Tron Reformation

Chapter 5: the Geniuses, the Master, and the Digitizer; a Timer for What…

1 Week Later

Tokyo, Japan

Back on Mahora Campus

Chisame was walking on campus, crossing the park grounds to get to the College Campus. She had returned the other day, and was coming to the campus after her classes were over. She pulled out the memory stick from her pocket; the same one that she had found at her uncle's arcade. So far, when she was on the plane, she had tried to open the files on it, but the problem was the files were encrypted and rather well-encrypted. She knew right then and all too-knowing that she couldn't hack into it without the right equipment to use.

… and she knew where to get it at. And more importantly, who to get it from.

Mahora Science College Campus

Chisame made it through and towards the lab in which she knew where to go into. When she got to the door, she noticed through the door windows that the lights were going on and off, meaning that the person she was looking for was hard at work. She sighed, knowing full well that she didn't want to go into a situation like that. But a thought popped into her head as she dug deep from her shirt, and pulled out the memory stick attached to a necklace chain. Remembering where she got it from, she sighed rubbing her temples as she looked up, knowing full well she couldn't access it without this person's help.

Summing up enough strength, she opened the door, and called out, "Hakase! Hakase, can I talk to you?"

She looked around and took notice to where the lights were coming from. Standing in front of a table, was Satomie Hakase, wearing some sort of apparatus with robotic arms on it. She was tweaking with something that looked pretty dangerous if she broke her concentration on it. Unfortunately… that's exactly what she did.

She turned around, wearing high-tech goggles, and noticed a now paling Chisame, as she smirked, "Oh, Hey, Chisame. How you doing?"

Chisame nervously pointed at the experiment, which was now sending off warning lights and horns. "Um, Satomie…" she stated, until…

KA-BOOM!

The doors were blown open as smoke came gashing out like crazy, and the lights dying out from the explosion. The two girls coughed violently, swatting away the smoke as best they could. As the smoke cleared, the girls were able to see each other once again; they were covered in soot and their hair sticking up from the explosion. Immediately, they cleaned themselves off, looking back to being as normal as possible.

Satomie coughed up a bit until she chuckled embarrassingly, "Oops. Guess I shoulve kept a better eye on the experiment."

Chisame hacked up one last cough as she exhaustedly glared at her classmate, "Really? You think?"

Removing the device off her back, Satomie adjusted her glasses in a fashion that usually said she was deep in thought. "So…" she started as she crossed her arms in a pondering fashion, asking her comrade in eyewear, "… what's the social visit? Need an update on your software and hardware? I updated it about a month ago; you're not due for another one til this September."

Chisame shook her head as she walked up to her, "No, it's not aobut that." she then pulled out the memory stick from around her neck and held it out, "I got this from my old Uncle's arcade."

"Your uncle?" Satomie asked, but then lit up as she nearly exclaimed like a giddy fan, "You mean Kevin Flynn? The greatest computer hacker and computer genius of the last generation? That Kevin Flynn, your uncle?"

Not phased by the emotional outburst of her 'friend', Chisame shrugged as she handed Satomie the stick and explained her dilemma. "When I went snooping around his old arcade, I found this. It was just lying there and I figured it had some sort fo clue as to where he's been for the past ten years." She then sighed heavily as she shook her head, "But the darn thing's so encrypted I can't even break the codes and firewalls that on it."

Satomie took the stick without hesitation, smirking up to the challenge, "And you'd figure I'd have the software for the job, right?" this earned a nod from Hasegawa, as the genius examined it. Then for a few seconds she shrugged, shaking her head in a negative fashion as she answered, "I doubt I have the computing power," and then smirked, "But I know someone who does."

Room 314

Satomie had led Chisame into another lab room, in which they'd find the one that could help them. They entered the lab and saw it was a mess. The desks and tables all had computers and computer equipment strewn around. Wires and cables were tangled and dangling all over the place like spaghetti. And there was also fast food bags and leftovers nearly merged together on some areas. Overall, this was a real computer geek's environment, as well as a nightmare.

But that didn't seem to deter the girls as they wandered on in, and looked around the empty monitors. So far there was no signs of activity… until they saw a working monitor with someone hard at work on it.

As they walked up to him, Chisame got a good look at the individual working at the console. It was a fifteen year old boy, light tanned skin, saddle-brown shaggy hair, light blue eyes, and a figure that was more of a surfing skateboarder. He was dressed in long jean shorts that ended under his knees, white and red sneakers, a phany pack strapped behind him, and a white hoodie jacket with red sleeves rolled up to the elbows. He seemed to be hard at work on something, and didn't even notice the girls until Satomie tapped him on the shoulder.

"Renton," Satomie called out to the boy, "Renton, you busy?"

The boy named Renton stopped for a moment as he turned around to face the girls. "Oh, hey, Satomie," Renton smirked, "Still working late on Chachamaru's new body?"

"New body?" Chisame asked, looking over to Satomie for the answer.

"That's not important right now," Hakase replied as she pointed to Chisame, "This is Chisame Hasegawa. The classmate I told you about needing the XL 9 for her software. The one that I asked you to loan for me." She then showed him the memory stick drive, "We could use your computer skills on this."

Renton gently took the stick from her and turned to his computer, "Alright, let's see what we have here." he plugged it in, and after a few seconds to load in, the computer screens flashed with windows of warnings and barriers. Renton scratched his chin in deep thought, and leaned back for a moment, "Seems this stick has a whole load of barriers and firewalls on this. Whoever made this wanted to make sure no one got in."

Chisame leaned on the desk next to him, and looked to ask, "So you're saying you can't get it unlocked?"

Renton turned to Chisame and gave her a confident smile, "I said no one could get in. I'm not no one, am I?" he took another memory stick and plugged it in next to Chisame's. he then typed as fast as the devil's fingers would, "Let's see if Zig and Zag can get past those firewalls and shut'em off at the source."

"Zig and Zag?" Chisame asked with an arched eyebrow.

"His hacking programs," Satomie explained, "He was trying to create a program that could bypass any firewall or obstacle, and the processed result became a twin-based program, constantly changing one another to avoid being recognized. It's quite brilliant if you'd think about it."

Chisame sighed at the moment, until she finally asked, "So how long is this gonna…?"

"Finished," Renton replied, turning towards the girls as he pointed to the screen, "Is this what you're looking for?"

The girls, who were a little pressed on words, looked at the screen and saw some stuff that didn't make sense. They were blueprints of some strange ray gun device. The details and computer program executions were all high tech, probably high top research material. Whatever it was, this gave a twinkle in Satomie's eye as she was probably formulating on building the strange device that was finally found on the screen.

Chisame looked to her, and sighed, looking away, while shaking her head, 'Oh boy…'

The Next Weekend

After a whole week had past since Renton had unlocked the memory stick drive, it had been a bit chaotic for Chisame's normal lifestyle. When they had opened it, the trio had found hundreds of design files pertaining to whatever her missing uncle was working on. Strange blueprints of buildings and vehicles that looked like they wouldn't be able to move, nor even fly from the bizarre shapes and designs they were shown. There was even the strange blueprints of some sort of ray gun that looked like something out of that movie, Honey, I Shrunk the Kids. The blueprints had hooked Satomie on right away, as did Renton who would help with reading the schematics.

Chisame was walking towards the College campus, this time dressed in a casual attire. She was wearing jeans that were a little tight on her thighs, but didn't give any sex appeal, a white long-sleeved hoodie shirt, with pink sleeves that ended under her elbows, and a pink hoodie sleeve, with two tussels on the collar, a watch on, her hair tied back, her glasses on, and a pair of red and white sneakers. She also had her small laptop on her as it was in her backpack, slung over her right shoulder, but she still had her sour frown on her face.

Chisame grumbled as she remembered what Satomie told her a week ago…

"Alright," Satomie shot up, her fists clenched up in determination, "Let's do it!"

"Wha?" Chisame asked.

Satomie pointed to the ray gun, with a smirk to the secret net-idol, "I'll build this thing in less than a week."

Stammering, Chisame tried to talk her out of it, "H-Hey, come on. We don't even know what this thing does."

"All the more reason to build it and find out," Satomie replied. She then looked to Renton and asked him, "You wanna help out? I could use the help in reading these binary codes."

"Oh, come on," Chisame objected, pointing to him, "He's not gonna say…"

"I'll help," Renton answered, giving Satomie a smile, but Chisame just had her jaw drop because of this, as he gave his reasons, "I've got nothing better to do right now, and I'm in need of a new challenge."

The two began to converse with one another with more ideas, while ignoring Chisame. "Hey, wait! Come on… will you…" she stammered, slowly getting quieter with every objection, until finally, she sighed, slumping her shoulders and head, sweat dropping, as she mumbled, "Okay, fine… go ahead and build it."

She grumbled to herself, rubbing her head in the process, mumbling, "I can't believe they talked me into this."

However, her thoughts were interrupted by shouting coming from down the plaza from where she stopped. She stopped in her tracks as she walked on over to what it was that was all the commotion. There was a huge crowd of what appeared to be students of every Martial Arts Class or Club on the Mahora Academy Campus, ranging from high school to college level, and there were even some from other schools. And at this point, they were all surrounding one student in particular… from Class 3-A.

She was one of her classmates, and possibly one of the foreign girls, considering she looked a bit Chinese. She had dark tan skin, a physical figure that was beautifully slim but very strong from a closer look, or if she ever smirked. She had blonde hair cropped to her shoulders, and had two ponytails on both sides of the top of her head tied together by black strings with black ball tuffels. She was also dressed in a yellow mini-skirt with slits on both sides, as well as wearing black spandex workout shorts. She had on a sleeveless turtleneck Chinese style shirt on, with four buttons in the front and buttoned to the right side of her chest, with gold trimming on it. She was Fei Ku, member of the Martial Arts Club, as well as a part-timer at a Chinese style restaurant.

She was just standing there in the middle, with one closed eye and smiling calmly at this whole thing. Chisame went all bug-eyed at this as she nearly shouted out crazily, "What the hell? WHAT'S FEI KU DOING DOWN THERE?"

But before the secretive net-idol could do anything, the swarm of warriors charged at Fei Ku, shouting out some battle cries of their own. But it appeared one-sided, as that Fei Ku was doing most of the battling, much to Chisame's amazement, and winning at that as well.

Even though she didn't care about what other did, she was actually amazed at seeing Fei fight for the first time, with none of the opponents laying a scratch on Fei Ku. She had heard that she was good in the martial arts, she just didn't believe in them, nor did she go to any school tournaments to see if those claims were true. And most of the time, she heard that Fei was challenged every day, and that not one opponent had ever defeated her, let alone a single blow on her at all.

"Whoa," Chisame mumbled, as she leaned on the stone hand rail that was there to support her as she looked down at the fight, "I heard she won most of the school's Martial-Arts Tournaments, but I didn't think she was this good to beat everyone."

After the fight was over, what was a crowd of fighters was now a pile of unconscious losers. Some of them managed to groan out that Fei Ku was too much for them or too strong any way possible. Fei Ku, at this point, was in a striking Crane pose, smiling anxiously for another round, but saw that no one was left standing, so she shot out, "You weak! There no more ones what is strong?"

Seeing that the battle was way over, Chisame sighed as she got up, "Well, enough of that bit of UCF fighting. Guess I'd better head over to the lab. Satomie said that…"

"Hey, Chisame!" Fei Ku's voice shouted, nearly making Chisame jump up in fright. Immediately, Fei Ku popped up right in front of her, startling the poor girl, from jumping up on the wall, and right in front of her. She smiled ignorantly, and waved, "How ya doin'?"

"Uh, doin' just fine," she replied, but immediately made her way to the college, grumbling to herself, "I really don't want to hang around loonies like her at this point."

However, it was a short welcome and leave, for at that moment, someone was right behind Chisame. She saw the hardened look on Fei's face as she turned around… and froze in fright as she saw one of the Hanzuman High School punks.

He was half-conscious as he balled his fist and thought Chisame was Fei Ku as he shouted out incoherently, "It's not… IT'S NOT OVER YET, CAPTAIN FEI!"

Chisame nearly paled at this as she gulped, and brought her arms up, closing her eyes shut preparing to receive a major beat-down. However, before it came, Fei Ku pulled her away, and shouted, "PAO EUAN!"

She delivered a massive devastating knockout punch to the gut, causing the rampaging student to stumble behind on the wall, and topple over it, falling down to the ground, comically shouting out like he was an actor in Die Hard, and slammed back first into the pavement with the others. The two stood there for a moment, until they heard a small groan escape his lips, in utter defeat.

Fei Ku looked to a slightly startled Chisame, as she smiled and asked her, "Chisame is okay? I sorry."

Chisame, slightly startled, looked to her and replied, "I… I'm fine. Thank you." But she straightened herself out as she began her trek again to the college campus. But stopped as she saw that Fei Ku was following her for some odd reason. She faced the front again, but spoke to her, knowing she didn't want to talk to anyone at this point, but did so, "So… you're that strong to beat up all those guys, eh?"

"Thank you, Hasegawa-san," Fei Ku smirked at that compliment, "But Kaede and Mana even more stronger. Specialties is Xing Yi Quan and Ba Gua Zhang. Also practicing Ba Ji Quan and Xing Yi Liu He Quan, but on as fan."

"Really?" Chisame replied, though not acting completely amazed by all this, "So, um… what's with following me to the campus? didn't know you were into science and computers."

"Nah," Fei answered, "I just going to see Lingshen if there. New combat VR simulation system needs testing, so I volunteer." she walked up next to Chisame and asked her, "Mind if join?"

Knowing full well this went along with her 'Not Wanting to have Friends in Class 3-A' categories, she would have said no. but knowing full well that Fei would just follow her anyway, she sighed in defeat, and replied, "Yeah sure." she shook her head as she grimaced, 'Can this day get any worse for me than it is now?'

College Campus

Lab 314

Afterwards, Chisame and Fei Ku had made their way to the lab room. Once they entered, they saw boht Satomie and Renton both hard at work on the computers. Once they stepped in, they both saw that on the floors, small and large tube wires strewn all about them, connecting into adapters and outlets. But behind the two, was the machine that Satomie had promised she would build. And she did, as there was the ray gun, looking just as advanced and powerful.

Fei Ku broke the silence as she tugged Chisame on the sleeve, and commented pointing to the laser, "Hey! Exact replica of Shrink Ray. Disney might get pissed off."

Chisame sighed as she took off her glasses, and groaned, "Yeah, right."

Finally, the two walked up to the computer geniuses, and now Chisame was standing right next to Satomie, who was sitting down, and observing newfound data files. Chisame asked, leaning forward on Satomie's chair, "Find anything about what this is?"

"It's a digitizer," she answered.

"Digitizer?" Fei Ku asked, looking rather clueless as ever.

"It's a sort of project your uncle was working on," Renton replied, having been fully explained as to where the memory stick came from and seemed okay to help out with it. "It was actually an earlier project from the 80s that ENCOM had been trying to perfect on. It revolves mostly around the technology of Digitization. Digitization is the process of converting physical matter into digital code. It requires the use of a laser-based technology." He then pointed at the laser, "Which… requires that basically."

Renton continued with a much more detailed explanantion of Digitization, in which he had found much of the information on the memory stick. Digitization required both hardware and software dedicated to digitizing a subject. The hardware in this case needed a powerful laser. The digitization system was designed at ENCOM by Dr. Walter Gibbs.

It needed to take several minutes to warm up the laser and prepare it for digitization and black goggles and had to be worn to avoid sight damage from the beam's bright light. When primed, the laser would shoot at the predetermined target and begin to split its molecules into a digital code, which was shown as billions of cubes. Each cube would be quickly extracted one by one and sucked into the laser beam to be suspended in the beam until the model was played back, at which point the molecules would fall back into place and the target return to its physical form. But where to… that was the question.

"And with this, we should be able to find some files on your uncle's last entry, hoping that he might have left something to find on," Satomie replied, as she continued to type in some commands.

It was then that the trio looked at Fei Ku… who appeared to be having a conundrum at the moment, as she held her head, whining, "AAAAAH. I don't get it at a-a-a-a-a-a-all."

Chisame crossed her arms as she reminded them, "Don't forget: she's Dummy Yellow of the Mahora Rangers Dummy Force. She doesn't understand all that science know-how."

Things were going pretty good for them all…until she opened one up, revealing a digital timer.

Um, what is that?" Chisame asked, looking a little confused and nervous.

Satomie hummed herself in thought, as she straightened her glasses, "I could be wrong, but I'd have to say…"

As she was thinking aloud, the ray gun slowly pointed to all four of them, on the servos that turned it.

Then, the Digitizer started glowing and humming to life, without the girls noticing.

"… a timer?"

Chisame raised an eyebrow in confusion, and looked to Satomie, "A timer? A timer for wha…?"

The question went unanswered as all four of the teenagers heard a humming from behind them. It was getting louder and louder, unnerving the four as they heard it from behind. Slowly, staritng with Chisame, the four slowly began to turn around, slowly and nervously, they hoped what they thought was just their fears getting the best of them.

But it was no such luck, as they saw the laser aimed right at them; the nose barrel of the gun glowing brightly white. And finally, a big flash filled the room, as the laser shot right at them. They and the whole world froze around them, as if time had stopped completely, and everything became distorted, stretching; pulling everything to some unknown black hole.

And then finally… total darkness.

Next Chapter: Welcome to the Grid; Armories, Discs, and Games