"Kaita?" He'd been inches from the front door when his mother had called. He gritted his teeth as Asuna rounded the corner to the entry. "Where are you going? You just got back from school!"

"I'm going to go to my partner's house to work on my school project, Mama," he explained, hoping she didn't ask who his project partner was. It had been over a week since the Ministry incident, and she still wouldn't leave him alone. "It's going to be summer in just a month and a half, so I wanted to get started."

Asuna scrutinized her son, her hands on her wide hips. "Don't tell me you picked that Mary girl." Kaita didn't say a word. Asuna sighed. "Kaita, listen." She took a seat on the chair next to the coat rack, putting her more on Kaita's level. "I know Mary is a perfectly nice girl, and I'm sure that you think that you two can take care of yourselves. But when you keep going after the kinds of people who'd kill police officers and innocent scientists—"

"They did that?!" Kaita asked, shocked. "But—I never saw anything—"

"Maybe they humor you because you're so young," Asuna said, pulling her son close. "But these people are criminals, Kaita. They mean business. That boy from when you were little, Hikari Netto—"

"Netto?" Kaita asked, somewhat muffled by his mother's blouse. "There's a ghost story about him—"

"The boy who died in the subway bombing, yes," Asuna said. "They say it was a coincidence, but I remember how it looked when the news broke. I just know he died—" Her voice thick with emotion, she took a breath and continued, "—someone decided to murder a boy your age because he was a Net Savior. I don't want you making enemies who'd just as soon—" She swallowed. "—get rid of you and frame it as an accident."

"Mama—" Shocked, Kaita hugged her back. "Mama, it's not like that, I promise!"

"I don't want to lose you, Kaita," Asuna said, holding him tightly. "And when the Ministry of Science's director drops you off on our doorstep not an hour after everyone in there was held hostage—Kaita, it terrifies me!"

"Mama..." Kaita felt so sad, and so trapped. He didn't know what to say. Tears forming in his eyes, he said, "I'm sorry..."

"I know you aren't going to stop seeing Mary, no matter what I say," Asuna said. "And I know you two won't stop looking for trouble! But I want to see you grow up, Kaita. I want..." She swallowed. "I want you to have the chance to be a child."

They stayed in their embrace for a moment longer; then, Asuna said wearily, "Go on." Kaita wanted to cry himself when he saw his mother's tear-streaked face. She wiped her face dry with her sleeve, then smiled. "Work on your project. And nothing else, all right?"

"Okay," Kaita said in a small voice. He had a feeling that his mother knew as well as he did that he and Mary already had their enemies' attention, and that they weren't just sticking together now because of the project.

01101100011000010111001101110100011000110110100001100001011011100110001101100101

Kaita and Mary stared at the project requirements for a little while before either of them spoke. "I still can't believe it," Mary said morosely.

"Did you hear about... y'know, what they did?" Kaita asked. He'd spent the entire car trip to Mary's house—he'd figured that they might as well have the Bratmobile with them if they were going to be together, just in case—trying to associate what his mother had said with Black. Kaita could see Atsuki doing those kinds of things, but not Black; at least, not without some amount of guilt.

"Yeah. It was all over the news..." Mary stared worriedly at her hands. "Four people, and as many Navis. That's all they needed to cause all that destruction."

"And they never even bothered to do anything like that before..." Kaita didn't know what to think about that. "It's like they've just been playing with us this entire time." The threat of Nova had seemed so manageable, until it wasn't.

"Imagine what that thing they're working on will be able to do," Mary said worriedly. "And we don't even know where they are, so we can't stop them..."

"Meijin-san says the police are trying to find them," Kaita said. More determinedly, he continued, "So we have to believe they can do it."

"It's all we can do," Mary agreed. This time, Kaita actually paid attention to the project guidelines when he looked at them. "How about we do typhoons?"

"Typhoon?" Kaita asked. "What does she have to do with nature?"

"The storms, not the Navi," Mary corrected with a laugh. "Though, that is where I got the idea." She looked over at the computer sitting on her desk. "Ring-chan, Turboman, did you hear that?"

"You bet!" Turboman reported, "We'll have some information to you in a flash!"

01101100011000010111001101110100011000110110100001100001011011100110001101100101

It wasn't long before Turboman and Ring found themselves waiting in line at their preferred search engine, where the hundreds of Navis on hand to point customers in the right direction looked swamped. "Geez, what's with all this traffic?" Ring asked. "I've never seen it so busy!"

"It must be because it's the end of the semester for college students," Turboman said. Most of the Navis there had less humanoid or more mature-looking frames, backing up his idea. "They must all be here because their Operators are writing papers."

Ring sighed. "I feel like this year just got started," she complained. "Don't tell me it's almost halfway over, I don't want to hear it!"

Another pair of Navis entered the queue. They were more college-student Navis: a girl who sported a patchwork-looking design, and a bright pink, cartoonish squirrel. "Weren't you in chat last night?" the squirrel chattered excitedly.

"At this time of the semester? Of course not," the girl said, exasperated. "Cheryl's going to fail this class if you two keep this up!"

"Whatever, whatever!" the squirrel said, not deterred at all. "You missed the big news, then!"

The patchwork girl reluctantly said, "Okay, I'll bite. What is it?"

"Well, you know that new business, ServCo?" the squirrel asked eagerly.

"Uh-huh..." the patchwork girl said skeptically.

"We're gonna blow it up!"

Ring and Turboman exchanged glances. "You really think that guy was telling the truth?" the patchwork girl wondered. "I mean, it does make sense, but we haven't had a job this big in a long time. And the whole story is pretty weird. Maybe he's just doing this for a challenge."

The squirrel shrugged. "Whatever. I know I am!"

Turboman and Ring looked at the line, which hadn't budged; and then at the two Navis, who were obviously thinking the same thing they were. "If this job's for real, and this line's for real, I think I'm going with the job," the patchwork girl said. "We can try back later."

A window showing a young Japanese woman appeared in front of her, while an Ameroupian woman showed up in front of the squirrel. "Sherrie just filled me in," the first woman explained. "Let's go."

Cheryl grinned while her squirrel Navi laughed, "Score!"

Turboman and Ring waited an agonizingly long five seconds before tailing them. "ServCo, huh?" Ring asked as they flew along the pathways of the Internet. "I think I know where that is." She and Turboman sent alerts back to their PETs so that Mary and Kaita were aware of what was going on.

"But why are they blowing it up?" Turboman asked. "It doesn't make any sense!"

"Maybe it's just some kind of joke," Ring said. "Or maybe the entire threat's a joke, and they're really not doing anything..." They had reached the corridor that led to ServCo—or would've, if its warp hadn't been closed off. "Or not."

"So you can't get in that way, huh?" Kaita asked. "They really don't want anyone just wandering in."

"I guess we've got to go see this in person," Mary added.

01101100011000010111001101110100011000110110100001100001011011100110001101100101

By the time Kaita and Mary got there, the building labeled ServCo: Corporate Business Solutions looked pretty deserted. There was one person talking into a cell phone at the edge of the parking lot and a few cars, but otherwise no one else. Turboman directed the Bratmobile into the back area and parked it next to the smaller of the two doors.

"Ring-chan, get us in!" Once Mary had plugged her Navi in, it was a matter of seconds before the door unlocked. She and Kaita stepped inside, ready to plug into anything that seemed threatening or useful, only to find themselves in a perfectly normal-looking break room. Other than the betta fish swimming in the water cooler, there was nothing out of place.

"There's no point looking around." The man who had spoken up was standing near the door, wearing a distinctive mask and tie that Kaita recognized instantly. "There aren't any hidden doors, if you're here about the same thing I am."

"Mr. Meme!" Kaita ran up to him. "What are you doing here?!"

Mr. Meme looked at him and Mary for a second, then said, "If you recognize me, don't you already know?"

Kaita scrutinized him. "You don't sound right," he said. "Do you have a cold?"

"Hm?" Mr. Meme realized, "Oh, I see. You must've met one of the more recent old Memes. Not very impressive, were they?"

"An old Meme?" Mary wondered.

"I'm really confused," Kaita said. "If you've got this group all of a sudden, how come you—or that old Meme, I guess—didn't use it before?"

Mr. Meme laughed. "The Flock has no one leader. Whoever feels his cause is important enough finds the way to take up the mantle. 'From the ashes of one fight rise the embers of another.' Of course, I can't tell you exactly what that means—other than that naturally, some Memes are better-received than others." He explained, "Today's mission is to expose an animal smuggling ring-one that this company is a part of."

"But you said you were all about disorder," Kaita pointed out. He got the feeling Mr. Meme was rolling his eyes behind the mask; he weakly corrected, "Or the old Meme did, at least..."

"Freedom," Mr. Meme corrected. "The Flock is all about freedom. In this case, freedom to deal with a bunch of corrupt men who the police are too weak to catch."

Mary asked, "But how is any of this going to stop the problem, if it's so widespread? If this is really part of a smuggling ring, wouldn't there be many more branches?"

"That's where the Flock comes in," Mr. Meme explained. "I'm just here because I live in town. But around the world, members of the Flock are using their Navis to publish everything in their ring branches' information banks, photograph any evidence they find, and take their networks offline."

"That doesn't change the fact that this is illegal," Turboman pointed out.

"Right! Even if this place really is part of a smuggling ring, that's a real-world crime—nobody here's committed a single cybercrime! The law says you've gotta catch them in the act to go after their network like this," Ring said, arms crossed.

"The law is—what's the so-called 'right' phrase to use these days—challenged." Mr. Meme explained, "Consider the problem of a poacher and a group of environmentalists. The environmentalists have proof that this is the poacher that is hunting endangered species—they may not have gone into his camp and pulled out a tiger fur, but they've checked where he's been at what times and found his movements highly suspect. So the environmentalists should be able to disable the poacher's transport to help save the other tigers, because that's the morally sound thing to do. Isn't it?"

"Well..." Awkwardly, Mary conceded, "Yes, but..."

"But those cute Net Saviors get called out to the scene," Mr. Meme said, turning to Kaita.

Kaita disbelievingly asked, "Cute?"

"Yes!" Mr. Meme explained, "They all look very normal, upstanding, wholesome—cute. Perfectly aligned with the law. I'm sure that's part of why they pick them so young. Anyway, your turn to answer—whose side do they take?"

"Well..." Kaita didn't want to think about Meiru and Enzan helping a poacher. It didn't seem like something they'd do. "The environmentalists, right? It's the right thing..." Mr. Meme just sighed. "No?"

"No," Mr. Meme said. "From the law's standpoint, the environmentalists are doing this on little provocation. The Net Saviors help the poachers, because their job is to stop cybercrime. If the poachers are very sloppy and the Net Saviors happen to see something incriminating, then the regular police can take over. That's also why standard protocol for dealing with us usually seems to involve any nearby Net Saviors sticking their fingers in their ears and whistling a tune for an hour or so." He took out Sheepman's yellow Link PET to display numerous articles holographically. "Similar thing here. It's easy to see that ServCo and other companies like it can all be traced back to the same group of people; it's easy to see that an upswing in strange pets can be noticed anywhere those companies go; it's also easy to see that they shouldn't be able to spread out as quickly as they have. But there's not enough proof for the police to just barge in and look around. That's where we come in."

Kaita was more preoccupied with one of the articles Mr. Meme was displaying. Though the Latin terms were pretty hard for him to pronounce, he got the idea with the rest of it. "There was a gigantic snake loose?" he asked, amazed. "Wow..."

"It explains how Narcy got enough crocodiles to fill that pit, too..." Mary looked up at Mr. Meme's masked face thoughtfully.

"Maybe you're right," Kaita told him. "We might as well stick around and see, right?" Mary nodded. "Where do you think they'd be keeping the animals? Would all the employees know about them, or would they be in a more hidden room?"

"I'd think they'd want to keep the number of people who knew limited. It's not much of a secret if any employer you fired could rat you out, is it?" When the three Netbattlers left the back room, they found themselves in the back of a nearly-deserted but normal office area, neatly divided into cubicles whose desks held stress balls and other fairly typical decorations.

"This place sure doesn't look like much," Kaita noticed as they walked up the aisle closest to the right wall. "You'd think if they were smuggling animals, they'd be a pet store or something..."

"No, that would be too obvious," Mr. Meme said. "There's no point in associating yourself physically with a group unless you want to show you're a part of it—just like how you'll never know my name and appearance, or those of any Flock member."

Before they could turn to the next room, they found a fellow intruder leaving it. A teenage girl in black sweatpants and a purple hoodie, the hood up and her face hidden by a blank face mask, gave them a wave. "I've already checked this one—nothing," she explained. "I'm going after the loading dock next."

"Good idea," Mr. Meme said. "I'll be looking closer to the front entrance."

"Got it," she said. "Who're those two?"

"Some newly converted friends," Mr. Meme said. "You'll have to forgive them; they don't know the rules yet."

"Right. Well, if you think they won't get caught..." The girl started heading for the back of the store while Kaita and the other two went in the opposite direction.

The next hallway led to a series of offices and storerooms. "You sure about this?" Ring asked skeptically. "This place seems so average."

Mr. Meme tried the door to the head office. "Locked," he noticed. "Sheepman, plug in!"

"A little help might be nice," Sheepman said moments later. "Lava Dragons, five of 'em!"

"I've got this," Kaita said, lining his PET up with the other port on the door. "Plug-in, ! Transmission!" He watched as Turboman appeared next to Sheepman, who had already sent a swarm of Molokos to dogpile one of the Lava Dragons.

"Battlechip: Aqua Sword!" Turboman sped forward and pulled back his sword for a quick slash, ripping through the nearest Lava Dragon in seconds. He jumped over a burst of flame from another and sent a wave of water at its head once he'd landed, weakening the virus before he jumped up to behead it. However, he still got hit by a blast of flame from the remaining unoccupied Lava Dragon—the leader, judging from its size.

Sheepman nearly disappeared under a jet of flame from the Lava Dragon he was facing head-on, absorbing it into his fleece before returning the favor and deleting his foe. "Hit me with a Mega Cannon!" he called to Turboman.

Kaita got the idea—something that powerful would probably supply Sheepman with a lot of weaker energy blasts. "Here it comes!" he called, sending the Mega Cannon in. When Turboman fired, the attack sank into Sheepman's fleece, leaving it crackling with energy. Turboman didn't waste time seeing that for himself, instead jumping away from the Lava Dragon as it swooped toward him.

"Just try and hit me," Sheepman taunted, bouncing a small but white-hot energy bullet off the Lava Dragon's head. Enraged, it turned away from Turboman, who took the opportunity to slice its arm off. "Come on, play along!" Sheepman chided it, unleashing a larger blast that left the Lava Dragon momentarily blinded. Turboman leapt up and sliced it in two, landing between the halves as they fell away and pixellated.

The door clicked open, and Kaita nearly forgot to plug his Navi out as he was hit with a horrible stench. "Doesn't anyone clean this place?" he asked, not wanting to go inside.

"Not in a while, it looks like," Mr. Meme said angrily. "This is exactly what I was afraid of!" Kaita saw many kinds of animals in small cages once he'd sucked in a breath of less stinky air and poked his head in—brightly colored birds, small monkeys, and a large snake much like the one in the newspaper article.

"Wow," Mary said. "You were right..."

"Of course I'm right," Mr. Meme said. "I wouldn't go to all this trouble over nothing." He stopped. "You hear that?" he asked.

Kaita wasn't too afraid at first, but his eyes widened as he remembered just how illegal this was. "Sirens!"

"You two should start moving—I'll finish up around here." Mr. Meme fished through his suit pocket. "But consider coming down to the Ura Net to seek us out," he said, handing a pair of chips to Mary and Kaita. "You seem like you care about what you do; though most of us won't admit it, we always appreciate more company like you."

"Thanks!" Mary said. Mr. Meme quickly nodded, then shooed them out.

Kaita and Mary wasted no time getting into the car. "Turboman, full throttle!" Kaita called. They sped off, the car bouncing as it went through the dirt to avoid the front of the parking lot. "That was really weird," he said once they'd gotten on a side road.

"Not really," Mary said. "We do the same thing all the time, don't we? It's just that the Net Saviors know who we are."

Kaita thought that over. "I guess you're right," he said. "What with how we go after Nova..."

"If you tailed them and they weren't doing anything wrong, you'd be the one in trouble!" Turboman added.

Mary nodded. "It seems like everyone has something they care about enough to fight for," she noted. "And everyone seems to have a different way of doing it."

"I wonder how many sorts of groups there are out there?" Ring asked. "There could be hundreds of them, and we'd never know!"

"It is something to think about," Mary said. "Along with typhoons, of course."

"I completely forgot!" Kaita realized. "Shoot, it's gotten kinda late..."

"But not that late," Turboman said. "And it's probably been long enough that getting that search in won't take long at all!"

"You're right!" Still, it was far from the first thing on his mind; Kaita was back to wondering just when Nova was going to make its next move.