickly around numerous times at such speeds that a minor twister formed throwing the rain away from him. Then as the last spin ended he kicked off the twister and shot off like a bullet towards Helba, firing a blast of yellow light straight into the ground below him as he flew leaving a burrowed hole where it hit.

Colliding with the super hacker somewhere between their starting positions, Liet swung in hard and fast, blow after blow hitting against Helba's staff and bubble. Finally their staffs came together and locked, lightning flying from the point of contact like fireworks, burning and melting everything it touched. Continuing to hold in on the clash, staring down his adversary, Liet grinned with fanatic glee. Then from the ground fifteen feet below them a golden beam burst forth shooting straight up at the pair. At its arrival Liet kicked off Helba's own staff and bubble away from the impending collision, launching another bolt straight back at Helba as he did so.

Glancing down just in time, Helba slammed her open palm down, slowing the bolt to a mere crawl. Then spinning fast, she brought her staff around and connected with the other incoming bolt, sending the majority of it flying off into the distance as remnant sparks fluttered about her staff. With that done, Helba then kicked off the bolt beneath her and rocketed skyward, the bolt suddenly regaining its previous speed and blasting up after her.

Spinning in the air, flipping into a one-eighty and landing upside down on a storm cloud, Helba lifted her head up and stared back down at the ground and the blazing bolt hurtling up towards her. Not moving a bit, she watched as it kept coming, then suddenly yet looking as casual and unconcerned as could be, she skipped a step or two along the cloud, a bolt of lightning searing down from where she had just been standing and colliding with the incoming bolt, blasting it to pieces. Where the bolts had collided, a sudden vortex of code opened up in a swimming whirlpool before closing itself again moments later.

Continuing to trot along the cloud, Helba glanced up to see Liet now flying up to meet her. Rotating ninety degrees so that she was now facing the incoming hacker, Helba began to slide down towards her foe as if she were merely moving along an ice rink or down a ski slope. Moving at insane speeds, the two met as Liet thrust his staff up radiating energy off it. Helba though merely somersaulted and twisted in air coming for a moment even with Liet in the air. In that moment she spun at an even more insane speed, her staff colliding straight into Liet's back, sending him flying towards the horizon. Crossing the area edge and reappearing behind Helba on the other side of the area, Liet slammed chest first into a tree, snapping it in half as he shot straight through it.

Gaining a slight composure and control from the impact, Liet slammed his feet down and slid across the surface, his soles digging into the ground leaving skidding depressions along the surface until he finally came to a stop. Flipping his head up in Helba's direction, Liet scowled as the woman merely floated there in midair, awaiting his return. Fine, if she wants to wait, lets see how she likes a burst worm shot. Lifting his staff high before bringing it down hard to the ground, causing a minor tremor in the process, Liet's staff pulsed with golden energy before he pulled it up and out again and shot up towards his target.

Halting a small distance before her, Liet began to maneuver around Helba, waiting for the right moment to strike. Finally the ground below them erupted, this time though instead of a single bolt scores emerged each shooting straight up at Helba. At that moment Liet shot skyward, cutting off Helba's previous route of escape and launching another large blast down at her, this one surrounded by visible data code.

Lifting her staff up high, Helba began to spin it around and around before finally hurling it down towards the incoming scores of bolts. As the staff went down, still spinning, it twisted in the air to a horizontal spin, blowing the air and rain away from it. Then for a moment as the staff began to glow it appeared as if the staff had actually begun to grow in length. Suddenly a golden disk of immense diameter separated from the spinning staff and shot down, colliding with and blocking the incoming attack.

As this was happening Helba had turned to focus on the other larger threat, and frowning raised her hand forming a ball of light in her hand. Then flicking her fingers up and out, the ball shot up and spread out into a glowing net of light that caught and halted the blast, but only for a moment or two before it tore through it. In that time though Helba had taken off, blazing through the air off towards the horizon, the blast turning in midair to follow her. Descending, Helba rotated in a one-eighty again and planted her feet firmly on the trunk of a tree. Then raising her hand, she summoned back her staff as she had done before and pointed it at the incoming blast. The head of the staff then began to glow brightly as Helba leaned into it, bracing herself on the trunk and focused.

Thus when the blast hit, it slammed hard into Helba's staff, causing the nearby area to rumble and shake as it pressed in on the now highly visible and glowing staff and force bubble, the latter seeming to warp and bend up towards the blast to provide extra support. Suddenly Helba gave out a forceful scream and slashed down with her staff, slicing the blast in two and sending it flying off away from her.

Taking a deep breath of relief, the strain of the previous move beginning to show on even Helba's face, she let out a painful scream as suddenly from behind Liet's staff collided into the weakened force bubble and punched through to hit Helba directly, driving her hard down to the ground below.

What had happened was that Liet, taking a page from Helba's book, had thrown his staff down at the woman as she had been fending off the blast and then teleported it across the field behind her to collide from the opposite direction. Sadly the teleportation had meant that he couldn't have put any real charge or ace into it to do her real damage, but he'd take what he could get. Recalling his staff to his hand, Liet grinned and dove down towards Helba who was pulling herself up off the muddy ground. Grinning back at the tactic used, Helba glanced up at the descending hacker and shot up and away, letting him chase back up after her. It was almost time.

As the battle had raged, the three spectators had watched on with more and more awe. Twice though Mycinity and BlackRose had needed to find new placing to take cover on the fly as their previous tree or rock had become the target of stray and deflected shots. To the two of them, the fight was of such magnitude of impossibilities that they could not find words to describe it. Yet they didn't see what the third spectator, still standing put, saw.

Kite didn't know whether it was due to the bracelet or something else, but he was able to see something that the other two could not. The real battle that was waging invisibly. Sure the combatants had been sending all sorts of attacks at one another from energy pulses to actual kicks and punches, but what went unseen was the attacks between the lines and the rain, or more precise, between the code. That was where the main event had been.

As the two had battled within the area, data had been swimming between the two even more. Great tendrils of code lashed out between the combatants, colliding and grappling, worms, viruses, vaccines and things that Kite had no clue about were flung about, zipping about through the code trying to connect. This was the true battle, the rest was just an attempt to distract or show off, or perhaps even both.

Liet and Helba had returned to staff to staff combat now, trading attacks and blocks with one another, a foot or a fist erupting up and out, charged with coded energy, from time to time. Kite watched this along with the rest, and as he watched there began to appear something of a flow to what occurred on the battlefield and what happened between the lines of code. The tendrils were locked now, innumerable amounts of them, holding and pinning the other down as staffs collided and pulses and shockwaves exploded on the field.

Suddenly out of the deadlock, just as Helba began to grin again, a strange worm-like program code zapped in and stabbed in at Liet. Spotting it, Liet chuckled and a bolt of code shot out between the code to strike and eradicate the incoming worm. But then Helba grinned wider; knowing it was all over as suddenly Liet went stiff. He had fallen for her trap, the worm had actually been something of a Trojan horse, except this one became active once it was deleted, sending a trace source code back through the deletion code and reform into a very nice little virus/spike she had created.

Realizing too late what had occurred, Liet screamed in agony and frustration, but even as he did so Helba's staff came pummeling down upon him, driving him down hard towards the ground. Struggling to stop himself, or even move, Liet used his last bit of skill and strength to slow his descent, crashing hard into the muddy ground, but without the crater that would have otherwise formed. There was no time to relax though, and Liet's eyes widened in fear as Helba slammed into him in a diving kick, having followed his descent in. The result was that his body crushed down hard into the ground, the force causing the earth about him to compress and then burst outward, causing a massive circular depression much like the crater he would have previously created around him.

Helba though had not been finished as she had bounced up and off him back into the air, and twirling about gracefully for a moment until she came to a halt in the air, charged her staff and hurled it down towards her adversary. The staff slammed down bottom first straight into Liet, causing him to scream in agony as the staff buried itself through him and into the earth beneath him. As it did so it released a shockwave that spread across the entire area. Liet's scream faded, and his body followed suit, until it vanished into nothingness, leaving his staff lying where he had been.

Reaching out her hand and summoning both staffs to her, Helba sighed contently, then flipped Liet's staff up high and shot a blast of coded lightning from her own at it, hitting it dead on and in a massive explosion that was followed immediately by another shockwave of the same force, Liet's staff was no more.

Turning her attention to Kite now, who was still standing in the same spot, Helba floated down towards him some, then stopping a short distance away said, "My work here for now is done. Until next time little boy." With that Helba gated away, leaving Kite just standing there in awe in the pouring rain.

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Author's Notes:

Wow, another long one. Hope you enjoyed the final climatic battle of this story. It was certainly… interesting to write. I want to touch on a few comments from a review, mainly about the implication about what Liet was doing to Mycinity last chapter, or was going to do. He was not attempting a Data Drain, nor was it the fear that he was that Kite was reacting to. What was important in it from a literary view is that it mirrored fairly well the appearance of what Kite had seen happen to Orca. Wand, the pose, Mycinity hovering, and all that stuff, it was there not because Liet was about to perform Data Drain, but simply to create a link in Kite's mind between the two scenes that he could understand and react to. I think that Kite's quest to save Orca is in part due to a sense of guilt that he had just stood there doing nothing to save him, or that he was powerless to do so. Thus seeing it happening again, his guilt would force him into action.

Another note on hackers using things like Deadly Flash, or putting people comatose. In the shows, and the games, we are never truly told or shown what Helba, or the other hackers out there really can do. We know that Lios can delete character data, and he seems capable of setting up a barrier or quarantine of some kind, but he is of course bound by the legalities and ethics of a System Administrator. Hackers, by their nature, are not. Note I'm not saying that by nature all hackers are criminals, unethical, or bad, just that a hacker is basically someone who does, or is capable of hacking, or accessing other computers and protected systems that they don't have normal access to. Anyway, we have no idea what a hacker such as Liet or Helba is capable of doing. Just because they haven't used a virus that kills or renders someone unconscious does not mean they don't have one stored away just in case, or some other program like it.

This said, Liet was not trying to directly render Mycinity comatose last chapter as he had her brother. He was attempting to both delete her data and at the same time completely crash/wipe/render unusable her computer. Why didn't he just do that before, I'd say because at the time he wanted to just stay in the background and not get his hands dirty. Besides, such an open act would draw Helba's attention, as we saw.

Now a few things:

If you're thinking that this seemed similar to the final fight in Matrix Revolutions, I'd be lying if I said I didn't think of it a little while writing. However the idea of how this battle would basically be fought, and what could be done by each was thought up before Revolutions came out, leaving me surprised to see it in the movie. Also to note, while writing this chapter I listened to "Duel of the Fates", "Bodies" by Drowning Pool, and "Bawitaba" by Kid Rock. There is only one more chapter to go, which I hope to tie a few things inside the game world up with. Also, I will have an epilogue that takes place a little in the future in the real world wrapping up the rest. After that there will be a little treat for all of you. I would like to ask that any and all people who have been reading this fiction review this chapter, especially if you have never yet reviewed. This is because at the end of the next chapter I want to say thank you to each of you for your reviews, and perhaps answer some of your remarks, comments, or explain why a request did not appear. If you'd like me to mention your name, please review next chapter. I will be getting those who have reviewed throughout, but I may decide to leave a few out if you have not reviewed in a long while. That said, I have already finished the next and last chapter, much shorter than the last few, but I will not be releasing it for a little while to give people a chance to send in their reviews. When I say a little while, I can't be exact since I don't know how fast the reviews will keep coming. Probably once I hit a real lull I'll stop waiting and post it, along with the epilogue as well all at once. The servers that were jumped to in the story are in the order, Delta, Lambda, Theta, and the final battle is on Sigma server.

Almost done here, but not quite yet. To those of you who have enjoyed it thus far, I thank you.