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Ends up keytools are immune to the degrading affects of the web! We're awesome little buggers.
It took nearly a second for us to break free. The storm had been gaining strength and size, but I think it was slowing down. Megabyte's destructive power still had limits after all, and I expected the web to start taking back some ground shortly and whittle this mess down to a more manageable size. Still Surfr made some comment about how the space could never really heal. There would probably be a storm here indefinitely. Megabyte had left his mark. It's all he ever wanted, I'm sure. I guess that viral scourge got his wish in the end, at least in some perverted way.
Now that we were cruising through clear (or at least clear by web standards) space I could pick up the signals of all the tears in the immediate area as well as those pods of webcreatures I'd sensed earlier. Mainframe's address was no where in sight but no matter! There was a juicy little tear straight that would make a worthy replacement.
If only Ray could understand signal.
Hey! You! Up there! Goggle boy!
I began to whirr and buzz at his hip and he jumped, clipping me off.
Now you notice. He slowed down and gave me his attention. "What's wrong?"
YOU CANT UNDERSTAND ME!
He made a quick visual scan of the space. "You're getting something aren't ya?" I parsed desperately for a way to translate my ideas. I missed Bob. Ray's grasp of the web turned up nothing suspicious. He was getting ready to put me back so I chose the first idea I thought of. If I didn't send a message now, it might take cycles for us to find and return to Mainframe and I was not prepared to be separated from my guardian for that long. I fired a pulse shot out past his face.
"Woah!"
That way! Go that way!
He pulled to a stop and watched my pulse peter out. I fired again straight at the tear I wanted.
There! Take me there!
"What? You wanna get that tear?"
Yes! For User's sake, yes!
"That's not the address, but… what could it hurt? I'm not on the clock." He veered off like I wanted him to. Thank goodness for old-fashioned charades, and thank goodness he's the kinda basic nut who looks for adventure and does things for no good reason.
We hovered next to gargantuan orb of broken energy and he held me out to read it.
"There ya go. See?"
I shot a beam of golden light, rerouted the tear, and popped a portal to Mainframe.
His eyebrows went flew up in woder. "Huh? Whaddaya know!" He took another look at me then back at the portal. "I gotta get me one 'a you somehow." I went back on his belt and we dove into the portal, the link sealing and recalibrating behind us.