A/N- I'm sorry for updating this so late but I'm going to try and make up for it. Word of warning, this was always meant to be a short story and I think it's at least halfway through at this point. I may continue it into SR4 if you guys really want though. Anyway God Is Wearing Black, ZorraVixen, and .Snake, thank you for reviewing! I hope all of you enjoy this Boss POV chapter, it's very revealing in all sorts of ways. Also this is one of those chapters where i changed the original plot to fit the story. Please R&R! It helps me get off my ass and update faster!

Disclaimer: I do not, nor will I ever own Saints Row or any of its characters. The content of this story was not meant to insult anyone in any way, shape or form. Rated T for violence and coarse language.

Chapter Five: Admittance

The world is a haze of color and strange geometric shapes and the first thing I can think is that Kinzie must have messed up somehow. She'd said that she was going to insert me into the Decker usenet, Matt Miller's own personal universe, but this place looks nothing like what I'd imagined. No human being would willingly live here.

"Alright," Kinzie's voice rings out, surprisingly loud in my nonexistent ears, "You should be seeing a visual representation of the Decker Usenet now."

I look around the wide, technicolored space once more and then down at where my arms should be. They're not there. They've been replaced by a thin arch of what appears to be-

"WHY AM I A FUCKING TOILET?!"

I hear laughter as Kinzie struggles to alter my form. I move forward a little, God knows how since toilets don't fucking have legs, in an attempt to get a better view of the castle-like structure to the north.

"I haven't finished your avatar yet. That one's just temporary." Kinzie assures me as I pop into yet another form of being. I have arms now, but as I reach up to touch my face I realize that I'm something far worse than a toilet.

"Great! Now I'm a fucking sex doll!"

I should've known that kinky Kinzie would've turned me into the sort of object that I'd likely find lying around somewhere in her "inner sanctum". She's my friend, but there is so much about her personality that terrifies me into a near-petrified state. After I take a few more steps in my more squeaky form, I find that my body has changed yet again. I am now an androgynous black figure with pinnacles of light running all over my body. It's a bit disconcerting but much better than the shape I'd been before and one of my arms has transformed into a beautiful hand-cannon. It feels so good to hold a weapon again.

"Thanks, Kinzie." I mutter towards the sky. I barely have a moment to myself though before I'm surrounded by a squad of humanoid lights that look suspiciously like Deckers. They're all packing heat.

"Don't thank me yet. Matt sniffed me out."

I curse inwardly and begin shooting at the figures around me, ducking behind geometric blocks as they fire back in quick succession. This part of the game is as easy to me as breathing.

"You're nothing in here." a voice I've heard only a few times before drifts through my mind, garbled as if by feedback, "You should go. This is my world and I'd so hate to see you get hurt."

I grit my teeth and pulverize the last of the enemy figures with another blast from my handgun. Something tells me that Matt Miller has much more up his sleeve than what I've seen so far.

"I'm not the one who's gonna get hurt."

The rest of my time in cyberspace is no more peaceful as I fight my way through a pointless text adventure and then destroy a couple of virtual tanks while simultaneously ignoring Kinzie and Matt's neverending bickering before I finally reach the strange castle-looking edifice I'd noticed before. Kinzie calls the building a Cathedral and urges me to go inside.

"And those giant tubes are just happy fun slides, right?" I comment, looking at the wiry structures on either side of me. Some animalistic instinct buried deep inside me tells me to avoid touching them, so I do.

"Those are the feeds he uses to transport information from the real world to here." Kinzie explains as I trek up the incline to the arched doorway in the distance, "This might be a trap."

"When is it not a trap?" I grumble, more to myself than to her. It seems that every Decker-related thing I've done up until now ends in some sort of fucking trap and that on its own annoys me more than Matt Miller's entire existence. And he annoys me quite a lot. I'd been texting him nonstop over the past few weeks demanding to know how he could possibly know the time at which I'd been trying to go to sleep that one night but the most I had gotten back was a measly "Can't answer that, love." Like I said, real fucking annoying.

The inside of Matt's palace of techno-geekiness is exactly the same as the rest of this stupid place, it's just more open. I'm actually thankful for this, it'll be easier to trounce him this way. I spin around, startled, when the sound of autotuned laughter floats past me. Did that little shit make himself invisible?

"Easy to laugh when you're hiding like a pussy. Come out!"

"Anything for you, my liege."

A colossal mass of technicolored blocks bound together to look like a weird dinosaur steps into the wide empty space. My heart leaps up into my throat as I contemplate the situation. Kinzie had told me that if I was killed in here I'd suffer serious brain damage and might possibly go brain-dead. If I have to fight this thing at the size I am now, it's very likely that I'll be looking at a future as a vegetable.

"Don't you get it?" Matt's voice, magnified to be unbearably loud, flows from the dinosaur's mouth, "I'm God here."

I take a deep breath, forcing any fear I feel way way down, and point my handcannon right at his face.

"That's just fine. In the real world you're just a bitch with a keyboard."

I fire a shot at him, but when it hits it fizzles into nothing more than sparks.

"We're not in the real world now. Here, you cannot beat me."

He takes a few swipes at me and I jump back, praying internally that Kinzie will figure something out soon.

"Alright, just... don't die until I figure out how to copy his avatar." she whispers so only I can hear her and I grunt my affirmation before doing a barrel roll out of the way. This must be the most embarrassing thing I've ever done.

Eventually I manage to rip the wings off Matt's stupid dragon monster and pummel him into the ground enough that he runs away from me. I'm feeling pretty good about myself when, with absolutely no warning, I shoot ten feet up into the air. After a moment I realize that I'm not flying, I've just grown in size. Matt's not the only dragon in this game anymore.

"YOU'RE WELCOME!" Kinzie shouts over Matt's bodiless cry of frustration. I weigh the gargantuan sword that had appeared in my hand and decide that it would be very useful in any situation.

"Guards!" Matt screams and waves of those weird Decker light things race through every crack in the blocky walls. I open my jaws to laugh at the patheticness of his situation and a tongue of what looks like flames flows out.

"This just keeps getting better!" I exclaim. Dragon Matt appears again and comes at me with his sword, something that I block way too easily. We face off, finally on equal footing, and I'm surprised by the change in him. He's furious and violent and much stronger than he was the first time around. The Decker King breathes fire on me and I make a dash at him, pushing him into a wall. Just when I think I've got him trapped he slips away.

"There's no room for you in my world. Time to die!"

He runs me through with his sword and I gasp sharply. I feel it. This is a world of pixels but I can still feel pain. He bends over my faltering body and I see my dragon form slipping away, hear Kinzie screaming NO somewhere in the background. Matt Miller is a monster the size of a building and I'm just a regular girl with nothing left to defend herself with. Even my cyberspace avatar has disappeared and I am a virtual copy of the way I look in real life. At least I get to be me when I go brain dead.

The tip of Matt's sword is buried in my stomach and if this was real life I'd be dead already, but I'm not and I assume that he probably has to pulverize me with it to actually end me. He doesn't. The dragon is hesitating and neither Kinzie nor I have any idea why.

"What the hell is he doing?" she murmurs in my ear, voicing my confusion. As soon she reaches the end of the sentence, the dragon begins to disappear into sparks. Matt is shrinking...shrinking back to his actual size. His human form. I've seen him in person only once before but I can already recognize him.

"I can't do this," he whispers, his body hovering a few inches above mine. I'd be pretty uncomfortable with the position we're in if I wasn't so worried about dying.

"Do what?!" I hiss, struggling a bit under his weight. It's useless, it feels like he's a ten-ton truck and I'm nothing, even though I probably weigh a little more than him in the real world.

"I'm not brave any more, darling. I'm all broken. You've broken me." he says in place of an answer. Matt sits up enough to look me in the eye while still holding me in place.

"Why are you quoting Ernest Hemingway at me?" I ask him because I am nearly at a loss for words. Thank God for that stint of time I'd spent in college studying English Lit or I'd never have recognized the words when he said them.

"You can read?" Kinzie pipes up in my ear. I ignore her, completely focused on the young man above me. His hair and eyes are both very dark, a strange contrast to the pallor of his skin. The two of us are the only two substantial things in this insubstantial world.

"How'd you do it?" he looks like he's struggling against something, "How'd you find just the right combination of psychotic killer and damaged, beautiful human being to make me want to understand you?"

"What the fuck are you talking about?"

"I don't like being like this. I don't like the way I feel when you text me. I don't like how happy I was when it was you who survived Morningstar HQ blowing up instead of Loren."

He stands up slowly, pulling his sword out of me as he goes, and turns away. I jump after him but find myself hitting some sort of force field instead of any part of my enemy.

"Kinzie, what the fuck is happening?!" I demand from my friend's voice in my head.

"Matt defeated you, boss! He's got control of your NEMO chair, only…"

"Only what?"

"He's not using it to hurt you," she sounds confused, "Actually, he forced your virtual body to heal itself a little while ago."

For the first time I realize that the hole that should be in my body after what had been done to it is not there at all. Not even a hint of an injury remains.

"I can't force myself to bring you any more pain. That's actually the problem here." the younger boy says, his accent nearly overpowering his words.

"You realize that we're enemies, right?" I point out because I really have no idea what's going on anymore. He nods and I note the dark lipstick that covers his mouth. What kind of guy wears lipstick?

"But I can't fight you. Killbane will come after me if he finds out about my change of heart, though. I suppose I'll have to leave the country now."

He presses a palm against a geometric wall to his right and it begins to fall away at his touch. Matt Miller is taking his world apart, one annoying, blocky wall at a time.

"You're just gonna let me go?" I question uncertainly.

"Yes." he answers without hesitation.

"And leave Steelport?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

He pauses in the act of dismantling another plane of shapes and meets my gaze. His eyes look sad and...affectionate. Strangely affectionate considering how much he seems to enjoy being an obstacle to my every move.

"I like my face. I'd rather not have it get scarred by an angry, muscular wrestler."

So the kid has a sense of humor. He's not wrong, he does seem to have an attractive face under all that makeup...but that's besides the point. Kinzie snorts derisively at his comment and I continue to ignore her.

"I meant why you're letting me go." I reiterate. Matt looks as if he's bracing for something when he answers me.

"Because I love you."

The shock I'm feeling as the words leave his mouth belong to both Kinzie and me, although hers is more verbal than mine. I push her shouts of indignation away as I try to concentrate on what I've just been told. In love with me? Doesn't it usually take, I don't know, INTERACTION to fall in love with someone? When I voice my confusion Matt grimaces in a chagrined sort of way.

"I wish I could tell you, love, but I don't understand it very well myself."

The pet names he keeps calling me seem to carry a different weight now. I'm not sure what to do. Half of me wants to try killing him again but the other half wants nothing more than to stop him from leaving, oddly enough.

"Don't worry about it, I'll be out of your hair soon enough," he goes back to dismantling the cathedral. All I can think is that so much is going to waste here.

"Kinzie, you might not like what I'm about to do." I mutter as soon as my mind is made up. I begin running to catch up with the man across the way from me.

"What?" she doesn't understand and I don't really have time to explain.

"Just wanted to warn you." I raise my voice and octave and call out, "MATT!"

He spins around again, clearly surprised. It seems as if he'd expected me to exit the usenet in some way Kinzie hasn't yet thought to figure out.

"Is there something else you need?"

Curse that stupid way British people make everything sound so fucking polite.

"Yeah. What will happen to the Deckers when you're gone?"

It seems as if I've hit some sort of sore spot as I ask him this. He frowns just slightly and bites his lower lip.

"They will fall apart, unfortunately." he seems to be talking to himself as much as me, "I don't see how it can be prevented."

I come to a stop just a few feet in front of him and find that I'm very thankful we're in cyberspace. In the real world that sort of sprint would have had me on my hands and knees, gasping for breath.

"I know a way."

His eyes are appraising as he watches me and I can tell that no matter how much he may claim to love me, he doesn't think much of my intelligence. I don't mind, I've never put much stock in my thinking ability either.

"Go on…" he allows. It's hard to think of him as a teenager when he's facing me this calmly. A small part of me wants to do something to make him lose that cool. I want to see him squirm. There's something more important at hand right now, however, and I force myself to focus on the present.

"I think we should join forces." I say. Kinzie protests the idea as soon as I say it but Matt looks merely thoughtful.

"Work together?"

"Technically, you'd be working under me."

The corners of his lips twitch upward and I can almost hear the crude comment he wants to make about "working under me".

"I may be interested in that." he smirks. I fight the urge to smile back.

"Good," I look around at the halfway-undone castle, "Meet up with me in the real world, okay? There's some shit I've gotta deal with before I make any decisions."

"He is the enemy!" Kinzie screams but I'm beyond the point of caring what my underlings think of this idea. It's a done deal. Still, I can feel her disengaging me from the NEMO chair and that's not something I can ignore.

"I'm yours to command." Matt says in parting and I do smile at this. I can work with being in command. The virtual world slips away from my sight and the last I see of the Decker King is a smudge of black that might've been his hair.

For the first time since Johnny died, I don't feel like I died with him.