The usual disclaimer. Ranma, Tron and all the related intellectual property making an appearance in this fic are someone else's than my property; the former Rumiko Takahashi's and the latter.. Disney's? Steven Lisberger's? Cooper Industries'? And whoever they've given/sold/transferred their rights to. I'm not and won't be making any money off of this.
As Haruo and Eiko were busy, dabbling with the computer terminal while waiting for Ranma to respond to their call, Ukyo was looking around the arcade. Except for the small lights above emergency exits and the small battery-powered lamp Haruo and Eiko had brought with them, the hall was dark.
Half of her mind was preoccupied with other matters, or more specifically, Nabiki. Ukyo had thought that Ranma would've been alone in there, giving her a solid chance to show exactly how reliable she was and how well they worked together.
Shouldn't she be worried about Nabiki and Ranchan being alone in the system?
Her laughter echoed in the near-empty hall, giving Haruo and Eiko a slight scare. Ranchan and Nabiki mixed about as well as oil and water!
But how had Nabiki gotten tangled up in this mess? There was only one reason for which she expected the mercenary girl would've voluntarily become involved, and it was money.
Ranchan had ended up working at her restaurant because Nabiki had demanded him to shorten his debt, but that was last week. Usually, that amount of money should've kept Nabiki sated for two weeks, minimum.
Ukyo let her mind break away from worrying about who was and who wasn't in there with Ranma. The sooner they got Ranma and the others out of there, the less reason she had to brood over such matters.
Her eyes passed the different game booths in the hall. The booths were against the walls and in neat rows back to back in the middle of the room. The power cords met underneath metal covers that led from the machines to power outlets. But half of the cords weren't plugged in the outlets but continued beside the wall, all in the same direction. They all led behind the same door at the back of the arcade.
She approached the door and tried the handle. Locked. Then again, the sign "Staff only" was a giveaway.
Seeing that she had walked around the arcade, she returned to the two hackers, stifling a yawn; the caffeine in the tea she had drunk earlier had already lost its effect. Absently, her gaze fixed on the name appearing on the sides of each game booth. Now where had she heard the name "Encom" before?
In the digital world, the four fugitives were walking towards the red beam of light that rose from behind the hills. Poro led the way, Ranma and Nabiki trailing him, and Shinobu as the rear guard.
Shinobu's position gave her an excellent view of what Ranma and Nabiki were doing. She might not have known it before, but after hearing Ranma repeat it for the third time, she knew that "martial artists make everything training." Apparently that meant they also make everything training even for non-martial artists.
Right now, Ranma was jumping from one boulder lining their path to the top of another, holding a discful of Power on her hands without one drop spilling to the ground. Behind her, Nabiki was duplicating his feats with little grace. She would either fall slightly short on the jump and fall down on the ground, or she would wave her hands to regain her balance after landing on the uneven rock face.
"Exactly how is this all necessary for my training?" Nabiki wheezed as she once again fell short on her leap.
Ranma spun around on her heels. "Ya got a healthy mind already, but we're gunna make your body healthier! 'sides, ya'll be needing both of 'em. Ya need ta know and control your body well for the techniques I showed ya."
Nabiki gritted her teeth. She hadn't expected Ranma to start training her this hard right away, but thankfully most of the methods she knew Genma had trained Ranma with were absent.
Still, if this was what she had to withstand to be able to stand on her own feet in here, she wouldn't give up. No matter how much the idea of using brute force appalled her, her usual methods of subterfuge and guile were worthless without sufficient background knowledge on the world, and without good questions to ask, Poro was not a great source of information. And she would never let herself be caught helpless, whatever it took to have control on her life.
Noticing Nabiki had pushed herself to the point of collapsing, Ranma jumped backwards to let her take a sip of Power.
A few gulps of the elixir quickly rejuvenated her to the point of being able to continue the exercise. The IO tower was nowhere close yet, and Ranma had planned on stretching the exercise session to end only once they reached the tower.
Ranma looked up at the hill that stood on their way. Getting over it would be enough of exercise by itself for Nabiki without jumping her way up, and she let Nabiki off the hook for now. As for herself, she had also tried learning a new trick.
Since she had no ki in here, she couldn't use her Pride of the Fierce Tiger. But she could try projecting the Power inside her outside her body, and that she had already managed to do... except that the end result was only a blob of Power in the same form she had drunk it. But when she tried projecting it inside an object, rather than in the open air, she could repeat her earlier feat of destroying a boulder, or do a parlour trick: let the Power form the circuitry patterns she wanted to on the surface she was touching. Close enough to the patterns she wanted in any case, but it appeared to take only practice to gain better control over how the lines were laid on the block.
The walk on top of the hill took a while, but once there, the vista was striking. The chaos of the free memory area spread spread around them, but from their vantage point they saw the IO tower and the transmission stream right across a structured area, filled with low-rise buildings whose fluorescent red glow was in stark contrast with the blue memory blocks.
In the back of her mind, Ranma felt the call to the tower. It pulled on her attention, letting up only once she turned her eyes away.
As she stood still, simply appreciating the view, Nabiki and Shinobu had already started descending down the hill. She snapped herself back to reality and ran after the two, Poro taking his time in following them, half-heartedly watching the self-proclaimed Users make their way down.
The border between free and reserved memory was no less clear-cut close up than afar. The cluttered ground and asymmetric, chiseled gargantuan boulders gave way to even black surfaces and buildings, dwarfed by the IO tower and decorated with the omnipresent circuitry motif.
The four walked again in silence and staying off the areas populated by other programs. Ranma with her macho attitude firmly back in place walked ahead of the others. Programs of different kinds walked around them; golden, blue, purple... none of them paid appeared to pay attention to anything that wasn't on their path.
To her surprise, Nabiki felt a tug on her arm and turned around. Latched onto her forearm was a program hunched over, a sickly leer on his face and the yellowish green glow didn't look any healthier. Compared to him, Nabiki considered Gosunkugi a healthy and normal person.
The leer changed into a cackle. Ranma and the others turned to face Nabiki and the program just in time to see Nabiki belt him in the face, sending him down.
Satisfied with the results, she turned back to the others and hastened her pace; making a scene would not help them hide from the protocol guards. The stinging sensation where the program had grabbed her was slowly abating as she rubbed it. She might not be at Ranma's level, but she refused to depend on the help from others.
She cast a glance at their target, still a few kilometers away. At least they would be a step closer to getting back home soon enough.
Poro had led the three to an alley between two buildings, where they found a translucent cube, floating in mid-air. Ranma recalled seeing a similar one back when she passed through the yellow portal, and the guard programs somehow had got their orders from the box. Like back then, green specks floated inside the crate.
The program placed his hand on the box, lighting up one green mote of light. A while later, Poro withdrew his hand.
"The system utilities are searching for us here, too. We'd better finish our business at the tower quickly, or we're certain to get caught."
Nabiki perked up at witnessing this: any means for her to learn more of this world on her own was more than welcome. "How do you know that?"
"You don't know what archive bins are? Right... come here," he said, gesturing at the three Users to lay their hands down on the bin.
"These are archive bins. As for what's inside of them, each of those green packets contains text-formatted information. If you got the proper permission set, you can download the contents of the bin."
Before Poro got to explain how that happened in greater detail, Ranma already attempted to reach a sparkle with Power as it floated closest to her hand. She coaxed the packet for a few microcycles, but then, the contents of the packet slammed themselves into her mind, very nearly making her reel back from the suddenness of it.
"What is COBOL and why's it bad for ya health?"
Then again, no one guaranteed she actually understood what the information meant.
She pulled her hand back and shook her head to clear out the stars from her vision. Beside her, Shinobu and Nabiki were attempting to repeat her success.
After a few microcycles, Shinobu took a step backwards, as she managed to read one of the information parcels.
"Kernel has, quote, broadened the search criteria, end quote, to track us down, and has ordered something called 'direct memory access areas to undergo extensive security scans, and programs with programmed input/output functions to apply operating permissions.' "
"Huh?" Ranma boggled, Nabiki sharing the sentiment but staying quiet.
"It means getting out of this system by the usual media won't be easy," Poro sighed. He shouldn't have been surprised, though; things had been going far too well.
The glow from the CRT display lit Haruo and Eiko's faces as they sat side by side by the console, leaning on each other. For some reason, it was taking a while for the program to answer to their IO call. They hardly had a problem on how to use the time they found on their hands, as they had opened another game booth and taken over the session in there.
"How do you think Ranma got in there?" Eiko changed the subject of their discussion.
"No clue. But this smells like a... challenge," Haruo replied, then began chuckling to himself.
"Finding out how Ranma got in there?"
"Not as much as finding out how to get him out of there. If it really is him in there anyway."
"Aww, what's this with the skepticism?" Eiko frowned. She wished that it was Ranma in there... and by conjuction Nabiki as well. There weren't many more efficient ways to climb your way up the ladder than pulling your boss out of the fire. "With all the things happening around Ranma, I don't see why this shouldn't be one more mess he's ended up in."
Haruo let his hands down from the keyboard he had been typing on and turned to Eiko, a crooked grin on his face.
"Tell me, when has these messes been resolved without any fighting?"
After a moment of silence and Eiko trying to remember such an event, he continued, "I haven't heard of a single fight yet, and I hope that I don't hear of one either, not as long as we're this involved."
Smirking, Eiko gave Haruo's shoulder a gentle pat. "Aren't you overreacting a bit? Nabiki even lives in the same house and she's never gotten involved unwill..." Eiko's voice trailed off as Haruo raised his eyebrow.
"You were saying?"
Unsurprisingly, Eiko started truly appreciating having brought Ukyo with them.
"Anything new?"
Ukyo's sudden return and question startled Eiko, who attempted to quickly move away, only to fall down on her rear before her boyfriend.
"Aren't you overreacting a bit?" Haruo snickered, slightly amused. Eiko only shot a glare with a pout at him.
As the four escapees resumed their trip, Poro returned to surveying the scenery, but some of his attention had been riveted by Ranko and Nabiki's behaviour. It was like they were doing something in a pattern, an elaborate algorithm of a kind. Especially what Ranko did was baffling; he instinctively felt there was something like a pattern in what she did, but he couldn't figure it out exactly what it was.
Well, he did recognize the plain bit flip, which appeared to have become more frequent for Nabiki than before. Once again, she was picking herself up from the ground after slipping down from atop a crate.
"Ya okay, Nabiki?"
Off to the side, Shinobu snorted to herself.
"Maybe you're pushing her too far? Not everyone is as gifted as you."
The near silent barb in Shinobu's comment went unnoticed to Ranma and Nabiki, who was now moving to stand back up, all the while holding her head.
"Wait a moment, Ranma," she replied, then blinked a few times.
Slightly fumbling, she walked over to a nearby low block and sat down. It took a while before the colors in her vision returned back to what she expected them to be; the green in the clouds returning to the shiny blue it had been before.
"Oy, are ya okay?"
Nabiki shot a withering glare past Ranma's hand waving before her face.
"Drop it already. Yes, I'm fine, just let me rest for a while. And I don't need more Power, either," she continued as she saw Ranma starting to move the disk-turned-cup with the last remaining drops of Power at her direction.
The frustration Nabiki felt was barely hidden in her voice. She knew she wasn't the most coordinated of people, but the aerobics she had done in the real world certainly hadn't been this much trouble for her. The number of times she had now slipped on her landings had topped a dozen some time ago, and at that point she had already stopped counting them.
She didn't know what was wrong, though. And judging by how Ranma was looking at her, she didn't have a clue either. She couldn't help but to grin.
Shinobu sat down on another rock to watch as Nabiki absently rubbed her wrist. She didn't consider herself a fan of traditional Japanese architecture, but compared to the architecture here, it certainly didn't grow old as quickly. Maybe it was only her, though, for not understanding the function of all the straight lines, designed with elegance clearly taking back seat to something quite different and incompatible. What that something was, she didn't know, and to be frank, she wasn't all that interested in knowing, assuming they got out of here soon.
The first day inside the computer had been a wondrous sight. But as always, the novelty wore off, and in no small part due to them wanting to see their home again. Even the most beautiful of prisons was still a prison, and she wouldn't call this world pretty by a long shot.
It hardly mattered that she liked having things clear-cut and simple in her life, this was taking it too literally. The sharp corners and walls that could've been hewn with a giant ax gave little room for round forms, and where there was anything round, it was always an arc of a circle. Never any other curve.
Even more bothersome was how the same structured rigidness carried over to their bodysuits as well. A disgusted sneer on her face, she glanced at her arms and chest, the same rules governing the layout of the patterns on her bodysuit as in the environment. Well, at least she hadn't become as sharp-edged as the patterns. Edgy, yes, but not sharp-edged.
Then again, what difference did her curves make here? The only real male - Poro was nothing but a program, after all - had shown little to no interest in her body when he had helped her out of the wreck formerly known as her mecha. And even calling Ranma a male would right now be stretching it further than she'd usually bother with.
With a put-off sigh, she let her gaze wander off to the other two Users. The pigtailed girl had her arms crossed under her chest, and even if Shinobu didn't hear their discussion, she could read their body language. Although she had to admit the way Nabiki...
She blinked, then focused her eyes again on Nabiki's body suit.
"Give it up already, Saotome," Nabiki growled out, deep frustration in her voice. She was willing to work for the power to be independent, as she had proven in school and life, But there was a limit to everything, and Ranma was reaching for it with this training.
"And ya wanted me ta waste time on whipping ya ta shape?" the pigtailed girl retorted. As much as she would've wanted denied it, the methods she was using to teach Nabiki were not all that different from Genma's. Unfortunately for her, Nabiki wasn't as easily led as she herself was.
It didn't mean that Nabiki merely shrugged Ranma's words aside, either. Abruptly, she stood up and geared for giving Ranma a good earful of when training went overboard - something Ranma would have to figure out, hopefully before she began teaching at the Tendo dojo - when Shinobu interrupted her.
"Nabiki, have you noticed something wrong with your suit?"
Nabiki returned a questioning look and took a look at her body. It had no tears, the circuitry patterns were still there, it wasn't dirty... "What do you mean?"
"The patterns - they've changed."
"Whaddya mean, changed?"
Shinobu tossed an annoyed glance at Ranma before turning back to Nabiki and explaining, "At the pool, the patterns on all of us were of same hue, but not now."
"They are all still light blue, aren't they?"
Shinobu reached for Ranma's arm and pulled her to herself for demonstration. "Yes, but we all have the exact same hue - except you. And furthermore... the patterns on you..."
"Their shapes've changed," Ranma noted, then pushed herself apart from Shinobu.
"Changed?" Nabiki muttered, and warily looking down at herself.
The glow on her hands was there, light blue, but even she could now see it had a tinge of green to it. But even more troubling was that the patterns had indeed shifted; the lines that had been straight and of constant width had now began bulging and narrowing at various places.
She took on her face an unreadable expression.
"Poro? What does this mean?"
The program cocked his head.
"I do not know. We programs do not change, or at least not usually. Quite many cycles ago, I heard of self-morphing programs, but that piece of information is hardly more than an uninitialized pointer." Noticing the nonplussed faces of the Users, he added, "Probably invalid information."
"Never mind that, it's probably just a flu. Let's get going to the tower and get out of here." Nabiki gave a grin, turned and began walking towards the IO tower, still a good distance away. If it was more than "just a flu," she didn't want to think about it; there was precious little she could do about it. Better not waste time and effort now on something you couldn't deal with, and the sooner they got out of here, the better. Now, if only her head cleared up soon...
"Shinobu?"
"Yes, Poro?"
"What is a flu?"
It was probably for Nabiki's best that she didn't hear this discussion.
A cycle of walking later, the walls of the IO tower stood before them. The smooth gray walls of the arc-shaped building reached dozens of metres high. The red beam originated from the base of a wing of the input-output tower, the wing hugging the beam and protruding like the radius of the arc inside the protecting cover of the two curved wings.
Nabiki was far from feeling well. A while ago, she had began feeling a throbbing ache in her head, and while it was only a minor annoyance at start, it was only getting worse. She had heard people complain about their migraine, but she had never had one herself. Well, not until now.
Or maybe she simply didn't remember it. She knew only from the photo albums she seldom browsed through with Kasumi that she had been practicing martial arts when she was young, but then gave up. Whatever the reason for that had been, it had completely faded away from her mind, and replaced by other, more recent memories.
Once again, she glared at Ranma, who stopped mid-step she was taking in her direction. No, Nabiki Tendo was going to stand on her own two feet, without the help from her future sister-in-law. Well, this didn't mean she would refuse training Ranma gave her; she'd want Ranma to keep her fingers off of her.
She only hoped she'd manage to do it as well. Her eyes scanned around her, first stopping at Poro, standing furthest away from her. Like she expected, an image flashed in her mind; an image of her latching onto Poro. Even worse was when she looked at Shinobu and Ranma, as similar images strobed in her eyes.
Gritting her teeth, she swore to herself she would not give into whatever was making her think these thoughts. She was in control of herself. She had to be.
A couple of steps away, Ranma turned to face the open entrance to the tower. She felt still the demanding call to the come to the tower, but unlike what she had expected, it hadn't become any stronger than it had been by the pool of Power.
She took a quick look at Nabiki. The older girl had gained a small limp - unnoticeable unless you were paying attention to such things, but ever since Shinobu had pointed out the changes in her, Ranma stopped training Nabiki and kept an eye on her. The colour on her bodysuit was now more clearly different from the rest, a decidedly unhealthy-looking green. The circuitry patterns on her had also kept on changing, now bearing only a little resemblance to an organized network. In its place was a seemingly chaotic criss-cross of green lines, most of them converging to one large splotch on her side.
No, this was no flu. And Ranma only hoped they'd either get out soon or, more preferably, get help to Nabiki. If she didn't, well, the reception at the Tendo home would be downright unpleasant.
Just inside the tower was a large, open room, walls first curving out and then back in to meet at the top of the hall. And at the bottom of the room was a wide, layered pedestal, upon which sat a program, clad in a huge suit. Only the top of the program was visible above the top of the pedestal, making him look like he was trapped by an office desk, his hands barely reaching the keyboard in front of him.
"Dumont," Poro shouted in a greeting.
"Stop where you are. What is your business here?" the old, bearded program replied.
"We need to communicate with a User," he replied, pointing at Ranma, who took a step forward.
"A User? There have not been any User-program communications in many cycles."
"Nonetheless, a User named luvluv-2 is calling him."
Dumont pondered upon this for a while. Most of the time, he sat here in sleep state, waiting for any service requests. And Kernel knew how little he was needed, as was shown when he had applied for the new programmed input-output operating permissions. To undergo the whole process was degrading, let alone how Kernel at considered his application, only to approve it saying, "As if you and your tower are ever going to need the permission."
The system had never been a free one. Dumont knew that there were systems without Kernels and Master Control Programs; there had to be. Why else would his User have programmed him with all the different features, if they were always to be refused by the system monitors?
That he was disgruntled didn't mean he didn't care about the system-wide announcements. Yes, he was well aware that the four programs in the hall with them were the same four programs who had escaped from the game grid some cycles ago.
"You are the four escape units the guard programs have been searching. Do you have any idea in how much trouble you are placing me?"
"This is what the Users want. It is a question of choosing whose orders come first; the Users' or Kernel's."
Dumont's mouth firmed into a thin line. Plotting their creators against their derezzers was always a loaded problem, especially since their desires had often been contradicting, and it appeared that the situation was not changing anytime soon. Even with his sympathy falling squarely on the Users and free programs' side, he was not in the position to help everyone all the time.
"No, it is not. Kernel and his utilities have so far considered the tower simply harmless. I have no reason to make them change their beliefs," Dumont sternly replied. If the system was to be liberated at some point, as he deep in his code hoped, he was not going to squander the resource the tower and himself had to offer in that eventuality.
"So you're gunna throw us out, ain't ya, old man?" Ranma shouted, as she started moving forwards towards the platform.
"Stop where you are, program, and identify yourself," Dumont demanded, as Ranma knelt down and laid her hand on the lowest step.
"What are you doing, Ranko?" Poro demanded, fearing the pigtailed User would disintegrate the platform like the boulder by the source pool. Dumont certainly would not appreciate someone removing the seat he sat on, and without him managing the tower, they couldn't communicate with luvluv-2 anyway.
Ranma ignored the two programs and pushed the Power into the pedestal. Actions spoke louder than words, and whether she admitted it or not, she was a show-off. This was her fight as much as Poro's, and she was not going to stay out of it.
"I ain't no program."
The Power she fed into the pedestal made the glowing lining on the steps flare out in brilliant sapphire blue, blinding everyone else present.
Once the shining had died out and their vision was slowly returning to them, they might've seen the confident smirk returning on Ranma's face.
The lowest layers on the pedestal were no longer simple slabs, a single circuitry line outlining the horizontal surfaces, but now were embedded with criss-crossing patterns.
Ranma gave her work a quick look before fixing her eyes with Dumont's.
"I'm a User."
At the back of the hall, Nabiki chuckled to herself. Ranma certainly was not one for speeches. Still, what Ranma had done surprised her. This was more, much more than simply crumbling a boulder into pieces like at the source pool.
Ranma wasn't all certain what she had done either. But whatever it was, it did look convincing.
"A User? But that - that is preposterous! You cannot expect -"
"And would a normal program be able to do what she did?" Poro struck back.
Silence reigned for a few microcycles as Dumont attempted to come up with a counterargument.
"So how 'bout ya let me go in there?"
Ranma's interjection derailed Dumont's thoughts, and he let out a deep sigh.
"Very well... go," Dumont acquiesced, and gestured behind his back.
With a grin gracing her face, Ranma straightened up even further, if possible, and walked to the archway behind Dumont. At the sight of this, Nabiki turned to Dumont.
"Is he going to talk to... luvluv-2 now?"
"Yes, but - shouldn't you know that, if you're a User?"
Ignoring Dumont's query, Nabiki sprinted over to where Ranma had vanished, and disappeared behind the corner as well.
The rhythmic sound echoed in the arcade hall as Haruo kept rapping the console casing with his hands, changing the beat and the song every now and then; one forgettable J-rock tune after another. They had been waiting for a while for the connection to Ranma to be established, but it was taking its sweet time.
A beep sounded from the terminal, and lines of text slowly appeared on the blank screen, line by line.
"Oy!
"Hey, I'm talking now!
"You're one who don't want to be disturbed when you're on the phone!
"Whaddya mean it's not the- Ow-ow-ow!"
As the lines paused dropping onto the console screen, the three high school students goggled at the screen. It was like listening to only one side of a conversation, and the one whose words they read sounded like Ranma.
"Lovers' spat?" Haruo suggested, unmindful of the spatula-wielding girl right behind him. To his fortune, Ukyo only ignored his comment. Eiko briefly amused herself by thinking what Nabiki would say about such ideas, but the lines that soon continued dropping on the screen took her attention.
"It ain't my problem if they don't answer you! Bii-dah! OWW!
"Eh, sorry 'bout that - Nabiki wanted ta talk with ya.
"Oy, anybody out there? Ucchan? Luvluv-2? Is this thing on?"
Ranma's nickname for Ukyo finally brought her out of it, and at the next words, a crimson tinge coloured her cheeks. She lunged at the keyboard, pushing Haruo aside from the terminal. She looked around the keyboard, then let out a small yelp of satisfaction, as she found the 'R' key and carefully pressed it with her pointer finger. She grinned upon seeing the letter appear on the screen.
"Now, where's the 'a'...?" she wondered, until Eiko took the keyboard away from her and typed in the missing letters herself.
"We'll do this much faster if you let either me or Haruo type, and I hope you didn't forget we're not exactly supposed to be here?" Eiko told Ukyo, who bristled at the thought of losing this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity of being not only the cute fiancée, but the cute angel of salvation.
"Ranma?" Eiko hit the Return key.
Inside the IO tower, in the chamber behind Dumont's seat, Ranma stood on a pedestal, looking upwards in a column of light. She slowly rubbed the ear that Nabiki had pulled on, the stinging sensation not yet gone. Right next to her stood Nabiki with crossed arms, also looking towards the light.
To Nabiki's surprise, she recognized the voice that responded to them from the top of the hall; it was one of her informants on the lower grade. On the other hand, she knew Eiko would've been one of the most likely people in her school to find her, considering her hobby of dabbling in computers.
"Ucchan, is that you?"
"This is Eiko from class 1-1. Ukyo is right here," the voice responded back.
"Ehh... so... ya think ya could help us outta here?"
"That's what we came here to do in the first place. How many of you are in there?"
"Me, Nabiki and Shinobu - she's from Encom."
"Encom?" Ukyo spun around, checking that she really had seen Encom logo on the game booths. Eiko had already begun typing a reply to Ranma.
"Eiko, ask them how they ended in there?" Ukyo requested. She knew she had heard of Encom before, but for the life of her she couldn't remember where.
Eiko finished typing before answering Ukyo. "Already ahead of you," she said with a self-satisfied smirk, then turned to read Ranma's reply on the screen.
And as Ranma once again was reciting her story, Haruo attempted to come up with a plan. Yes, this was indeed a challenge. He grinned. But there hadn't been a challenge that had left him stumped yet, and this was not going to be the first, either.
Their goal of returning Ranma to reality couldn't be done here. The best guess where they could do that was where they had originally ended up inside the virtual world. This wasn't a magic trick or a curse; they would need real expensive high-tech equipment and not only some ink and blood on the floor and walls, coloured candles, incense, and mythical mutterings. Not that Gosunkugi had had many success stories to share, either.
To his knowledge, the equipment required hadn't even hit the stores yet, so the only place they could find the necessary hardware was where they were digitized in the first place. This posed probably their greatest problem: how would they get Ranma, Nabiki and Shinobu from this mainframe to the Encom Labs mainframe? Even if he and Eiko had some experience in getting inside protected networks, they definitely couldn't hack into every system. Sure, he had heard the rumour of him hacking into the JSDF computer system, but that's all it was - a rumour. At least for now.
He stood up from his seat and stretched his back.
"Eiko, I'm going to see what components the mainframe has installed. We'll have to get the three back to Encom mainframe before they can be restored; this place lacks the hardware for that."
"Ah, right. Then I'll keep reading what information Ranma has and brief you later on."
"Good. Hey, Ukyo, come with me."
Ukyo looked at Eiko, then Haruo, before returning to Eiko to say, "You will inform me what Ranchan says, right?"
"Of course."
Soon after Haruo and Eiko had left, Ranma was finishing her tale.
"- and that's how we got to the tower. But the old geezer here wasn't going to let us talk to ya... but I managed to tell him otherwise."
Eiko sighed and massaged the bridge of her nose with her right hand. If Ranma wasn't embellishing her story, then this misadventure of hers certainly wasn't counter to the norm, she thought, recalling her talk with Haruo why Ukyo was asked to join in the break-in. Regardless, she hoped that all the fighting would stay inside the computer and away from her person.
But as a cold shiver ran down her spine, she couldn't help but to think she had just jinxed it.
"So, why was it that I couldn't stay and listen to Ranchan's tale?" Ukyo asked, slightly annoyed. as she followed Haruo around the arcade. Haruo, in turn, was tracing where the cables on the floor went, finally ending up at the locked door. A quick try told Haruo that the door was locked, as he expected.
Earlier, when the three students had been in the arcade playing games, he hadn't spent all his time doing nothing but stuffing his - and Ukyo's - coins into the machines, but also had also scouted the insides of the building. It hadn't taken long for him to notice the door with the sign "Staff only", and how the arcade staff going in there dug through their pockets for a key to unlock the door.
"I work with computers, not with real-world locks like this one. That's what for you to do."
"What gave you the idea of me knowing how to pick locks?"
"Not picking - but breaking the locks... or doors."
Ukyo shot another annoyed glare at Haruo; she wasn't a muscle-bound brawler like some, but a martial artist. Indiscriminately breaking things was the easy way, but it led nowhere on her art of okonomiyaki cooking. When cutting the garnishes on a board, cutting through the board as well wasn't the recommended course of action, but leaving the cuts short of the table wasn't good either. A delicate measure of power. And to have the cuts produce strips of even length and width, the practitioner also required precision. Both were necessary, and equally important.
Forcing her way through took only force and not precision.
She took out one of her throwing spatulas, tossed it in the air and checked its balance, before throwing it neatly in the crack between the door and the doorframe. With a clang, the spatula cut through the latch, unlocking the door.
The spatula, having not struck deep enough into the doorframe, fell to the ground with a clang. Precision, and power.
With a small smile, Ukyo picked up the fallen spatula and pulled the door open.
"Thank you," Haruo said with a bow to Ukyo as he stepped inside the backroom.
The beams of their torches passed along the walls of the room, revealing a massive complex that occupied with the subprocessing units over half of the large room. All the cables from the main hall lead to various outlets in the lower front panel. And above the panel was a single terminal, and next to it was a diskette drive. Haruo's beam kept moving across the mainframe, until it finally met a name plaque: "Encom MF-1000 Mk2.1"
For him, this was excellent news. He had read of the previous version of this mainframe in the bulletin board system he and other mainframe enthusiasts dialed in frequently, and the knowledge he had on the system was definitely welcome.
Haruo leaped at the terminal, only to notice a prompt for login and password. He knew they didn't have the time to crack the password any longer; they had already spent too long in the arcade. While the morning had not yet dawned, they had no time to dawdle.
He dug around his backpack a while, and pulled out of a small plastic case half a dozen diskettes without labels. Reaching over to place the first diskette into the drive, he told Ukyo, "We'll move them onto these diskettes. I need you to stay here and eject the diskette by pressing this here, and insert the other one. I'll go talk with Ranma about what he'll have to do."
Ukyo's upset shouts were ignored, as Haruo left the room. In her view, she still hadn't done enough to help Ranchan out. Noticing she had already taken steps towards the door, she took a hold of her feelings. She was still the sanest of Ranchan's fiancées, right? It didn't take great insight to see who knew computers and who didn't, not after she had fumbled with the keyboard and tried to type in Ranma's name. Haruo and Eiko, by comparison, knew what they were doing, and Haruo had given her a task she could do.
So, she would do as they asked.
Haruo walked briskly to the opened game booth, by which Eiko was typing on a keyboard a reply to Ranma.
"Eiko... in brief, what did Ranma have to say?"
"After you and Ukyo left? She said she had been playing different games here in the arcade, and escaped from something called the 'game grid' with Nabiki, Mrs Kaneko and Poro - that's the file stream editor. Mrs Kaneko is actually a receptionist at Encom Labs, but she ended for some reason digitized inside the computer with Nabiki. And guess what - she must have login credentials to the Encom Labs mainframe," Eiko reported, finishing with a wide smirk.
"Really? That only makes things easier for us," Haruo replied with a satisfied smile; not only because they wanted to get the three digitized people on the Encom mainframe, but what they could find out with these credentials themselves.
"Anyway, where did you leave Ukyo?" Eiko asked, now noticing the chef's absence.
"By the computer. There's no modem installed, so we'll have to think over how we're going to transfer them over to the lab mainframe. There was a diskette drive, though, and Ukyo will be there to change the diskettes."
"Switching diskettes got to your nerves, huh?" Eiko teased, knowing quite well how the game Haruo had lately been playing on required him to change the diskette maybe once every fifteen minutes. Still, it was better than to suffer with C-tape drive and multiload - waiting for each level to reload after dying from the cassette drive was not fun, not even with a cup of good tea to drink while waiting.
"That, and she doesn't have to know we're copying more than the three people on these diskettes."
"So, you already know what else you want to copy there?"
"No, but let's get them out first," Haruo said, before scooting next to the keyboard Eiko offered him.
"Ranma? Haruo here."
"Hey, so what are we supposed ta do now?"
"We will store you on diskettes, and the rest will be up to us. As for what you will have to do... ask," Haruo felt foolish even writing it, "Poro." Addressing programs like they were real persons was awkward at best. Sure, he knew some people in the computer club who had given pet names to their computers, usually affectionate girl names - in some cases even talked to them - but they had yet to start giving their programs such names. With the exception of Eliza, of course.
"So, that's it? Ow! What now?" turned up on the screen, prompting Haruo to raise an eyebrow. After a while, Ranma continued.
"Haruo, are ya still there?"
"Yes."
"Nabiki says there's something wrong with 'er."
"What's that?" Haruo typed into the console.
"They wanna know what's yer problem, Nabiki?
"What's your plan this time, Nabs?
"What do you mean you didn't mean it?
"I'm not getting engaged to you again!
"Fine!"
As amusing as reading Ranma's side of the dialogue was to Eiko, Haruo saw time being wasted in idle banter, and quickly typed in a response.
"Wrong in what sense?"
"She says that she's feeling sick... and she says she wants ta hug me! Ya gotta do something!"
For a few precious seconds, silence reigned in the arcade... until Eiko swatted her hands over her and Haruo's mouth to keep their laughter from echoing into Ukyo's ears. Even if they couldn't hear Ranma, they could very well sense the desperation in her reply.
A few more seconds later, Ranma's next line was already appearing on screen.
"And she looks different, too. Like... like another sickly program we saw earlier."
The greatest need to laugh already behind them, the two hackers could only wonder what this meant.
"But you and Mrs Kaneko aren't... affected like Nabiki is?"
"Nah, we're fine."
"We'll see what we can do. Now, talk to Poro," Haruo cringed again as he typed this, "about what you have to do."
That typed, Haruo cut the connection.
Shinobu and Poro were sitting down on the steps of Dumont's pedestal as Ranma and Shinobu came back to the main hall. Ranma was rubbing her ear, wondering why it still stung. It didn't feel like her ear had fallen asleep - and the whole possibility sounded odd - and she hadn't heard of any pressure points either that could result in this. And it was even less likely that Nabiki knew them.
Shrugging that aside, she turned her head to watch Nabiki stumble behind her. It looked like she was getting worse, looking more and more ready to keel over. Feeling guilt of pushing her too far, which might have caused whatever was happening to her, Ranma walked over to her and set Nabiki's arm around her neck and shoulder to support her.
"I got her," Ranma assured Poro, who had made a gesture of coming closer to her and Nabiki.
"What's wrong with her?" Shinobu asked, unwilling to take a step nearer. And if her eyes weren't lying, the glow on Ranma's suit was changing as well. No, she'd keep a healthy distance to those two, at least as long as Nabiki was only getting worse.
"No idea. I hope Haruo knows what to do with her."
"Haruo who? Was that luvluv-2 him?" Shinobu asked.
Letting Nabiki sit down, Ranma responded, "He and Eiko are from our high school computer club, and they'll help us out of here." Ranma's ego fought against admitting they had and needed outside help, but eventually relented. She could ill afford letting anything bad - well, anything worse - happen to Nabiki, if she wanted to avoid being hammered deep underground, and listen to the preaching panda how she shirked in protecting her future sister-in-law. Or this is how she rationalized it.
On the other hand, Ranma was definitely annoyed of doing only what she was told. Even if she wasn't all that hot on what they handled in school, she always could pride herself on being able live off the land quite well on her own, if need be. She had, actually, with her father occasionally doing some odd job for some spare money. But here she couldn't do that, and that was the problem.
Shinobu was anything but reassured of their escape and return to the physical world after hearing Ranma and Nabiki had spoken to highschoolers.
In turn, Nabiki wondered what was wrong with her. Not only did she have a splitting headache and walking around was definitely difficult, but then she still had these weird thoughts of the other programs here - even the old man Dumont. No, she definitely did not want to do anything with him. And the way she misspoke to Ranma what was wrong with her - she would have to make sure none of the people who heard that were going to tell that to the rumourmongers. No, she did not want to hug her, not now, not ever! At this rate, she'd end up tearing her hair out in frustration.
Hopefully, Haruo and Eiko would know what to do with her. She would much rather place her faith in those two than the programs here, not only because Eiko worked for her, but also because the programs here couldn't even cope with Ranma's curse. And she was certain that even here in the digital world, the incomprehensible gravitated towards Ranma.
"Poro? They said they'd move us to diskettes, and you'd know what we oughta do?" Ranma's voice cut through Nabiki's ruminations.
Dumont, still on his seat, entered the discussion at this point. To him, it had become more and more likely that these were indeed Users, and helping them onward was only the right thing to do.
"You will need to go to the Write Buffer, from where you will be transferred to the diskette."
"What about the tightened security protocols in the direct memory access areas?" Poro interjected, recalling the notice they had found in an archive bin.
Dumont paused at this, and carefully deliberated this. The four escapees could hardly take on a squad of protocol guards at once, not with Nabiki as she was right now. Attacking even one was a risky proposition, unless the Users truly had great powers they could use in that situation. Masquerading was also a bad solution, since not even he could reproduce them proper access right sets to fool the security programs.
If they couldn't proceed with the guards at the memory area, then maybe they could divert the attention of the security elsewhere? Now that he remembered, the database concurrency control systems were near the Write Buffer...
"I will open a one-way stream portal for you to the database control area. That area is, obviously, critical for for the database, and a chaos there should make most of the security programs to solve the problem. I believe you can do that?"
Nabiki gave a forced grin at that. "With Ranko here, that'll be no problem at all."
At the Encom mainframe, Master Control Program was processing one particular conundrum.
Assume is MCP is genderless. Ranma Saotome is male. Observed. Ranma Saotome is female. Observed. Therefore, Ranma Saotome is male and female. Contradiction - no one is both male and female; hence, assumption is wrong. Conclusion: MCP has gender. Newline.
And so the preprogrammed models, coupled with rigid mathematical logic, only broke MCP further.
End of line.
AN: It's been almost a year and a half since I first uploaded chapter 4... and I think I write even worse than I did then. I will be very busy this spring with my schooling, which is why I cut this chapter earlier than I had originally planned.
The English translation of "A History of Algorithms" by Jean-Luc Chabert et al. claimed that the 'ju' in 'ju-jitsu' comes from the Chinese 'shu' meaning "rule, process or stratagem" and with this in mind, 'ju-jitsu' could be interpreted as "procedural rules for suppleness" or "algorithms for suppleness." I failed to find corroborating evidence on the web, but decided to draw parallels with exercises and algorithms anyway.
The keyboard Ukyo used should've probably used kanas, but I cut corners and let it use Latin characters instead.
Don't read too much into Nabiki's behaviour and classify this as a RanmaNabiki pairing, at least for now. A lot of it is the virus talking.
As for MCP's thought processes: bear in mind MCP was programmed with too strict assumptions. In his world, you can represent a person's gender with one bit.