To the Master of the Grounds:
Target Nine is beginning to suspect us. He has a tendency to make us go out into the garden, but has done little else. The situation is otherwise normal, with very little disturbance of the peace. The flowers are unsuspecting. No serious problems have risen from the wasps.
I continue to work on the birdhouse. Progress is at about forty percent. That number is expected to rise quickly with the first new installation. If my judgement is sound, the installation will be complete before the month is out. Work cannot begin in earnest on the second installation until the results of the first are shown. However, it should follow quickly on the first installation's heels and spur the birdhouse to completion.
My fellow gardener continues to serve his purpose well. Both Target Nine and the flower girl seem to be more hostile toward him than me, but that could be beneficial. I believe that as long as T-Nine takes him to be the real threat, I can slip back into the inner ranks. This effort to regain trust coupled with the first installation will remind T-Nine of my importance to the greenhouse, and will prevent him from doing anything rash.
If all goes well, I will return home before the summer begins.
Your faithful and humble servant.
Black looked up as he thought, watching the room bob up and down. "Hey, Atsuki..."
"Yeah?"
"Is 'judgment' with one 'e' or two?"
The room stopped moving. "What're you asking me for?" Atsuki wondered. The room resumed motion. "I never fill that straight-to-superior shit out. One sounds right."
Black gripped his laptop tighter as his seat's weight shifted. He looked down at Atsuki, who was now doing his push-ups with one hand. "Show-off." The older man flashed him a grin, then returned his focus to his workout. Black corrected his spelling, then looked over the formal report one last time—not very long, since it had been quiet for a change—before closing it. He then sent it off to zip through the back ways of the Internet to its destination.
"Hey, guys."
Black looked up to see who was in the doorway. "Hi, Yumi." Atsuki gave her a grunt.
Yumi was rolling her eyes at her fellow Nova members. "Atsuki, you're such a guy." She turned her scrutiny on Black in an instant. "And why are you such a wimp, Black? You could stand to do a few of those yourself."
"It's his job to make sure I don't have to," Black said coolly, opening up his main project and typing in a few lines more for show than anything else.
As she always did when he weaseled his way out of exercise, Yumi said, "You might enjoy it."
"I doubt it," Black said. He then added on the customary excuse, "Besides, I'm working." Yumi tried to look at his screen (moving up and down like everything else on Atsuki's back) and he confirmed, "Our big weapon is taking shape." He gripped the laptop again as Atsuki changed hands. "I suppose the Boss wants something?"
"Well, yeah, but we can't go yet," Yumi said. "You can't do an uneven workout. It just doesn't feel right." She took another look at Black and added, "Not that you'd know anything about that."
He laughed it off. "Any luck with that side project of ours?"
"I've got a couple of spots. How much we need to do kind of depends on how well the Ministry goes. And of course, those kids..."
"We want out-of-the-way locations if that's your big concern." Black smirked. "Good, aren't they? And they aren't as restricted in thought as the Net Saviors. It's still a big, dangerous adventure to them."
"They've got fresher eyes. Is that what you're saying?" Yumi asked.
"Yep." He held his hand out flat in front of him to illustrate. "You get comfortable when you're a Net Savior. You know you're good. The idea of someone posing a real threat rarely enters your mind after a while. So you just lure a Net Savior into a sense of familiarity, and yank the floor out from under 'em at the last minute..." He snatched his hand up into a fist. "And that's what separates a successful organization from a failure."
Yumi nodded, her expression thoughtful. "Knowing the enemy, huh…" Atsuki lowered himself to the ground, letting out a long grunt. Black unfolded his legs and got to his feet. "Let's go, boys," Yumi said.
"I bet it's another one of these get-out-of-here missions," Atsuki grumbled as they went down the hall. "What do you bet?"
"I bet you're right, so I'm afraid there's no wager," Black answered. "You could set a watch to our dear Boss's thinking."
"But that's part of what makes our darling Boss so... promising," Atsuki said. Black shot him a look—they were right behind Yumi, and she didn't look pleased by the direction their talk had taken. "That experience," he said, navigating smoothly back into less suspect waters. "A good leader knows what's best," he said as they walked into his office.
"And a good leader knows his men well," Black agreed. "I'd say the Boss does both, don't you, Boss?"
"Absolutely," the Boss said. "And that's why I'd be remiss to leave you two lazing around the base." Atsuki shot a smirk toward Black once Yumi had left them. "I thought you two could use a little free-for-all. Whatever you care to do, so long as I'm hearing about it within a day or two. The whole city is your oyster."
"Sounds good to me," Black said. "It's been a while since we truly had a team mission, hasn't it?"
"Too long," Atsuki agreed. "Thank you for giving us this wonderful opportunity, Boss."
The Boss raised his wineglass in acknowledgement. "My pleasure. Dismissed."
"Everything we need's in my room," Atsuki said the minute they were through the door. "I know just the thing."
He shot Black a toothy smile. The smaller man complained, "Well, don't just leave it there! Tell me!"
"The air show," he said. "Specifically, a huge-ass, privately owned blimp from Kingland that has arrived at the air show," he checked his PET for the time, "roughly five minutes ago." They stepped into Atsuki's room—a spartan affair, much like Black's own. A pair of black backpacks sat at the foot of the bed, and Atsuki wasted no time unzipping one.
"So, we're going on a joyride," Black said.
As he took out a pair of special clips—containing tiny, wireless flash drives, each with a different set of programs inside—and a light pen, Atsuki said, "Not just any joyride, a joyride in the air! If we have to go do something pointless and stupid, it's gonna be balls-out stupid!"
Black laughed. "I guess now the only question is how we're going to hijack this thing."
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"Helloooo!" crowed Atsuki, stepping toward the guards.
"Hi!" Black said from behind him.
"Excuse me, but unauthorized personnel aren't allowed in," the guard said, a little flustered. In Black's book, that wasn't flustered enough. It normally wasn't something he bothered to keep track of. But things like this were so much more fun with Atsuki, and adding in all the additional little details was just part of the deal.
"But we love blimps!" he said with an almost cartoonish enthusiasm. Now the guard was approaching acceptable levels of flustered.
"We just couldn't wait to see one!" Atsuki said, advancing on the guard with aplomb.
"We were all like, 'If we could see this blimp before any of our friends, it would be the coolest thing ever!' So won't you just let us have a little peek?"
"I'm sorry," the guard said nervously. "You'll have to wait for the exhibition..."
"Just a little one?" Black asked. "An eensy, weensy, bitsy, tiny little..." With a swift chop and a bit more force than necessary, Atsuki sent the guard into the dirt. "That's what I thought," Black told the unconscious man. "Thank you!"
"Onward!" Atsuki called dramatically.
"Our destiny awaits us!" Black added.
"Whatever shall we find?" asked Atsuki, pulling out a tranquilizer gun and loading it with darts.
"A blimp, hopefully," Black replied, making sure to stay well behind Atsuki as they skipped into the hangar. "And those must be the previous owners!" he said as Atsuki shot one of the men in the neck. He looked over in confusion before falling to the ground. His friend actually made it a few steps before the second dart did its job. "You hide 'em away, I'll delete the evidence!" Black said, making a beeline for the nearby port.
"Gotcha!"
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The cockpit of the blimp was silent as it slowly rose into the air, Black ready to send Punk in to back up Burnerman in the pilot's seat if things went wrong. Once they were so high up in the air that the airport was a tiny square below them, Black felt free to start poking around the onboard computer. "Why, Aw-tsu-kay, look awt this!" Black drawled in a ridiculous Kinglish accent. "We're Kinglish air exhibitioners! We've got pictures and everything!"
"I daresay, Blawk," Atsuki bellowed, easily matching his comrade, "that is even more smawshing than just having this blimp!"
"Zeppelin!" Black corrected, rifling through his backpack.
"—this zeppelin!"
Black found the flash drive he was looking for—he doubted they'd need it, but it never hurt to be safe, especially when they had pictures of the blimp's original owners in the system—and clipped it to the control panel, where it activated. "There's nawthing like hawving a vacation on your boss's tawb, is there?" he asked, taking a light pen out of his backpack and touching it to the center of the front window. "Punk, set zero."
"You... gawt it," Punk managed. Black doubted the poor Navi's bad accent was even intentional, like his and Atsuki's were.
As he began tapping the pen to each corner of the window, reading off what the display on its side said so that Punk could enter the coordinates into the program on the flash drive, Atsuki said, "Oi'm going to hawve a look-say. Cawll me up 'ere if you need me."
Black left the pen touched against the upper left corner. "And cawll me if you find anything worth seeing; negative five thousand seventeen, negative three hundred ninety-eight, left window is four centimeters away," he drawled without pausing. With that, he began to repeat the process for the left window, starting at its upper right corner.
"Oh, my!" exclaimed Atsuki somewhere in the back rooms. "Do come and have a look at this vintage, Blawk!"
Black was quick to finish after hearing that. "It's symmetrical," he told Punk, slipping the light pen back in its place. Loudly, he called, "What's this?" Black ran over to find Atsuki in what appeared to be the on-ship wine cellar. He didn't have much expertise in the way of picking wines, but he knew how his friend liked them—as pricey and top-quality as they came. The bottle in his hands looked like no exception. "What a find!"
"And it gets bettah," Atsuki said, with extra emphasis on the 'tah'. "Our friends in Kingland weren't believers in 'less is more', either!" Black grinned as he looked over the rest of the wine bottles in the well-stocked cellar, which looked like more of the same. He was sick and tired of having to figure out every consequence arising from every step he tried to take, or having to ignore the consequences because something about him didn't want to sit idly by. It didn't help that half the people and places in this town made him remember things, which he hated doing—it meant having to deal with the feelings that he thought he'd locked away years ago. It all resulted in a lot of stress, and getting completely wasted and forgetting everything for an evening was the only relief he knew how to find. Atsuki held out a wineglass, and Black took it. "To our vacation in the stars!" he toasted, pouring them both glasses.
"To us!" Black drank deeply—it tasted wonderful, with just the right amount of warm sting as it swept down his throat. Silently, he willed the alcohol to take it all away, and he felt relief as it started to oblige, the fuzziness starting to settle into his brain. He closed his eyes as he swallowed the next gulp, enjoying the feeling.
He opened his eyes to see Atsuki, the other man's glass much fuller and his smile a very amused one. "You're supposed to take it slow, silly," he chided, grabbing the bottle they were on and a second one and steering them both out the door. "You're so uncivilized."
"You're just jealous because I'm going to have more than you if you don't catch up," Black said, grinning. He felt much, much better.
"This isn't beer. The point isn't who finishes first," Atsuki laughed. "Anyway, if you get too drunk I won't be able to show you around our glorious vessel, and then who's going to miss out?" Black hated missing out on things, so he was careful to take a smaller sip as he and Atsuki tromped down the hall. "Why, Blawk, look awt that! It's a hawtch!" Atsuki proclaimed.
"Wow!" Black ran over, the wine nearly sloshing out of the glass. He took that as an excuse to drink some more. "Where does it go?" he asked, tugging at the handle.
Atsuki set the bottles down and easily pulled it open. "Why, it looks like a storeroom! With bombs and things! Maybe we can carpet-bomb something, if there exists a place in this dump of a city that's actually important enough to carpet-bomb!"
"Dunno," Black said, barely managing to keep up his accent and find words at the same time. "I think... I don't think there's anyplace that important. Maybe we should just pick somewhere at... awt random."
"It's alroight, dear," Atsuki said. "You don't hawve to be Kinglish."
"But I-oi want to be Kinglish!" Black protested.
"You don't seem able to string together words, darling!" Atsuki said, moving ahead to open and shut some doors until finding a good one. "Well, would you look awt that! I think we're hunter-zeppliners, Blawk!"
"What do you need all those guns for?" Black wondered, peering into the room. "You're in the air, that's silly!"
"Got me," Atsuki said, topping off his own glass and then refilling Black's. "Maybe they just feel safer." He grinned, taking a sip. "Or maybe they just felt like giving us a little hand."
"How nice of them!" On reflection, Black wasn't sure if Atsuki was being sarcastic or not, and decided to take a drink. "This all sure will sort out anyone who tries taking this thing back, huh?"
"That's the idea," Atsuki said. "Come along!" He was off again, leaving Black to trail along behind him. "Don't toddle! Get over here!"
By the time Black had caught up, his glass was half empty again. "Dude, they've got a kitchen?" he asked, looking around. "I'm jealous."
"You can't cook, silly," Atsuki reminded him.
"You said 'silly'," Black laughed.
"And you're being silly," Atsuki said with a fond smirk. "I wonder if their food stock's as good as their wine selection?"
"I would totally learn to cook if I had a kitchen," Black said. "I'd make myself everything I wanted. Curry and cake and sushi and spaghetti..." he sighed, twirling toward the stove.
"You wouldn't really do that, would you?" Atsuki asked.
"I would. I so would," Black said, completely serious.
"But then you'd be fat," Atsuki said, setting down his wine glass.
"Really?" Black asked. He barely noticed Atsuki gently prying his wine glass out of his hand and setting it aside.
"Oh, yes. Morbidly obese," Atsuki said, hands ready at his sides. "And it'd make it even easier for me to do this!" Black shrieked as Atsuki tickled his stomach, easily getting around any attempts he made to protect himself.
"Wait—stop!" Black laughed.
"Okay," Atsuki said, far too cheerful. He abruptly dropped out of sight. Before Black could even wonder where he'd gone, he was being tickled behind the knees. He yelped, stumbling forward, as Atsuki laughed.
"You're funny," Atsuki said, springing to his feet.
"Geez..." Black crossed his arms and pouted. "But wait!" he remembered. "I know!"
"Oh, no you don't!" Atsuki said, putting his arms down to protect his sides. Black couldn't force his way through, no matter what he did.
"Well, fine," Black said. "If there's cake in the fridge, I'm not sharing!" He opened it. Inside were a pair of dinner trays; one with tiny sandwiches and deviled eggs, and one with tiny, square-shaped cheesecakes. Black popped a deviled egg into his mouth and sat down to best devour the cheesecake tray. "Everything looks so good!" he said around his mouthful of egg. "And—this is so good!"
"Well, duh," Atsuki said, taking the entire sandwich and egg tray out of the fridge. Black had a feeling it was going to return eggless. In the meantime, the cheesecake Black bit the corner off of was delicious, and its crust still had a bit of crisp to it. "Since you took an egg, I'm taking a cheesecake," Atsuki said, reaching down to pluck out one with a candy lime slice on top.
Curious, Black took one of the same kind while he continued to take small bites out of the first cheesecake. After he'd worked his way through it, he was anxious to take a bite of the second. "Oh, that one's good!" he exclaimed, chewing slowly to savor the tang. The next one that caught his eye had tiny, dark flecks in it. He took a bite and found it to be light and sweet. "What's this one?" he asked, taking a second bite to completely chase out the lime taste.
"Vanilla bean," Atsuki said.
Black turned to see how his friend was doing. "Wow, you eat so fast!" The large tray was half-cleansed of deviled eggs.
"No, you eat so slow," Atsuki teased.
Black took a third bite of his square of vanilla bean cheesecake. "This one's my favorite," he decided. "Why does vanilla get such a bad rap, anyway?"
"Because it's too subtle for people with no taste buds?" Atsuki asked.
"Are you saying I still have taste buds after eating nutrient soup for so long?" Black asked skeptically.
"Touché." Atsuki theorized, "They must have been in hiding, waiting for the perfect cheesecake."
"Sure." Black took another bite, sliding it around his tongue. "Maybe people just aren't patient enough," he suggested.
"And they just wolf it down... That would probably be me, come to think of it," Atsuki said. Black was starting to feel full already, but there wasn't much more of the vanilla bean square left. He made sure to enjoy it, committing the taste to memory before he swallowed; after all, things like cheesecakes were rare for him. He didn't particularly enjoy dwelling on that; he reached for his wineglass, and Atsuki handed it to him. Both of them stood, Atsuki returning the tray sans all of its eggs to the fridge and kicking it shut.
The kitchen wasn't far from the cockpit, but Black still managed to finish his wine off before they re-entered. "Some ship, our dahling 'ere!" Atsuki proclaimed as they walked in.
"This is awesome," Black said happily as the room floated around him. "We could, like... We could do stuff in this!"
"We certainly could, mate," Atsuki said, taking Black's empty glass, finishing off his own, and setting both to the side. "And I'm sure we will, in the morning. But for now..." Atsuki lightly set a finger on his temple. "Something's coming to me."
"What is it, Atsuki?" Black asked eagerly. Whatever it was, it had to be exciting.
"Atsuki-sama," the blue-haired Nova member growled, grabbing Black by the hand.
"Wooooo..." Black managed as he was tugged to Atsuki's side. The larger man held him there with an arm around his waist. It was all pretty silly and made him incredibly dizzy, and he couldn't help but laugh.
"I'm getting an idea, Black," Atsuki proclaimed, holding his free arm up for emphasis.
"What?" Black gasped, leaning into Atsuki's body to better see by the angle Atsuki's arm indicated.
"When we're ready, we're going to take over," Atsuki pronounced.
It was their favorite joke, because they both knew it would never be a reality. "He'll never see it coming!" giggled Black.
"And when we take over, we'll have a big parade," Atsuki said, twirling them both around so they had more of the bridge to walk on. "We'll have a float with clowns, and a float piled with bodies to discourage anyone else, and a float with our subordinates. And we'll be on the last one. The biggest, most elaborate float anyone's ever made."
"With balloons?" asked Black.
"Naturally, with balloons! Whatever we want." Atsuki said, "Next, we're going to design ships. Planes, boats, our own armada. And we'll use them to take over—"
"—the stars!" Black said, pointing at them shining in through the window.
"Of course!" Atsuki agreed. "And we'll live above the earth, maybe even in a zeppelin like this one. Every morning, we'll see the sun shining in, and our whole world below."
"How wonderful," Black breathed.
A look somewhere between confused and thoughtful came over Atsuki's face. "It'll still take work," he said. "You'll control the Internet, and I'll deal with the humans."
"But it'll be ours." Wistfully, Black said, "It'll all be ours..." Laughter, more out of joy than amusement, spilled out of his throat. "Hey, Atsuki...?" Black half-fell onto the floor, splaying his arms.
"Yeah?" Atsuki asked, following him to the ground more gracefully.
"This..." Black wasn't sure what he'd been about to say, so he said the next thing that came to mind as he stared up at the ceiling. "This is really lousy for stargazing, considering we're in the sky."
"There's an observation deck just above us," Atsuki said, picking Black up with ease and rising to his feet. Black felt safe there, since anyone wanting to harm him would have to get by Atsuki, and nobody could harm Atsuki. He leaned his head against Atsuki's chest, feeling himself beginning to doze off. "Don't sleep yet, we're almost there!" Black could hear Atsuki's footsteps against the stairs, but his older friend was so careful that he didn't feel a thing. He heard a door open, and then the humming of the ship, and then another door opening. "Here we are," Atsuki said, settling them both on the soft carpet.
Black opened his eye to see stars, hundreds of them, unobstructed by artificial light. "Amazing," he whispered, his attention completely on them. The sky was vast, seeming to stretch into the distance without end. But that didn't make sense, of course it ended somewhere—but would he ever see the end? He probably wouldn't. It made him wonder what was out there at the end, or if it even existed, if he would never see it. He recognized constellations, their names forgotten after all the years he'd gone without seeing them; but they were like faces were to him. He didn't have to remember what they were called. One look and he could remember so much more: telescopes and field trips as the myths built around them were explained, friends surrounding him as they all searched among those stars and wished for silly dreams, shooting stars that aimed to destroy all that he held dear...
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The carpet felt glorious. The sun in his face did not.
Black groaned, scooting himself backward with his arms and feet. He didn't want to move out of the sunbeam entirely; it felt so pleasantly warm. He just didn't want it in his face, where it was blasting his bionic eye with light and making his head start to pound. He had to stop after his stomach gave an uncomfortable lurch, powerless to do much other than groan again. After everything felt like it was staying still, he continued to shuffle backward until he saw the much dimmer ceiling, with tables and chairs at his side. With a sigh, he let his arms and legs flop out again.
Even with his vision unfocused again, he could see Atsuki appear above him with an unopened water bottle. "We've got company," Atsuki said as Black took the water and drank some of it down. It made him feel better enough to ignore his headache, which he could tell would be a good thing when Atsuki said, "That Enzan's got a really nice car. If I were any less honorable of a man, I'd take it."
Black swayed to his feet and ambled over to the observation window, gulping down more water. Down below, a bright red sports car was zooming down the highway, easily keeping pace with the blimp above it. "Is that a Lamborghini?!" Black asked indignantly.
"Yep," Atsuki said. Black clenched his free hand into a fist, speechless from jealousy. "You can't even drive," Atsuki pointed out.
"I don't care," Black whined. "I want a cool car, too." Morosely, he watched the glorious car, all speed lines and flashiness and so completely Enzan that it was almost comical, speed alongside him. "Come on. Let's see if we can't at least do something to get them out of our hair."
"Actually, that's exactly what I was going to tell you about," Atsuki said as they left the observation deck and headed down the stairs. It seems we overlooked something last night."
Black began to nod, then stopped when it made his head hurt. "I can't remember half the details of last night," he said. "What'd we miss?"
"There aren't just small-scale weapons down there," Atsuki explained. "It seems we have the keys to a fairly good-sized mecha. Doesn't quite look like military, but I'm sure it's built for heavy lifting."
"And there were guns in here somewhere," recalled Black. Atsuki motioned him into the room where the mecha was. He connected his PET to it; even without a Navi to pass into the mecha, he could acquire important information like its connection signal, so that he could control it through a different computer. "So the Net Saviors are coming out here to help arms dealers or something? That's funny."
"Hey, as long as nobody's doing anything illegal on the Internet, I doubt they're allowed to care," Atsuki said. "Anyway, I'm sure we can toss 'em in the ocean and be on our merry way."
"As long as we don't throw in the car," Black said, already trying to think of some situation where Meiru and Enzan wouldn't wind up on the receiving end of Atsuki's punishment. Because of the headache, it wasn't very fruitful. "The car goes with us."
"Oh, shit," Atsuki laughed as they entered the cockpit.
"We distract them, grab them, and then steal their car," Black explained. "Considering they're practically on top of us, that'll have to do. We really don't want them finding an exterior port and plugging directly into this thing, which is probably what they're trying to do right now."
"Right," Atsuki said as they took their seats in front of the control panel. "So, what are our names again?"
"I'm Lucas, Nigel," Black said, his Kinglish accent as perfect as he could manage. Considering that he'd passed himself off as half-Kinglish in the past, he was pretty sure it was at least serviceable even after over a year of disuse. "Don't you remember, old boy? We've been on this whole 'who-knows-what-we're-doing-in-Afrikku' bit for years now!"
"Right, right!" Atsuki said, "Punk, be a good man and identity set!" The windows flashed white for a second as the device Black had clipped on the control panel came to life. It used the hologram generator that normally displayed readouts like altitude and distance to replace their bodies with those of the Kinglish air exhibitioners, mapping their movements to animate the images. It would probably provide momentary confusion, which was all Black and Atsuki really needed. "Burnerman, land us on the highway." To Black, Atsuki said, "I do apologize, but if the Net Saviors don't get out of the way, the car is going to be crushed."
"I sincerely doubt they'd be dumb enough to do that," Black said, digging through the backpack next to the pilot seat to pull out his laptop. "Besides, where's the fun in that?" He beamed over the mecha's information once his laptop had turned on. "Okay, connection on..." After overriding a few poorly-protected bits of security that were meant to restrict the mecha's use to Navis, the controls and cameras of the mecha were Black's. He directed it through the hallways of the blimp to its back hatch. As they drifted closer, the car came to a halt. "Help!" he called next. "Those horrible men from Nova are holding us hostage! They—" He paused as if someone had just prodded him with a gun, then said, "Get out of the car and they'll meet you in front." He turned away, then shouted, "Hurry, plug into the zeppelin, you've got a chance—" and ducked away. In an undertone, he instructed, "Punk, drop my identity but not his."
"Now, don't give the game away!" he said as he resurfaced, almost a sigh. Between the headache and needing to find the switch that opened the back hatch, he really wasn't feeling the act that day. "We need a few things before we can just let you in." Atsuki's hand was nearly flush with the control panel and pointing at a small switch; Black flicked it and watched through his laptop's mecha-vision window as the back hatch began to open. He allowed himself a little sigh of relief, then continued, "Perhaps something to the tune of ten million zenny?" while the mecha surged out the door and into the nearby brush.
"That's a shitty request," Punk said through his connection.
"Don't do it!" Atsuki shouted. Black always enjoyed Atsuki's acting. His peer's delivery was always so uncharacteristically passionate that he couldn't help cracking a smile, no matter how lousy he felt. "Whatever these foul miscreants want, it can't be anything good!"
"I feel like crap, shut up," Black muttered in Punk's direction. Loudly, he said, "Shut up, Nigey! You can gripe all you want, but it won't change anything!"
Black had nearly forgotten about the Net Saviors below, but what Meiru shouted up to him made him remember fast. "Yeah, especially considering that we're here because we found the real Lucas and Nigel!"
Black and Atsuki looked at each other. "Well, shit," Black said, plugging Punk out and typing commands into his PET. Immediately, the mecha burst out of the bushes right next to Enzan and Meiru, snatching them up in its hands. "Come on, let's get down there!" Atsuki retrieved Burnerman while Black shoved everything that was theirs into the backpack; the larger man shouldered it and ran for the door, Black right behind him.
They had barely reached the side exit before an alert warned Black of exactly what he'd been afraid of—the remote control had been overridden, probably by Roll and Blues. "Hey!" Black yelled, throwing the door open and running out. "You stole my stolen mecha!" He and Atsuki plugged in, causing the formerly stationary mecha to start spinning in a circle at the waist and the now-freed Net Saviors to step backward as a Netbattle ensued inside. Directing his commands to reach Punk's ears alone, he said, "Make the mecha do something really distracting. I don't think we can expect to win against them together." Sure enough, Roll had summoned a Fuanka virus to sweep Blues up and make his Neo Variable that much more dangerous; first Punk, then Burnerman was swiftly hit. Putting aside the twinge of annoyance about where he recognized the tactic from, Black sent in, "Cannon, slot-in!" as a third Sonic Boom hammered into Punk's shoulder plate. Before Blues could aim for Burnerman again, Black fired twice into the base of the Cyclone the red-armored Navi was riding, dispelling it.
"Shotgun, slot-in!" While Punk made a run for the controls, Burnerman sent over an opening salvo to distract his enemies before charging forward in his Burning Jet attack, his Burning Sword already ready for when Blues jumped forward to meet him.
The mecha suddenly ran for Enzan and Meiru, giving Black and Atsuki the distraction they'd needed to escape into the bushes. "If you want to lose 'em, now's your chance," Atsuki said.
"But they're faster than us," Black pointed out. "We're on foot, and they're not."
"Yeah, but if we cut across this wooded area, we're not that far out of town," Atsuki told him. "Give Yumi a call; once we hit the city, we'll lose 'em easily. Besides, if there's one thing I know about fancy cars, it's that they're never, under any circumstances, driven through brush." He smirked. "Now do you think we'll make it?"
"Okay," Black said. "Fuujin Racket, slot-in!"
"Same here, Burnerman!" Atsuki said, slotting in a chip of his own. Roll and Blues had nearly been on top of the Nova Navis, but they were sent flying backward. Before they even hit the ground, Punk and Burnerman plugged out.
Black didn't even bother seeing what was going on back there; he and Atsuki retreated into the forest until the road and the blimp were nowhere in sight before they considered slowing their pace. "Well," he said, catching his breath. "That was fun. We should do stuff like that more often."
"But for now, it's time we got back to work," Atsuki said.