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 originally Rumiko Takahashi's and the latter.. Walt Disney Company's? Steven Lisberger's? And whoever they've given/sold/transferred their rights to. I'm not and won't be making any money off of this.

Chapter 6: On the Run

The yellow glow from the stream portal quickly faded from Ranma's vision as she landed on the portal endpoint. Looking over the place where the portal Dumont had opened had taken them, her eyes widened at the sight. Granted, she had seen many unbelievable things here already, but only the Write Buffer tower was anything compared to this.

The construct was a huge complex of cylinder-shaped towers with bridges of light connecting them at various heights. Their luminosity varied, pulsating with no apparent rhythm, but as the pulses reached the destination tower, more circuitry patterns lit up on the side of the tower before fading back to the dark gray background.

And all this was atop of a base that, while more monolithic in appearance, was certainly no less intricately shaped. Indeed, most of the shapes Ranma and the other Users had seen before were not particularly detailed, most resembling only large building blocks with some edges clipped, and some comparatively simple circuit decorations on them. This complex, however, was no simple geometric shape, nor were the etchings possible to describe in as few words as usual. And it didn't take an expert in modern art to see this.

Although, she wasn't so sure she could call the glow patterns mere 'decorations.' She still didn't know what they were, but after seeing Dumont open the stream portal and the patterns light up right underneath it, she would've bet... well, a week's free lunches that they were connected. Especially since she didn't have to hide her bad poker face to win the bet.

Nabiki, now leaning on Ranma's shoulder, would've definitely agreed, if only the crippled User had been feeling any better. Instead, she kept her eyes closed and waited for the effects the portal had on her vision to disappear. Meanwhile, Ranma guided her to sit on a nearby slab.

Shinobu and Poro had stepped into the portal before the younger Users, and now stood some metres ahead of them, looking at the database system. At the base they saw a wide entrance in which a rapid stream of tugs vanished, and a somewhat smaller one from where tugs appeared before disappearing behind the archive stacks surrounding the database.

With Nabiki now sitting still, Ranma walked over to the other two escapees, casting a brief look a the huge corkscrew-like tower to her left. It was going to be a long, long walk up there again... but before that, they'd have to get to that stack of pipes and chimneys, or that's what the complex looked like to her.

"So that's where we're gunna go?"

"Indeed. I hope we can find out how to disrupt the system... I have not heard of any data being lost since the latest version was installed."

Seemingly mulling over something for a few microcycles, Shinobu turned to face Ranma and Nabiki, who now opened her eyes.

"Should Nabiki come in there in her condition at all?" she inquired, nodding her head at the Tendo.

An understanding dawning on her face, Ranma looked at Nabiki.

"Don't you even think about leaving me here," Nabiki snarled low, her gaze focusing on Ranma. "You will take me to the Write Buffer, got it? What was the martial artists' creed again?" she asked, then continuing with obvious distaste at her own words, "Defend the weak?"

Ranma's face tightened in a scowl. She wasn't planning on ditching Nabiki, but as a martial artist, she couldn't help but to balk at the thought of not going in that huge complex herself.

As if reading Ranma's thoughts, Shinobu interrupted her line before she even got started.

"She has a point. You're the... martial artist, right? So you'd be better off guarding her than us."

"Ranma, let's get going," Nabiki said, standing up, if only a bit wobbly. She turned towards Poro and Shinobu and cast a meaningful look at the latter. "We'll see you at the Buffer then."

"Don't worry about us - we'll make it out just fine," Shinobu assured. A hint of smile appeared at the corner of her mouth. "Just try to make it up there by the time we're done."

Ranma pivoted quickly towards Shinobu. "Challenge taken an' accepted."

Half a cycle after the team of fugitives had split, Ranma was taking a good look ahead of them. The Corkscrew Tower, as she had named the tower with the Write Buffer for the lack of any better name, looked far more intimidating from down here than up there.

Although the root of the tower with the Write Buffer was a few microcycles' straight walk from Ranma and Nabiki's current position, it didn't mean the path there was only a cakewalk, especially with protocol guards and recognizers moving around in abundance. Indeed, running out in the open was as good as running for the gallows - or rather, to the debugger and then the null device. Not that Ranma knew what debuggers or the null device were, but it was bad.

At least the structures that lined their way to the root of the tower provided them with enough nooks and crannies for them to hide in. Right now, they were once again sneaking in a low trench that was in some places lined with those nondescript crates they had been hiding behind. The crates were a poor mask if they had to stay still; they had to move in pace with the guards passing by to keep themselves hidden from the guards. But when the walkway they were following was either lined with a high wall or a deep chasm, they were much better than nothing.

Nabiki needed a breather to recover once every five microcycles, and it had been four microcycles already since their last break. A few more microcycles walk from their position, they could see a large bridge crossing over a chasm, and ending at the base of the Corkscrew Tower.

Ranma heard again the tell-tale sputtering of a recognizer tug, this time coming from behind them. She took a quick glance around them, in search for their next hiding place. The trench and the crates weren't enough of visual cover, since the recognizer had no problems seeing over them. And Ranma had certainly learned not to be so foolhardy to challenge a recognizer, a vehicle that could squash her in bits and pieces without any problems... if they only saw and caught up with her.

To their right: an open walkway and a deep chasm. To their left: wall. Going backwards or staying put wasn't an option either, and going up or down, those weren't going to help them even if they knew how to fly or burrow like moles... burrow. That gave Ranma a pause and made her briefly stop in her tracks.

Nabiki, who had now heard the sounds as well, was getting anxious herself as well, and Ranma's sudden stop surprised her.

"What are you waiting for, can't you hear the tug coming?"

Not replying, Ranma only punched the wall hard, channeling some Power into it. She didn't want to pass out, not without a Power source nearby. She could use only a limited amount of her reserves, but the training she had done on Power conservation and use on their way to the IO tower paid off.

Like when she had punched a boulder by the source pool, a piece of the wall now crumbled apart, revealing a cave several metres deep. She quickly took a hold of Nabiki and started pulling her towards the hole, when the older girl exclaimed, "Stop wasting the time, they'll notice the hole just as well they'd see us!" and started limping forward in the trench. If they hurried, they might manage to dodge the recognizer in the next intersection, which she hoped to be soon after the next turn on the walkway.

The next thing she noticed was herself losing both breath and footing as Ranma slung her over her shoulder and started sprinting towards the intersection.

It took only a moment for them to turn the corner to the left. To their distress, they only saw the road open before them for a long stretch, far longer than they'd manage to run before the recognizer would catch them.

Nabiki still hanging on her shoulders, Ranma took a deep breath to gather herself. She was the best martial artist around here, and she was going to keep things that way! She only had to run-slash-leap as fast as she did in the real world with ki-infused legs.

In an attempt to repeat that skill, she focused some of her remaining Power in her legs, making their glow brighter and brighter, but elsewhere on her body, the circuitry shapes darkened and lost their vividness.

Without another preamble, she launched herself and Nabiki towards the crossroads. The ground blurred beneath her as she ran as fast as she could, keeping Nabiki on her shoulders somewhat steady. Her vision grew dim at the borders as she focused the Power she had on her legs.

As one fourth of the distance lay behind them, the ground shook, making Ranma nearly trip over. To her and Nabiki's luck, she regained her footing instinctively, but slowed down to look for the cause of the tremors.

Nabiki gaped at the top of the recognizer tug now visible over the top of the wall. Then Ranma turned around to look at it herself, spinning Nabiki around and making her lose her sight of the tug.

"What's it doing?"

It sounded like the engines - or whatever was the force driving the recognizer - had died down, and the bracket-like hooks under the tug had turned around and moved right underneath, making the tug now look like a giant standing on one leg. Leg that was placed at...

"It must've blocked the hole you blew in the wall," Nabiki noted, now that she had struggled herself down from Ranma's shoulder. She couldn't believe what luck they had. If Ranma hadn't blown the hole without thinking, the recognizer would've seen them by now. If she hadn't dragged Ranma onward, they'd be nicely holed up in the cave.

Ranma merely scratched the back of her head sheepishly. The unsaid compliment was the best she could've expected to get from Nabiki back in Tokyo, or even more than she could ever expect to get. In a random offshoot of a thought she wondered if whatever disease Nabiki had was making her act this strange.

Before she could think about this any more, Nabiki broke in with her comment. They had to find a place to take a breather and get away from the open area by the time the tug moved on, or guards came to check just what the recognizer had found.

Ranma picked up Nabiki again and began running towards the intersection. There she could see a pile of crates that weren't piled in straight lines, but leaving a clear path for climbing up halfway to the top, from there on to a ledge, and finally to a cavity well above the street level. It was well out of sight from the passing guards, and the crates would also shield the two fugitives from the sharp sensors recognizer tugs had.

The only small problem was in getting also Nabiki up there, but they both managed to get up to the ledge easily enough.

Both of them leaned against the wall, relaxing while knowing they couldn't be spotted from the walkway. Not only did Nabiki need to catch her breath, but Ranma welcomed the chance to recuperate as well. Not that she showed it, though, but the Power she had expended was very slow in returning.

They sat there in comfortable silence, until Nabiki had started feeling a bit better. She rolled over to her side and turned her head to Ranma.

"What's gotten to you, Saotome?"

"Whaddya mean? Ain't got nothing wrong with me!"

"Please, haven't you learned already you can't fool me even now? You've been in your girl form for a day now, haven't seen any way to turn back, and you're not in any kind of panic?" Nabiki sniffed, then continued in a fake soprano, "Aaah, I can't be a girl, I'm the man amongst men!"

Ranma fixed an annoyed glare at the older teen.

"Now, I ain't a book smart, but I know 'bout doing the important stuff first, ya know?"

"Could've fooled me," Nabiki thought to herself.

"And right now, we gotta get outta here."

"I ask again, what's gotten to you? Where's the macho bravado you only briefly flashed at the IO tower?"

Ranma moved his free hand to cup her breast and gave it a solid squeeze. "See these?"

"Haven't stopped you before, have they?"

With Nabiki not buying the excuse, Ranma only grumbled to herself and slightly shifted on her place. "It's not your problem, Nabiki."

"The hell it isn't. We're both stuck here, and that makes it my business."

A muted humming sound cut their discussion short and made them crawl over to the ledge and look down at the walkway. There, two black and red gleaming tanks made their way towards the still stationary recognizer, followed by a small squad of protocol guards. Both Users briefly thanked their luck that they hadn't stayed in the cave.

"We should get back on the road soon... they might comb through the neighbourhood thoroughly now that they've seen a sign of us," Nabiki muttered, attempting to remove the thoughts of physically attacking the guards walking down below. She didn't know why she was getting these odd impulses, but she didn't like it. At least she hadn't had such thoughts of Ranma after they left the IO tower. That would've made things awkward.

Banishing such thoughts from her mind, she looked at the horizon where the silhouette of the database system was visible. The ramp leading up to the Write Buffer didn't give them any hiding places, so they'd have to wait until all the system maintenance programs had left the tower, or prepare to fight them off. And fighting them off was out of the question. Although she had seen Ranma practice around with the disc she carried on her back, what kind of weapon would a frisbee make? All they could do for now was to wait for Shinobu and Poro create the diversion at the database.

She hated her situation from the bottom of her heart. Not only was she involuntarily and totally dependant on someone else accomplishing something, but she also felt she was losing control of something that had defined her for years now: her own mind.

For what could have possibly been more terrifying for the person whose guile and wits had kept her out of the rampaging martial artists' way?

Meanwhile, Shinobu and Poro had found their way to the main entrance of the database management system. First broad and wide, it narrowed to a point of having room for only one program to pass at a time... after taking a queue number.

For the tenth time in five cycles, Shinobu watched the ticket she held in her hand. "3,110,675," it read. "3,110,437," read a huge holographic display hanging from the ceiling of the waiting lobby. She couldn't slump down any further; she had done so far too many times by now.

"Does it always take this long waiting?"

"Yes. Requesting anything from the database demands a strict adherence to the protocol."

Frustrated, Shinobu stood up and began pacing around the lobby. "3,110,440," the display read now. It would be quite a while before their turn came up and they could go in through the gates before them. The lobby was full of different sorts of programs; some were purple, some were yellow, but none were red, the color Shinobu had already learned to associate with the system guards.

Then there were the gates. The entrance deeper into the database was a set of gates with revolving doors, obscuring whatever was behind them from sight.

And on the other side of the room, the open holes in the wall showed the ramp leading to the lobby. The database apparently was an important place here, considering the number of programs continuously entering the system. And constantly busy, too; a display next to the "now serving"-number told the number of programs currently inside the system... fifty-six at the moment.

As her habit was, she started looking for patterns around her. In Tokyo, this meant the way road pavement was laid, ceiling tiles, flower plantations, and so on. Every time a program stepped through the doors, they went in alone, even if there would've been just enough room for two to enter simultaneously.

And every time the doors closed, the counter telling the number of programs inside increased by one. Every now and then, at a seemingly random pace, the counter decreased as the programs apparently exited from the system to some other space than the lobby, keeping the number constantly just under sixty.

She looked again out through the window frame. To her distress, she saw a squad of five red-glowing programs heading their way, all probably in attempt to find the escapees. Not minding to use her elbows, she quickly made her way to the yawning stream editor.

"Get up, the guards are coming!" she hissed at Poro's left ear. That made the lethargic program stand up quickly, although Shinobu pulling on his arm definitely helped.

She dragged him from the arm, weaving between the programs that blocked their way to the revolving doors.

The entrance doors opened to let in five guards. A sharp rap of one shock staff on the floor was all it took to part the mass of programs standing in the middle of the lobby, revealing Shinobu and Poro almost at the doors.

"Suspend, conscripts!" the lead program ordered.

Ignoring the order, Shinobu forcibly pushed Poro into the next opening in the door and jumped herself in the same slot. It was a tight fit, but like water wheels, the door pushed them forward and onto the other side of the wall. Unseen to them, the holographic counter increased by one to fifty-seven.

"Stop executing the escape routine!" the guard programs shouted in the lobby.

As soon as Shinobu and Poro reached the other side and couldn't support themselves against the wall any longer, they hit the ground with a thump, Shinobu on top of Poro. She quickly rolled off of him and stood up, fearing the guards to come through the doors right after them.

A quick survey around them showed few places to hide. The inside of the database was riddled with translucent bridges in multiple levels crossing over large stacks of crates lying below ground level. At least the bridges had railings, as they certainly weren't wide. And wherever the bridges intersected, there were red and green traffic lights floating in mid-air.

Still, no matter where they were on the bridges, the guards could easily see them from the entrance point. And the only way forward was through the bridges.

"Get up!" she shouted, and started running towards the bridges, Poro following on her heels a moment later.

She picked at random a bridge, and by the time the first guard program got through the doors, they had already passed three intersections completely ignoring the traffic lights.

"Suspend those programs!" the lead guard ordered. The escapees were already so deep in the network of bridges that they could not directly see which way they should have gone. But there were five of them, so he ordered the other four to go after the conscripts on the bridge, while he himself would find the way to the exit and block it from unlawful programs.

Meanwhile, Shinobu and Poro had ended up in a queue of programs waiting for the light to turn green. A quick glance behind them was enough to make Shinobu push the programs before her down almost like domino blocks.

Stepping over the prone programs, Poro asked, "Where are we going?"

"Away from those guards!" she replied, waving a hand around her. The said guards had already managed to get so far off from the doors that they almost appeared to be all around them in the web-like set of bridges.

Running away from the red lights, she and Poro crashed in the next intersection into another program, who fell down on his back. Shaking the cobwebs from his head, he stood up and wondered which direction was he going anyway before picking one direction by chance.

He ended up going a way no program was supposed to go to from that intersection, not in this version of the database system.

Shinobu cursed. They had to find a way out of here! To her great frustration, the bridge network was so complex and full of twists and turns so that planning her movements ahead of time would've needed her to stand still to see exactly where she could and couldn't move. Standing still at the moment, though, was a bad idea, unless the guards had been moving to some central coordinated plan. That didn't appear to be the case, though, as the guards appeared to wander around the bridge network, not finding a good path to the runaways.

Still, when she was running in straight lines towards the next intersection, she couldn't help but to curse that she was in worse physical shape as the martial artist of the group, or that uppity girl. She was already getting tired, and if they stopped, the guards would certainly zero in on them. Even if she hadn't seen the effects of programs derezzing at the game grid - except for the disco dancer - the frog monster she had had to fight against on the game grid was one thing she didn't wish to face again. And that was assuming she'd be sent back to the game grid in the first place; she wasn't too keen on finding out the interrogation methods and other sentences this world provided.

No, this was not the time to think of those things, not as long as she had the exit to find. It wasn't to the top, since there weren't any exits there, just a number of crates and terminals. She couldn't see any on their level either, but the four guards were getting around her.

Shinobu did a double-take. Four guards? Weren't there five that she saw coming to the database? If these were four, then where was the fifth?

Her eyes scanned the whole hall. She couldn't see her at the bottom, near the stacks, but that didn't mean he wasn't there. He wasn't to the top, but... there he was, near the entrance doors but the door he was in front of wasn't a revolving door. And she was certain that all the doors from the lobby to here were revolving ones; she had spent a good while looking at them while waiting for their turn to enter the system.

And if the door wasn't an entrance, then it had to be an exit.

She looked a bit to the side, seeing nearby a large amount of programs stuck on a particularly long bridge. At the end of the bridge was an intersection, and the one program that appeared to be coming to the intersection from another direction appeared to be the same as the one she had pushed over some time ago. And now they were stuck on a bridge directly above the platform that had the exit doorway.

"If this qualified for the problem as the database, I'd want to benefit from it, too!" she thought to herself.

Poro, who had dutifully been following Shinobu as she raced the bridges over and over, took a speculative peek at the bridge. He doubted the bridge had been built for the load of that many programs. If the bridge collapsed, he'd feel responsible for the derezzing of the programs now on the bridge, because he hadn't warned them. The question wasn't that easy, though. If they didn't cause this disruption in the services, he'd be caught by the protocol guards again, and unlike Shinobu, he could understand what else the Kernel might do to them if they were caught. That was far from something as pleasant as the assignation to the game grids as a pedestrian inbetween fast-moving cars.

He only hoped the bridge wouldn't collapse, and that they'd find their way out of the hall without getting caught.

The hope was all in vain, though, as the bridge creaked under the excess load and with a loud screech broke, one end crashing down onto the platform level. The other end, however was left hanging up like a hinge.

The programs, kept from falling off the bridge due to the guardrails, tumbled down along the fallen bridge. The protocol guard, caught off-guard by the collapsing bridge, ended up buried under the dozens of programs.

As the movement on the bridge came to halt, the loudspeakers that had been quiet until now came to life. "Database integrity compromised," the speakers repeated while a translucent barrier appeared atop the record stacks at the hall bottom.

"Poro, can you see a way down there?" Shinobu shouted to Poro, a smile attempting to break through on her face. Things were going their way after all!

"Left in the next intersection, then right, then down the bridge!" he replied, attempting to overpower the loudspeaker's blaring, not masking either his relief of the programs not falling down to the bottom of the hall or guilt of having them hurt.

The guards still circling around the bridges were making their way towards the collapsed gangway as well. But in spite of their best attempts, they were still a good distance away from the two escapees as they ran down the ramp, holding on to the guard railings to secure their steps.

They gingerly stepped around the pile of programs at the bottom, and immediately ran to the exit where they hitched a ride on a tug out of the complex. From their ride they could see the spike of the Write Buffer tower.

Soon after them, the four guards reached the bottom of the wrecked bridge as well. Three of them went to pull the squad leader from underneath all the rubble and programs, while the fourth ran to the security rezzing station to call for backup in cleaning the mess.

MCP has gender. Proven. Corollary: MCP is male or female. Newline.

Ranma and Nabiki were still hiding on their perch when they noticed the traffic down on the road get much higher as security guards ran down the Corkscrew Tower ramp towards the database complex.

"Do ya think they're done now?" Ranma asked from Nabiki.

"In any case, this appears to be our chance, " she replied, stretching her arms wide. A good rest had done wonders to her, but she still felt awful... only not as awful as before. They'd still need to take breaks on the trip to the top if she was to walk up there on her own feet, but Ranma would probably be able to carry her if the need arose. Turning her thoughts away from the trip ahead, she settled to watch the flow of protocol guards and whatnot coming down from the tower.

It wasn't until a good while later that the last guard they had seen had vacated the ramp circling around the tower. They carefully slipped down the crates back to the ground level, and began making their way towards the Write Buffer.

Some microcycles into their journey, Nabiki stole a glance or two at Ranma. Whether she liked to admit it or not, she wouldn't have survived this long without Ranma helping. Not that her survival prospects looked good without a small sort of miracle right now, but she would have derezzed already at the game grid.

Many would question if Nabiki had any honor in her actions. Even more people would say opportunism was Nabiki's middle name. She often bent and twisted the topic so that the question of her owing anyone anything became unclear. But sometimes even she could not do that.

She hated to owe people anything. She did not like one bit that she owed Ranma "brawn-for-brains" Saotome her life. But no matter how she attempted to tell herself it was not so, she could not.

"Ranma."

"Huh?"

"Thank you."

And this time, she meant it.

Nabiki's acknowledgment of Ranma's help brought forth silence the two had walked in for a good while. It was been a novel - and awkward - situation for both, so neither really knew how to continue talking from there on.

"No." A synthetic voice broke the silence behind them.

"Yes," echoed another, very similar voice.

Ranma and Nabiki quickly turned around to see... two floating polyhedrons with a glowing afterimage showing their path.

"No-no."

"Yes-yes-yes."

Then, after a brief pause, "Yes."

The two objects began moving towards Ranma and Nabiki, who had now began running away from the two bickering blobs. They were better off not taking the chance of them being in league with the system guards.

Their attempt to outrun the mysterious chatterboxes ended in a few microcycles, when Nabiki couldn't keep up the pace any longer and fell down on the ground. Ranma quickly stopped and moved herself between the prone User and the two floating near-spheres.

"Whatcha want? Are ya with the guard programs?"

"No."

"So what are you?" she asked, tapped the ground with her foot a couple of times, but got no reply.

"Can't ya say nuthin' but yes and no?"

"No."

"Great, a pair of sumthing that can't say things straight - or nothing but straight - or... argggh!" Ranma muttered to herself. The quiet snickering from Nabiki told her that she hadn't gone unheard, and she spared only a brief glare at the girl now getting up from the ground.

"Whaddya think, what should we do with 'em?"

Now upright, Nabiki turned to the two unidentified flying objects.

"Will you cause trouble for us?"

"No-no-no."

"Can you show us the shortest path to the Write Buffer then?"

"Yes," the objects said, rapidly moving up and down as if nodding, and then began moving along the ramp.

Meanwhile, Shinobu and Poro had already jumped off the tug and were on their way towards the tower as well. The former was feeling very good about herself, although the way they had made the system crash down left her a bit unsatisfied. She wasn't even certain what and how they had accomplished their task, and that's what miffed her. Lady Luck was a fickle mistress.

"Something wrong?" Poro asked Shinobu, whose expression seemed to constantly change from annoyed to frustrated and back again.

She only let out a long-suffering sigh and picked up the pace. The sooner they got out of here, the better. This wasn't just her desire to simply kick back and relax for a while, but she also missed her husband a great deal. The problem wasn't him, though; it was the in-laws.

That she couldn't be there for the dinner with them was certain to make their relations tenser, as if they weren't difficult enough before. When she told them she was not going to stay home and manage the household but go to work herself, they didn't have to say out loud that they were surprised and disappointed. At least her dear husband understood. He'd better, since doing postgraduate studies at the university wasn't a good source of income. And with the falling out with his parents, the money she got as a secretary was even more welcome.

It was her job as a secretary that she considered one of the better aspects of being employed in a Western company. Some of the women she had went to school with had been hired as office ladies, but were practically asked to leave their job once they got married.

While her chances of moving higher on her career at Encom Japan were low, at least they hadn't expected her to quit her job. Hopefully they wouldn't fire her for these missed days, either.

Her thoughts briefly wandered to the two teenagers. "They should be near the Write Buffer by now... if they are still alive." She had stomped down her nagging conscience, but she refused to take the risk of getting the same disease as them, whatever it was. But it helped enough to tell herself that at least one of them had to stay fine, especially if the boy had the same bug already.

She remembered the walk up the ramp was a long one, and last time she had walked the distance it had been all downhill. Going up there should definitely pass for aerobic exercise, she thought. "Better not stop to wonder about it," she thought, and continued onward.

Nabiki sat down on a slab and chuckled mirthlessly as she looked over to the two blobs now floating just over Ranma's shoulders. True enough, their 'guides' had shown the shortest path to the Write Buffer, but without Ranma carrying her, climbing up the stacks of those mysterious, ever-present floating crates would've been beyond her current capabilities.

Ranma was again practicing new tricks with Power, now attempting to replicate the fancy patterns she had seen below the stream portal at the IO tower. She set her palm on the ground, and channeled some Power into it.

As she saw the emerging patterns and a small, fluctuating yellow sphere above the ground, she yelled, "Yeah!" while the two objects both traced a victory flag above her shoulders with their trails. At least they couldn't make them wave.

"Ya know, we could try to already enter the Buffer?" Ranma asked.

"No, we're better off waiting for Shinobu and Poro; besides, when Shinobu and I were... moved here, the loudspeakers," Nabiki waved around her, as she couldn't exactly tell where the speakers were, "told us when we were supposed to step in. And if you go in there by yourself, you're on your own then."

"Fine, fine," Ranma replied and rubbed her arm a bit. It had began to ache a bit, probably due to the training she had been doing.

"Don't ya think they should've been here already?"

Nabiki rubbed her forehead and felt a migraine forming up. She doubted it was due to Ranma acting like an impatient child, but it wasn't helping in the least.

"Even if we ignored that the database is a good distance away from here, we took a shortcut here, something they probably wouldn't know about. So no, they aren't late yet." Truth be told, she was getting a bit anxious of staying up here much longer; the longer they stayed there, the more likely it was for the guard programs to return and apprehend them.

Begrudgingly, Ranma turned away to continue practicing while Nabiki looked at the slope leading back down from the top of the 'Corkscrew tower'. "Can't say it isn't an apt name," she thought.

In a few microcycles, the loudspeakers broke the silence. "Prepare for the transfer of data files and code archives."

"Ya hear that, 'Biki?"

"Yes, and it's Nabiki!"

In the physical world, things were starting to move forward. Haruo and Eiko had looked around the system files and attempted to pick a reasonable selection of files they might be interested at home, especially source code for Space Paranoids.

"Ukyo, insert the first diskette now!" Haruo called. A few seconds later, they heard the reply.

"It doesn't fit in!"

"Eiko, why don't you go there?"

With a sigh, she stood up and went to the back room.

Back at the Write Buffer, Ranma and Nabiki watched as a stream of ubiquitous crates moved to the Buffer portal before vanishing.

"Ya think that's Ukyo?"

Nabiki merely nodded. "We should hope so..." she thought to herself.

At that time, the two database wreckers turned a corner and saw the other Users watching as the crates floated by. Already at a distance, Shinobu could tell that Ranma's colour had taken a step in the same direction as Nabiki's. She double-checked her own colour and sighed, relieved. It was still the same pure blue.

"Hello, Users," Poro greeted Ranma and Nabiki, who turned around to see the new arrivals.

As Nabiki saw the uninfected User and program, new thoughts filled her mind. "Hug him! Hug her!" echoed in her mind. As if in pain, she slapped her hands over her ears and turned away, hunched over. Great, now she was hearing voices, too!

Ranma's reaction was a bit different. "No, stop checking Shinobu out! Ya already got too many fiancées!" she thought. To avoid these thoughts, she redirected her gaze to Poro. "No no no, I do not like men!"

Shinobu took a step back from the two sickly Users; they appeared worse than she had expected.

"Programs and , enter the Write Buffer now," the loudspeakers announced. Ranma pulled on Nabiki's hand, both of which were still on her ears, and told her, "Let's go, it's our turn."

With the voices in her mind now almost silent, Nabiki let Ranma guide her by hand to the portal. "I really hope Haruo and Eiko know what they're doing," she thought as she stepped into the portal plate.

Poro and Shinobu watched as Ranma followed Nabiki, vanishing in a golden flash.

"There's something wrong with her, too?" Poro asked.

Before Shinobu could answer, the two polyhedrons appeared before their faces and said "Yes."

"Gahh! What on Earth is that?" Shinobu exclaimed, startled. They hadn't met many friendly faces in here, and if it moved and didn't have a face, even then it was probably a tank, a recognizer or something else decisively unfriendly.

"Bits?" Poro stated more than asked.

"What did you say?"

"They're bits, aren't you?"

"Yes," one of the now identified bits answered.

"They don't appear to be verbally gifted," Shinobu commented.

"That's right... they can have only two states, 'yes' and 'no', so that is quite a limitation."

The loudspeakers interrupted their discussion. "Programs Poro and , please enter the Write Buffer immediately."

"You go first; I'll be right after you," Poro told Shinobu, who had already turned and began walking towards the portal. "Hopefully I won't be in any close contact with those two," she thought. She guessed whatever they had had to be infectious.

As Shinobu vanished in a flash, Poro walked to a nearby message crate and set his hands on it. "It's good to be a stream editor," he thought, as he wrote a message to whoever would read the diskette. When he was finished, he pushed the crate into the portal and stepped in himself a moment later.

Eiko ejected the last of the diskettes from the drive. They now had copied all the people inside - without forgetting some extra compensation for their efforts. She gave Ukyo a smile.

"We're about done here, then."

"And you'll help Ranchan back here, won't you?"

Eiko replied confidently, "At least we'll give it our best shot." In her mind, she amended, "Not that I have any clue where to start. But that's better left unsaid."

A few minutes later, the broken game console was again in the same condition it was when they entered and the window they entered through closed.

Not much later, a katana cut the window latch open, and in climbed a dark-clad high school student.

"Verily, the dark depths noble men must delve in order to free the innocent from the vile evil that plagues us."

End of line.

Extra: Substitutes

In the dark of the night, one particular purple-headed girl was breaking into the Encom arcade. This time, Shampoo wasn't armed with her usual melon maces, or at least they were nowhere visible. Instead, she carried a book; a book whose cover said, "Computer Programming for Amazons." Granted, the last word was hastily scribbled next to an crossed-out word that eerily resembled "Dummies."

A good question is to ask why she did that... when you're an expert tracker and have a bit of extra time and a whole lot of desire to admire your legally wed hubby, very little is impossible. Even finding out where he - or she, as it was at the time - disappeared and how.

Two hours later, Shampoo returned to her room at the Cat Caf. And there was much rejoicing as she hugged her beloved maces, all the while thinking how much she missed them. At this point, it is prudent to point out the couple of microcomputers brutally smashed into pieces, usually with the said maces, in the trash bin.

"Computer programming isn't that difficult; no different from writing down a new noodle recipe," Shampoo mused to herself.

Some hours later, as the morning batch jobs executed far above the sparse matrix clouds in the arcade mainframe, the four fugitives continued on their way. Their progress to the IO tower was halted by the appearance of an apparently female program with long dark hair, held up in two large round hairclips.

"Nihao, shi jie!" the program exclaimed, before glomping onto girl-Ranma's frame. "Nihao, shi jie!"

"Shampoo? Whatcha doin' here?" Ranma asked, as she tried to extract the clingy program off her person.

"Nihao, shi jie!"

"It's not Shampoo, Ranma..." Nabiki said, although she wondered just why did a random program have Shampoo's face and why did she give the constrictor-snake-strength hug to Ranma. Was there a connection to Shampoo?

"Nihao, shi jie?"

Poro nodded sagely. "Yes... and apparently suffers of helloworlditis. They're programs whose function is repeating the same line over and over again in an infinite loop... as would happen to be the case now."

"Nihao, shi jie? Nihao, shi jie!"

Far off in another realm and time, the whole Pokemon population looked up, having the feeling of someone talking about them.

AN: The joys of classical (dumbed-down) sentential calculus with a contradictory theory. Well, at least these "reasonings" are simple.

I gave up on writing 9kw chapters; instead, I'll settle with updates over 5kw. Oh, and I have no idea how badly wrong "Nihao, shi jie" is; I wanted to say 'Hello world'.

Natalie-E-G raised a very good point about the virus in this story in a review for chapter 5. I'm well past the point of no return with anachronisms, and I don't plan on introducing Ghost in the Shell into the picture... yet.

Things I didn't like in this chapter: No frisbee tricks. No upcoming Ukyo vs Kuno. Poor virus characterization. No Oikake, Machibuse, Kimagure or Otoboke... as much as I wanted to give the four guard programs names and have them act according to them.

Thanks to Ozzallos and weebee for giving feedback on this chapter.