a/n: this one doesn't cut nicely down the middle like the others, so... i guess it'll just be kinda long, ha. not sure if i should give y'all the full week to digest all this or if i can go ahead and zoom out another completed chapter midweek lmao. i do see everyone lookin', so thanks for lookin'!

The Players Regroup

It was mid-afternoon when the leak reached the Ministry. For Meiru, the first sight of it was relieving–this had to be where Rockman was and what he'd been up to in the past day, which meant Roll and Hikari-hakase could stop being worried sick.

"Are you certain this is him?" Roll asked, watching Gateman direct the Ministry Navis in organizing the incoming data for human consumption. "This much information–I understand finding what you're looking for, but this is on a whole other level…"

"Roll!" Unable to help herself, Meiru teased, "Is that doubt I hear? You should have a little more faith in your guy!" Roll's face turned as pink as her jumpsuit. Then, she hid behind her gloved hands.

The leak just kept coming. And coming. And coming. Even Meiru was starting to wonder if Rockman alone could manage this. For a moment, she couldn't help but hope that Netto was finally having a change of heart. But that seemed much more impossible than Hikari-hakase's miracle-worker Navi pulling one more trick out of the metaphorical hat. Nobody else was hoping for that much anymore, so she needed to keep her head out of the fantastical as well.

Then they were all in the briefing room, reading through the information, and the mood grew somber.

"That's ridiculous," Meijin finally said, breaking the silence. "I know the point of a special ops team is that nobody else knows the extent of its power, but Darkland of all places can't have that kind of technology or manpower. Enough resources to infiltrate the police?"

"It's absurd, but it happened," Enzan pointed out. "We've got all the proof we need in that security footage."

"Unless it was faked," Meijin countered. "And nobody in that footage looks like a soldier. Those suits could be any organization's."

"Using electromagnetic waves to make a human brain forget everything in short-term memory…" Hikari-hakase said, "I've only heard fringe theories around it. In a sick way, actually making that work is genius." Looking over his shoulder at the same information, Meiru was more concerned about how on earth the enemy knew the way their amnesia wave altered the minds of other people in such detail, not to mention how the last time the word 'Mu' had turned up had been in connection to an underwater ruin. These people had the time and energy to invest in even myths and legends, and hearts cold enough to turn their work on other people just to see what would happen.

And the Commissioner's office was hollowed out. They needed to find out what had happened to Kifune, Manabe, and the other people who belonged there; but Meiru had a dreadful feeling she already knew.

"These Navis…" whispered Roll at Meiru's wrist, looking through the frame data that had been pulled along. A Navi itself was too much to pull through a leak even of this size; there were no AI programs to accompany the monstrously optimized frames. "What must it have felt like, having a frame like that…?"

One of Hikari-hakase's assistants burst in. "Everyone, look at this news stream!"

It was all real. There were the police officers, engaged in a firefight with unfamiliar, black-suited men on what should have been their own turf—the Net Police Headquarters. Though they'd been in the security footage that had leaked to the Ministry, Netto and Atsuki were nowhere to be seen in the livestream. Even scrubbing back to the start of the footage produced no sign of them, which Meiru found oddly relieving. No commentators outside of the Ministry briefing room seemed to know why the men were there or why the police were fighting them, but everyone looking on inside did.

So they read on, knowing that this insane leak was all the truth. The goal here was technology, primarily Synchro Chips, for Darkland's military, for reasons left unlisted. One special operations agent, listed only as 'Seven', would have engaged the Net Saviors and associates in a fake 'Nova' attack that had been built up to seem legitimate and concentrate as many people as possible in the building; while the other, 'Three', would have led a charge to quickly and quietly capture all Ministry of Science personnel and establish a perimeter of their fake police. From there, Seven and Three would reformat any unrelated parts of the Ministry network and install their own military-issue guard Navis to keep their prisoners from getting any ideas. An elaborate scheme that the Net Saviors would have had no time to react against, had all this information not arrived at their doorstep.

The Darklish special operations agents were to avoid revealing themselves as anything other than Net Police. If they had to, then simply as mercenaries. They were to oversee the creation of new Synchro Chips and other substantiation technology to their own performance specs, then leave the confusion behind once they had what they wanted. Even after this, most of the world would have had no idea who was responsible for the attack on the Ministry.

"If it's single digits, doesn't that mean they're really important?" Kaita whispered to Mary, still loud enough that Meiru could hear him three seats over.

"It always does in the movies!" Ring replied, not even trying to whisper. "This is absolute espionage territory!"

"This is serious, you two!" Mary complained sotto voce.

"Really," Turboman said, "especially considering they were gonna capture you, Kaita-kun."

That deflated all of Kaita's excitement. "O-oh."

Indeed, there it was: both Kaita Todoroki and Meiru Sakurai were to be held not just in the Ministry with the scientists, but all the way across the ocean in Darkland itself. Meiru found the idea chilling. Were she and Kaita targets because of what they knew? Or was it because of the leverage they would have provided Darkland and its fake "Commissioner" over Enzan? The legitimacy he could have lent their operation as the last familiar Net Savior in Densan City would have been a major boon.

"We know everything they had planned. The ball's in our court now," Enzan said, probably figuring it was better to do something about all this than dwell on the implications.

"Is it, though? We've got four of you, and they've got at least fifty of them," Meijin pointed out. "You four are extraordinary at what you do, but you can't fend off this kind of sustained attack, even with forewarning."

"Then we contact friends who can," Enzan replied.

"Poipu-chan's been dealing with them since we were kids," Meiru recalled. "We'll ask her if she can tell us any more of what she knows."

"We should talk to Laika, too. We need as much information as possible on what we're dealing with, and he'll probably have some more of it." Meiru tried not to look too skeptical, but after their reception in Sharo, it was a bit difficult for her to see Laika bending the rules enough to give them much assistance.

Hikari-hakase looked over to Meijin. "You think you can call Aoni-san? I'm sure she could find a way to help an old friend."

"With Makoto-kun's hardware and our software, we may be able to rig up a few surprises of our own," Meijin said. "I'll call her right away." When Meijin said things like that, he meant them–he was on his feet and plugging Gateman out of the center console in less than a second. "Excuse me."

"…Now we're just fighting crimes with crimes," Meiru remarked to herself, watching Meijin leave to secure their extremely illegal Copyroids.

Mary and Kaita looked on, the plans and contacts entering play clearly far out of their league. "…Does… Does this mean we can go home now?" Kaita asked.

"No," both Hikari-hakase and Enzan snapped, almost equally severe. Meiru would have to make sure to tease Enzan about turning into a dad later on, possibly on a coffee run.

As the person with experience in parenting, Hikari-hakase was the one who softened his tone and pressed forward. "If you're a target of theirs, Kaita-kun, I think you'll be better off staying under our watch. And I'd feel better if you were here, too, Mary-chan. I'll send word to both of your parents." With a relaxed smile, he said, "You two would be excited to join in our Super-Science Camp, right…?"

"I'm sure Enzan and I will be taking turns as your Super-Science Camp Counselors, too!" Meiru chimed in.

"That sounds like it's for eight-year-olds," complained Kaita. "Can't we at least call it an Engineering Camp?"

"And miss out on all that alliteration…?" Hikari-hakase looked dolefully to Meiru for help. "What's happening to kids these days, Meiru-chan?"

"I just don't know," Meiru sighed, playing along.

"Well, it's not a real camp, so I guess we can make it an Engineering Camp," Hikari-hakase sighed.

"Sounds like we all have our assignments for now. Let's get started," Enzan decided.

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Three had always been a bit fascinated by Seven.

In the earliest days, he'd been a sort of small, fiery presence in the mess hall. The girls would stare baffled as he desperately asked what was WRONG with them before turning to one another and bursting into hysterical laughter. He'd tried to escape longer and gotten further than anyone else had. Three didn't quite get it, as he'd been too small when he was recruited to remember anything before it, but it was certainly unusual.

Then, he was gone. Solitary, according to the mutters of the soldiers on guard duty. Three had never been sent to Solitary, but he knew people came back different from it. He had to imagine it was like the medical ward, barren and pristine with nothing to distract from the pain. Some people never came back from it at all, also much like the medical ward.

The mess hall returned to its normal state. Two and Four gossiping in one corner; Five and Six discussing schematics; Three idly glancing at the door, wondering if this would be the day One came out from his lab, though it never was. So interminably boring.

Finally, one day, Three had come in to find Seven there in the mess hall once more, though missing both an eye and his old spirit. This, too, was unusual. Seven had gone from loudly protesting everything in sight to completely silent, though Three could see no damage at his throat. He didn't try to shove Three away if he sat beside him, or really do much of anything. Like he was hoping to just waste away without any more fuss.

But that seemed like an incongruous end for such a brightly burning spirit, so Three continued to sit by Seven. When he got hold of a rare treat from up top, he smuggled some of it downstairs, showing Seven the tricks the rest of them knew to gain some privacy from the omnipresent security cameras and microphones.

It was over kolacky from the village that Three noticed how tart the apple filling was and Seven said, "Yeah."

From then on, Seven seemed to take on a soft glow to Three. Never as boisterous as before, but never as silent as after. A steady presence, like one of the small candles Three burned while hidden away from the cameras in his room. Persistent and wickedly clever, able to solve any problem the General asked of him–or, indeed, any problem Three couldn't solve himself. When the opportunity had struck, Three had been eager to replace Six's sniveling hesitance with Seven's understated brilliance, even if temporarily.

So there was no one else Three would have rather had by his side as things went to unprecedented levels of shit than Seven.

"They don't know who we are. We're still just any variety of mercenary group to them, which is within parameters," Zimmermann said. Gauze was visible under his open shirt collar, and his right arm was in a sling. "And we've still got your Nova files."

"Sure," Seven said, clearly convinced it was pointless. "And we're missing everything else."

"That doesn't matter," snapped Zimmermann. That was acceptable, for now. But if he kept up this belittling tone for the entire rest of the conversation, Three would have to remind him that this was his fault in the first place. "We'll just overwhelm them in the real world. It doesn't have to be a big attack if they don't know it's coming."

"But we need those targets alive," Three told him instead of shoving him into the nearest wall. "We can surprise them, maybe even hold them for some amount of time, but then what?"

"You're right," Seven said, seeming faintly surprised. "We can't hold them for more than a day without the network reformat and the guard Navis we had ready. We'll have to wait–"

"You really think our superiors'll just wait?" Zimmerman asked incredulously.

"Maybe yours won't want to, but ours will insist." Seven was right, of course; the last thing the old General would want would be to jeopardize everything at the eleventh hour.

"You really want that creepy old man over here? Watching your every move?" Three had no idea if Zimmermann knew how threatening that was to all of them, but the sardonic smile on the other man's face made him feel like he did. Three felt a sudden bolt of white-hot rage streak through his brain.

"We no longer have a choice," Seven said, emotionless, the stillness Three desperately needed.

"If we go ahead and move now, we won't need a choice!" plowed on Zimmermann, much too loud.

"As we are now–"

"I can have my remaining healthy men assembled at noon–"

"SHUT UP!"

Three was faintly aware that Zimmermann was terrified, his neck pinned to the wall by Three's hand. Seven's gaze, in contrast, was in sharp focus, his eye soft and brown and unafraid.

It was Seven who broke the silence first. "The General won't have to come if you tell him the truth: that you've lost the Net Police and we need to adjust the plan." He tilted his head in Three's direction, a quiet reminder to let Zimmermann go.

"But he might take interest if you request too many additional resources," Three added as he let Zimmermann drop to the floor, "so I'd try and play it smart."

Zimmermann staggered to his feet and stalked away, mumbling something about monsters under his breath.

"Think he's gonna move his men in anyway?" Seven asked.

"He'd better not."

"Does he know that?"

"He oughta." Three smirked. "You know what? I don't care anymore. So long as the General knows we played it safe, it's not our asses on the line. Let the girls have him once he screws this up."

Once one was deep enough in Operations to know of the Silver Division, after all, there was no pension plan.

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"I wonder where Black… I mean, Netto is?" Kaita murmured to Turboman.

Night had fallen on the Ministry campus, and Kaita had stretched his sleeping bag out on the upper walkway, with its enormous plate-glass windows. Even this far from the main stretch of Densan City, the colors of the night sky couldn't quite come out the way Kaita had seen them in pictures sometimes, but the stars were all present and bright. Clouds drifted through the air, purply-gray but hardly ominous.

"He has to have been the agent who was baiting us with the Nova attack," Turboman said, all in a rush like he'd been sitting on this conclusion for hours. "'Seven'. He's always been around the Nova stuff that's been happening recently."

"Then he really is…" Kaita knew Turboman wouldn't appreciate the spy-movie stuff, but it was the only way he knew how to contextualize it. "…really important."

Turboman's green eyes narrowed into slits under his visor. Kaita held back a giggle as his Navi tapped his foot impatiently, obviously annoyed but trying to move past it. When Turboman did regain his composure, though, his question was all too serious. "Well? Does it change your mind at all?"

Kaita wanted to say it didn't. "It… kind of does," he finally offered. "This is all way over my head now. It's bad enough to believe someone can do this kind of stuff all the time and not even think about the people in his way. But for someone to know how much he's hurting other people, and then to just go on anyway…"

He felt a little silly for thinking just he alone could change Netto's mind, when he was surrounded by other people who had cared so much for so much longer than he had. They'd all been in the same position of having no idea what was really happening. Making arguments when they didn't know what the point at hand was.

"Maybe this was all just… some kind of fun game for him." It really, really hurt to think of it that way. His breath hitched before he continued, "Where he got to, like, feel feelings for once. And now he's just put those aside."

"Dang it!" Turboman said suddenly. "I was hoping you would think about all this–"

"I am!" Kaita blubbered.

"You're doing it too much!"

"I am not!"

"Are too!"

"I am not!"

"You are–no! Look, you don't know what he was thinking! Or is thinking!" Maybe Turboman was right, but it felt a lot easier with all the crazy events of that day to just cry instead. "All you have is what Netto was told to do. But how does he feel about doing it? Tell me!"

Turboman forcing his Operator to think on that was enough to break the crying spell. "O-oh."

"How about you go to sleep, and then in the morning, you and Mary get together and figure out something you two can contribute," Turboman firmly suggested. "Even if it's just following Hikari-hakase and Meijin around while they're doing stuff. You guys shouldn't be sitting around, especially if your mom comes rolling up tomorrow morning."

"Oh, gosh, I didn't think about that!" This was all very scary, but Kaita absolutely didn't want to get ripped away from it now by a furious parent, the scariest thing of all. Not to mention the dressing-down she would give to the adults at the Ministry, since she had never been an especially big fan of the Net Savior program. "It's not their fault," Kaita said. "Meiru, and Enzan, and me, and Mary, and–and Netto, we…"

"You'd have done this whether you had their support or not," finished Turboman.

"Yeah." Kaita's mother had always seemed a little more put-together than either he or his dad were. It would be hard to convince her to let him help, but it had to be done. "Well, at least we have the whole night to come up with a better reason."

"All night?!"

"You really think I'll be able to sleep right now?"

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"So!" Punk said, sounding way more delighted than Netto thought the situation called for. "If this guy's less of an idiot than he looks, we've got a few more days to figure out the whole whistleblowing idea. If he is a complete moron, we just sit back while he screws up even further for us."

"Yeah, and I can't be there to make things less shooty," Netto said crossly.

"They know everything," Rockman reminded him. "Zimmermann's attack is going to fail. We've–well, the Ministry of Science has more friends than you seem to remember."

Netto sighed. "The more I think about it, the more it feels like it'd be easier for us if he saw sense."

"I dunno if that's possible. Guy seems awful bigheaded," Punk pointed out. "They all like that?"

"Enough of them," Netto said. "Once they know they've got the advantage." Yes, this attack was going to fail if it went through. But the next time, the General would want caution. Perhaps even an abandoning of the plan altogether, if it got too obvious that the Ministry knew everything–and that would mean further investigation into why it had failed.

Netto thought he had done everything possible to cover his tracks, but he knew better than to think that he could pull one over on the old man for any extended period of time. Down beneath the Citadel, there would be nothing but time for the General to figure out what had really happened–and then Netto would be the one turned over for the girls to experiment on, not Zimmermann.

"Where's Shun now?" Rockman asked.

"No idea," Netto responded easily. "I suspect they'll be moving him out early, just so they don't have to deal with him."

"Then we should figure that out," Rockman said adamantly. "If you can't be there, and Zimmermann's taking everyone under his command who can fight, then that's the best time for us to save him."

"But–" Netto explained, "I know I can't do much, but I've got to at least keep an eye on things…"

Beat jumped into frame. "Pi pi!"

"…You're right!" Rockman explained, "Netto-kun, Beat can get into the real world!"

"And bullets barely graze digital objects," Netto finished.

"Beat's been outta your control for months now," Punk added. "You throw a couple Barriers on him just in case things go real south, an' he can keep tabs on the Ministry while nobody suspects a thing." He added, "But don't get me wrong, Rocky, you're hopin' for too much. Shun is a garden-variety lousy kid. Nothin' like Netto."

Netto was a bit lost for words at the sudden compliment. "…Thanks." He picked the pen and paper up from his bedside table, scribbling a dark line into it. "We can't stop him from being a moron. If we could just stop the Ministry from responding in the wrong way…"

"What if we tip off the Net Police?" Rockman asked. "The real ones, I mean."

"Then the operatives' instructions are to die rather than surrender," Netto replied. "And that kind of loss of resources means the rest of us get pulled out immediately."

The group grew silent yet again. "…What if we send the Net Police after somethin' else?" asked Punk. "Can we set off any a' that whistleblowin' stuff early?"

"They won't find anything right now," Netto explained. "The Citadel's network is completely cut off from the rest of the Internet, so you need one of two things. A physical search warrant, or a link established from the inside." That would be the final move, in every way. There was no level of masking that could hide Netto, the one person both capable of and inclined toward doing such a thing, from the General's–no, at that point, the Cabinet's–wrath. Everything would need to be lined up just so… and he would have to have returned to the Citadel.

"Welp, we sure aren't doin' the second one, then," Punk said, as if he had a choice in the matter.

"Right now, you just need to not be sent back to Darkland," Rockman agreed. "And whatever happens tomorrow we'll leave to Beat. One thing at a time, right?"

It was hard to quite swallow. But without any other options occurring to him, Netto agreed, "…Right. So now we're waiting. Which means next we–" Netto made a face before continuing, "rescue Shun."