As was foretold, by me, I have updated in four weeks!
Admittedly there was a distinct lack of updates on other stories during the past four weeks but that is besides the point!
Sorry about not posting this yesterday, something went horribly wrong with the internet.
Anyway, the update is here in a semi-timely fashion and I'm quite proud of myself for it. But moving on from my own pride, am I the only one who finds themselves frustrated with fanfiction at times?
For example, this fandom, Megaman (and/or Rockman), the updates on fics these days are few an in between, most of the best fics have either finished or not been updated in years and to top it all off half of the ones that do exist… let's say they leave a lot to be desired.
I mean, it's not dead yet at least, with the new show this year as well as Megaman 11 but a lot of the non-classic stuff like EXE, X, Legends, it's all being left in the dust and that worries me, one of the reasons I'm so determined to see this story through to the end is because I want to help keep EXE alive.
Well, with that out of the way, it's time for the story, not to much action this time, mainly just setting the stage so to speak.
Meiru POV, Skynet Industries HQ…
"Okay, stay calm, it's just your first day interning, it's not like a job interview or anything, you already have the internship, it's just the first day. Everything is going to be just fine." Meiru told herself as she watched the numbers on the elevator increase.
Fifth floor, sixth floor…
"You really need to calm down." Roll said from her PET, "You've had this conversation with yourself five times now."
Meiru shifted uncomfortably, "I know, it's just well, it's one thing knowing you're going to do an internship at a big company, it's another thing actually being here, what if he doesn't like me and wants someone else? What if I can't get the things I'm assigned done." She stressed to her navi, listing just a few of the problems she had already considered.
Tenth floor, eleventh floor…
"You're just starting out as intern Meiru, even if they do decide to offer you a job eventually, you won't be doing much for the time being, maybe some filing and getting coffee and donuts." Roll pointed out.
That calmed the nerves a bit but Meiru felt a bit disappointed, her navi had a good point but she was hoping that she would be able to do more than just that. Technically she was still in college but this was her first chance to get some real world experience. Although her hopeful profession wasn't exactly exciting most of the time considering it would mostly center around programming.
Yeah, she had decided to go into Net Science.
Well, she was still studying music a bit and she always enjoyed it but she had felt like she needed to do something else, there were hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people who aspired to be musicians. But despite its prevalence in today's society, Net Scientists were in surprisingly high demand.
That was part of it of course, but there was another reason, she didn't like to talk about it when people asked her why she was aiming to become a net scientist but ti was still there in the back of her mind every time someone brought it up.
Netto.
Sixteenth floor…
It hadn't been the biggest part of Netto's personality, not like net battling or helping people or anything like that. But wanting to be a net scientist was something that had never changed about him as long as she knew him. She figured that since he didn't get the chance to do it, then she would do it, for both of them.
It wasn't like becoming a Net Scientist steered her away from her own lifelong dream. Music wasn't a career for her, it was a passion, something she cared about deeply. Something that she could potentially make a career from, but also something that she could continue to enjoy and felt she would enjoy more, if it weren't a part of her income.
Twentieth floor... *DING*
She jumped when the elevator stopped, she had gotten a bit lost in her own thoughts. Straightening herself and quickly running her hand over her hair to make sure it was straight, she walked out of the elevator and into the hall.
It was fairly impressive, it had an ornate look to it with a tile floor and pillars designed to look like polished stone, she doubted they actually were as it didn't seem like good architecture strategy but it didn't seem like an important enough question to ask on her first day of work, or rather first day of internship.
At the end of the hall was what she could only call a lobby, it was smaller than the one downstairs in the main entry of the building. It had the same stylistic architecture as the hallway outside. Despite all that, it was kind of on the smaller side, that made sense since it was on the top floor of the building after all. It was probably about five meters or so long and maybe seven meters wide.
Apart from another door on the far side of the room, it was fairly barren. There was a desk for the lobbyist and a set of three chairs and an end table in the corner. Both sets of furniture were made primarily of metal and seemed out of place in the general aesthetic of the room.
She walked up to the lobbyist (or maybe she was a secretary?), a woman older than her who seemed completely immersed in her work. Meiru walked up to the desk and waited, and coughed lightly, hoping to attract the woman's attention sooner rather than later.
Eventually the lobbyist finished the paper she was working on and looked up at Meiru expectantly, "Who are you and do you have an appointment?"
"I'm Sakurai Meiru, I'm supposed to be interning here." She announced herself quickly, already she was feeling her nerves start to fray again. Logically she knew there was nothing to be nervous about but she couldn't help herself now. Hopefully once she had some time to get used to being here she wouldn't have to fight to keep herself calm and collected in front of the people she was working for.
The woman behind the deck turned on the monitor of her computer and quickly ran a search, Meiru stood there awkwardly silent for a few minutes as the lobbyist looked for her information. "Ah, here you are, I'm sorry but you're going to have to wait for a bit, Mr. Obihiro is in a meeting right now."
Meiru let out a breath she hadn't known she was holding. "Alright, I can sit over there right?" She gestured to the corner of the room where the chairs were gathered. The woman behind the desk nodded and Meiru took a seat. There weren't any magazines or anything really so she was going to be there doing nothing for awhile it seemed.
General POV, Scilabs Local Net…
"I'd forgotten just how much I hated meetings…" Lightman complained as he and his brother logged back into their homepage. They had just been attending another Net Officials meeting for an status report and general update on both the fallout and the investigation of the incident the week prior.
"We don't have to go to them that often." Rockman pointed out. "But with everything that happened last week they're kind of a requirement right now." He thought for a moment, "And probably for the near future too."
"I know why we need to go to them." Lightman said as he went over to his side of the homepage (technically his side that is, there wasn't a set boundary but each brother tended to one side or the other) "I'm just saying that they're almost always boring and I hate them."
"Only almost always?" Rockman asked with a hint of amusement in his voice.
"We've been to a few that were exciting." Lightman admitted, sitting down. Rockman considered for a moment before his brother elaborated for him. "Normally the ones where we were attacked by the evil organization of the week."
"Okay, we didn't have to fight the bad guys that often back in the day." Rockman pointed out. "Sure they showed up more often than they have the past few years, but we had moments of peace."
"Exactly!" Lightman exclaimed, "And during those moments we didn't have to go to meetings!"
Rockman chuckled even as Lightman backtracked to something his brother had said. "Did you really just say "back in the day?" you make us sound old." He asked with a bit of shock evident in his voice. "No seriously, how old do you think we are?"
"Twenty." Rockman replied without thinking before straightening up and staring with wide eyes at his brother's mirrored expression.
"Oh no, we are old!" Lightman cried dramatically, he was over exaggerating it a bit but now that he was actually thinking about it he wasn't sure how to feel. Sure the twins had been celebrating their birthdays but they hadn't actually considered the fact they were technically getting older.
"I guess so, I'd never really thought about getting older, I mean it's not like there's a maturity factor and we don't really need to grow on the net." Rockman thought out loud. They were already two of the strongest Navi's around, looking older would be more for aesthetic than anything else. Not to mention existing as data kind of made the need to grow and expand your knowledge a tad irrelevant.
"It makes sense I guess, I mean we're used to being on the Net, remember when we ran into Laika and Enzan while we were using our Copybots? They were older too, but everyone on the net doesn't exactly get older." Lightman commented.
"Well it doesn't really matter." Rockman said with conviction, getting back to the original topic. "We might not have to fight terrorists groups as much as we used to but we'll beat whoever hacked the PETs just like we beat them before."
"Yeah!" Lightman cheered before looking downcast. "We kind of need to find them first though."
"That's kind of a given Lightman." Rockman pointed out.
They still didn't have a lot of information about who was responsible for the hack. As far as they could tell multiple PET models had been afflicted, as long as they had been actively connected to the Net at the time. It didn't matter if they were Jack-in models or wireless, as long as they had a connection they could have been targeted, if anything that made things slightly more nerve racking.
It meant that the only reason that more PETs weren't reset wasn't because the hackers couldn't get in but because they had limited themselves for their first attack. This made the Net Officials all the more determined to find the ones responsible. Unfortunately they didn't have much to go on, no announcements or claims, no new powerful Navis making an appearance. The only thing they had was the weird symbol Rockman had seen on the "commander" virus from the army that attacked the telephone system.
They had run several searches on the image and despite similarities to other images there was no exact match that they could find. Even the more similar insignia's had no relation to the Net apart from being something that could be found with any given search engine.
It was frustrating to say the least.
It wasn't all bad news though.
On the bright side most of the Navi's who were lost when their PETs reset were able to be recovered. Some of them had backups of earlier versions saved somewhere and others were like Tomahawkman and weren't actually on their PET when it was reset.
Speaking of Tomahawkman, he had been returned to his PET, with a few upgrades in the firewall protections other securities, courtesy of Scilabs. Rockman wasn't sure how well they would work, but the more secure they could make their friends the better he felt.
Between the two of them, they felt the worst part was probably the waiting. Either waiting for the Officials to make a breakthrough and find a lead to follow up on, or for this new group to make a move so they could get there and stop them, and hopefully get some answers in the process. Who were they? What was their goal? Could they be reasoned with?
Until then all they could do was wait.
And thus ends chapter five.
I'm not sure when I'll post the next chapter, hopefully either by the end of this month or early next. But it is happening in the short term rather than the long term, I can promise that.
Also, I'm bringing in a character from the games, you may already recognize who it is but if not, more will be revealed next chapter. If your confused about what this story follows, games or the anime, Serenade of Light claimed that it followed the anime acting on the assumption that they were still brothers.
Nobody reviewed last chapter, so there's nothing left to say relating to that other than I hope someone reviews this time. I like getting reviews, as do most authors I assume.
Well that's about all this time, I have some other stories that are demanding my attention for the next few weeks, so until then my friends!
~FriTik
R&R