Elenkova...

The small town they walked through was empty. Only a few of the houses had light visible through their windowpanels. It was all silent and only the crunching of the snow beneath their feet could be heard. The storm weakened a bit when they entered the town, allowing them to see their way clearly this time. The blonde girl walked ahead of them, leading them through the empty houses.

Jessica: " why is it very silent here?"

She asked the question for everyone else and the blonde looked back at her for a second before answering.

" Most of the people had evacuated as they heard of the possible coming snow storm. This town is small and most of the houses here won't hold well against strong wind."

To prove her words, there were a few houses with broken roofs and windows or doors hanging of their hinges while there were multiple wooden planches littered around them.

Lillia : " seems the storm was so strong and it went on for days."

" You can say that, our town hadn't had supplies for the whole week of the storm."

She finally stopped at the doorstep of a slightly larger house. It was intact, and had slightly larger windows than the other ones they saw.

The blonde searched her pocket for a second before taking out a key.

" We stayed here waiting for you. We knew it was about time you reach here and seek what we were entrusted with."

She turned the key in the lock and swung the door open widely for the guests to enter.

" Mama, Papa, I'm back. I've brought them with me."

She announced as soon as she was in and took off her grey coat and hat. A brunette woman stepped out to greet their guests.

" Well done Sayaka."

She faced everyone with a gentle smile on her face.

" Everyone, welcome to our house, I'm Elenkova Seiko, Sayaka's mother. Please come in and make yourself at home."

Jin's eyes narrowed slightly at the name. It had ringed a bell at the back of his mind.

Sayaka: " this way."

They followed after her as she led them through the hall of the house and knocked on a door before opening it, revealing a large room with two large desks across the walls and an aquarium next to the door. One desk had many papers pilled on top of it as well as some strange machines no one had seen before. The second one had two large monitors showing codes scrolling down. A blond man was sitting to the table, apparently absorbed into his work seeing how he didn't notice them as they entered. It was until that Sayaka gently placed her hand on his shoulder that he came back to reality and stopped his fast typing.

" Oh Sayaka, you're back."

He looked over his shoulders at Ban and the others who stood by the door.

" And I suppose these are our guests."

He stood up.

" My apologizes I didn't notice you. Work can be really consuming."

He cleared his throat.

" Well, Guess you may be confused. An explanation would be good right now. But let me introduce myself first. My name is Egor Elenkova, a nero-scientist."

At that, Jin's eyes completely widened as he recognized the man.

Jin: " I had a feeling I've heard the name before. You're the professor working on the net diving technologies."

Egor smiled widely at that and his eyes were fixed on the man, gauging him carefully from behind his glasses.

Egor: " I'm glad you know about me."

Jin: " I've read your researches before and Professor Mito had always spoken about you. You were his colleague back when you were in the university."

Egor's smile broadened as he pointed at him.

Egor: " I see. I bet you're Eisuke's most praised student. What was your name again..."

Jin: " Kaidou Jin, pleased to meet you professor."

Egor: " no, the pleasure is all mine. Eisuke never stopped boasting about you whenever we had the chance to have a conversation."

Lillia: " um, hold on a second. What's this net diving?"

Everyone else seemed not to get the new term as well.

Aya: " do you mean as, surfing the net or something?"

Egor: " pretty close but not right. Unlike surfing when we only explore the surface of the net. Diving means going deep beneath what the net usually shows us."

He walked off to the aquarium. The fishes within the water were swimming smoothly as if they were dancing.

Egor: " the infinity net is much more like a sea of data. What we usually see and manipulate is the surface. But there is more inside its depth that we have yet to discover. Net diving means mainly accessing the net in a different way... basically linking the mind directly to the net instead of using a meddle machine."

His words earned bewildered faces.

Elie: " directly linking the mind to the net?"

Jin: " you don't need a mediator between you and the infinity net. You're accessing it directly."

Ban: " much like Otacross' scanner for LBXs, right?"

Jin nodded at him.

Lillia: " is that even possible though?"

Egor smiled.

Egor: " it's my job to make it possible. By finding a way to convert the human's mind into data and then sending it into the infinity net."

He said reaching back to his desk and taking a circular device that seemed like some kind of goggles.

Jin: " this is..."

Egor: " Nerve Gear, the future access to the net."

Jessica: " is that what can convert a human's mind into data?"

The man nodded briskly.

Egor: " this small device here scans the human's mind, measures the electromagnetic activity within it, and transfers it into data while at the same time, blocking any signal starting from the scruff of the neck."

Lillia: " so it renders the person paralyzed while using it."

Egor: " to a certain point, yeah. Then, this data is projected into the net and so, people are able to interact with data directly instead of using some sort of mediator to manipulate them."

Haruka had her hand on her chin in thoughts as she turned around the idea in her mind.

Haruka: " theoretically speaking, it should really allow us to interact with data in a direct way. But, in reality it isn't easy as it seem."

Everyone looked back at her , surprised, and the man widened his grin even further.

Egor: " pardon my horrible eyesight, I didn't realize a professor was here. May I get your name first."

Haruka: " I'm not very famous so I doubt you've known me before, Oozora Haruka, I work mostly with AIs and data, so I'm really interested in this."

Egor: " pleased to meet you, Professor Oozora. And to answer you I may say that what you said is true. When it comes to the practical case, the way we interact with these data isn't actually the thing sciencefiction captures."

Lilyan: " what do you mean?"

Egor: " to demonstrate that, I may need a volunteer to try this."

He said holding up the Nerve Gear.

Aya: " oh! Me! Please! I want to try it!"

Egor: " sure, why not."

He said handing her the device and pushing his chair towards her.

Egor: " have a seat and make sure you're comfortable."

She sat down, leaning her head back and placed the device around her head, the crimson glass part covering her eyes.

Egor had the device linked to a slightly large central unit.

Egor: " are you ready."

The woman nodded in excitement.

Aya: " I've always wanted to try this. To thing it's really happening..."

Kämpfer: " hold on, are you sure this is safe?"

He questioned the man who opened his mouth to answer but his daughter beat him to that.

Sayaka: " Papa and I have been trying it so long. Don't worry, it's safe."

Though they seemed reluctant, Aya was totally excited and unable to wait.

Aya: " how to get it started?"

Egor: " Just close your eyes and say ' Direct Link ' clearly."

Aya nodded and closed her eyes.

Aya: " Direct Link."

The sound of the machine starting was heard.

Jessica: " so, how do we know it's working?"

Egor: " hold on, I just forgot to press this button."

He said typing on his keyboard and Aya's voice could be heard through the speakers.

Aya: " huge!"

Egor: " your conscious of your surroundings isn't completely blocked so you can here us, right?"

Aya: " clearly."

Egor: " so, can you describe what you see?"

Aya: " um...well, it's a wide dark place with a whole bunch of zeros and ones flying around?.."

Lillia: " codes?..."

Egor: " exactly. Now you see, the thing is when we dive to the net world as it's, we are actually met with a bunch of flying zeros and ones. That's the true flow of data. The real form of the infinity net."

Ban: " but, when we use Otacross' scanner, it appears like a blue sky with a whole lot of bubbles."

Egor: " hold on a second... Now I activate the user interface and the recorder and..."

A picture appeared on the screen, it was of the infinity net they always had known.

Odin: " that's much like the one we're familiar with."

Egor: " the truth is what you see here is much like a user interface."

Elie: " user interface?"

Ban: " for example, when you use your laptop and tablet... What you see are items like apps, functions and a cursor. It makes it easier to understand how to communicate with your device."

Jin: " while in reality, our machine can understand only zeros and ones. So every action you do is actually converted into zero and ones, what we call machine language."

Haruka: " long ago, before the user interface was developed, only those who knew of machine language where able to use computers, and they were so few."

Lillia: " so this picture, is actually some kind of conversion of the real sea of zeros and ones, right?"

Egor: " yep. If we want to dive, of course we don't expect anyone to understand how to manipulate data from zero, so an interface is needed. Though we still have one missing thing."

Jeanne D: " which is?"

Aya: " um... How can I move or do anything here! I don't have a body!"

Everyone blinked at that.

Beargguy: " what?"

Egor: " you didn't realize it when you were floating with the data before. But now you do. Right, she is now nothing but a stream of zeros and ones herself. We've only copied the data of her mind to the infinity net, nothing more, she can't do much in that form of hers."

Aya : " eh! That can't be!"

Egor: " wait, it's not over yet."

He chuckled.

Egor: " anyone who may know how to fix this tiny trouble."

Everyone seemed to think about it but Haruka simply spoke out.

Haruka: " she needs an avatar. A body of data to which her mind is projected and through it she can interact with the elements of the interface. Let's say, the cursor of the computer."

Odin: " avatar?"

Haruka looked down at him.

Haruka: " even the bodies you were using in the infinity net. They were avatars as well."

Egor: " that's right, an avatar is needed if we want to move freely around the interface. So, let's just set the Nerve Gear on calibration and..."

Aya suddenly appeared on the screen.

Aya: " woah!"

Egor: " it can scan your real body or you can just create a new avatar as you want. Let's go with this for now. Why don't you try and access one of the bubbles.

Aya: " okay."

Saying that, she already floated towards one of the bubbles, and upon touching it, she was converted back to a thread of data and got absorbed into the bubble as it glowed.

Once in, her body formed again and she glanced around.

Aya: " this site, a gallery?"

She said walking between different pictures that kept changing every few seconds, awestruck.

Aya: " it feels like walking through a real gallery. Awesome!"

The man smiled in satisfaction as the girl stopped to marvel over one of the paintings.

Egor: " and that's the most interesting thing about diving, you get to experience things in a more realistic way. You can taste, smell and touch everything as though they were the real thing."

Lilyan: " this thing is really amazing."

Egor: " it still need some fine tuning though, for more easier use. When you want to go back just say 'Link Out'."

She did and sat up while taking the device off before returning it to the professor.

Aya: " can't wait to see this thing out in the world."

Egor: " it may take a while before this thing is brought to everyone. But quality is the most important don't you think?"

He said placing the device back on his table and his eyes landed on the digital clock.

Egor: " I'm sorry, it seems I took a long time speaking about my project that I forgot the main reason you're here."

Lilyan: " right, Dr. Elenkova, is it possible that Onii-sama... Himari William, had left something with you?"

Egor: " actually yeah, the Driver. William said some people will be coming to get it from me and that I should make sure it's given to the right people. But to think his sister would be with them, I didn't expect that."

He said rummaging through his drawers before finally holding out the small rounded device.

Egor: " we've been waiting for those people he mentioned. And since he already told us the previous Driver would be Artemis' prize, we kept an eye on it, though I honestly would have liked it if you participated Sayaka. Leading them here would have been easier after Artemis."

He said turning to his daughter who gave a nonchalant shrug.

Sayaka: " they were keeping an eye on this very town, I couldn't just leave."

Elie: " they were?"

Egor: " I'm pretty much sure they tried keeping an eye on everyone close to him."

Zenon: " so the fairy from earlier..."

Egor pouted and looked at his daughter.

Egor: " you took it down?"

She nodded.

Egor: " I see. Then no time left. Here, use it."

He said handing the Driver to Ban who nodded at him before activating it. But this time, the hologram wasn't that of William, but of a kind of compass.

Aya: " what's the meaning of this?"

Ban narrowed his eyes and moved the device around, yet, the transparent needle was pointing always towards the window of Egor's room.

Ban: " he is telling us to find him."

He said looking at the same direction as the needle.

Lillia: " but how, he may be in another country for all we know?"

Egor: " I don't think so, he would have left a hint if he was. But seeing this compass, he may not be actually far from here."

He looked back at them.

Egor: " you better go. After that Fairy is gone, they will sure send back up here."

Elie: " hold on, what about you?"

Egor: " don't worry about us. You came here to find the Driver, right? Mission accomplished, you should move on."

Ban though about it for a second.

Ban: " Lilyan and I will follow the compass. The others, you stay back here and defend this town. Those in the Duck Shuttle as well."

Egor: " what are you..."

Ban: " if we move all together, they're surely to follow us. But if they stay here, they will surely stop them."

Lilyan: " and Leviathan won't know where Onii-sama is."

Ban nodded.

Jin: " very well then. We won't let any of their back up follow you."

Egor narrowed his eyes then flicked them toward his daughter.

Egor: " Sayaka, you go with the both of them."

Sayaka: " eh?"

Egor: " you know the vicinity very well, they would need you there."

The blonde squinted her eyes in thoughts before nodding.

Sayaka: " we should move now, meet me at the garage."

She said leaving ahead of them. Ban and Lilyan nodded at each other.

Ban: " everyone, be careful."

Elie: " Onii-chan too."

He nodded.

Haruka: " I will call Mirai and inform everyone back at the Duck Shuttle of the situation."

Jin: " yosh, everyone, get ready. The enemy's back up may be here any time soon."

" Roger that."

He turned to the brunette.

Jin: " leave protecting the town to us."

Ban had a satisfied smile before he and Lilyan left the place, grabbing their coats in their way out to the garage.

When they reached there, they could hear the sound of a motor revving and soon, Sayaka immerged in front of them on top of snow bike.

Sayaka: " get on, the sooner we find him the safer he is."

Both nodded as they rode right behind her.

Ban: " though, isn't it prohibited to have three people on a bike..."

He said with a sweat drop.

Sayaka: " screw law now. It's an emergency."

She said dashing in the direction the compass was giving them...