Behind These Eyes: Chapter 2
The Tour Plan, the Dark Plan
Icarus arrived shortly after his run-in with Rockman, and hurriedly told the navis at the Densan Records computer that his operator, Ookami Cyril, was going to be a bit late due to the fact that he got his email notice a bit later than expected. The navi who was apparently the president's navi stepped forward. He looked like a normal navi, except he was a deep purple color and he looked like he was wearing a business suit. He also clearly had some age to him.
"So you are the navi drummer on those tracks, eh?" The business navi asked.
"Yes," Icarus said, "I am the drummer on those tracks, and backing vocals, if you desire to believe it."
"Really? Very human-like voice you have for singing. Most navis sing with a very mechanical and emotionless voice, and their playing is similar if they are musician-style navis. However, my operator and I were very impressed on how deep a pocket you formed with your operator." The older navi said evenly
"Heh," Icarus chuckled, "I suppose he programmed me to be very human, and you can't help it when you hang around someone for 6 years, I suppose."
"Quite," The navi began, "We will wait for you operator here, as this is the main net and it has access to even the main office. The only thing that is protected is the music files that are recorded in the studio network." The navi stopped to point to a portal that was guarded by three guard navis. "That is our most valuable asset after all. If that got stolen we wouldn't be able to distribute any songs, either thorough internet sites. They all just play the music from temporary copies made from here. That way no-one can steal the music."
Just then a bell-like ping was heard throughout the network, indicating a person had arrived through the entrance of the Densan Records building. A screen popped up that presented what the security camera saw at the entrance. There stood Ookami Cyril, his hands on his knees looking slightly out of breath.
"That's your operator?" The navi asked incredulously.
"Yes," Icarus said proudly, "That's Ookami Cyril, 16 year old instrumentalist, singer and programmer."
"Certainly impressive," The older navi said slowly, "Is he also the son of the Science Labs' Professor Ookami?"
On the screen the 16-year-old musician was making his way over to the secretary, who (after he presented some identification,) told him which floor the president's office was, and by the way she was acting, that he had to hurry. "Yes," Icarus said, "Dad is a programmer at Science Labs. He has worked with Cyril on how to provide amplification for me, and how to put me up onstage with him." Icarus pondered for a moment, then said in a very business-like tone, "I would be glad to go into more detail of that, or Cyril would, when the meeting gets underway."
The older navi smiled at this. The younger navi who stood before him seemed to know what to do; a bit rough around the edges of course but that was merely inexperience. "Yes, your operator should be arriving soon." The navi said politely as a few digital chairs materialized, "Now you should have a seat, it may be easier than standing here."
"Thank you," came the polite reply as Icarus sat down, folding his wings.
Cyril was waiting in the elevator, as his impatience began to take control he eyed the floor monitor. "Come on… almost to the 35th floor…" Cyril started to whine to himself under his breath. Finally, after what seemed to be forever the elevator made that familiar lurch and stopped at the 35th floor and began to open the doors. As the doors opened,
Cyril mused to himself on how, after all the advances in technology on the net, they still couldn't make elevators more smooth for the passenger.
The 35th floor was less like a standard office floor and more like a penthouse. This, of course, was not a penthouse as the top floor was the 50th, however it was very open with chairs for meetings and only a few offices lining the main open area. Cyril was unsurprised to see a man sitting on the chair facing the elevator. This man was a stout sort of fellow, who looked like he once was quite in shape, but had gone to seed many years ago. Adding to his aged look, the man had thin hair that was beginning to grey by the roots. He wore his hair loosely though, and not in a very business-like way. His suit was the standard business fare, although it was a dull, salmon color and his tie was deep red.
The man smiled and motioned for Cyril to sit down on the chair directly in front of him. The only thing separating this man and that chair was a double-monitor computer terminal, one facing towards him, one facing toward Cyril. Cyril thus strode over and took a seat, smiling as well. "Pink is a true man's color, eh?" Cyril said to break whatever ice that may have been separating the two people.
"Well," the man said, "You are half-right. Though it may look pink, this is actually "Salmon" and yes, this is a true man's color." With the last few words, Cyril thought he saw the man puff out his chest a little bit. "Now, your navi had come to inform me you were going to be late. Is this a common occurrence for you?" the president said quite seriously.
"No," Cyril said with a nervous tone in his voice, "I normally am quite punctual, my navi could tell you such. However, I have been losing sleep over what this meeting is hopefully concerning, and I slept in quite late. I did not get your message until about an hour ago."
"Ah!" The president said jovially (also causing Cyril to loosen up,) "Yes, I was the same way when I had my job application sent out. Though I am sure it is not quite the same, it is close." The president stopped for a moment and looked at Cyril, as if trying to read his soul. "My name is John Ryun. No need for formalities though, for we are friends here." He paused as he and Cyril shook hands. "Now, I read in your email that your navi is an integral part of your sound. Care to explain in greater detail?"
"Yes," Cyril began. That started the conversation that would change Cyril and Icarus' life. He began to explain how Icarus was part of their sound because of the fact that he played the drums and many other things. At the same time, though, a darker meeting was being held in a place not far from the Densan Records building.
"Madoi!" said a voice from the darkness.
"Yes, what can I do?" A woman says as the spot light comes on her. She looks like she has make-up on so thick that you could scrape it off, and still have another layer to go.
"I want you to delete the music in the Densan Records computer." The mysterious man said, "With that, the people who love the music so much, will have to go with silence as their music disappears. For it is all connected… yes… DELETE!"
"Delete…" Madoi said bowing out of the room to execute a plan that would cripple Densan Records and delete all the music in their archives.
"Well Cyril…" John said standing up. "I will send these off to be mastered, and released within a week. Do you have any input as to which song you think would make a good single?
"I suppose you would know the public better, but Icarus and I had talked about it, and we think that Virtuality would be a good single, shortened slightly. It's not too much, but you know if we just cut out a piece of the instrumental break and cut the small section before the voice comes back in after. That should effectively shorten it and make it more palatable for radio and net play." Cyril said, adding "Do you agree Icarus?"
"Yes, I do agree. You know that we agreed earlier!" Icarus said.
"I just wanted to make sure." Cyril said with a smile.
John paused for a moment to take in the nice connection these two had. Such a connection between operator and navi is one that has been dreamed about, but most people are too selfish. "You have a good friendship with your navi. It does my heart good to see that kind of connection these days." John said with a broad smile. "You can go on tour if you would like, I am sure that your unique combination of Navi and human band would make a fantastic live show. Especially considering the way you described it to me!"
Icarus took this one and said, "Yes, we hope to appear good to both navi's and humans alike with our live shows. We have a way of getting Cyril into the net world as well so it appears he is still the front man on the net."
"Very good…" John said with a sense of finality, "I'll get you some musicians to play the parts that you don't… You will need a person on… keyboard who can also play rhythm guitar, and a lead guitarist? That's it?"
"Yes," Cyril and Icarus said in unison, after exchanging a quick glance Cyril continued, "A female singer would be nice, but it's not necessary at this point. I have some ideas for higher vocals but not yet. Let's try to spend as little as possible."
"Very wise." John said after pausing to think. He continued saying, "I think that we can handle the gigs for you. I'll assume no place is too small?"
"Not at all." Icarus said slowly, "We are kinda edgy, you said so yourself, so we may not have huge shows to start with…"
"Besides, don't you think that it would be better to start small? I mean I suppose it depends on how well it does on the radio." Cyril finished.
"Yes, since the contract is signed," John said, pointing over to the newly signed contract. His navi did likewise on the net. "I guess we are finished here… we will email you wh-"
John Ryun's words were cut off by an alarm blaring and an announcement over the loudspeaker. "Warning, Warning! Firewall has been hacked by unknown source, viruses are invading the archives!" This was looping many times.
"CYRIL!" Icarus yelled, "If that stuff gets deleted then Densan records won't have any way to do business, because they keep all the music in there!
"Are you suggesting we fight? I don't even know…" Cyril said uneasily.
"We'll be fine, just go to the first floor, I'll begin deleting the viruses and you can give me aid when you arrive." Icarus yelled as he dematerialized into pieces of data and was transported to the archive network. Cyril meanwhile was racing towards the stairs and began to run down them as fast as humanly possible without killing himself. The whole time muttering, "We gotta protect the music! We gotta…"
Meanwhile, Icarus was deleting virus after virus with his Arrow Buster. Unfortunately for him, after he deleted the "last" virus, he heard a distant "TAMA!" and shortly afterward was run over by a ball. Getting up he looked around for the source of the voice and began to run wildly to his left. Again, he heard "TAMA!" and at that one pointed his Arrow Buster and fired three shots in quick succession. The first two effectively stopped the ball, somehow, and the last one grazed the clown-looking navi's right arm.
"Shimatta!" The navi yelled, "How did you find me?"
"You shouldn't yell, 'TAMA', right before you attack… genius." Icarus said haughtily.
"Grr," The wacky-looking navi growled and summoned what looked like two smaller versions of him. "You'll regret insulting Coloredman! Take this!" He yelled, as both of the little versions fired aqua and fire towers at him at staggered times so as to not have them cancel each other out. This caught Icarus completely off-guard and he was hit with both of them. Taking a huge chunk out of his hit points and leaving him rather battered and bruised on the ground. Coloredman rolled on his ball over to Icarus, presumably to deal the final blow. "Heeheehee," Coloredman laughed, "You should know not to mess with the World Three little boy…"
Suddenly, a voice called out "Recover80, Slot-in!" At those words, Icarus wounds were healed and he dealt a nice uppercut to Coloredman's face. This pushed Coloredman back to a safer distance away, allowing Icarus to get up.
"Alright Coloredman," Icarus yelled heavily, "Prepare to be stopped in the name of music!"
Another voice, this time a female one, rang out, "Coloredman, don't just stand there attack! Aqua Tower! Slot-in, download!"
"Thank you, Madoi!" Coloredman yelled in glee as a smaller version of him popped up and hit the ground with both of its hands causing a hug tower of water to come at Icarus.
"Flame Tower! Slot-in, download!" yelled Cyril as he gave Icarus the flame chip data. Icarus too hit the ground with his palms, causing a huge pillar of flame to move towards and cancel out the aqua tower. This plan would have worked had Madoi not gave Coloredman another Flame Tower chip, allowing it to hit Icarus dead on.
"Dammit!" Cyril yelled, "Icarus, hang in there!"
"Tee-hee" Coloredman giggled, "You're going to have to do better than that to beat the World Three!"
As a battle tends to be volatile, at that moment a glowing pink and red energy slashed through both of the mini-Coloredmen and deleted them both.
"What? Who did that!" Coloredman screamed as he looked around frantically. In his panic, he did not notice a red navi with silver hair and a visor appear directly in front of him and deal a mortal blow directly to him. This caused Madoi plug Coloredman out, causing him to disappear in the familiar words "Logout."
"You're…" Cyril said staring at the person who just plugged in. The boy was wearing camouflage pants and a red and white jacket. The clothes were not really his most defining feature though; it was his dual-colored hair. Black hair looked like it was growing underneath a canopy of white hair. Cyril finally found his voice after a few seconds, "Enzan Ijuin!"
At the same moment (after being helped up by him) Icarus did more or less the same thing about the red navi, except instead he said "Blues!"
Entirely nonplussed, Blues looked up to the sky and asked "Enzan-sama, should I delete this one as well?
Icarus and Cyril both went very pale at that concept that Icarus may get deleted, but fortunately for both of them; the answer produced by Enzan's voice was "No. Plug-out Blues." Both Icarus and Cyril breathed a sigh of relief as Blues merely said "Yes, Enzan-sama" and plugged-out. Icarus did the same and Cyril ran after Enzan, as he already had walked off.
"Enzan-san!" Cyril said running after him and, placing himself in his way, "I only have two matters of business I want to get over with to clear my conscience."
Enzan sighed, "What?"
"I want to know why you were here, but first and foremost I want to thank you for saving Icarus." Cyril said, in one breath.
"I am here," Enzan said, "On company business, the old man said he couldn't do this himself because it was too trivial, but I can imagine that this would increase our profits much. Also, I want to congratulate you on how ugly your navi looks. Positively distasteful. He doesn't look like a program at all."
"I get that a lot, but it doesn't make a difference how he looks, he just wanted it that way, so I made it so." Cyril said shrugging, his tone still the same.
"Hmph, whatever. I have to leave, so please get out of my way." Enzan said, in the same cold tone.
"Sure." Cyril said simply and moved out of the way. He watched him go and pulled out his PET to talk to Icarus. "Well, we met a famous person already!"
"Yeah, but he was a jerk, calling me ugly." Icarus said coldly.
"Eh, don't let it get to you," Cyril said soothingly, "If John is right, and our music takes off, it won't matter if you have your butt for a face, you won't be called ugly."
"Maybe you are right, ignoring the obvious hyperbole in that." Icarus said chuckling.
"Sorry, I tend to exaggerate things!"
"I know!" And with that they laughed and continued to smile and laugh all the way home. However, not everyone was smiling at the end of the day…
"Wily-sama's going to kill me!" Madoi said, with an obvious overtone of fright…
End Chapter 2.
Cy: My first action chapter! How was it?