Disclaimer: I do not own Megaman Battle Network or any of its related properties. Capcom does. All remaining characters and ideas are the digital property of the Chaos Coalition.

Author's Note: Please forgive my lack of a chapter last week, but there was no physically possible way to have produced a decent product for you by the weekend, because of various factors including (but not limited to) Decathlon studying, work, and sleep. So I decided to just take an extra week for this chapter, and here it is, on time for once. Please make sure that you tell others about this story, and remember to review. Also, enjoy the plot twist no one saw coming...including myself!

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Matthias plummetted through a cavern of nightmares, fighting to regain consciousness, if such a thing still existed. His last memory of reality was of being shot by his brother, in an ill-fated attempt to stop him from gaining one of the eight 'Pawns' he deemed necessary to his dream of world conquest. So far he had five, Drs. Taruka, Voltstein, and Flaun, the ONB trainee Matt Aurion, Brian's younger brother, and Mikoto Sakura, Shroud's cousin and Chaos Delta. Dr. Flaun had been Alex's most recent acquisition, and in reality, Matthias was probably bleeding all over the good doctor's couch.

But in dreams, anything could happen, and so Matthias found himself in a cavern of mirrors, each one reflecting not his face, but his brother's face, smiling as the invisible camera panned backwards to reveal that he stood beside a sliding glass door, which both Dr. Flaun and a gun in hand. The camera shifts, moving to a side view, and Matthias Terre watches himself come into focus, bursting through an open door with a spear in his hand, a spear that creates mist around itself. But a spear is no good against a gun, and Matthias can only watch himself see only the gun, and comes to the same conclusion twice at the same time.

He is about to be killed by his brother, and there is nothing he can do about it.

As the gun fires in slow-motion, as it must for dramatic effect, a wave of concussive heat hits Matthias, and he faintly realizes that this did not happen the first time. Slowly, the image fades, and he sees only snatches in the cracked mirrors, a bullet sailing through the air, a Terre slumping to the ground while the other walks away, the glass breaking the broken glass the cracked mirror of breaking glass broken shards of whole glass breaking endlessly shattering reflection

He opens his eyes to see a beautiful woman crouched over him and pressing something into his bullet wound. He tilts his head to the side and lets out a sigh as he sees the bullet itself on the ceramic tile beside him, a floral pattern of some kind. It is bloody, as are her hands, but it is better to be bloody than to be broken, he thinks to himself.

"Well, you're certainly not broken, Mr. Terre, not if I have anything to say about it." It takes him a moment to realize she is speaking to him and not his dead father, and several moments more to notice that he had spoken aloud. She took her hands from his wound a moment, and Matthias felt the pain return for an instant before she returned, and propped him up gently against whatever was behind him.

"The couch, probably," he thought sarcastically, but she pressed a cup to his lips before he could think any more.

"Drink," she told him, and he obeyed, nearly gagging on the cup's contents, a tea of some kind that tasted distinctly of dirt. He tried to fight against another sip when the girl pulled the cup away to allow him to swallow it, but she lightly held him down, forcing him to finish the cup. "I won't have you die on me," he heard her say faintly as the tea carried him into a more peaceful sleep, and his eyes blinked twice to clear his vision, so he might see the woman who would become his wife once more before slipping into unconsciousness.

-

Chaotic We Stand

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Chapter 7: Cacumen Infractionis

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-- 9: 06 AM, Subterranean Caverns, Twilight Desert, Neo Arcadia --

Pavo slowly opened his eyes to see that they were alive, somehow. He and Chris had been blown backwards about twenty feet, and his shield was lying in pieces on the ground, but they were alive, and still maintaining Cross Fusion to boot. "Are you all right, Chris?" he asked, getting to his feet.

The ninja nodded, standing and sheathing his laser in his holster. "I'll be fine. That shield of ours didn't work as well on me, but luckily, my armor was fairly thick. Did we take out the door?"

To be honest, Pavo hadn't looked, but he did now. The door hadn't stood a chance, and barely a scrap of it remained. "Come see for yourself," Pavo said as he walked forward, stepping gingerly through the hole they had made. Perhaps, if he was lucky, Shroud and the others really would be alive, and this wouldn't have been a fool's gambit.

Unfortunately, this didn't appear to be the case. Pavo looked out upon destruction, tons and tons of jagged rocks forming piles upon the ground, and water seeping through into the indentions made, forming small lakes and rocky mountains, conversely. Pavo heard Chris speaking from behind, but didn't care to listen. They were lost now, all of them.

"I certainly hope that we haven't spoiled X's plans too badly," Chris was saying as he walked out onto the cliff's edge to see the rocky ground below. "What? But…this can't be…I was so sure…" He was stunned into silence, and reached to his pendant, muttering to himself.

"It's all over now, Chris," Pavo said bitterly, charging an attack in his hands. "The Chaos Union has died, and we're fugitives in a land we can't escape from." He threw the sphere down in anger, and then threw another, and another, trying to channel his rage outward to keep from succumbing to his grief. Chris simply watched. There was nothing more to say.

-

Matthias tentatively pushed at the rocks above them yet again, but it was no use. The electricity he was able to summon was barely strong enough to form a dome of safety that protected them, much less push the stones above aside. Not to mention the fact that he was slowly growing weaker, not only from sleep deprivation, but from the sheer strain of being in Cross Fusion so long.

Most of the others had reverted to their human form long ago, save for the ever-vigilant Shroud and SH, who was their backup shield creator. The multitude of paper SH could create was weak, but he could hold the rocks over their heads for about two or three minutes, which gave him a short break during which to regain his strength. He couldn't sleep though. He'd wake dead.

So the three of them had been awake for roughly 24 hours, give or take. The others had gotten a chance to sleep, although someone needed to be awake to keep an eye on Alistor constantly. He'd been hit in the head by a blunt rock, and while he was stable, the impact had knocked him unconscious instantly, and he had a wound on his forehead that required attention. Currently, Link was on medicinal duty, and Golex, Seija, and Brian were asleep.

It was a miracle that no one else had been hurt. He and SH had come flying out of that submarine like rockets, and only an instinctive lashing out with his electrical powers had allowed him to save the others, forming a dome that kept the remainder of the ceiling from falling on them, but effectively trapping them. They were now encased under tons of stone, and were likely to starve.

Luckily enough, the waters weren't encroaching on their domain quite yet, SH helping to soak them up with his papery abilities. But it couldn't last forever, and if starvation didn't do them in, the water would. They all knew it, but Matthias had no intentions of letting Mother Nature do them in. So he kept pushing against the lethal roof over their heads, and began to feel himself grow faint.

"SH, shield us, now!" Shroud shouted, as Matthias finally lost his hold over the electricity. It dissipated, but a shield of stiff paper took its place, supported only by the thick paper columns that SH formed under the initial layer. He kept adding sheets to support the weakening areas of his shield, but the effort would be futile, as all his other efforts had been.

Taking advantage of the respite, Matthias collapsed, slipping easily from his cross-legged position into a prone one, spreading his body along the deck beneath them, his hand splashing into a small puddle of water. SH would need to purge the area of water again in about 15 minutes or so. If they survived that long.

"Stay awake, Matthias," Shroud said warningly. "We can't risk you falling asleep." Matthias knew that, but something inside of him kept him from wanting to listen. Despite Shroud's words to the contrary, he slowly felt himself slipping into the black despair of slumber. "Matthias…Matthias…"

A large explosion jolted him awake again, and he opened his eyes to see the paper dome SH had created aflame, and shards of stone falling down towards the dock. Matthias let out a roar of frustration and unleashed all of his energy, causing his and Shroud's hair to stand on end, and a dome of lightning to form all around them again. The stones that had slipped through had luckily missed the others, although Link had come very close to being squished, and had fallen into the water when the deck beside him splintered.

As SH moved to help Link out, Matthias looked up at the newly formed hole in the roof. A hole that could be their salvation, if one could get through his shield without sending the remainder of the rocks to tumble to their doom. He looked at Shroud ironically, and opened his mouth to form some sort of witticism to attempt to lighten the mood of their last few hours, but he stopped when he saw the look on Shroud's face. "Shroud, you can't. We don't know what's up there, and I don't think that I'm strong enough to hold the shield if something hits it."

"I'm sorry, Matthias. But it's this or certain death. Forgive me." Matthias opened his mouth to protest, but Shroud moved too quickly, extending his wings and breaking into flight, soaring through the hole in the ceiling. The impact with the electrical field made Matthias' teeth ache, and took a large portion of his strength, but he held it up. But not for long. If help were above, they would need to save them in the next few minutes.

The next few minutes passed. By this time, everyone was awake, even Alistor, albeit faintly. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Brian talking with SH, and managed to pick up a few words through the strain of his labor, "--what's up there to begin with?" or "We need to tell him that--", but nothing of any interest to him at the time. There was nothing but the shield around them to concern him, so that was upon which he concerned himself.

He slowly began to feel a slight lifting in the burden, and it took him several minutes to realize that this was because he was channeling his own life force into the shield. He faintly heard someone telling him to stop, and vaguely recognized it as his netnavis. But he was too far gone now to listen. Matthias Terre was prepared to die before letting go of this shield.

A loud explosion rocked their prison, and Matthias faintly saw an opening of light in the side of the dome, with people behind it. The others hurriedly pushed their way through the electrical field, and Matthias allowed more of himself into the surging field to adapt to the strain. Eventually, they were all gone, SH being the last in case the electricity would have failed again. Then Matthias stood alone, and looked up at the hole to see the others beckoning to him.

A voice suddenly entered his head, and Matthias couldn't tell whether it belonged to Gizmo, or was a tragic byproduct of his growing delusions. "Go, Matthias, get out! Go through the hole, GO THROUGH THAT HOLE!" He snapped suddenly and broke into a run, his life force slowly returning to him as he ran. Sections of the electrical dome began to separate, causing rocks to fall around him, but all he saw was the yellow-tinged glimpse of freedom.

His sanity finally regained its hold three steps away from the hole in the prison. Time seemed to slow as he caught himself up on the past period of time, and realized with joy that they had somehow been saved. As he grew a step closer, he began to wonder how Shroud had found someone to help save them, but with his next step, he decided that the point was probably moot, because he could find out this all later, back at the capital. He stretched out his right leg to take another step. Then all hell broke loose.

For some reason he couldn't explain, the electrical field had an adverse reaction to Matthias, and as the others watched in shock, his right foot lost Cross Fusion, returning to its normal state: five toes, a foot, and a boot over them. He seemed to trip as this foot touched the rocks beyond, perhaps on some unsteady ground, and he fell forward, pushing his hands past the barrier to break his fall.

That wasn't all he broke. Within the next second, Matthias had fallen far enough through the barrier that the PET strapped to his arm had passed through as well. He lost Cross Fusion, and as a result, the electrical dome vanished, and the stone dome collapsed.

Matthias never felt himself hit the ground.

-- Wednesday, April 2nd, 4:17 PM, 7th Floor, the Hotel Electric, Electown, Electopia --

"So, what's up with your dad now? He's still in Neo Arcadia?" John and Luke were walking down the hall briskly, speaking quietly within the silence of the seventh floor. Electown wasn't a large city, but the Hotel Electric was worth coming to see. The hotel doubled as the central mainframe for the entire city, and the building itself was built in the shape of a battery, round and cylindrical. One could almost hear the crackling of the data as you walked through its silent halls.

The hotel had only eight floors, and the accommodations grew better and better as you went up. The fact that their contact this afternoon was staying on the seventh floor told you that he was most likely as good as Alan had said he was. Either that or his parents were undeniably rich. Not too rich though, or they'd be in one of the suites above.

The seventh floor's carpeting was the shade of crushed eggplant, and Luke looked down at it while he chose his words carefully. John knew just about everything he'd learned about the Chaos Union, including what Kitsune had said on Sunday, but Luke hadn't yet mentioned the information he'd found from hacking into the Arcadian databases. When he'd returned Sunday afternoon, after meeting with Kitsune to discuss the Chaos Union, he'd checked their files as he'd suggested, and discovered that his father, along with a majority of the Chaos Union, was MIA, presumed deceased. However, the next morning, he was listed as being alive, but in critical condition. That didn't appease his fears much.

"Well, he and the other Chaos Union members were supposed to be back by Sunday evening, or Monday at the latest. The fact that he's still not home worries me, to be sure, but I can't imagine that he's been sent anywhere else." He felt bad about disclosing the full truth from his best friend, but it wasn't doing him any harm, and the fact of the matter was that John didn't really need to know that his father was supposedly in critical condition, especially since 3 days ago, he'd been considered dead.

They reached the room, numbered 724, and stopped outside of it. "This is the place," John said. "I certainly hope that this kid can help with your navi. You don't need another glitch like in your battle with Metro. Otherwise, you might end up making some powerful enemies."

"You don't have to tell me twice," Luke said as he rapped on the door. He only had to wait a moment before Pedro Ferreira opened the door, and he quickly bade them step into the suite. He closed the door behind them, and Luke and John hesitantly walked ahead into the sitting room.

Like all good hotels, it had a couch and a television, although this television boasted of its top-of-the-line capabilities on a sticker in its upper-right corner. A kitchenette was off to their left, and Pedro slipped behind it to pour them all a glass of water. As he opened the remarkably well stocked refrigerator, Luke faintly glimpsed about three wheels of cheese crammed inside, and a quart of something that was supposedly "Homemade Liquid Cheese", or so the label taped on it said. He twitched in disgust but maintained his composure otherwise. It didn't do to offend the kid who might be able to fix your netnavi.

As to the kid himself, he looked to be only a few years younger than they, thirteen or fourteen perhaps. His hair was a dark brown that neared black, and it hung messily about his head, strands dangling in every direction. He pushed one of these strands out of his vision as he passed the glasses through the large window to his guests, and then took his own and walked back into the sitting room.

"I always dislike having to play host, so I'm just going to treat this visit like we're all good friends here, all right?" Without waiting for either Luke or John to respond in the affirmative, he continued to talk, after taking a sip of his water. "Now, which one of you is the one with the crazed netnavi?"

"Err…I am, but Aeon's not crazed, just glitched." Luke detached his PET Watch from his right hand, passing it over to Pedro for him to run a diagnostic. Pedro looked at it a moment, and then extended it to its full size, even larger than the extended version used for netbattles. It was now roughly the size of a textbook, although only as thick as a small leaflet, and a majority of its body was circuitry, which Pedro now began to fiddle with.

"Hmm…I see that you've installed this program into your netnavi a bit sloppily," he said, after a few minutes of silence. Luke and John looked at each other at this, trying to hide their surprise behind their masks of indifference. They'd had to use those an awful lot lately. Unfortunately, this time, it didn't work, and Pedro noticed it. "What did I say?"

Luke sighed, and decided to level with Pedro. "I didn't actually choose to install the program, Pedro. It installed itself." A light of understanding came into Pedro's eyes, and he set his glass of water on the end table before getting up and plugging Luke's PET into a laptop upon the floor, which brought its screen up onto the television.

"Hey, Luke," Aeon said as he was brought up onto the screen, which seemed to have a two-way camera installed into it somewhere. "Is this the room where that little programming prodigy's holed up?"

"The 'little' prodigy is the one handling your PET, my friend," Pedro said in a brief stint of passion, apparently disliking being called small. "So I'd watch your tongue before I accidentally get rid of your arms." Aeon smiled sheepishly and apologized, but Pedro was already focused on something else. "Anyways, if this program of yours really did install itself, the problem is most likely that it was meant to be refined before its application, but because it was tailored to fit your netnavi exactly, it installed itself before you could do so. Correct?"

"Close enough," Luke said, taking a drink of his water and moving his chair closer to the television. "So are you going to be able to refine it then?"

Pedro nodded. "It shouldn't be too hard, although I can't be certain. If this 'Alan' told you that I'm the best programmer in Electopia, as I would assume, he's probably wrong. I know lots of people who are better than me. I just have a knack for being able to try something eccentric, and have it work perfectly. Like my netvirus, Ebi."

"What?" John said, as confused as Luke. "What's a netvirus?"

"It's exactly like a netnavi, except you start with a virus. I just captured a Shrimpy with a generic netnavi, and then programmed it as you would the shell of a netnavi. It's not nearly as powerful, but it works, and it can get into some places that netnavis are forbidden from entering." As he spoke, he rummaged through his pocket and pulled out a PET of his own, blue and silver, and jacked it into his laptop, causing his 'netvirus' to materialize on the screen.

Ebi looked no different from a Shrimpy virus, and Aeon's glaive automatically materialized as his systems detected the viral signature. He dissolved it again when he realized that Ebi was no ordinary virus, and on his side, but he still felt a faint sense of unease as he looked him over. He didn't appear to be any different from a Shrimpy on the outside, but as the netvirus opened his mouth and began to speak, Aeon knew that he really had been changed from his original state. "Greetings. What brings you here?"

"This is Aeon, Ebi. I'm checking out a program of his. Feel free to get acquainted." Pedro continued looking at Luke's PET as if nothing out of the ordinary had occurred, but frowned to himself as he skimmed a line of source code. "Well, it seems as though the data specs for your program are missing from Aeon's file registry. Did you know this?"

Luke sighed, and rummaged through his pocket to find the small drive that held the data for Project: Fallen. He and John had discussed this the day before, and decided to simply see if Pedro would be able to fix the problems with the program without needing or asking for the specifications. He had planned to keep the exact properties of the program under wraps, especially if it had at one time belonged to the government. The last thing that Luke was looking for was jail time.

Pedro took the finger-sized drive and plugged it into his laptop, bringing up its files. "Well, I can see why you aren't keeping it on the PET," he said a few minutes later after reading the overview. "This project is very powerful, more so than I had anticipated. Theoretically, one could adapt the way these 'Fallen' are formed any way he chooses, not just the way that they are now."

"What do you mean? Like an alternate form?"

Pedro shook his head. "Not quite. The data of the beings themselves will remain written the way it was, so there will only be one Fallen for every deleted navi whose data you obtain. But you can choose to express that data differently. Tell me…have you ever heard of Style Changes?"

Luke had heard the phase before, but couldn't remember exactly where. John knew though, and he spoke up. "They're specific codes that manipulate a netnavi's frame. With an equipped style, a netnavi can change their own shape--within reason, of course. They aren't common any more, because the secret to making them died with Dr. Hikari several years back."

Now Luke remembered where he'd read the phrase. After learning of his father's involvement with the Chaos Union, he'd gone to the library and downloaded several news articles about them. One had been from right before their disbanding, and detailed how they had failed to save Dr. Hikari from being assassinated. In the article, Dr. Hikari was mentioned at having developed Style Changes, as well as his son's unique program known as Soul Unison. Neither had been successfully reinvented since then, and Hikari's son Lan wasn't giving out his father's secrets.

"Well, I've been studying whatever I can find on the subject," Pedro continued, "and I think that one of the ways you could manifest a Fallen would be through a Style Change. The only problem is you would have to have the Style Change program written into your netnavi prior to this."

"Which is impossible, because Style Changes aren't commercially available yet," Luke replied. "So what's your point?"

"My point," Pedro said, closing the laptop and looking pointedly at Luke, "is that I have been working on recreating Style Changes, and I believe that this data may be of help to me. So, I ask you, may I borrow it?"

The answer Luke wanted to give was no. The data was his to begin with, and for all he knew, Pedro was waiting to sell it to the highest bidder. Still, recreating a lost program would be a grand feat, and he wouldn't mind being a part of it. "All right. Keep the drive; you can save what you need to it. But I want it back when you're done, and I'd appreciate it if you'd work on refining the program for Aeon first."

"Certainly," Pedro said, folding the PET back to its smallest size. "I won't even need your netnavi to do so, so feel free to take him with you. I'll send you an email in a few days with some progress results."

"You don't have my email," Luke said as he took his PET out of Pedro's hands and allowed Aeon back in.

"I do now," Pedro said simply, before reopening his laptop and bending over it in an obvious sign of dismissal. Luke and John took the hint and let themselves out, silent until they were six or seven doors down, and halfway to the elevator.

"You did have that whole thing recorded, right?" Luke asked his companion as they neared the end of the hallway. "After all, if this turns ugly, I may need that as legal evidence."

"Don't worry about it," John said, extending the PET strapped to his wrist to turn the recorder off. "I got all the audio, and whatever visual I could without seeming too suspicious. And there's always whatever Aeon can get off of the hotel's security cameras too."

"Excellent," Luke said. "But I certainly hope that this goes smoothly. Those Style Changes sound awfully interesting."

-- Thursday, April 3rd, 10:41 AM, Hikari Hospital, Rho Complex, Neo Arcadia --

Matthias wasn't the world's fastest healer. Everyone in the Chaos Union knew that. But when his body needed to leap back into action, it did it almost instantly, which had caused several 'medical miracles'. The truth was, his body seemed to know exactly when it could reboot itself without causing more damage, and if his body needed to reboot then and there, it did.

Such was the case now. He had been brought into the hospital by his companions, several of whom needed medical attention of their own, and was treated right away. He'd been in a coma the last few days, while the medical staff did their work as they always did. His doctors had informed Shroud a day earlier that he would awake once his body had recovered, but there was little more they could do at this point. Since the Chaos Union had been reinstated in secret by X once they left on their mission the weekend prior, Shroud was now considered Matthias' medical proxy, and decided to simply move him into a ward designed to cope with comas, rather than waste valuable dollars keeping him in the ER.

No one had expected him to awaken less than a day later. But at exactly eight o'clock in the morning, Matthias opened his eyes, feebly asked the nurse beside him to contact the Chaos Union, and promptly fell back to sleep. The nurse had been startled at first, but decided to contact Shroud anyways, and Matthias' friends had quickly come to the hospital to meet him.

The nurse that had been designated to keep an eye on him gently jostled Matthias awake. "Mr. Terre? Your friends are here to see you."

"Thank you," he said hoarsely, reaching over to the nightstand beside him for a glass of water. "Send them in, please." His chest hurt, and breathing was harder than usual, which told him that he'd probably cracked a rib or two. The last time that had happened to him, his brother had thrown him into a wall while wearing a powerful exoskeleton. He didn't recall exactly how long it took the wounds to heal, but it wasn't a terribly bad injury, especially with Irine's ability to create her miraculous bone repair serum. Regrowing bones was painful, but it took a lot less time than it did to regrow them naturally.

Shroud led the way in, and his face was a carefully composed mask, hiding whatever his emotion was at the sight of him. Matthias knew that it wasn't a positive one though; Shroud had given up hiding all of his emotions years ago. If Shroud didn't want him to be able to guess what he was thinking, that wasn't necessarily a good sign. Behind him came four others, SH, Brian, Golex, and Alistor, the last of whom was wearing bandages around the site of his head wound, making him look like he was wearing a turban.

"Where are the others?" Matthias asked right away. "They all made it out of the tunnels safely, didn't they?" He couldn't imagine them surviving that cave-in only to die minutes later.

Shroud quelled his fears quickly with a nod. "Link is with his family right now, and Pavo and Chris are in prison for the remainder of the week. It seems that they came back to the caverns to rescue us without X's permission, and broke a few laws in the process. My legal connections managed to keep them from having to do any serious time, but they're being kept in solitary until Saturday, and were hit with a fine too. But they'll be all right. How are you doing?"

"Fine, I guess. I haven't actually spoken to a physician yet, but I don't feel like anything is seriously damaged, except for some cracked ribs."

Shroud's face revealed nothing, but the others reacted quickly, their eyes opening wide for a second before they managed to restore their composure. The Chaos Union had grown very good at that skill, since it didn't pay to work in espionage without being able to fool opposing nations. However, Alistor had never learned that skill, and no one thought far enough ahead to shut him up before he spoke. "Matthias, are you crazy? Your spine is broken!"

The tension in the room congealed into silence.