TIME JUMP

"Users!" Came the odd computer generated voice, that the four ninja team recognised as their titanium brother.

"Meaning what? Cole shouted into the large arena. All he got in response, was jeering, laughter and insults. "Rude."

The unknown man grabbed at Cole's arm and held it high, a small trickle of blood fell and landed on the transparent floor. "User!" He whispered into Cole's ear.

"What's your problem?" He hissed and pulled his arm from the strong grasp.

"This is the computer world right?" Jay pushed the man away gently, he stood as close to Cole as he could without raising suspicion.

"Yeah so?"

He leaned his head slightly and spoke clearly but quiet enough so that Cole could still hear amidst the heckling of the audience. "There's a few types of components that effectively run large scale servers and computers, namely; programs, files, memory and drivers being the most common." He nodded in the direction of the stands.

The fully filled arena was overflowing with thousands of almost identical faces, male and female. All wore impossibly black one piece suits with bright neon orange piping that glowed as brightly as the settling sun. "The people who control it from the outside, well, that would be us!"

The master of earth looked to his feet, he was never really interested in tech, physical fitness was more his thing. But he was fast learning that perhaps tech should have been taken more seriously. "Oh!"

Jay's usual upbeat attitude pulled him from the depths of uncertainty. "Don't let it get to you Cole, Gotta have thicker skin right? Besides we handled much worse than this."

The opposing team, consisting of four familiar looking opponents, were wearing the same black with bright orange, they were steadily approaching. None of the ninja team could see their opponents faces, they were completely obscured by an ominous black tinted helmet.

One of the brainless followers of the overlord, approached the black clad crew of confused young men. He held a long black hard case in his arms.

Another man stood in front and opened it with ease, clicking open both clasps at the same time. The lid opened gently and he turned his back, offering the choice to his own team first. They each took a long black stick out and held it aloft, raising it menacingly as if to strike a piñata.

He then approached the men with white neon stripes, namely; Cole, Lloyd, Kai and Jay. "CLU Titanium has offered you the chance to participate in disc wars or a battle on the light cycle grid. It is your choice."

"CLU?" Cole queried, it was the first thing that popped into his sleep addled brain. He took one look at the open case, to him the black rods looked like katana without a blade, maybe they were hidden or maybe they were tanto or electrified like everything in this city was.

"Cole, it means Codified Likeness Utility...C.L.U." Jay quickly answered, both of them didn't look at Zane nor his compatriot.

This was unknown territory for all of them. "What if we say no?" Kai said in jest. He received a look of disgust from the opposition and a few choice slurs were cast in his favour from his opposition.

Zane was corrupted, likely a virus or a new computer program. One that was installed by the Overlord as a final act, after Zane sacrificed himself and his consciousness ended up in the virtual world.

It was a literal middle finger to the Ninja team for meddling in his plans to dominate. But of course, now they were in his world, and in this world, he was the boss, Zane was his next in command and everything here would turn in his favour.

The man with the case answered in an unnatural yet mocking synthetic voice. "You choose or you'll be rectified or deleted dependent upon his choosing."

"Ha yeah, because we all know that you can delete an actual user…"Jay snorted but received a swift kick to his shin from Cole.

"Oww, hey no fair."

"Sorry Jay, but we're in their world now. We can be deleted, forgotten about, stuck here like we would've been a few years ago." Cole admonished, but gently.

"That wasn't exactly what I meant, I was sort of being facetious."

"Anyway forget about it, were you referring to when we fought the overlord as a team?"

Cole nodded, "The very same in Borg tower, we did it together though and we can do it this time too."

"Yeah, it was only because of PIXAL and Nya that we weren't stuck in here forever." Kai sobered up, his face now somewhat solemn.

Time was still ticking, but not in their favour, the man who held the case tapped his feet impatiently. His face was long, square set and devoid of emotion.

"Then what are we waiting for? We've got no choice so let's go out with a bang huh, lets show these guys what we're made of!" He put his hand in the middle, palm down.

Cole was next to place his hand on top. "Let them know what they're up against…"

"That they picked the wrong team to mess with…" Kai placed his palm down on Cole's.

"That we're stronger together and that we can do this." All four palms down they cheered and pushed down, chanted and stood back up, as if energised.

"How typically human of you, so quick to use team working to rouse emotions. Why bother?" His strange synthetic voice sliced through their good feelings and strong resolve.

A few opposition members took a rogue team member away, a frog march of sorts. The ninja team simply stared at the spectacle. The restrained man did not seem happy about the treatment, he didn't even want to participate in the games. But as a fitting end to his now obsolete function and for the entertainment of Zane, this man was being summarily deleted in the name of fun and to sway the audience in his favour.

The floor seemed to morph, panels seemed to open and fold in on themselves like a giant glass origami puzzle, out of nowhere A large circular hole appeared in front of them with a very long drop leading to a mincing fan a couple of hundred feet below.

The ninja didn't need to peer over the edge, a large LCD screen appeared overhead and it gave a pretty good image of what was at the bottom of the hole. It was a fan, the largest one they had ever seen.

Jay thought it could have just been a computer fan, nothing too special when you're a human and removing fluff from it with ease, but when you've been transported by some weird laser-matter manipulator and you're now smaller than a pinhead, the fan wasn't so inconsequential anymore. It was a hazard, lethal and would kill everything and anything regardless. Jay gulped and found he could tear his eyes off the screen as the man was thrown into the hole, it was only a few seconds until he hit the fan and exploded into tiny pixelated fragments of his original programming.

The man was no more, his coding, everything about him, now recycled into the system. Jay's face had paled considerably, even Zane stared at him from his vantage point. He simply scowled in response and turned to face Cole again.

Jay's face had paled considerably, even as Zane stared at him from his vantage point watching for his reaction. "Dammit Zane. Really?"

He simply scowled in response and turned to face Cole again. "You choose for the team." He stood in front of Cole but his black and green binary eyes were staring into Lloyd's.

Lloyd grit his teeth, his jaw clenched angrily. "We'll take a battle on the light cycle grid."

He spoke for the team, his team. The group of ninja, who stood strongly behind him, backing him up in number and strength. Even in the face of adversity and uncertainty.

"Jay, you sure about this?" Cole whispered to his best friend.

"We've got no real choice have we? You heard what he said and we all saw what just happened to that other guy, he was destroyed, like completely obliterated into tiny squares of tech and energy."

"He was a computer file, a program. He wasn't real though."

"You wanna take that chance? I thought he meant that a user could be deleted, that it would be a case of some binary code, like removing our name from databases, erasing our very existence. But considering the fact that we can bleed in here means something very much worse." Jay looked more concerned at Cole's injured arm, the blood contrasted against his tight black suit from his most recent disc wars fight.

"And I don't wanna end up in there." He said with a visible shudder. He ran a hand through his hair nervously and looked back up at the screen as it hovered in the large expansive arena.

"Hey Cole, you can ride a bike?"

"I never tried, preferred four by fours or my trusty earth digger."

"Well, there's nothing to it, just gotta hang on to the handlebars and only pop a wheelie when the time calls for it." Kai added with an imperceptible grin.

Lloyd wasn't smiling, he wasn't a huge computer gaming fan, he dabbled in a bit of if when he was younger, the odd racing games or fisticuffs but nothing this retro.

"It's who he is now guys. And Jay's right, we've got no choice in this."

"Our only chance to get out of here alive is to participate and win these games."

"Just gotta hope that Nya can help us out of this mess and upload a new program. We've got no choice, we've got to battle." Jay replied and took his long black stick from the opened case.

"Hey, uh what am I supposed to do with this?" He wafted it around, looking at it in confusion.

"I'll give you a hint….not that." The man who held the case mocked. The crowd erupted into raucous laughter, sardonic at Jay's expense.

The blue ninja blushed and faltered. But he wasn't downed that easily. He watched the opposing team as they pulled the stick in half, the action not too dissimilar of unsheathing a sword.

He tried it himself. It worked, the black stick he was holding onto was the computer program that recreated a motorbike, not just any motorbike. This was a light cycle. Just like the one he had created with help from Ed, his adoptive father.

"Ahahahah, neat…this was just like the one at the Junkyard. Soo cool." He jumped onto it but waited for his team mates to do the same. As soon as he sat on the cycle a pure black helmet covered his entire face and head, the only part of his natural colour was a small blue section on his own disc. The brighter than usual ID disc pulsed with his own element, it remained attached firmly to his back.

"You joining in too?" He hollered to Cole.

Lloyd had quickly followed suit and Kai was sitting atop his light cycle, revving the accelerator whilst his foot remained on the back brake. "Come on Cole, if we work as a team we can all do this…"

Jay turned to Cole, the only part of Jay's face he could see was the lower part of his jaw, a small flash of auburn hair visible. "You ever played the retro game 'snake' or Tron? I guess it might be a bit like that, except you got, uh, eight snakes in total and you can't cross the tails or beams without losing, not even your team mates!"