Inhumanity
In the end, Netto decided to make the receiving point of his leak the heart of Japan's Internet City. Whoever found the information could do what they pleased. He'd been hoping to send it directly to Densan News Network, but he had no time to slip away. There were simply too many people around now, packing away anything of worth around the Nova base and destroying any evidence left over.
"We aren't really going to Darkland with them, are we…?" Rockman asked, sounding frightened.
"It'll work out," Netto said, unwilling to lie and muster up any real reassurance. It didn't take him long to pack everything away into the duffel but his laptop, which he kept on his person in its usual backpack. It was the only thing he'd need for this final day. After he was finished, he opened the door to find the Nova base cleaned out and a pair of operatives waiting to take him to the harbor.
There were two soldiers left after their breakneck conversions over the afternoon and evening before. Claes, who screamed for his mother as spikes erupted bloodily from his stomach and back; de Smet, who refused to do more than spasm against his restraints and got an extra two rounds of Null viruses injected into him as reward.
Rather than go to the mess tent for lunch afterward, Netto found an unoccupied corridor and slumped against the wall, zoning out as the sounds continued ringing through his mind.
Rockman and Punk faded into his vision as the horror receded. "It's not your fault, Netto-kun," Rockman said. "It's not your fault."
"I don't even try to fight it anymore," Netto said quietly. "I really am disgusting, aren't I?"
"No!" protested Rockman.
Punk's question actually gave Netto pause. "If you hadn't gone along with them, what would have happened?"
"The General has all of our workspaces bugged. He would have found out that I wasn't doing as I was told, and he would have punished me for it. And he would've started looking more closely at what I was doing again, so it could've blown everything." Netto hugged his knees to his chest. "I… I chose to do it, but if I hadn't, it would've brought down everything else."
"Bugged…?" Rockman seemed weirdly surprised by that. Netto was not sure why; the General was keeping a very large state secret down there under the Citadel, and he needed everyone within that secret to keep being a secret. It only made sense that he would keep such a firm hand on the eight agents who answered directly to him. The General himself had explained as much, right before…
The burn scar on his left shoulder started to itch at the memory. Back in reality, Punk said, "There you have it. Just like you said last night. You just are. Got it?"
"I just am," Netto repeated, further grounding himself in the present.
"You aren't a bad person," Rockman said. He almost sounded angry.
"I'm not a bad person, and I'm not a good person," Netto recited, though tears pricked at the back of his eye. "I'm surviving…"
"There you go," Punk said, though Netto just felt numb now.
"Take your time, okay?" suggested Rockman, reminding Netto of what he'd needed his laptop for.
"Okay," he told them, opening the lid and sending Punk in to help him sort through all the viruses laying dormant within. "But we've only got a couple hours left before we go, so let's start getting things together to try your dumb rescue again."
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Shun was being kept in one of the old offices, or maybe it was a break room. Whatever it was, it was upstairs. Thanks to the side hallway on the lower floor being connected by a stairwell, it was also easy enough to get near without any fuss.
It had been for the purpose of entering and exiting Three's room undetected that Netto had initially developed the Mirror's Eye virus that he was using on this occasion. A branch of the Killer's Eye, it had a fairly sophisticated AI for looping recorded audio and video to broadcast over security systems, able to autonomously insert the sorts of "natural" variances that would throw off an onlooker looking for seams.
This time, it would be tasked with a much bigger challenge: making it look like Shun, erratic as he was, remained in the office with no visitors.
It was easy enough to while away the time until the Mirror's Eye had its loop. After all, Netto belonged here, watching the agents bundle away the tents and equipment, packing everything together atop two pallets to be swiftly brought aboard the seaplane. Across the huge space, he could see Two and Four looking on much as he was, occasionally turning aside to share a smirk. Three and Eight were probably waiting somewhere in reserve with the caged Virus Fusions. At least they wouldn't need to be called into action tonight.
None of this needed to exist, and Netto was a part of it, so he would disappear alongside it. The sensation of the necklace chain against his skin was reminder enough; he had maybe twenty-four hours left, and he would be free. No more screaming, no more denying, no more crying, no more thinking.
He took a few breaths to calm his heart, mutinously pounding with the desire to live. Then, he went to find Shun once more.
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"Can we skip the arguing this time?" Netto asked as he entered the empty office. Shun was chained to an iron ball this time, but the key to his shackle was hanging right outside the door. All Netto had to do was reach over from where he was leaning on the doorframe to snag it.
"I guess," Shun shrugged as he was set free. "I don't know why you're coming back here, anyway. Aren't we all about to leave anyway? Why would you go back for me now?"
Not wanting to let Shun in on too much of the plan, Netto met Shun's quizzical tone with an equally noncommittal, "It's something to do?"
"Well, if we're gonna do this, let's go ahead and do it, I guess," Shun said grouchily.
An alarm sounded. Netto knew it couldn't be about them, because they hadn't even left this makeshift holding cell.
Once again, it seemed that going after Shun had been the trigger for all hell to break loose.
"Now what's going on?" Shun asked. Before Netto could even tell him to keep his voice down, he added, "Okay, fine, shutting up now."
"Stay close," Netto said quietly, and inched the door open.
The alarm shut off midway down the dark hallway. Probably someone or something had found the sound annoying.
It had been a minute and a half, which meant the Virus Fusions could be absolutely anywhere. Especially the Ghosler one. Netto had seen ones like it in action up close once before, and once was more than enough to realize that it had the potential to be one of the most effective Virus Fusions.
But what Netto noticed instead was a horrible, rancid stench. They were nearly to the stairs, but with just a few steps of backtracking they could hide in another empty office. Netto noiselessly crouched under the steel table inside, Shun's bare feet slapping the concrete beside him as he also ducked under.
Netto kept his sight trained on the ajar door, fervently wishing he had a rocket launcher on him.
A human skeleton encased in putrid-smelling pink jelly soundlessly lurched into sight in the hallway–de Smet. At least the smell was somewhat of a tell to whether the Virus Fusion was near. It didn't change course to find them, slowly oozing away.
Shun held out against the stench until de Smet was gone; then, he threw up dangerously close to Netto's shoes. "Classy," Netto remarked under his breath.
"Shut up," Shun muttered back, then wiped his nose on his sleeve. "Next time, I'm barfing on you."
"Please don't."
Somehow, despite Shun managing to produce clanks and creaks all the way, they made it down the stairwell.
The main floor of the warehouse was, surprisingly, empty save for one very crispy-looking dead agent. It probably hadn't helped that these agents weren't supposed to see any level of substantiated combat; they were primarily for covert missions. Fighting something as fast and powerful as a substantiated enemy with pistols alone was futile at best and stupid at worst, but it was all anyone here would be carrying. Rather than question this gift, Netto headed for the doors.
From what he could glean, everyone was outside. Ring and Turboman were on the far side of the warehouse building, presumably in Copyroids, fending off a Virus Fusion with empty eye sockets and patches of shaggy purple fur growing from its skin. They were having less luck with the Garuu Fusion's partner, a bloated Virus Fusion with limbs like stones and very human brown eyes hanging out of its head on ropey nerve cords. Luckily for them, it seemed to have trouble keeping track of their location, swinging wildly at the air.
Netto remembered that one: it was part Remgon, another agent who had stood by and made his life immeasurably more miserable underneath the Citadel. Its mouth was permanently wrenched open in a silent scream. With how extreme the Virus Fusion's mutation had been, Netto suspected its jaw was dislocated.
A decent swatch of the people who had tormented him in training had received their comeuppances over the past fortnight, yet Netto could find no joy in any of it. Shaking his head, he turned to make his way toward the entrance to the harbor, Shun alongside him.
A sudden prickle of heat was the only warning he had to pull Shun to the ground and crouch himself as a blue fireball shot over their heads. It seemed the Ghosler Fusion had found them. The charred remains of its legs dragged along the ground as it looked blindly around, its own vision hindered by its fire and the "cloth" over its head and torso.
"No sudden movements," he muttered. "Don't startle it, and maybe–"
"Rush Hole!"
The barely-human thing crumpled under the invisible force of the void that had opened beneath it, then vanished before his eyes. "Oh, no," Netto sighed to himself. "What are you doing here…"
This time, Rush's ears seemed to be a permanent feature in the Cross Fusion, falling over the Navi marks on R-Roll's helmet like magenta pigtails. Fortunately for Meiru and Roll's dignity, the ears seemed to have supplanted the weird tail.
"It's the seaplane," came Three's voice through Netto's implanted comm. "The Net Saviors showed up right when it landed. It looks like they're trying to herd everyone away from it."
"How did they know?" Netto wondered, genuinely stunned. "What are… how are…"
"Netto!"
Hearing Meiru say his name, knowing that she had to have just fought her way through several mutated operatives, hurt no matter how concerned she sounded saying it. He looked back at R-Roll framed in the alleyway, brave and strong and everything he wasn't.
Five card-shaped projectiles embedded themselves in the ground between them and exploded, saving him from having to respond.
"Let's dance," R-Spider called, smirking. Eight's aqua-green hair fanned out from under Spider's fedora in two snail-shell swirls as she leapt in to block R-Roll's path. "You have the guts to try that auto-delete trick on me? I wanna see if I can dodge it."
To make up for the instability of Darkland's Synchro Chip design, its two Cross Fusing agents had an array of small devices implanted throughout their bodies and special alloys inside their artificial bones. At first, the hardware had merely been developed to stabilize the imperfect Synchro Chip's fusion. But over time, it had gained other features as well. Now, the fusion was able to take damage that would normally leave the Navi deleted or the Operator killed. It could produce massive surges in attack power in the hands of an experienced user. Most importantly for the moment at hand, the fusion could hold outside of a Dimensional Area, albeit not for more than five minutes at a time.
Even outside of Cross Fusion, Eight's ability to sense pain and fatigue was dampened by the Fusion-supporting devices in her body, allowing her to push herself far further than an ordinary human could. Her strength and durability exceeded standards as well, the latter thanks to her alloy bones and the former thanks to a drug cocktail that also held together the entire mess of modifications.
And all of that meant that Netto was on borrowed time to get Shun away before the Net Saviors got wiped out.
The one small blessing they had was that they were heading in the opposite direction of the docks, so the number of agents and Fusions running around thinned out considerably. Now it was easy enough to avoid confrontation; they went around a building rather than pass behind a group of agents keeping a Spark Bee Fusion occupied. Both the agents and the Spark Bee Fusion were wasting their time with regards to protecting the seaplane, but most Virus Fusions weren't mentally stable enough to discern friend from foe. Or maybe they remembered what had happened to them, and knew who their real enemy was.
"Keep running," he told Shun once they were outside the harbor entrance. "Until you're outside Densan City–then you'll be safe."
"You're not coming with me?" Shun asked, taken aback.
"Nope. I've got one more thing to do," Netto told him. "Stay safe out there, okay? Don't start up any more net mafias." With that, he headed back in, both to figure out what the hell had just happened and to somehow convince Kaita, Mary, and Meiru to get out of there before they were all killed.
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It was much easier to evade the Virus Fusions now that Shun and his ridiculously heavy footsteps were no longer in tow. Netto slowly made his way back to the docks, senses alert to discern both potential threats and any signs of how the battle was going.
Eight was the finished product of Darkland's Cross Fusion research, while Three was the prototype. He had been tinkered with since before Netto's recruitment. Netto remembered sitting together with him in his room after various procedures, back when he was maybe half his current size, listening to him gasp for breath one moment and bravely crack jokes the next. He sometimes wondered if Eight would be so happy with her lot in life if she'd been the one getting endlessly optimized.
Thanks to all those years of experiences, as a rule, Three did not Cross Fuse outside a Dimensional Area until he absolutely had to. Netto didn't run into R-Burnerman, and he didn't run into anything whole enough to be Three's corpse, both of which he considered good signs.
The other things he found surrounding the warehouse didn't look nearly as good. The Virus Fusions' indiscriminate attacks had left the harbor looking like the site of a massacre. What had been done to them was horrible, but what they could do to others in retribution was somehow worse. Most of the remains didn't even look human any longer, and the too-familiar smell of blood permeated the air.
And someone–Meijin? Hikari-hakase? Themselves?–had decided to send two tweens into the middle of it all, one of whom had never seemed to be in the best of health. Netto re-entered the warehouse in order to have some semblance of cover while he located Kaita and Mary, hoping he wasn't too late.
When he emerged on the second floor to get a bird's-eye view of the situation, the fight in front of the water was still in full swing. Turboman and Ring were in the middle of it all, having reduced their number of opponents down to four; but Netto had yet to pick out their Operators in the fray.
What he saw instead was enough to steal his breath. The seaplane that was supposed to carry them away was a fireball on the water, its pontoons the only reason it was still afloat. He still couldn't believe they had found out about it, leak or no leak. But the evidence was there before his eyes.
Then, mixed into the bloody smell, a stench of rot. It had to be de Smet. Netto began to retreat from his position, knowing that his back was unprotected here, but that was when he saw Kaita and Mary, hiding from sight in the foliage next to the warehouse's lower wall. And de Smet, soundlessly rounding the corner toward them.
Before the Null Fusion got anywhere near Kaita and Mary, a red flash cleaved de Smet in half. The Virus Fusion had no time to ooze itself back together before its attacker sent a spray of Engetsu Kunai into the center of the two halves, splintering the central skeleton further and causing the two halves to melt uselessly into stinking, unmoving puddles.
Somehow, R-Blues could make a pair of cat ears look somewhat cool and like they belonged on his helmet. Netto sighed, certain that R-Rockman would have just looked like a dork. Even this part of things was under control with R-Blues there to guard the Operators.
So why was Netto still there, unable to let the situation play out?
He thought over what he'd seen along the way. At most, there was one Virus Fusion remaining besides the four Turboman and Ring were fighting. R-Burnerman was nowhere in sight. And R-Spider–
"Arachno-Paranoia!"
R-Spider's laser light show shot past the opposite corner of the warehouse, forcing the bloodied figure of R-Roll to dodge into sight. Netto blanched; it wasn't that he'd never seen someone fighting through a broken right arm and so many wounds, it was more that the person doing so was Meiru. This kind of battle was what he'd meant to protect both her and Enzan from by hiding his identity.
Then R-Spider chased her into view. Netto's horror turned back into disbelief, for R-Roll had given as good as she'd gotten. R-Spider's evening jacket was in shreds, a lumpy bruise forming on her collarbone, her left ankle twisting unnaturally underneath her weight.
"Satellite, double slot-in!" There wasn't even a hint of the dazed expression Netto would have expected from R-Roll, only resolute concentration. Having boxed in R-Spider, she next yelled, "AkaTsunami!" and scored a direct hit.
The fight had gone on for well over the five minutes R-Spider was normally expected to hold her Cross Fusion. But still the Darklish operative remained on her feet. "I can't lose here," she pleaded desperately. "I'm not dying here–!"
R-Roll's momentary confusion was both understandable–she probably had no way of knowing that Eight was not supposed to surrender to her even if she survived this fight–and immediately seized upon by her opponent. An Area Steal shot R-Spider into Ring and Turboman's midst, where she cut a deep slash into Turboman's throat with cards held between her fingers. "You're going down with me," she proclaimed, rounding on the two Operators before Turboman's Copyroid had even begun to lose stability. But R-Roll swooped in on a Dash Condor, leaping off of it to tackle R-Spider before she could throw her handful of razor-sharp cards at the defenseless Operators.
Kaita pulled Turboman out with milliseconds to spare. After a brief conversation with R-Blues, Ring took the children under either arm and retreated, leaving R-Blues to face down what remained of the Virus Fusions. Netto sighed with relief.
Then, he ducked as a stray card went sailing over his head. R-Roll didn't have her own Heart Slash to counter in this form, only able to shoot down a few projectiles with her Roll Arrow as she staggered away. R-Spider closed the gap in moments, a Flame Sword forming on her arm.
"Rush Hole!"
R-Spider was forced to leap gracelessly away, stumbling on her broken ankle upon landing but not stopping. With a wordless scream, R-Roll next fired off her Elec Aqua Tower, which R-Spider dodged as well–
But while she was in midair, a simple Sword buried itself deep in her gut. Netto didn't know where R-Roll had found the strength for that final, swift jump that had propelled her to intercept R-Spider early, like an avenging angel soaring to deliver her justice. If anything, not having the pain-dampening modifications R-Spider had, she should have been at a disadvantage.
With one vicious slash sideways, R-Roll forced R-Spider out of Cross Fusion. Eight fell limp to the ground, almost certainly in critical condition, her PET clattering uselessly in front of her body.
But R-Roll landed in a heap of twisted limbs as well, barely holding her own Cross Fusion. Eight had done her job.
Zimmermann and Claes were still standing. R-Blues was staggering, having just finished dealing with the Remgon Fusion, his chest armor shattered and a gash in his side leaking data-blood.
Netto forced himself to tear his eyes away, turning to flee. It was over. At least they had gotten the children away.
"Tango Infuse!"
Netto, baffled by hearing Enzan's unfamiliar battle call, turned back and became even more stupefied. "What?" R-Blues had gained an orange Aura and was knitting himself back together at an alarming rate.
The catlike Cross Fusion next knelt and took R-Roll's hand. As R-Blues pulled his partner to her feet, his rapid healing spread to her as well, resetting her broken arm and mending the slash wounds in her skin and armor down to cuts.
Two and Four had been trying for things like this for years, always with horrific results, while Enzan and Meiru got them through the power of cute cartoon animals. It really, really wasn't fair.
Netto watched with dread as the Cross Fused pair squared up for another round against the Virus Fusions, but the scene was replaced by rust-red darkness and the familiar warm, spicy smell of R-Burnerman's cape enveloping Netto.
R-Burnerman's silhouette was a near-inversion of the original Burnerman's, thanks in part to sporting a gray cape that flared out dramatically, leaving his hands free while still ending in red trim around Atsuki's hips. Rather than pauldrons, the cape attached to R-Burnerman's shoulders via an array of six flame jets. Beneath it, red-and-yellow armor protected Atsuki's torso.
"We can't stay," R-Burnerman said, cradling Netto in his arms. The events of that day were all too overwhelming for Netto to resist this further surprise. They went sailing away from rooftop to rooftop, rapidly leaving the disaster at the harbor behind.
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There were only two Virus Fusions remaining: a Bajiliko and a spiny thing that might have been a Daijan. R-Roll and R-Blues split up to take care of them, the Bajiliko lurching after the former.
Knowing that she couldn't deal damage until it attacked, R-Roll let the Bajiliko Fusion close in. It didn't seem to want to use its attack, but she kept just enough distance that its flailing limbs were too small to touch her. At last, its Poison Mask popped forward, expelling its poison gas and letting blocky, reddish-black sludge drip from the creature's face. It had no skin there to protect it, only thick clots of the same reddish-black stuff atop muscle and sinew, pooling in eyeless sockets and running over teeth.
Whatever these things were, they were disgusting, weirdly intelligent, and all three members of the R-Roll fusion wanted them gone. "Rush Hole!" she called, then knocked the Bajiliko Fusion into it with a Roll Arrow.
The Bajiliko Fusion fell into oblivion, the Rush Hole closing after it. On the far side of the harbor, the Daijan Fusion sank to the ground, headless.
"Is that all of them?" R-Roll wondered, blood pounding in her ears. "Where'd… Netto go?"
R-Blues scanned the area wordlessly. He turned toward R-Roll, then stumbled. R-Roll didn't notice she was falling as well until she hit the ground.
Meiru felt her own arm moving without her input as Roll fired a Spread Gun skyward. Then, blessed nothingness as the Cross Fusion fell away.
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Ring and her two charges were in no state to follow the red-clad figure they saw retreating in the other direction from where they were hiding; the battle had been so intense that all three were exhausted, and they didn't want to stray too far from R-Roll and R-Blues in case Ring needed to help them in a retreat as well.
The burst of blue light in the air resembled a firework, but after a moment, Ring realized it was a Spread Gun blast. After another moment, she realized it was an impromptu distress flare.
"Kaita, call the Ministry of Science," Mary implored, once again thinking on her feet a bit better than the rest of them. "Ring-chan, let's find Meiru-san and Enzan-san."
"Gotcha," Ring said, gamely rallying her energy for at least the sixth time that day before gathering the two children for a piggyback ride.
If they hadn't been lying in the middle of the slowly disintegrating Virus Fusions with their PETs feet away and Rush and Tango sprawled alongside them, Ring would have thought Meiru and Enzan were just taking a nap. Tango's healing powers were no joke. The Net Savior pair was certainly better off than the Darklish girl who had been attacking them; Ring was certain humans couldn't survive losing so much blood, but she could see the girl's chest rising and falling, impossibly still alive.
Hesitantly, Kaita shook Enzan's shoulder, but the older boy didn't respond at all.
It was a long, uncertain wait for a van to pull up and Yuuichirou, Asuna, and Meijin to leap out. Yuuichirou and Meijin wasted no time carrying Meiru, Enzan, their PETs, and their equally unconscious support programs into the van.
While they did, Asuna cradled her son and his friend in her arms. "Are you hurt?" she asked, the gentlest Ring had seen her.
"We're okay," Kaita reassured her. "Turboman and Ring didn't let anything happen to us, and neither did Enzan-san!"
"Thank you, Turboman," Asuna said. Then, to Ring's surprise, she found her mitten being shook by a human hand. "And thank you for holding out, Ring. You've been incredible."
Ring blushed. "Aw, gosh, thanks!"
"Get in, all of you," Meijin ordered. "We need to get them to the hospital." To Ring, he said, "Thank you for your help. I apologize, but we need to be more discreet for the trip into the city." Which, of course, meant that Ring needed to leave the Copyroid.
"Uh, before that… what do we do with her?" Ring asked, pointing out the Darklish girl. "She did try to kill us all, but on the other hand…"
"We'll take her to the hospital, too," Yuuichirou said firmly. He jogged to her side.
"We can't tell them anything without implicating ourselves, anyway. We'll just say we found her like this," Meijin decided.
"Ring-chan, before you leave the Copyroid, could you help me with our new friend?" Yuuichirou asked. "She's strangely heavy–I can't lift her."
"Okay~" Ring bounded over. With how weirdly dense the Darklish girl felt in her arms, though, she could tell she'd need to take a normal pace back to the van. "What've they done to her?" she wondered, more curious than unnerved. "That's not right!"
"I think it's more important that we treat her wounds first," Asuna said firmly, climbing into the van with Kaita and Mary in tow.
"I'll drive," Meijin said, determinedly.
"No, I'll drive, and you can make sure everyone remains stable," Yuuichirou insisted. "Pass her to Meijin, Ring-chan," he said once Meijin had reluctantly parted with the keys.
"I can't believe you don't–" Ring settled the Darklish girl on the seat next to Meijin. The weight of her leaning against his shoulder produced a choked, "Oof."
Mary plugged Ring out of the Copyroid once she'd handed the green-haired girl over. With his friend's help, Kaita disassembled the Copyroid and hid the torso with its telltale components in a lead-lined case; then, it was off to the hospital at a speedy but nonetheless reasonable pace.
a/n: i'm going to put this on a more sporadic schedule for a while. the lack of response to it is starting to weigh on my mental health, and i'm about to pick up some more work elsewhere. with the time constraint, it's better for me to refocus on things that'll strike the right balance between 'stuff i like doing' and 'stuff people like seeing' with my free time, y'know?
thank you to everyone who viewed this, everyone who's gone back and read the other fics, and who kept reading even after the dark turn a few chapters back! i was able to keep my spirits up enough to continue working on this for quite a while because of you. :)