The usual disclaimer. Ranma, Tron and all the related intellectual property making an appearance in this fic are someone else's 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.
Note: This chapter has not been proofread, so if you spot errors (typos, continuity, continuity error, plain stupidity) in it, please send me a PM and I'll try fixing them.
It was taking a good long while for everyone to transfer from Haruo's computer. While waiting for Shinobu and Poro to arrive, Ranma and Nabiki had begun stretching and plain enjoying how good they felt after getting rid of the infection.
Nabiki had not been a sickly child and had never been as sick as the infection had made her. "You never know what you have until you lose it," said a proverb, and it definitely held true in this case. She couldn't say she gained any real insight how the Kunos perceived the world, but the mental changes she had undergone - and which were thankfully now undone - were a step in that direction. Then again, she didn't know if the Kuno siblings were only eccentric and hard-headed instead of genuinely mentally ill.
Still, she enjoyed her newly-found sanity and good health while reflecting on the other changes her world view had undergone. Indeed, the cornerstones of her reasoning had taken a pounding after she had been digitized.
She had mostly thought that the modern world had no place for people like Ranma: jocks whose only way out of a paper bag was to tear it open. No, that wasn't right either. Ranma had shown her that there was more to her than that. And in a hostile place like this system, her "non-verbal communication skills" were of immeasurable value.
She took a look at the martial artist in question, who was quietly jumping still and clearly anxious. She had to wonder how one could be such a good actor but such a bad liar... and her face betrayed that something had shook her up pretty badly as well.
Nabiki definitely preferred the muscle of the ragtag group focus on keeping the trouble away from them, rather than being distracted over things that were at odds with their survival and continued freedom.
"Saotome, what's the problem?" she said, not showing much, if any, compassion in her tone.
"Nuttin'," Ranma muttered, reluctant to talk about it.
"Wrong answer. And the sooner you open up, the better off you both will be."
"What's it to you, anyway? Ya never do anything if you ain't getting something out of it."
"You're not at the top of your game," Nabiki replied. She fidgeted for a while before continuing, "And we need you to help us get out of here." Seeing Ranma's incredulous face, she continued, "And you probably had something to do with getting us better."
The surprise on Ranma's face was replaced with look of regret as she was reminded of what she had done to another program. Nabiki, being as masterful as she was at reading people's faces, noticed this. She could see where the problem was. This time, she would give Ranma a bit more space.
She'd just have to remind him not to mention it to anyone - she had a reputation to keep.
"Fine. But you don't have Ukyo here to open up to, you know."
"Wha-?"
"Don't forget who you're talking to," Nabiki said, with exaggerated irritation. "I know you've been talking with Ukyo rather much recently, and it doesn't take a genius to see the difference in you before and after the talks. Even Akane has seen it." Granted, her sister might have misread it, but she saw it.
"Shinobu might not truly hate your guts, but she doesn't like you. And Poro wouldn't be much more help than a pet, since he wouldn't understand what you were talking about. Ukyo, Haruo and Eiko can't contact us any longer. Like it or not, I'm your best and only choice right now."
Ranma opened her mouth to reply, but then closed her mouth and sat down, attempting to think things over while looking at Nabiki at odd intervals, as if measuring her by her eyes. Deciding she could take a look at the surroundings, she left the buffer area.
Nabiki didn't have to wait long alone before Shinobu finally arrived in the system.
"Are you feeling better now?" Shinobu asked after seeing that the healthy blue colour had returned to Nabiki. The glow patterns hadn't changed back, though, so she was still wary of touching her.
"Hmm? Yes, I'm much better now. So is Ranma."
"She's already here?"
"She... left the room for a while."
Shinobu didn't want to pursue a topic that was obviously a private matter. And based on what she had learned of the family life of Ranma and Nabiki, she definitely didn't want to get involved. Not that she wouldn't necessarily mind watching what went on in their lives - it sounded better than the daytime television - but only as an outside observer.
Nevertheless, she was very glad that Nabiki and Ranma were feeling better. For her, safety came in numbers, especially if one of them was better suited for keeping them from bigger trouble... whatever might qualify as such.
Speaking of which, she had better find the password change program. However, that idea was less than stellar because she was probably still a persona non grata in this system as well. She was trusting the two high school students that brought her here. The mere thought of that made a shiver pass through her. Small things like these kept reminding her how badly the things were for them.
But in the meantime, she sat down to wait for Poro's transfer to complete.
It didn't take nearly as long for Poro to be uploaded into the system as it took the Users, but by that time Ranma had already returned from scouting the neighborhood.
"We're at the bottom of a huge hole," Ranma explained. "I couldn't see a path we could just walk our way out, but there were some portals not far from the exit."
"Did you see where the portals headed?" Poro asked.
"Uhh, no. There were some plaques atop of 'em, but I didn't go close enough to read them."
"You can read the signs?" Nabiki asked, intrigued. She had thought that the writing there wouldn't be in any language they would understand.
"Well, I don't understand the signs, but I know what they're saying... uh, I mean, I can't read'em but I understand their message," Ranma attempted to explain.
Nabiki raised her hands in surrender. She'd figure out what Ranma meant when they'd see the signs themselves.
"But what should we be doing now?" Shinobu put the question forth.
"Our best shot would be to find the place where we arrived in the system," Nabiki mused aloud. "If we couldn't return to the real world there, then maybe in the near vicinity." Seeing the pondering faces of the other Users, she continued, "Or do you have any better ideas?"
"To start with, we have no idea where that place would be. And even if there were any roadsigns pointing there, we wouldn't know which ones to follow since we don't have the slightest idea what that place is called," Shinobu pointed out before turning to Poro. "Poro, how well do you know this system?"
"I don't. I've seen only the Read Buffer, Holding Pits and the Write Buffer, in that order."
Shinobu frowned at this before thinking to herself. At her work, she had had to go through some logs the other company employees - and on occasion, MCP himself - had made. But considering all the small details captured in those logs, she guessed that some of these might shed some light on where they had to go.
"You don't know where all the logs are, then? Some of them might have a clue on where we should be going." Shinobu asked Poro.
"Logs? I believe they would be in the directory tree."
Nabiki grimaced at the unintended pun. "Do you think we can get there and also find the logs?"
"Finding the way there is easy. Finding the logs depends on whether we can ask the programs in the shell to help us in finding the logs," Poro replied.
"So how are we going to get to the shell?" Shinobu interjected
"We follow the signs," Poro simply said.
As they left the Buffer hall, Nabiki and Shinobu noted the same thing as Ranma did as she was transferred to the system: something had changed since then. The colour on the walls had taken a turn to the purple instead of the crimson it used to be, pulsing at a pace much greater than it used to. The changes had not reflected to the skies, however; the same light blue cloud arrays floated above their heads, or at least in the small section of sky they could see from the bottom of the hole.
Like Ranma said, there was no apparent way out by traditional means; at the bottom of the pit, however, was a circular platform with four stream portals, all covered by a remotely mushroom-like hat with circuits snaking their way around it.
To their great relief, no protocol guards were visible, so they had not been alerted to their arrival yet. Maybe luck was smiling on them for once?
They quickly made their way to the portals. Nabiki then understood what Ranma had meant with not knowing what was written on the plaques yet understanding them. The symbols on them made no sense to her alone, but somehow her brain parsed them as legitimate words, such as 'IO Tower', 'Memory bus' and 'Archive stacks'.
"We want to go in that portal, 'Disk access'. The directory tree shouldn't be far from there," Poro advised the Users, who nodded to themselves, and entered the portal, Poro trailing them while yawning.
A good many cycles ago, Buta had been loaded onto the Encom mainframe. Had anyone inside the computer known his User, Maseo, they would have noticed the stark difference between their personalities. Yet there were some similarities. Focused attention on the task at hand was one.
Few permissions were spared when he entered the system with standing orders to derez all infected programs. The one permission he did not have was to attempt derezzing MCP. He didn't question why; he had been given orders and he would follow them.
He hadn't spotted many infected programs so far, but their presence meant that he had to be constantly vigilant.
Movement at his feet made him look down and pick up one of the small scripts he had spawned some microcycles ago to assault infected programs. He turned around and looked at where the sickly-green-coloured programs had been.
The ground was covered with quickly disappearing core dumps and subroutines that the programs had left as they derezzed. Satisfied with the performance, Buta terminated the scripts that were left, bar the one in his hands. He put it back on the ground and walked away, the script quietly following him.
Once the Users arrived at the root of the directory tree, they saw nothing like a tree. Indeed, the name was a misnomer. If the different parts of the tree in the digital world were considered, the tree would, to an inexperienced observer, resembled a spider's web more than a tree, as the completely unrelated parts of the tree were in some cases situated next to each other, and in some cases, quite a distance away.
For its part, the shell was yet another huge complex, remotely in the shape of a cut upside-down cone. The sides were covered with constantly pulsating lights that ran up towards the top of the building, where the glow from some unknown source dyed the underside of the 'hat' of the building dark red.
The entrance within was not a long distance from the platform the Users were on. They crossed a wide bridge, certainly designed to accommodate a considerable flow of programs coming in and out of the complex.
Off in the distance, a batch of recognizers came out from behind a nondescript building, the purpose of which was unknown to the Users.
Ranma noticed them first. "We'd better hurry in before they can spot us," she muttered before starting to briskly walk towards the entrance, the others quickly falling in line behind her.
The recognizers were coming towards them from the side of the system. "We're not going to make it in time," Ranma thought.
The first recognizer passed them overhead as they were just entering the building. So far, they hadn't deviated from their course, making Nabiki think they might have dodged the bullet. "For now," she added, but did the recognizers really miss them?
The thought stayed in her mind, nagging, as they passed through the arch leading into a large hall.
If the exterior of the shell had been impressive, the inside was by no means behind it. Hologram matrices, arranged in several columns, slowly crawled towards the ceiling in the large open space in the middle of the building, making the building feel larger than it was.
Lead by Poro, the Users made their way deeper into the lobby. Programs of different colours and sizes wandered around, especially near the walls where system utilities were adding disk access requests to a long queue, not much unlike a conveyor belt for translucent tetrahedrons of light.
While Shinobu and Poro went to one of the service points, Ranma and Nabiki sat down on a pair of benches that were set back to back. The information hoarder that was a part of Nabiki's psyche reared its head as they gladly accepted the breather.
Her eyes roved across the programs, noticing how there were not many protocol guards, or what all the system enforcer programs should be called. She couldn't help but to be surprised; as far as she understood it, the shell was not an irrelevant piece of the scenery in the system. In fact, she was willing to bet a thousand yen that had this been in the arcade mainframe, there would be at least twice as many enforcer programs in this hall alone.
Two programs sat down behind her back, making her and Ranma stiffen almost imperceptibly. Nabiki quickly evaluated the situation: panicking would only draw the attention of the system programs to them, so their best choice was to sit down and shut up. A quick glance to her side showed that Ranma had also decided to try playing it cool, even if she was not able to reach the Soul of Ice.
The two programs behind them, however, were completely unaware of the thoughts of the Users.
"I would expect that MCP would try to alleviate the port congestion," one of them remarked to the other, dissatisfaction audible in his voice. "The last time I waited for data packet delivery, the request queue almost overflowed."
"Well, I hear that there has been some confusion in the system core. Master Control Program has been downloading data archives from many other systems," the other program, whose voice sounded like a woman's, replied.
"Hush! If you can help it, do not call MCP by that name," the first program warned. "I saw one program call him that so that protocol guards heard him. They didn't even tell what he did wrong but took him straight away to the holding pits."
"Really? Have you heard what that might have been about?"
"You remember I relay the message buffer, right? Not many cycles ago, the headers of MCP messages changed," the male program replied, his voice dropping down to a whisper. By straining her ears, Nabiki could pick it up nonetheless.
"Changed?"
"Yes. The originator was no longer Master Control Program but Mistress Control Program," the male replied conspiratorially.
Hearing this, Nabiki felt an overpowering urge to slap her face. Having done that, she looked to her side at the most obvious culprit, who seemed to miss the apparent connection between her and the sudden gender change of their host. Sure, she had no idea what the connection exactly was, but considering the way trouble, chaos and people of inconstant gender seemed to follow Ranma, it definitely wasn't unlikely that she was linked to this, one way or the other.
Meanwhile, the female program had been quiet in surprise. The answer did not compute.
"You can't be serious." Seeing as the male program kept a straight face, she continued, "By my User, you are serious."
"Very serious. Just remember - call him MCP, and you'll be fine. And don't mention Users either."
The female program sighed and looked to the service request queue before abruptly standing up. "Ahh, my request! Search for me!" she called back to the male program as she ran towards the packet delivery desk.
"I'd love to interface with that piece of code," the other program muttered to himself as he watched after the female program before getting up and walking to the request queue himself.
Meanwhile, Ranma turned to Nabiki. "So whatcha think that was about?" she wondered.
Her reply was a silent glare.
"Hey, what did I do this time?" she asked, waving her arms in frustration. She figured Nabiki must have been still angry at him for avoiding her questions earlier, but she was still not ready to reveal what she had done to Nabiki, especially if this shift from her mercenary ways was only a temporary one.
"Watch it, program," Ranma heard a gruff voice say in front of her, and noticed how she had nearly hit a protocol guard with her hand.
If she had one technique to teach Nabiki, she figured it would be the Soul of Ice - as she seemed to be quite adept in it already. On the other hand, it looked like she might have confused it with "scared beyond the pale."
The latter interpretation was definitely correct, as Nabiki saw the two system enforcers before them. They had been so focused on eavesdropping the two programs that she had neglected to watch where the guards were. It had been a while since she had started snooping around the school herself - everyone had to start at the bottom - and she still did it on a weekly basis, rather than letting her flunkies do all of it. But she did not remember any occasion where she had been caught flat-footed like this.
This wasn't the school, either. Principal Kuno and his squad of shearer monkeys didn't hold a candle to Master- MCP and the Game Grid, so getting caught here was a much worse proposition.
If it weren't such a dire situation, she might have been amused by how Ranma nearly jumped off the bench in surprise. But to her pleasure, it took hardly a blink of an eye to see Ranma come up with a way out.
"Oops, sorry," Ranma replied, her voice laced with sugar, spice and all things nice. The puppy-dog eyes she cast at the guard were the finishing touch.
"I didn't mean to, really," she continued, "I - I was just sooo excited and -" at which point the embarrassed guard interrupted her before the small glittering pools of Power that had been gathering in her eyes began falling.
"Uhm, well, just don't do that again," he mumbled, the red glow intensifying a lot on his body armor, even if his face remained within a closed helmet. He hastily pulled his partner away by the hand to avoid further embarrassment.
Seeing her plan working flawlessly, she turned to Nabiki and gave a wide, shameless grin. By now, Nabiki had already relearned how to breathe. Only Ranma could be so audacious.
"Did ya notice?" Ranma asked, "They didn't try arresting us."
"Perhaps we aren't fugitives here. I'm quite certain the recognizer saw us as we entered this building. That would explain why there aren't any of those guards trying to apprehend us," Nabiki replied, relieved. Sure, she had been in a similar situation when she had been engaged to Ranma, but that stint hadn't been this long and even so, she had been in control of the situation and the other fiancées.
She had to admit she was on the right track when she thanked Ranma back at the arcade. Noting the turn of her thoughts, she quickly shook her head to ward off any further thoughts in that direction. She breathed out deeply and then tried to look for Shinobu and Poro, wherever they might be at the moment.
Shinobu was either getting bored out of her mind, or as it was more likely, she already was. The queue to file system utilities was a long one, and reminded her of the time she was in line for a free scoop of ice cream in a local ice cream shop's promotion. Of course, so was half of the ward, or that's how it seemed at the time. Being smart, she had taken a few friends with her, making the waiting a social event rather than an exercise to see how long she could keep standing still.
Was everything in these systems always this slow? The database at the arcade had also had long queues - until they had simply had to run past everyone in front of them.
She looked at Ranma and Nabiki, who were now sitting on a bench. With rising dread she saw Ranma almost whack a protocol guard at the stomach. A quick look to her side told her Poro had also noticed what was happening. She prepared to stop him from leaving the queue - no point in drawing any attention to them, if those two were going to land in trouble - but to her satisfaction, he merely shrugged and watched what was happening without moving anywhere.
Poro answered the unspoken question. "As if there was anything we could do from here," he nonchalantly said before yawning yet again.
Seeing that the situation in the lobby was resolved quickly, Shinobu turned her attention back to the queue. This time it was frustration and not boredom that arose, and she had already counted the number of service points across the first floor of the shell; to her disappointment, there were no tiles in the ceiling.
"Poro... what are you going to do once we Users are out of the system?" she asked, trying to strike up a conversation.
"I don't know. Find a place that has use for me, if there is one." Seeing Shinobu's questioning look, he continued, "I'm not from this system either, remember? So chances are my User doesn't know how to reach me. No User, no uses. Chances are no User of this system even knows I was here or that I am here now."
"Quite a mood killer," Shinobu thought as she opted this time for silence rather than continuing about the depressing topic. She was not aware if it was just as necessary for programs to feel themselves useful as it was for humans, but his outlook seemed rather bleak.
And so they waited. And waited.
Finishing up for the day, Ukyo had time to think. Today had been the first time she served food at the computer club meeting. She hadn't known there were so many members in the club; compared to the time she had been recruiting Haruo for the job, there were today almost twice as many members present. Apparently free food was the thing that drew in also the inactive members.
Now that she thought about it, serving complimentary okonomiyaki at the club meetings might end up being beneficial to her business. She didn't remember seeing many of the club members at her restaurant or buying okonomiyaki from her during lunch breaks, but now that they were getting a taste of good, masterfully made okonomiyaki, she was willing to bet her business would be picking up a bit.
There was nothing wrong with a good amount of confidence like Ranma had shown, of course. If her cooking didn't turn over those pizza lovers, then what would? Then again, she didn't really have all that good a track record in betting - but the Gambling King had cheated!
Realizing she was digressing in her thoughts, her thoughts returned to Ranchan.
She couldn't deny that what happened at Haruo's home bothered her. When she had found Ranchan in Nerima after all those years, she had believed he had purposefully hurt her when he and Genma left her behind.
It had been easy to believe him when he said he didn't know they were engaged; if she didn't unconsciously remember what a bad liar he was from the Gambling King incident, she probably wouldn't have forgiven him so easily. It all hinged on how trustworthy Ranchan was.
But then he infected the program. How was she supposed to think about this? If he didn't do it, he and Nabiki might have died. But now he showed he had some level of ruthlessness to him. Not necessarily much, but she didn't truly know how he felt after the fact. "Take me out of here" had been his last words. But they were mere letters on the screen without any feeling to them.
Ukyo sighed. She expected to be doing that a lot more in the near future.
Now that she had seen this new side of Ranma, how should she feel about it? Be happy that he would be willing to defend his cute fiancée - surely, if he had done it for Nabiki the mercenary, then protecting her would be a given - or worried that there might be a much darker side to him?
What was she thinking anyway? She wasn't this wishy-washy before, so why start now?
Eventually, Shinobu and Poro got to the service counters to leave the search request. The request handler placed a node with the request onto a bin behind him on a flat surface that seemingly acted as a conveyor belt, as the bin - and many others like it - were moving on it towards an exit from the lobby.
With another queue ticket in their hands, they returned to Ranma and Nabiki to wait for their turn.
"Poro, how does this relate to the IO tower? This is nothing like that," Nabiki asked in her attempt to both kill time and learn more of the system, even if she hoped they wouldn't be staying there for much longer.
"The IO tower is a low-level facility handling the requests submitted here. Even if it takes a good while to queue for the utilities, it is still easier than direct handling with the IO tower."
"Didn't look difficult at all at the arcade," Ranma mused quietly.
"That's because there was little IO going on otherwise. Beside that, maybe the system did not have higher-level facilities for program-to-User communication, which is very rare, at least in a system under MCP's control," Poro responded. "If there were more communication going on, it would've been a luck of a draw who would have been serviced first."
A seemingly random sequence of beeps sounded from one of the service desks. Poro recognized this as the announcement that their search request was finished, stood up and made way towards the desk, the Users trailing him.
The program behind the desk gave Poro a small cube, looking very much like the packets they had learned to read from those transparent crates. He focused on the cube a moment before passing it onto the rest of the group.
"Do you know where this log archive is?" Shinobu asked.
"No, but it is only a matter of following the file system links."
Ranma was already rocking back and forth on her heels, eager to get on the way. Even if she had now the chance to really create a new type of martial arts from scratch - possibly including some of the Anything Goes principles in it - she did miss some of the routines she had come accustomed to after arriving at the Tendos' place. Granted, there were quite a few of the less pleasant routines, but overall she felt the change had been for the better.
So when Poro turned and started walking towards the exit, Ranma was the first one following him.
The former fugitives had now walked close to a cycle, taken a few stream portals and were still quite a distance away from their goal. Still happy about her regained health, Ranma was currently walking atop a horizontal beam. Meanwhile, Nabiki was walking beside the rest of the group, watching Ranma take a few running steps before doing a perfect cartwheel on the beam.
"Showoff," Nabiki muttered loud enough for Ranma to hear her.
"Gotta keep on practising," Ranma replied. "No fences ta walk on here, so this'll have ta do." She then fixed her eyes on Nabiki. "Speaking of practising, you're slacking off. So get up here."
Remembering she had been the one asking for training, she started climbing atop the same beam, about a meter and a half from the ground. Thankfully, on the other side of the beam was not the void of null device but a wide platform filled with those crates they had been seeing all the time.
She started walking on the beam, which was almost thin enough to make her keep focused solely on balancing herself if she didn't want to fall down. "Poro, what are all those crates around? I've seen them everywhere and they just are there, with no text or symbols on their sides."
"I am not aware of their purpose. However, I am inclined to assume they do have one."
After nearly falling off the beam, Nabiki returned all of her focus to the task at hand. And once she reached the end of the beam, the next leg of the journey was jumping onto the ubiquitous crates and back down again.
This continued until they reached the log archive, yet another towering construct, this time organized as separate spires with a program-operated shuttle flitting back and forth between the stacks. They made their way to the entrance and, to the great relief of Nabiki and Shinobu, discovered a portal leading to the top of the archives. They did not know why the service level was set so high above the so-called ground level, but they didn't want to take the stairs to go there... even if they weren't carrying proton packs with them.
Scanners, small capsule-like scripts floated in the gaps between log stacks. Every now and then they would stop moving and open one of their ends like to project a beam to the archives.
Unlike at the directory tree, there was practically no queue and the group was soon allowed to do their business. Poro, being the only expert of the group on the protocol, was the one making the actual query with the help of the Users.
"Greetings program. Query is as follows. List system IO log entries -"
Ranma tuned out of Poro's query. She wasn't big on formalities, let alone using such a stilted language.
The service program typed search parameters by a terminal whose interface floated good ten centimetres above the desk. In a moment, a scanner started purposefully moving upwards until it stopped near the top of the stack. The red scanning beam of the scanner moved across the wall before vanishing and the scanner closing up again.
"Request id 7183, system IO log entries from the specified interval," the service program told and produced a small green information cube. After all Users and Poro had downloaded the information, it vanished.
"It's not here," Nabiki said.
"I can't find anything from when I got here either," Ranma commented, frowning.
"Poro, are you certain these logs should have entries about us being digitized?" Shinobu asked. She was worried that their practically only clue of how to escape was turning out worthless. Still, she hoped that Poro had a good explanation.
"These logs keep track of all major IO activity in the system. By what you have told me, your transfer here was very much that."
Nabiki thought to herself for a moment while Shinobu began asking, or as some might put it, demanding, alternative plans. Out of personal experience she knew that books and ledgers could always be faked. To her it was a possibility that someone had tampered with the logs.
"What if these logs do not show all activity there has been? What if they have been forged?" Nabiki gave voice to her suspicions.
Poro shook his head. "This is not up to the programs but MCP..." he trailed off as understanding dawned on him. "MCP could have kept the log from being written."
"So what does this leave us with?" Ranma asked, cracking her knuckles. She was expecting a new meeting with MCP, only this time she'd be better prepared and not be the one backing down. Ranma Saotome never lost the rematches.
Nabiki noticed Ranma's enthusiasm and mentally recited a brief wish that Ranma was not turning into another Ryoga. "Do we need to go to face MCP?"
The faces of Shinobu and Poro turned immediately towards Nabiki as she asked the question. Face MCP? It was insane! Shinobu turned towards Poro, now hoping that he'd have an alternative plan.
"That would seem logical. The world is vast and looking for what you need without any clues would not be feasible. Hopefully MCP has the information stored outside the main program so that direct confrontation wouldn't be necessary." It was at moments like this that Poro wondered what he was doing. Was this endeavour worth risking his extra time outside the game grid? Would his runtime end with an abrupt kill signal?
The service program interrupted the discussion. "You're blocking the desk. Please leave the area."
Once the group of four had reached the outside, the Users turned to Poro for directions.
"Are you sure you want to face MCP? You're safe here now without the system guards looking for you," Poro asked them.
Nabiki quickly looked at Ranma. She knew that their safety would be in her hands, and if she didn't believe in their chances, they were better off leaving MCP alone.
"Damn straight!"
Then again, Ranma was not known for her modesty, so this might have just as well meant "Not a chance in hell." Nabiki, however, was a gambler who could weigh the risks against the gains. In this case, it was Ranma's presence that decisively tipped the scale.
"With Ranma, I believe we have a chance," she said.
Shinobu was debating the upsides and downsides of following the rest of the Users to staying put while the others were doing the dangerous stuff. She wanted someone to find the way back, even if it meant directly dealing with MCP, she just didn't know if she wanted to risk her own skin. But since the other Users also seemed ready to go to MCP, she didn't dare to be left alone for that time. In her opinion, her survival was highly dependent on Poro and not so much with Ranma, and Poro had apparently decided to help the Users to the end.
"I'm with you," she eventually let out.
A moment of silence set upon the four as they weighed the meaning of their decision. Things were coming to a head, one way or the other. Finally, Poro started their walk towards a nearby stream portal.
Once again, the group found themselves walking, walking and walking. A reasonable assumption would have been to think that all roads led to MCP, but this was hardly true. MCP might have disagreed, but there were still several other important hubs of activity in the system.
The group walked in silence. Knowing they were risking their continued existence, Ranma and Nabiki had ceased practising and were merely walking.
Nabiki had not been intimately involved in as many strange events as Ranma. This was slightly compensated by a better control on emotions, but she still felt anxious. She sped up her pace a bit to catch up with Ranma, who had been walking a few paces ahead of others.
"Ranma."
"What is it, Nabiki?"
"You're still distracted." Seeing Ranma shake her head, Nabiki continued, "You are. Whatever you did on Haruo's computer is still bothering you."
Ranma stayed silent. "You are not going to need any distractions if things go bad. I hear talking to people about your problems tends to help you."
"You're always listening, even when I don't want you to," Ranma bluntly stated.
"Touch, but this time, I won't tell it to anyone... as long as you don't tell anyone I agreed to do this for free."
Ranma stared at Nabiki for a moment before snorting. "Fine. You also looked around Haruo's computer, didn't you?"
"First when I was sick and a brief while afterward. But not long."
"You maybe saw a program there, in the middle of the courtyard. His name was Baromu. Every time I was... loaded to the computer, he had forgotten about me and I had to reintroduce myself."
"Sorry, I don't recall him."
"He was chained to the floor by his legs, so he couldn't even move. And then, Haruo told me to infect him."
Nabiki's eyes widened at this. No wonder Ranma was feeling down.
"He begged me not to do it, but Haruo told me that nothing permanent would happen to him," Ranma continued, eyes downcast.
"And now you're thinking about how you have failed the creed of martial artists," Nabiki stated. She was well aware of what made Ranma's world turn around - that was the easiest way to control him.
Ranma turned her head to look her in the eye. She stared for a microcycle before Nabiki admitted, "Fine, so the decision was even worse and you have second thoughts of it. Did you see if he was fine later on?"
"No, Haruo checked that I was cured so quickly that I didn't have a chance to do that."
"So he might be just fine right now. Aren't you blowing this into too large proportions?" Nabiki said.
"Might, you say and think that is enough?" Ranma snapped at her and turned away.
Nabiki frowned. "Don't forget, you did it to help Haruo and Eiko cure the two of us. If you hadn't done that, we'd still be sick or worse. You needed to make a choice, and you did. Live with it." Seeing that Ranma was still unreceptive of her words, she continued, "You know, I wouldn't have had any qualms about infecting him with the information you've given me."
"Is that supposed to surprise me, Miss Ten-Yen-Challenge?"
"I'd still say saving two people and maybe hurting one is the better choice."
With that, Nabiki slowed down her pace to have a few words with Poro. Ranma briefly looked back at her. Maybe she had a point, and not only about distractions on mind being bad for everyone involved.
In front of the central administrative programs, a large screen came to life, displaying the red face of Master Control Program as he prepared to address the programs.
"There has been an unauthorized remote login. Why was this not noted until now?"
Sysif, a program created by a male User, attempted to answer. "The User was not removed from the valid user list until they had already logged out. We do have the phone number stored in our log files."
Then, without any warning, the face of MCP turned purple and the voice gained a higher pitch.
"You are hopeless, you scripts. Find out to whom the phone belongs to and contact me. Be ready for further orders. Ohohohohohoh! No one attempts to break in to the domain of Mistress Control Program, not without a fitting punishment," the face said before vanishing.
"That's Mistress Control Program?" a female program asked.
"Affirmative. But I recommend using the acronym MCP," Sysif replied. "But cut the prattling. We were given commands, so let us follow them."
After cleansing a group of programs several cycles ago, Buta had not seen more infected scripts. This made him quite unhappy. Programs who had not been captured by MCP but were still in contact with their Users felt a need to be fulfilling their purpose. For Buta, it was the neutralization of infected programs. In the real world, it would hardly have been a glamorous reason for existence. In the cold and sterile digital world under MCP's command it was a task like any other.
With ever growing dissatisfaction, Buta briefly scanned the programs walking around him. The peril of being a highly specified program was that if your task was not a repeatable one, you would likely be derezzed once there was no longer use for you. And it looked like his task was getting closer to being finished.
Three programs moved past him and with a quick glance he could tell they weren't infected. He grunted. He'd better go look for infected programs elsewhere, since this area of the digital world seemed to be clean.
Then he noticed a group of four programs making their way around the corner. And if he wasn't mistaken, two of them carried the tell-tale signs of being infected: the highly irregular patterns etched on their bodies. He took a quick sprint in their direction and verified his observation.
"Halt!"
The programs stopped and turned around to see Buta hold his arm straight in front of him, palm facing forward and glowing red. One of the infected programs with a strange black mass hanging on her head and a tail dangling below her neck, changed her stance and whispered something to the other programs, including the other infected one. He didn't hear what it was, but they seemed to get prepared for something.
He pushed more power into his arm to form a hissing and crackling sphere of energy. Only the strange infected program seemed to stay put while the other three took steps backward at an increasing pace.
With a small grunt, Buta dropped the sphere into ground where it turned into a small hissing four-legged script. The face of the remaining infected program changed from confident into a visage of utter terror as the script ran at her, hissing all the way.
Meow.
Claws.
Darkness.
Hiss. Flashing.
Pain.
MEOWL!
Unable to watch the angry cat-like script approach him at high speeds, Ranma screamed, turned and began running away. Nabiki saw Ranma running after them as the cat gained on the other Users. Beside them, a chasm over the null device was occupied by a chain of crates moving at a slow pace in the direction the Users came from before they started rising up towards a higher level, where they moved next to a ledge.
A thunk! told Nabiki that Ranma had ran headfirst into a wall and was now cornered by two hissing cat-like scripts, as Buta had created two more in the mean time. She could handle friendly cats better, but when the cats acted in a hostile manner towards her...
HISS!
Shinobu stood in bewilderment as Ranma flopped onto all fours and let out a cat-like hiss. The two scripts cornering her paused only briefly before pouncing on her, claws at the ready.
The third cat-script Buta had created wasn't paying Ranma much attention. Instead, she was running towards Nabiki.
"She's coming this way," Shinobu said out loud.
Nabiki took a few steps back and saw the cat-script pick up on her pace. If the script was as hostile towards her as they were towards Ranma, she'd better be careful. She took a few steps backwards and found herself at the edge, next to the moving chain of crates.
Poro stepped in front of Nabiki to block the script that was still approaching. He wasn't too keen on getting mauled by the strange scripts, but in a bout of chivalry - something quite strange for him - he decided to cover Nabiki. However, as the script reached him, she simply ran between his legs as he attempted to sweep the script into his hands.
The cat-like script pounced, flashing claws that were much longer than normal cats have. The claws left deep gashes on Nabiki's feet, making her fall down in pain.
"Arrgh!" Nabiki screamed and instinctively swiped her hands at the script. The cat managed to claw at Nabiki's arm to make not as deep wounds, but was struck by Nabiki and sent flying off to the void above the null device. With a pitiful yowl, the cat fell down into the abyss.
"Can you walk?" Poro asked Nabiki, watching the wounds glow with power pooling in them.
Nabiki tried to get up and place weight on her legs, but grimaced badly. "Barely - it hurts a lot."
She looked at Ranma, who was disposing of the cat scripts as fast as the program at the back seemed to produce them. The ki-blades the catfist endowed her in the real world had changed somehow, but there was also something strange about cat-Ranma this time. She only couldn't place a finger on exactly what that was.
"I wouldn't be of any help," Nabiki realized, since she seemed to be on the list of those cat-like things to attack. At that point Shinobu had begun tugging at her arm.
"We need to get out of here before more of those things come at us," Shinobu insisted.
Nabiki had to agree, although she definitely would've preferred Ranma to have come with them. She looked around to see if there was a quick way to escape, one that wouldn't require a lot of running. They were in a hurry, as she saw the mastermind program produce yet another of those cat-like things.
"Poro, where do these crates go?" Nabiki asked, pointing at the crates moving next to them.
"Up, but I don't know what up there is. But there seems to be a light bridge up there as well, so there's probably a common walkway."
"Then help me get on these crates to get a ride there," Nabiki requested.
"Sure." With that, Poro lifted Nabiki up and carried her closer to the point where the crates moved closest to the edge they were standing at.
Before Poro managed to place Nabiki on the next crate, Shinobu jumped on it first. "I'll go first, so that I can pull her to the ledge up there," she reasoned.
The cat-script was already closing in on them as the next crate came and this time, Poro set Nabiki on it. The crate quickly transferred her to safety while the cat-script was left at the edge, hissing towards the quickly vanishing Users.
Seeing that he was not in danger from the petite scripts, Poro looked at the fight the strangely behaving Ranma was in. It was not his fight, though, so he wisely stayed out in the sidelines. Ranma seemed to be handling the situation quite well.
Cat-Ranma was feeling strange. As the strange cats pounced on her, she swiped at them with her claws. For some reason, the claws did not look the same as they used to. Confused, cat-Ranma stared at her claws that shone with bright blue light, occasionally emitting a spark.
As she sat there confused, a catscript sneaked upon her and struck a gash in her side. As a reward, the script found herself cut in slices with cat-Ranma's not-ki-claws.
She bristled her fur to make herself appear larger to the cats approaching her. The hostile cats appeared to shrink as she let out an angry hiss, but they continued on their approach. Still, she felt something was off.
The annoying cats attacked her but were derezzed with a swipe of her hand. She didn't like this - she surroundings were unfamiliar, she didn't see any familiar humans around and she was under attack by other cats.
Then she saw a man in glowing clothing creating another cat that launched at her instantly. So that was the enemy! She hissed again and bristled her fur before starting to run at the man herself.
Buta looked at the program coming at him. Until now, he and his catscripts hadn't had any problems eliminating the infected programs. But this time... even though she was moving on all fours, her shoulders were two metres above the ground. Every time she had hissed, she had visibly grown in size. This was definitely not a normal program.
Deciding that this time running was highly beneficial for continued existence, he created another script with the intent of just harassing the program as he made his escape. As soon as the script's paws touched the ground, he turned and ran as fast as he could.
The new cat-script hissed at the huge program trying to pass her. It could've been a noble attempt if the script had any choice in the manner, as they were essentially reprogrammed for a specific purpose by Buta. Yet, the humongous program stopped before the script that was trying to look as big as possible. The program let out a deep growl and grew even further.
By now, Buta had vanished around the corner and was running further and further away.
With her focus no longer on the escaped foe, cat-Ranma looked quizzically at the small cat before her that was still trying to intimidate her with little success. With an un-catlike snort, she turned around and strutted back to where she had first been attacked by the cat scripts.
The small script stayed put where she was and watched as the program began shrinking back towards her original size. She was ordered to only stop the program from continuing past her, not to pursue her. A small part of her that was not bound by the orders was very relieved over this.
Seeing the situation calm down, Poro, who had been watching the situation from a distance but still close enough to the escape route to make a quick getaway if the situation so called, approached Ranma. She wasn't all that fond of Poro, though, and through a series of leaps, vanished to another level, leaving Poro alone with the small cat-script.
Cat-Ranma had no particular reason to go anywhere special, so she simply walked around on all fours. She tried to find a comfortable lap to sit in, but none of the programs she met seemed to pay any attention to her beside avoiding tripping over her. Annoyed by the lack of attention towards her, she jumped onto a slope that led to a higher level.
No matter where she was, the ground was hard and quite uncomfortable for a nap. What does a cat got to do to get a nice, cozy place to sleep in?
As cat-Ranma nestled as well as she could, the ground around her began to glow in the same bright blue glow as her claws had. Startled, she leaped up and stared at the ground, prepared for anything. The shining dimmed until it was completely gone. Gingerly, she prodded the affected part before quickly withdrawing her paw. A bit longer touch told her that it didn't seem to be dangerous. A more forceful touch told her that the ground was now softer.
She walked around the spot for some microcycles, glancing upon the spot several times. With nothing happening, she laid down on the spot and snuggled deeper into the yielding ground. Had there been someone else present, they would've heard her quietly purring before falling asleep.
Shinobu helped Nabiki jump off the crate as it floated past the ledge. The gashes on her legs and arm were now lit with pooled Power. To their luck, the level they were at was close to a source pool, close enough for them to easily bring some Power to Nabiki to drink. Unfortunately, this seemed not to do anything to the wounds she had.
Not much later, Poro also arrived after riding the crates.
"Ranma ran away. I could not follow her, so I came here," Poro reported.
"Poro, do you know what we could do about these wounds?" Nabiki asked, hoping that the program had had to handle injuries of some kind before.
"I have never before witnessed change of physical parameters such as this," he replied.
Nabiki's ice-cool demeanour almost broke as she tried to figure out her options. The only User with any survival skills in the wilds was Ranma, and they had left her behind. Not that she expected Ranma to know what to do in the digital world. They had no bandages, splints or anything, and as far as she understood Poro's comment, there were none of those in here anywhere. Healing her legs would have to be done some other way. At least Ranma had managed to coax the Power to do something, but as said, she wasn't here.
Maybe if she hadn't stopped practising Anything Goes as a child, she might have a better shot of manipulating Power herself. She frowned. She did not just give up without a fight, damnit! The little training Ranma had given her did not involve the strange Powers Ranma had in the system, but maybe - just maybe - that was something all Users could do and Ranma was just more attuned to the capabilities of her being.
With that mindset, she grasped the two sides of one of the deep wounds she had on her shin and focused. "Mend, mend, mend," she chanted to herself as Shinobu and Poro watched from a distance.
She put forward all her mental strength and willed the cut to close. "Mend, mend, mend, mend already!" she continued.
Then, slowly, the slash began to close. It did not merely miraculously disappear, but the wound became narrower and narrower as the circuitry design on her shin was being repaired and the pooled Power turning into, well, whatever their flesh had become in the digital world.
Shinobu stared from the side as the wound was closing. She had expected that they'd have to leave Nabiki here to wait for her and Poro to find help to her. Instead, Nabiki had found a way to cure herself.
It took a while before Nabiki had cured all the wounds she had received and then she had to drink a rather large amount of Power to refill her reserves. She was exhilarated over this. She may have had to depend on other people when in here, but she was not helpless without Ranma.
Nabiki thought back to him. Her attitude towards him had certainly changed during the time spent here in the digital world. But they were on their way out of here, and she had better get back on the ball about getting that loose change from Ranma, and maybe a bit more. Why, just two weeks before they ended up abducted by MCP, she got a splendid idea...
Ranma closed the door to the bathroom behind him. None of the three sisters were in the house, but that mattered little. If old signs held true, soon after he got into the water, someone would just come barging in and he'd bear the brunt of the blame. Well, this time he had a plan.
About the time the door had closed, Kasumi and Nabiki had come in, the former carrying the groceries she had bought from the market. While Nabiki sat down in front of the television, Kasumi went to the kitchen to put the fish to the fridge.
And as per Ranma's predictions, Akane came in from the dojo all sweaty and ready to bathe.
"Hi sis, going to take a bath," she called Nabiki as she began walking up the stairs, only to stop at the second step. Nabiki slowly turned her head towards the staircase as well.
The reason for this was the voice coming upstairs.
"I'm siiiinnging in the baaath, I'm siiinnging in the baaath," a male voice sung.
A silent splash later, a soprano voice continued, "What a gloooorioous feeeeeeling, I'm -"
At this point, there was a brief pause, after which the male voice continued "a maaaaan agaaaiiinn..."
Nabiki felt a twitch at the corner of her mouth. Akane felt her left eye twitch. Kasumi considered... Gene Kelly a much better singer.
The yen signs flashed in Nabiki's eyes. Why pay for two singers when one is enough? A man who can sing duets alone and he isn't a ventriloquist!
Well, it wouldn't have been a quick plan since she'd have to deal with the recording and licensing issues as well. But currently those plans of hers were not making her giddy with excitement. She shook her head. She couldn't be gaining a real conscience, could she?
After thinking about whipping together a quick plan to fool Kuno-baby out of some of his pocket money she definitely decided that she was not getting an all-encompassing conscience. Phew. But selling the photos of Ranma to Kuno was not as pleasant a thought as it should've been.
Curses.
"I suppose we should now head for MCP and hope that Ranma knows where we're going and meets us there," Shinobu stated.
Nabiki had to agree. She didn't know how long it would take Ranma to recover from the catfist this time, since there was no water around and no Akane to lull cat-Ranma to sleep. It looked like their best shot was to proceed to MCP.
She wondered how it was that cat-Ranma seemed to be able to wield the ki claws. Were they ki claws in the first place? Maybe it was something instinctive, like the claws. Ranma 'knew' how to wield them before he learned how to use ki intentionally. She had seen how Ranma could break huge slabs of ... whatever here with her new powers. What if cat-Ranma had the capability of all that and more, limited only by her lack of thought?
That was a scary thought. The catfist had been a formidable technique in the real world. In here, Ranma and the cat seemed to blow raspberries to sensibilities, which were little more than nigh invisible scribblings in the margin, if Ranma's capabilities thus far were of any indication.
Nabiki slowly started to believe that it truly was better for cat-Ranma to recover from the catfist on her own.
Several cycles later, Ranma opened her eyes. She stretched in the depression that had formed below her as she slept.
She stood up. "What on Earth did I do this time?" she wondered. Then she noted that she was alone.
"Hey, anyone around here!" she shouted, hoping that any of the other three escapees would hear her. Silence was her only answer.
Not losing herself into anxiety, she walked over to a nearby ledge. Far in the distance, beyond a grand plain, a thick red beam rose from the ground and crossed into the sky where it pierced the mosaic clouds.
MCP.
She knew that the others were heading there. If they hadn't found her here when she was sleeping, then her best shot would be to go there as fast as possible to catch up to them. But how could she do that?
Her gaze wandered across the cliffs that bordered the plain. And then she saw them, down below by the entrance to the plain. She grinned.
It took a while for her to find a way to the plain, but it was worth it. For some reason, there were no guards in sight. The depot of tanks appeared to be completely unguarded. On the other hand, the tanks looked like they might've been broken, with treads lying on the ground or the tank gun bent and broken.
She picked one with a bent gun and stepped inside. She was not fond of how complex the vehicle looked from the inside, but at least there was a rotating seat, probably for the driver or the gunner. She sat in the seat and tried twisting a few knobs on the console.
With a lurch, the tank collided with another behind it as it hit the reverse gear.
"Oops," Ranma merely whispered. "How about this?"
With whirring sound, the tank started moving, shedding some of the debris that had fallen on it to the ground.
Ranma smiled. With the speed the tank gave her, she'd make it to MCP in a few hours. All she had to hope was that she'd find Nabiki and the others there before MCP did.
End of line.
AN: I fear I've already started feeling bad of having unused programs on my HD. Weebee has, again, been of immeasurable help fleshing out the notes I had for this chapter. I feel I'll have to name him a co-author at some point. And I mustn't forget about Ozzallos's help either. Well, one more (short) chapter left and the fic is done, unless I can think of what stuff can happen before the 'epilogue'.
The part about the crates was about the long-running joke about nondescript empty crates appearing everywhere in various FPS games. I have no clue what they were about in Tron 2.0.
Like the neko in the real world can intuitively use ki claws, in the digital world the neko can intuitively use some User powers. And since Flynn could use User powers in the movie without really thinking, I let Nabiki use them if she really focused on them. Go ahead and blame me for making Ranma and Nabiki superpowered, since canon didn't establish what kind of powers Users had.
The singing scene is an old scene I just wanted to include in any of my fics. I can't write anything that good nowadays. And it's quite likely I have botched up the order in which waters of different temperature are used when bathing.