Continue?
It had been forty-eight hours since the disaster at Densan Harbor, and Netto was not free. He was very much alive, and still in Japan, with no idea of how he was going to establish that link into the Citadel now.
Luckily, with everything else that had just gone wrong, it was easy enough to pretend that he was out of sorts over one of those other things instead.
Netto penned his message to the General, sent it over Rockman's protests and Punk's seemingly ambivalent just-sayin's, and settled in to wait.
01110010011001010111000001110010011010010111001101100101
Day three went about the same as days one and two had. Three and Netto took turns monitoring incoming channels, Punk and Burnerman kept watch in case someone had tailed them to the industrial park R-Burnerman had landed in at the end of their flight from Densan Harbor, and Rockman was stuck hiding from scrutiny in the PET.
Because they'd both moved and been scrambling their signals, Netto had a suspicion Beat could no longer return to his location. Netto wasn't too worried, though; since Beat knew Mary and Kaita, he always had the Ministry to return to. If anything, knowing he wasn't coming and going was a big relief—with the mission in such disarray, anyone and any equipment returning to Darkland would be scrutinized for however long it took to find answers. Beat was supposed to be untraceable, but Netto had both seen and constructed a few untraceable programs in his career. The General would probably deduce Beat's existence if given the time to, but without the support program on Netto's person, it would be easier to deny him being his.
Morning became afternoon, Netto and Three each ate another bite of ration bar, and the wait in the stillness of the empty building stretched on. Every now and then, a half-formed idea would come to Netto, but it was hard to concentrate on so little sustenance. Following protocol was about the only thing he had keeping him from just lying down on the floor and whiling away the time daydreaming about curry.
Only one thing seemed important enough to keep resurfacing until it formed into a full-fledged concern. "Maybe we should be acting more like this is permanent," Netto thought aloud. "You can't survive out here for—"
"I will be fine," Three said firmly, and the silence resumed.
01110010011001010111000001110010011010010111001101100101
When they woke up, Meiru found that she and Enzan had lost four entire days to their hospital beds.
"Rush says he's never Cross Fusing again," Roll reported when Meiru asked if anything had happened.
"He's said that before," Meiru remarked. "Besides, now we can shame him into it using Tango's example." The green cat didn't move from his position sleeping next to Enzan's legs.
"He says he means it this time, Meiru-chan." Roll remembered, "Oh, and… uh…"
"'And'?" pressed Meiru.
"It appears someone else survived the battle at the harbor," Blues finished. "Apparently, she's been uncooperative, but Meijin has managed to learn a few things from her nonetheless."
"You probably shouldn't go to see her yet," Roll explained. "It sounds like she's been a real headache so far."
There had been, so far as Meiru could tell, only one other person to encounter at the harbor besides brief glances of Netto and Atsuki. "The girl who used Cross Fusion on us," she recalled. Wryly, she said, "I don't think seeing me again would help her much."
"There's something else I'd want to see before trying to get any answers out of her, anyway," Enzan said, finally joining the conversation after quite a bit of silent pondering.
"The location Searchman gave us," Meiru recalled.
"Exactly. It's past time for us to find out what's there."
01110010011001010111000001110010011010010111001101100101
With the battle at the harbor behind them and Ring rested up, it was time for Mary to pick the Flock's trail back up again.
Nobody was anywhere near the remains of ServCo. Mary could only hope that no one else had decided to make use of the statue's hint since the last time she'd been inside the building. Feeling a little guilty as she did it, she looked around, then walked past the No Trespassing sign and toward the front doors.
They were locked. "Ring, lend me a hand," Mary implored, plugging her Navi in. The doors slid open, revealing a near-dark, wrecked storefront. "Thank you," she said, plugging Ring out.
"No problem!" As Mary carefully stepped over the dried-out spills that lined the ground, Ring commented, "It sure doesn't look like anyone's been back here since Mr. Meme was. You really think this is what the statue meant?"
"It's better than sitting around doing nothing," Mary said, stopping in the center of the waiting room. "When we last saw him," she recalled, "he was in the main office..." She walked to her left. On the left wall, there was a door; this, too, was locked.
"On it!" Ring was in and out in seconds, leaving Mary free to push open the door. It led into the hallway, where the small office was still locked but lacked the viruses from before. There wasn't much in it now; just a water cooler, a desk, and a chair. The smell had gone down some, as well.
There was nothing on top of the desk. Mary felt her breathing speed up a little. She couldn't help it; had she gone all this way for nothing? She hurried to the other side of the desk, pulling open the top drawer. A smile broke out over her face, her green eyes flooding with relief. Sitting on top of some papers was a yellow Link PET.
Compared to the wrist-mounted PET Neo models, this one seemed to take forever to boot up. Still, the fleece-covered Navi she'd been hoping to see appeared. "You!" Sheepman exclaimed. A grin starting to form on his face, he said, "I wasn't expecting this!"
Mary clutched the PET with both hands. "Sheepman, can you find a Mr. Meme? I think—"
"Let me stop you there. First of all, Mr. Meme can't ask for himself," Sheepman said.
"Well… I'm not a mister," Mary said sheepishly.
"You'll look it, kid. It'd be best if you sounded it, too. Let's head out, we can't do anything here." Carefully, Mary began stepping back over the fallen chairs. "You can get yourself a suit in your size, right?" Mary nodded. "Then this'll work out fine. Now, tell me what your story is."
"My story…? Well, it's more of everyone's story, at this point…"
01110010011001010111000001110010011010010111001101100101
Once Meijin was done with another attempt at trying to get anything out of the green-haired girl they'd fought and then picked up at the harbor, Kaita found himself loitering outside her hospital room, wondering just what she was like. He still didn't understand the first thing about Atsuki, but he felt like he knew Netto, and Netto was not that bad once one got to know him. Perhaps this girl, too, was more than what she appeared to be.
"Who's there?" came a tomboyish voice, startling Kaita into action.
"Uh, just me!" he answered, poking his head in. "I'm Kaita. Hi."
"You're not getting shit out of me," the girl said coldly. "Tell that to your superior officer, too."
"Okay," Kaita replied, sitting in the chair next to the bed. After a moment's reflection, he added, "Who would that be?"
"You're serious?" the girl asked, obviously thrown. "That moron with the glasses who was in here before."
"Meijin-san?" Kaita wondered. "I don't think he's an officer of anything. He's in charge of the Net Saviors, but I'm not really sure if anyone gave him that job or if he just sorta… took it?"
"Then what's your chain of command?" the girl asked, crossing her arms.
Now Kaita was the one who had to stop and think. "I don't know," he said on first instinct. "Meiru-san and Enzan-san are the Net Saviors, and they tell Hikari-hakase and Meijin-san everything, and then Mary-chan and I aren't really Net Saviors, but also we kind of are…?"
"O…kay. So, who do Hikari and Meijin report to?"
"I dunno," Kaita replied honestly.
"What the hell kind of organization is this?" the girl said, as thoroughly confused by it all as Kaita was.
"We're the Net Saviors?"
"This is so stupid," the girl muttered vehemently. "How could this have happened…?"
"What's your name, anyway?" Kaita wondered.
"I don't have a name," the girl replied. "I answer to my title, which is the Eighth, or Agent Eight."
"So you're just a number?" It sounded completely insane to Kaita. "That's awful."
"No, it was great," Eight said wistfully. "It was order, and responsibility, and glory. Way better than what I had before."
"Then…" Carefully, Kaita said, "That must've been really hard, if what you had in Darkland was better."
"Enh, it's whatever. People suck," Eight shrugged. "You sure you're this bored…?"
"Positive," Kaita replied wholeheartedly. "Mary-chan's off on her and Ring's big solo expedition, and Meiru-san and Enzan-san are still asleep, so there's nobody around to talk to. Mama's back at the Ministry with Hikari-san, too…" Kaita sighed. "You're the only person around…"
"That's rough," Eight said, seemingly quite serious. "…Hang on, Hikari-san? Not Hikari-hakase?"
"She's his wife," Kaita explained.
"Huh. What's she do at the Ministry, then?"
"I don't know that, either," Kaita replied. "She just started showing up a couple days ago."
"What… Isn't at least some of what you do confidential?" wondered Eight. "Can she really do that?"
"I guess so, since she's doing it," Kaita answered.
"Kaita-kun!" Turboman's hologram popped into life next to his Operator's shoulder. "Meiru-san and Enzan-san are finally awake!"
"Oh, wow, they're finally okay!" Kaita said, equally excited. Then, remembering Eight was there and had nobody asking after her welfare, he added, "Er… are you okay?"
"I mean… At this point, I'm not supposed to be, but I am," Eight said, surprisingly level-headed about it all. "Your moron superior took my necklace, so I can't follow protocol."
A necklace? Kaita tried to commit that to memory for asking after later. "Well, you seem kinda cool. Thanks for talking to me, Agent Eight!"
"Marino."
Kaita turned back around, having dashed midway out the door already. "Huh?"
"My name was Marino," the girl from Darkland said. Her expression was eerily still, in that way Netto's sometimes got when he was thinking of something unpleasant.
01110010011001010111000001110010011010010111001101100101
It had been four days since the disaster at Densan Harbor, and Rockman was through with waiting. It seemed obvious that no one was coming for Netto and Atsuki. They'd had to buy some rudimentary kitchenware to outfit their little warehouse hideout with, because they couldn't be seen outside for long or give their location to anyone, but they'd run low on their emergency rations. Going back into the outside world had meant a switch back to the two humans calling each other actual names instead of numbers, finally, and Netto had even elected to use his given name without Rockman needing to prompt him.
But more importantly, Netto didn't seem any less convinced that the things he'd said about himself were true. It was easy now for Rockman to characterize Netto's strangely quiet demeanor. Trying to avoid unnecessary attention, for fear that he'd be forced back into line. Grief both for the many victims of the Ameroupian continent's warlike ways and for an innocence he couldn't return to. Above all, a resignation he didn't deserve to be feeling.
Rockman had been trying to take things at Netto's pace–now, it was time to take them at his own.
01110010011001010111000001110010011010010111001101100101
Netto had worried that the potatoes weren't going to cook in just fifteen minutes, but when the timer on his PET went off and he lifted the lid of the skillet, they were soft under his cooking spoon. "Okay, now I just add the roux and stir it in…" It came in one huge rectangle in the carton, which he broke into five smaller pieces along the pre-scored lines before adding it to the skillet. The water the vegetables had cooked in began to take on the golden brown color of Japanese-style curry, slowly combining with the roux.
Netto licked off the bits of roux that had stuck to his finger and thumb, receiving a comforting hit of spice and salt. Their little camp stove ran on propane, so he'd been banished to just outside their hiding place, cooking under the dim, patchy flood lights of the industrial park. The sauce thickened just the same in the empty, run-down environs as it would have in a proper house or campsite. He transferred the curry into a mixing bowl, since they only had the one pan.
He scraped out as much of the sauce as possible before adding oil, letting it heat up again over the camp stove. He was fairly certain that he'd been told that fish was too delicate to cook for as long as the rest of the curry, so it was an extra step versus just getting chicken or beef, but he hadn't been able to bring himself to buy anything else.
Fish looked and smelled the least like human flesh even when it was still raw, after all. With the harbor so recent in memory, nothing seemed less appetizing than anything that even remotely approximated the smell of flesh, raw or cooked.
They didn't have the breading or the amount of oil it'd take to make proper katsu, but he could at least pan-fry it.
In the meantime, Atsuki was already sneaking a bite of the curry. "You can cook?" he asked, astonished.
"It wasn't really that hard," Netto said sheepishly.
"You always said you couldn't!"
Semi-distracted by remembering to shake salt and pepper over the other side of the fish fillets as well, Netto explained, "I just followed the directions on the box…"
Snagging another potato chunk, Atsuki said, "Oh, come off it, this is great."
"Um, thanks." Netto added the fillets to the pan, watching them sizzle. "Someone showed me how to cook a long time ago, so I don't know how well I remember it, is all."
"Well, even half-remembered is better than nothing," Atsuki said. "Right now, that sort of experience is all we have."
Netto watched the pan until he suddenly heard Rockman scold, "Wait until dinner, or there won't be any left to go with the fish!"
"Rockman?!" Netto turned to see his Navi, in hologram form, standing between Atsuki and the curry. "Didn't Punk explain this? You can't come out!"
"We aren't in one of the Darklish bases any longer, so I'm not following their rules anymore," Rockman shot back stubbornly.
"Isn't that one of the Ministry of Science's Navis?" Atsuki asked, suspicious.
"Yeah, this is Rockman," Netto explained. Luckily, he'd been thinking of an excuse for this since the day Rockman had first arrived in his PET, so it came out smoothly. "He's under a new status ailment I was working on. He still has his full logic capabilities and memories, and he does still think of the Japanese crimefighters as allies. But he thinks of us as his most important allies."
"Stockholm syndrome?" summarized Atsuki.
"No!" Netto had not thought of Rockman's current situation in quite that way, but it did seem to line up alarmingly well. They would need to have a talk later. "You can use it in other situations, too. It's like… he's been charmed."
"Handy, either way." Atsuki grinned, clearly starting to get ideas. "Have a virus worked around this charm ailment yet?"
"I will if we ever get back home." Netto was not going back home for any meaningful period of time, so it was easy to make more work for himself as part of the lie. He flipped over the fish to find the bottom side now golden brown.
"You really like Netto-kun, don't you?" Rockman said. Netto could hear the smile in his voice, though Atsuki seemed a little taken aback.
"Rockman, get back in the PET," Netto ordered. "Atsuki's going to turn you into a kitchen timer if you keep this up."
"He'd have to get through you first, wouldn't he?" Rockman said to Netto, not budging.
"I don't know why you think that would be a challenge for him," Netto retorted bluntly.
"Japanese Navis are all so mouthy," Atsuki noticed. Netto looked over to see him idly flicking at Rockman's hologram, the blue Navi evading his attacks in turn. "I know most of 'em are for kids out here, but how would anyone get things done?"
"I'm—" Rockman gracefully tumbled away from an attempt at a squash from Atsuki. "—a companion and a partner, not just a tool. Though I have been following Netto-kun's orders, since he knows the most about the situation here."
"But if you weren't charmed, you wouldn't be following anyone's orders that you didn't want to," Atsuki observed. "Even though you're just an oversized program."
"And you're just a pile of flesh and bone, but you're greater than the sum of your parts," Rockman pointed out gently. "So are Navis."
"How funny," Atsuki said, in that neutral tone that Netto knew could turn dangerous at any moment. "It thinks it can wax philosophical."
"Rockman, you're not going to change anyone's minds here," Netto pointed out. The situation was beginning to make him nervous, the way Rockman seemed totally unaware of what a transgression this was even more so. "The fish is ready, anyway, so you don't need to distract Atsuki anymore."
"I just want to get to know him better," Rockman protested, though he did return to Netto's side.
They had a rice cooker and one skillet, and that setup had produced curry rice with fish. One and a half of the fillets went to Atsuki, since he needed more to eat anyway, and the rest went to Netto.
It really was surprisingly good, and they'd have leftover curry to eat the next morning.
Once their tiny fridge was crammed full of curry and rice, Atsuki gently pulled Netto to his feet by his collar. "Let's take a walk, it's stifling in here," he said.
"What happened to keeping out of sight?" Netto pointed out.
"It is after dinnertime," Rockman reminded him. "There won't be a lot of people around to see you."
"Especially not out here," Atsuki added. "We're a long way out from the downtown area."
"Oh, now Rockman's fine because he's agreeing with you," Netto complained, though he followed Atsuki outside.
They left the lights of the industrial park behind, coming to a bus stop that overlooked the bay. Netto relaxed against Atsuki's side as he listened to the waves crash against the rocks, tired after the long day.
There they were, staring up at the moon one more time, still and serene and so very far away. For a moment, just like it had after that first mission in Ameroupe all that time ago, everything seemed worth it for another glimpse at that impossibly gigantic sky.
01110010011001010111000001110010011010010111001101100101
Searchman's link brought Roll and Blues–and their Operators with Meijin over their shoulders, the humans looking on through their screens–to an archive.
Darkland's Virus Fusions were just the beginning of what had been documented in Afrikku by the Sharan soldiers who had gone there to bring money and influence home to their country.
Cross Fusions clearing out entire camps before collapsing in puddles of their own blood as their bodies fell apart. Impossible, screaming voids opening up to transform inconvenient enemies–or even ordinary people just trying to protect their own homes–into glitched-out, nonsensical abominations. Dimensional Areas that melted everything inside them. Dark Chips that, rather than stopping at corrupting Navis, then took the form of massive, physics-defying weapons. Abandoned towns and cities where nothing could grow.
And the Net Saviors could do nothing about it. If anything, the less Roll wanted to, the more she saw familiar faces and Navi frames in the images. The Net Saviors deployed here were only around to make matters worse. In Afrikku, they were emissaries of death, representatives of an outside world that only cared about what lay beneath the people's feet. They often fought one another, their ties to their nations or to the companies hiring them coming before their pacts as Net Saviors, leaving bewildering levels of collateral damage behind.
The resource war, some reports called it. Others had begun calling it the Dimensional War.
And R-Burnerman was there. R-Burnerman was there several times, playing all sides of the conflict, sometimes even destroying Darklish weaponry wielded by one faction in the employ of some corporation or another. Surviving things that were never meant to walk the Earth. Disappearing for months at a time from Sharo's records only to return taller, or bulkier, or with one arm longer than the other, or even visibly shorter.
Eventually, he stabilized, and soon after R-Spider began to appear in the reports as well. She never fluctuated in size as he had.
None of the former Cross Fusion Members ever appeared. Laika had been telling the truth.
"How much pressure has Laika-kun been under to come here?" wondered Meijin, somewhere over Roll's head. "He's probably been fending off requests from Sharo's top brass since he and Chief Malenkov returned."
"I can't imagine," Meiru said, her voice sounding alarmingly withdrawn.
For Roll, that took priority. "I think we've seen enough," she decided for both of them.
"Indeed. Continuing to look at this won't solve anything, Enzan-sama," Blues agreed. His Operator was ashen.
"You didn't know," Meiru tried to reassure him. "You couldn't have."
"I could've put two and two together, instead of sitting around for years like an idiot," Enzan replied bitterly.
"Maintaining contact with the overseas suppliers was never a part of your duties at IPC, Enzan-sama," Blues said firmly. "Neither of us had any reason to look so closely into them until now."
"Yeah, this is really a shock for all of us!" Roll chimed in. She had never wondered why there was so much military-style equipment at Enzan's command until now. It did make more sense if it was normally for expeditions related to these kinds of things, and not just for finding clues to defeating the Net Saviors' latest foe from the depths of space or time. Silly as it seemed in hindsight, she had accepted the latter without question after the experience that had been Meiru hanging around Yaito. "But, Enzan-san, this has nothing to do with you as a person. I mean, I bet Meijin and Hikari-hakase didn't think the Dimensional Areas would get used like this, either."
"Right you are," Meijin sighed. "It's hard for me not to feel somewhat responsible, too."
"Then we'll fix it," Meiru resolved.
"If only it were that simple," Enzan said wryly. "It's not like there was something else there like the Asteroids to amplify negative impulses. This is all because of the human greed that we already carry within us."
"Hey! No waxing poetic over this, got it?" Roll was proud to see Meiru act so immediately to nip this line of thinking in the bud. "Just because a bunch of terrible people rose to the top of this situation doesn't make every person on Earth terrible. Or even most of us! We'll figure this out eventually."
Meijin agreed, "One step at a time, right?"
But Enzan, though not protesting against their words, didn't seem particularly convinced.