Kaita had just finished with his homework when his PET beeped. "Mail from Mary-chan," Turboman reported.

"Huh? I thought she was busy this afternoon." Kaita glanced over at the mail.

Kaita-kun,

I'm a little stumped on one of our homework problems. Could you help me out? I'm waiting at the location shown in the attachment. Hurry!

Thanks,

Mary-chan

"That's weird," Kaita said. "Usually, she's the one who gets done with homework fast..." The location was only a few streets away from Mary's house. Kaita packed up his own homework to use as a reference before heading for the door.

"Where are you going now?" asked Asuna from the living room. "Honestly, it seems like you're never at home or at the shop anymore..."

"I'm just going to help my friend out with homework," Kaita said. "And Papa said he doesn't mind that much."

"I know, I know..." Asuna sighed. "Well, at least it's for a good reason this time. But spend an afternoon at home sometime, okay?"

"Okay!" As he opened the door, Kaita called, "Bye, Mama!"

"Stay safe!" After shutting the door behind him, Kaita began the trip over to Mary's meeting spot. It was a comfortably cool afternoon; spring was just around the corner, and the temperature was starting to warm up a little. There were a few clouds drifting lazily across the sky, their shapes shifting from things Kaita thought he could recognize to abstract tufts and swirls. He was almost disappointed to reach the spot, though he quickly found something else to look at.

"Wow!" Kaita gasped, looking at the mansion behind the slender bars of an iron fence. Its sensible cream paint made its massive size look stately rather than imposing.

"'Wow,' what?" Turboman asked. Kaita held up his arm so his Navi could see. Between the fence and the mansion stretched a garden, its hedges cut perfectly. Topiary trees cut neatly into cones dotted it, as did bushes—not in bloom at the moment due to the temperature. Closer to them were big, stately oak trees. The clay-red trim and roof of the mansion gleamed, set off by the deep greens of the garden around it. "Okay, 'wow' is right."

"There's actually nobody living there," Mary explained behind them. "The owner keeps it up, but he hasn't stayed here for years. Anyway, what did you need my help for, Kaita-kun?"

"Wait, your help?" Kaita asked. "I thought you needed my help."

"But you sent me mail a few minutes ago," Mary said, looking down at her PET.

"No, I didn't! You sent me mail, see?" Kaita showed her the mail he'd gotten, while she displayed hers. They exchanged worried looks - the names' placements were reversed, but the text was otherwise identical.

"What's going on?" Mary asked, looking around. "Is it a trap...?"

A block away, the gate swung open. "This way, please!" called a cheerful girl's voice.

"Should we go in?" wondered Kaita.

"Maybe it's a nest of bad guys!" Ring said excitedly.

"Yikes..." Mary said.

"I'm not finished! If we go in, we can turn the tables and stop their evil plan!"

"What's taking so long out there? Come on!" said the girl, sounding a little more annoyed.

"Maybe it's a ghost," Ring speculated next.

"I wonder who it really is?" Kaita started walking toward the gate, curiosity in full swing.

"I don't know about this, Kaita-kun..." Still, Mary followed him. Once they were inside, the gate quickly swung shut.

"Keep moving!" advised the girl. To back her up, a buzzing sound came from around them - lawnmowers were speeding toward them, chewing up the grass in their path.

Kaita couldn't leave Mary behind, but they couldn't just let the out-of-control mowers catch up to them. He pointed his PET to the left while Mary took the right. "Plug-in!" Before long, the mowers came to a halt and Ring and Turboman returned to their owners' PETs.

"Great job," Kaita said. "Now, let's keep going before anything else comes after us."

"Hmm. I have to admit, you're not bad," the girl said as they started walking. "But if you won't run, I'll have to speed things up my way." As she giggled, the ground started moving under Kaita and Mary's feet. The two Netbattlers yelped as they fell over, speeding toward the mansion. Just when Kaita thought they were going to run into it, they took a sharp turn to the left, skirting around it. They went past rows of flowers before coming to a halt in front of a rosebush, which had a gap to let visitors into the massive, forest-like backyard behind it. "Now, keep going forward!" The trail into the depths of the backyard was somewhat hidden by trees, but it was still visible enough to follow. Less so was the way further back, where the backyard began to show signs of its years of abandonment. Here, the grass was more overgrown, and the trees were far more numerous. A rabbit hopped past Kaita and Mary, disturbed by the human intruders.

"Look!" Kaita soon saw what Mary had—light was flashing out of one of the trees. Cautiously, the two came closer to discover a full-sized log cabin mounted to the side of a thick tree. Vines had grown around the ladder up, and moss was spreading across the roof and down the walls. "It's sort of pretty, isn't it?" Mary asked.

"Like something out of a storybook," Kaita agreed.

"A few years from now, it'll be completely hidden..." Lights flashed out of the windows, and Mary said, "I guess we're supposed to go into it." The two climbed up the ladder, and found the door had swung open for them. Mary coughed as they stepped inside—everything was coated with dust. Otherwise, it seemed like an ordinary treehouse, though with additional supplies like a kitchenette and some furniture.

"Now, sit down!" commanded the girl. The nearest seat was a tan sofa. As soon as Kaita and Mary took their seats, seatbelts snapped over them. Dust flew everywhere as the walls retracted to reveal screens and equipment of all kinds, powering back to life after years of disuse.

"What is this place?!" wondered Kaita, taking it all in.

"Gate Seven, open!"

"Ka—Kaita—" stammered Mary. Kaita looked down to see that the floor had vanished from under the sofa seconds before they plummeted down a shaft. Both children screamed as sections of tubing whistled past. They slowed down as they came near the bottom, but only so they could go flying sideways, past flashing magenta lights. Kaita squeezed his eyes shut and pressed his lips closed as he got a faceful of Mary's hair. This part of their journey was much shorter than the initial fall, and soon they were slowly rising upward. They looked around confusedly at where they found themselves: a cockpit, with clear glass above them and to their sides. Out the window, they could see pink airplane wings and a hangar. "We're... in a jet now?"

"Cool!" Ring said. In front of them, the plane was starting to move. The pilot and a woman on the other end were going through the final steps of taking off as they began to tilt upward. Above, a circular plate moved away, allowing the jet plane to take to the air.

"Who's doing this?" Kaita wondered.

The girl giggled knowingly. "Oh, you'll see! For now, enjoy the trip!"

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When they landed, they were ushered off the plane by a platoon of maids. "Now what?" Kaita wondered once they'd stopped in the middle of a sprawling room with a pink carpet.

"Your task is to find the mistress of the house before the day is out," a magenta-haired maid around their age said. "Feel free to get started whenever you'd like."

"What could someone all the way in Kingland want with us?" wondered Mary, looking around at all the doors they had to choose from. The maids didn't answer, all wearing the same polite smile.

Heading toward the middle door, Kaita said, "I guess we'll find out when we get to the end!" He opened it to find a broom closet. "Though this doesn't seem like the way to do that." Something shone out from the dim closet—a key ring. "Hey, this might come in handy!" he said.

"I guess since we're on a time limit, it's okay if we borrow them," Mary said, following Kaita inside to get a better look. Kaita pulled the keys off their peg, but found they were attached to a cord that went into a hole in the wall. "That's odd—" The closet began to shake. Even when Kaita tried replacing the keys, the cord didn't retract—and the shaking got worse and worse. "Kaita-kun, we're falling!" Mary exclaimed. The two Netbattlers could only see the maids from the waist down for a moment. Then, they plunged into darkness.

The broom closet landed with a splash, nearly tossing its two riders out. "Where are we?" wondered Kaita, looking around. They were in an ancient-looking, cavernous room that was largely taken up by the canal they were floating on. Water poured into it from slots in the wall.

"It must be related to the plumbing—a giant sewer," Mary said. They were carried past the skeleton of some animal, and then a very human skull. "And it doesn't look like it's very easy to get out..."

"This house must be really old, then," Ring said. To Kaita and Turboman, she explained, "Kingland's sewers tend not to be particularly modern, especially in dusty dumps like this." Kaita and Mary both gasped as they went by a wall dotted with arrows. "And they're especially difficult to navigate when the plumbing's trying to off you!" The closet suddenly plunged down a small waterfall, leaving the Netbattlers flat on their backs. That helped them escape the arrows that embedded themselves into the closet's back wall.

"I don't think it's safe to stay in here anymore," Kaita said, lifting his head to see a spherical cockpit that was attached via robot arm to the ceiling. A maid was sitting behind the control panel.

"Kaita-kun, plug in to that one!" Mary said, pointing out a circular lump in the ceiling a few meters away with her PET arm. Kaita did so, then ducked back down along with Mary as a second round of arrows came flying at them. As they came closer, the cockpit dropped down in front of them, its glass window falling open. The closet bumped against it, then began to slowly move to the side. Kaita got up on the glass, then helped Mary up before the closet slipped past the spherical pod and away. They got inside, the window rising up to cover them. "Now, take us up!" They rose past the surprised maid and up through the ceiling, where they found a room filled with pods waiting to be used. They didn't bother with those, instead heading out into the hallway. The only door was on the other end, so they started heading toward it.

A giant doll sprang in front of them, blocking the way. Kaita skidded to a halt. "Yikes!" It opened its arms wide. Before it could close them around Kaita and Mary, the boy called, "Plug-in, ! Transmission!"

"Plug-in, Ring-chan! Transmission!" The Navis appeared in the doll's system. Standing between them and the panel that would shut it off was a silver Dream Bit, which opened fire. After Ring jumped away from the attack, Mary called, "Battlechip: Corn Shot!" The Dream Bit stumbled backward on its bug-like legs, momentarily disoriented.

"Battlechip: Samurai Sword!" Turboman shot forward to deliver a long swipe down the Dream Bit's side, shearing off half of its legs. Now that it was immobilized, Kaita sent in, "Mega Cannon!" Together with the Mega Cannon Ring received next, Turboman fired a burst of energy that wiped away the virus. "Now hurry and turn it off!" Turboman zipped forward to access the control panel, then returned to his PET after Kaita and Mary were safe.

"Good work, Ring-chan," Mary told her Navi. "Now, let's see what's through that door." Kaita opened it and stepped inside. Almost instantly, a bookshelf fell toward him. "Kaita-kun!" He barely managed to make it out in time. Once he'd caught his breath, he turned to see Mary's sheet-white face.

"It looks okay from here, Mary-chan," he said. Hesitantly, Mary stepped on top of the face-down bookshelf and over to her friend. "Though I think we need to be careful getting across here," he told her, taking a step forward. The floor beam under his foot sprang up to catch him on the side of his face. "Ow!" He walked around the trap, Mary following directly behind him.

"I wouldn't trust that statue, either..." Kaita looked over at the stone figure he'd been about to walk by and had to agree. They walked to the other side of the room before going past, where the statue couldn't reach them even if it fell. They stopped again to look around. "Up there!" They managed to sidestep a square panel on the ceiling, and then inched past a flowerpot sitting on the bookshelf next to the door. "Now what...?"

On the far side of the next room was a wall full of pictures from security cameras. In front of it was a table, and in front of the table was a high-backed chair. "Well, well, well!" Coming from behind the chair was the voice of the girl who had led them there in the first place. "Not bad, you two!" She stood and turned to face them. She was probably only a year or two older than them, and a bit on the gangly side. Though her clothes looked relaxed enough—a light pink tank top, red capris with a white diamond pattern near the bottom, and heeled sandals - the jewelry and makeup she wore looked expensive. Her hair fell almost to her waist, even in its French braid. "I'm Ayanokouji Yaito," she introduced. "It's a pleasure to meet you in person."

Surprised, Mary said, "You know us?"

"Nothing falls under the radar of the Ayanokouji news ring!" Yaito bragged. "When I heard there were new heroes in town, I just had to test them for myself!" Kaita and Mary glanced at each other nervously. "But don't worry, you passed with flying colors." She turned back to the table her chair was in front of. "Come, sit. Strawberry milk, anyone?"

"Um, sure," Kaita said, following her to the other end of the room.

"So, tell me everything that's been going on!" Yaito said once her guests had sat down. "I've kept up to date on the news, but it's not the same as being there! How is dear old Densan?" A brown-armored Navi stepped forward with two wineglasses and a bottle of strawberry milk. Kaita stared in amazement as the butler Navi served them.

"It's certainly been busy," Mary said. "There's always someone trying to make a scene... Just the other day, someone tried to bring down an entire shopping tower." She then noticed what had Kaita's eye. "Dimensional Areas aren't banned here, like they are in Japan," she explained.

"So as long as we're in this mansion, Glyde can serve us!" Yaito finished.

"As always, it is my pleasure to make you feel at home, Yaito-sama and guests," Glyde said politely.

"Anyway, it seems like you've had your hands full!" Yaito took a sip of strawberry milk. "Fun, isn't it?"

"Isn't what?" Kaita asked.

"You know! Saving the city, going on adventures... it was the best time of my life! Seeing you two today really brought back memories." She swirled the strawberry milk around for a moment, then looked up at Kaita and Mary. "Well, since it's so late, you might as well stay here."

That startled both of Yaito's guests. "Mama's going to be so worried!" Kaita realized.

"So is Mum..."

"We've got phones here!" Yaito said, as if it were obvious. "A piddly little long-distance bill is nothing for me!" She stood, milk glass in hand. "You'll get the best guest suites here," she said. "But before you turn in for the night, I can't wait to hear more about your adventures!"