I do not own Virus Buster Serge. Sunny, Kenji, and Chief Harata are mine.

Ch. 4- Translation

Mirei traced lazy circles on the top of her glass desk with the tip of her finger. She had come in to the office early so that she could avoid Sunny and Kenji. Her head was still hazy and thick from the alcohol the night before, but the memory of what had happened with Kenji was sharp and fresh.

"Why did I do that to Kenji? I know better than to get involved with someone on my team. And Jouichirou? Why did that name come out? Why does that name make me feel so… strange? I know he was a fellow STAND member, but could he have been…more than that to me?"

Mirei was so lost in her thoughts, she almost missed the low jingling sound that signaled an incoming call. Her head snapped up as the call information appeared to scroll through the air in front of her, even though it was all in her head. She knew it was bad for her optic nerves to use internal viewing so much, but she always forgot to route her calls through the holoprojector. She saw that it was Chief Harata on the line.

"Yes, Chief Harata?" Mirei said as she answered the call. An image of the chief appeared before her.

"Team leader McCann. I was just checking to see if you had received my messages yesterday."

Mirei blanched as she sat more upright. She had forgotten to send a message back to the Chief about the assignment he had given her.

Mirei replied nervously to the Chief. "Oh, yes sir! I'm sorry, sir. I was so busy yesterday, I forgot to respond. I see no problem with getting a report back to you next week on the data."

"Very well. I have the utmost confidence in you. Please feel free to avail yourself of any resources you might need to facilitate your completion of this data review."

Mirei let out a small sigh of relief before responding. The Chief did not appear to be upset. "Yes sir. Thank you."

Chief Harata stared unblinkingly ahead. "Good luck, team Leader McCann. I eagerly await your report."

With that, the chief's image winked out, and the call was disconnected.

Mirei picked up the interface headband off of her desk, and put it on. The holoprojection flickered to life, and she opened the file the Chief had sent to her. She scrolled through the root directory.

"This must have been old stuff," Mirei thought to herself as she looked at the list. "This was originally stored in SHDL format- I haven't seen that in a long time. At some point, it must have been converted into SHINE. That could be a problem. SHDL to SHINE conversions are notoriously unreliable and prone to data corruption."

Miriei's fingers flew across her keyboard. She knew that most of the other people in the office thought she was super old-fashioned to use an external input device, but her time in New Hong Kong had made her wary of direct input. Her stint as a hacker made her especially wary about routing too many functions through her implant. Overreliance on implant functions drew energy away from neuro-firewall integrity. Mirei smiled bemusedly to herself as she contemplated these things. It was an ironic twist of fate that she could remember the intricacies of every hack she had ever initiated prior to joining STAND perfectly, but only could conjure up the face of her old best friend Erica in dreams.

The office slowly came to life outside of Mirei's door. She had messaged Sunny early and told her that she was not to be disturbed unless an emergency arose. She could hear the drone of a hundred conversations outside, and she knew today was going to be another busy day for Team Sonata.

Around 10:30, Mirei heard a knock on the door. She snapped her fingers to end holoprojection, and removed her interface device. She rubbed her temples as she looked up at the door.

"Come in." she called out to whoever was on the other side of the door.

The door opened, and Sunny came bustling through.

"Mirei! I know you don't want to be disturbed today, but the Chief of Operations in Pacifica has some technical questions, and you are the only one I know who can answer him." Sunny said apologetically as she stood across from Mirei.

"No, it's OK. I'm not getting very far on this work of mine, anyway. I'm reviewing some old data files for the Chief, but they're pretty badly corrupted from conversion."

Sunny giggled and replied. "Oh! That's what you're up to! I thought you were nursing a hangover from last night." She walked around the desk to hand Mirei a viewscreen and continued. "Conversion? From what to what?"

"SHDL to SHINE." Mirei responded with frustration. "The worst possible scenario. A lot of this data is probably irretrievable, unless I can get hold of it in original form."

"SHDL?" Sunny said, as she looked at Mirei blankly. "What's that?"

"A really old data formatting standard- Super High Density Layers. I bet this data was originally stored mechanically on some sort of disk drive. I only know about it because one of my mentors as a kid had a bunch of stuff stored on old SHDL quads, and she made me learn how to use that system. She said it was good to 'know my roots'. The problem is that it can't convert directly into one of the biodigital standards like Super High Index Neuro Encoding, or even Protocol 22. Someone got sloppy when transferring this data out, and didn't bother to run it through an intermediary format like Alternative Lexicon Format or Data Bio Bridge. ."

"Wow. That sounds intense. I've only even heard of half of what you're talking about, and I spent four years studying Biointegrated Technology. My Digi-Neuro professors probably had never even heard of some of that stuff! That's why you're the Team Leader, and I'm the lowly Assistant." Sunny said as she shook her head.

"Oh, mostly it's pretty useless knowledge. Unless you're trying to get into really old stuff, like this. I don't think anyone except for security forces or military units even use any non bio formats anymore." Mirei said as she looked at the viewscreen Sunny handed her.

"Why would they use non bio formats? Don't most soldiers and security officers have implants?" Sunny asked.

"Actually, not all of them do. And even the ones who do don't use them in the field if they are under threat of direct hack. They prefer to go old school, like external data input and storage- even external processing. Sometimes, they'll even opt for mechanical storage. It's crude, but durable. And if you get hacked, at least they aren't hacking directly into your brain."

Sunny smiled. "that's why you use the keyboard, eh? Old habits die hard."

"Um, I'm not sure what you mean…" Mirei trailed off.

"Oh, it's OK Mirei. Everyone knows you used to work for STAND. I bet you have some really juicy stories!"

"Actually, I don't. Not anymore. The very thing we were talking about- a direct neuro hack- really messed up my medium-term memory. I don't know if you've ever heard of the Tai Mo Shan Incident, but I was there. It took me three months and a lot of therapy to just regain functionality." Mirei said with a far-off look in her eyes.

"Oh, wow! Yeah, I did hear about that. A crazy cyber-terrorist group wanted to recreate Black Valentine, right after the End of Incubator. I knew STAND was involved, but I didn't realize…"

Mirei stared at the floor for a moment, then spoke. "I don't actually remember anything. Sometimes, I have dreams… Apparently, I flew to Tai Mo Shan peak in STANDS's Razorback vehicle, and was attempting to lock on to the terrorists' position when they sent out a feedback spike . I was interfaced at the time- I don't know why- and it blew my implant. Apparently, I interpreted it as an external attack to the vehicle, and auto ejected. I was too low, my chute didn't deploy… I guess I was quite a mess when they found me."

"Oh, Mirei. I'm really sorry. I didn't know. I was being insensitive to even ask."

Mirei forced a smile, and assumed a businesslike tone. "Well, it's all over now. No sense in making a big deal out of it. It seems as if I'm going to have to return to the scene of the incident anyway. I think I'm going to have to take a look in the old LL archives in New Hong Kong to find the original version of this data if I'm going to have anything to report back to the Chief. I'm putting you in charge while I'm gone, Sunny. It should take a day- two at most to locate the originals."

"Mirei, I'm honored. But should you go by yourself? New Hong Kong isn't exactly the kind of place a person should travel to alone. Besides, I've heard those archives are immense. If you really want to find the data in one or two days, you need an assistant. Really- think of it from an efficiency standpoint. The longer you are away from here, the more Sonata suffers. You are the only one who can really answer the big questions. You can leave anyone in charge, really- the outcome will be the same." Sunny observed.

Mirei hemmed and hawed over her answer. "Oh, that isn't true… you are quite competent, and I really don't know if …"

Sunny broke in. "No, I'm not competent. Not in the same way you are. You are the brains behind Sonata. Everyone knows that. We can't afford to be without our brain for long. I don't want to tell you what to do, but…."

Mirei interrupted. "…but you are. OK. You can come. Make reservations at a hotel- I like the Kowloon. Arrange to rent a small air shuttle. There is no sense in taking a transport there- you can't rely on the mass transit. I do remember enough to know that New Hong Kong is a tough town to get around in if you don't have wheels or wings of your own. Oh- and tell Kenji that he's in charge while we are gone. I had better clean up this Pacifica tech nonsense before we leave."

Sunny snapped a bright salute. "Yes, m'am!"