Annihilation
Disappearances
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One moment it was white and misty, the next it was black and murky. Ice Chan had found her way into the infamous Undernet after all, and was drawn deeper inside despite her misgivings. Hoshiko couldn't make out why. From her perspective they were just hopelessly lost. "Come on Ice, there's no way the snow ball is around here. If you can't find your way back, just jack out."
"It's okay. I just can't shake the feeling we're missing something important here. That little creep wanted us to come here, not just to sell Dark Chips." IceChan answered with determination as she moved down a thin walkway.
"So he probably wanted you to walk into a trap...and that's what you're doing?"
"I don't think he realized we were Officials when he approached us. We have power and skills that ensure we don't suffer the same fate as the kind of victims he did have in mind."
"Yeah...and with power and skills comes responsibility, or something like that." Hoshiko admitted hesitantly.
"You want us to be heroes, right? You're going to have to learn to say it with conviction! Throw a 'great' or two in there! Anyway, I can find my way back when we're ready, but right now I feel like we can't turn our backs on a potential threat." IceChan continued forward but stopped when she almost lost her footing. A small piece of the walkway broke loose from under her foot and fell into the pit below. She listened for the sound of it hitting the bottom, but no sound came.
"I get it, no more running away. That doesn't mean you can't be careful." Hoshiko pleaded.
IceChan rolled her eyes and was about to brave her way onward when a distant grunt from below caught her attention. "Wait...did you hear that?"
"What? I didn't-uh oh. The PET is detecting something coming your way from below, fast!"
IceChan could hear something else now, a rumbling hiss growing louder and louder. She could now see the light of a jet stream over the ledge. "Is that a missile?!" she exclaimed.
"Get out of there, now!"
IceChan ran as fast as her little legs could carry her. For a moment she was relieved when she heard the explosion a good distance behind her. The shockwave she felt did no significant damage. However the relief quickly turned sour when the remains of the bridge she was running on fell to pieces from the impact, leaving nothing beneath her feet but the seemingly bottomless darkness.
"Jack out!" Hoshiko ordered frantically. Navis couldn't jack out safely while moving, and certainly not while falling. It would hopelessly fragment her structure to be transferred without a clear coordinate lock, they both knew that. Panic overrode logic and common sense, but not the PET's safety features. IceChan tried to log out but nothing happened as she plummeted into the abyss. The navi's scream grew faint in the PET's speaker as she fell out of the transmission area.
Hoshiko tried to think. If she was going to be deleted, there was still a chance that the deleted remains would automatically return to the PET, provided nothing interfered with the transmission, but maybe that's why navis aren't supposed to wander into the Undernet in the first place, and why the ones that do often don't come back. As she tensely watched her PET for any sign of IceChan, she prayed they hadn't already made the fatal mistake of their new career.
* * *
"Shchrach shizzra hachhrmm."
"Yes, she is here. I feel it as well. I never before realized how...peculiar her nature appears."
"With all that influence on her, she should be with us, blblgll. It's like her soul's in the right place, but her mind isn't quite there yet. Grullglbrr, I wonder how much it would take to push her just over the edge?"
"WRAAaahhhhhh."
"This is a rare opportunity. We should try to recruit her. Alternatively, it would be best to destroy her."
"She'd be more receptive to a former ally, don't you think, bglrlr?"
"I am preoccupied here at the moment, but fortunately we have a perfect emissary already in the area...I believe she would find her way to him more quickly with your guidance, sir."
"Achha. Zshourrya, Shcheehara Zsacchm!"
* * *
Darklady and Dark had arrived in a familiar battle-ravaged area of the Undernet. The less-customized navi inspected the gound, picking up interesting readings for her operator in the scorched and decayed rubble. The other surveyed from the air and let her operator in on what she could see. "Yeah, this is where the last victims were supposedly seen last, and there was some kind of a struggle here recently, and Darkloids were involved. Moe was right to send me!"
"And you're sure you're not just saying that so I don't recall you now because you still haven't found any trace of the victims?" Kalinka asked listlessly.
"Hey, I know what I'm doing. There's a trace. There's trace all over the place. My new sidekick is picking up some trace right now."
"That's not your sidekick, it's just some darkchip junkie tagging along. You can't keep it." Kalinka yawned. "Anyway, you've done well enough for tonight. We'll stop for now and send the readings to Moe."
Her op may have been exhausted, but Darklady felt like she was just getting started. She nervously thought of other excuses to keep going. "Now hold on, there are navis in danger here. They're still alive, I can feel it. But every second counts!"
"Oh really?" Kalinka said incredulously.
"We've got the trail. Just sit tight and we can be heroes!" Darklady began to hover down another walkway. When Dark noticed, she rushed to catch up with her.
"Hey, where are you going? I thought this was the place."
Darklady kept moving. "Patience, trusty sidekick."
Dark shot back an annoyed look. "What did you just-"
Darklady stopped when an unusual feeling swept over her. "Huh, was this road always here? I thought I'd been this way lots of times..."
"Now you're lost!?" Dark exclaimed. She knew following this navi was a bad idea.
"I know exactly where we are...or I did a second ago at least. Uh Kalinka, you got a map handy?...Kalinka?"
The other navi threw her arms in the air. "Never mind. I'll just go back to scanning the battlefield." She turned on her heel and ran a few steps before noticing the damaged platform that should have been right in front of her was gone. A walkway stretched into the distance in its place. "How in the...A-Alia?" There was no response.
Outside the Cyberworld, both Kalinka and Alia experienced the same thing from different sides of the world. The signal to their PET was lost, replaced with static. Kalinka tried the forced retrun function she had rigged up. Nothing happened. Alia was about to throw her PET against a wall. For some reason, both of their navis had just unexpectedly disappeared.
Back where those navis had mysteriously found themselves lost, Darklady crossed her arms, feeling stumpedand for the first time since she jacked in that day, she wasn't eager to stick around. "Yeah okay this is new. Let's go...this way." She pointed down one of the two directions the seemingly endless walkway stretched, the way she was headed originally.
"Shouldn't we go back? Maybe this is just an illusion." Dark suggested.
"You tried going back. You would be back now if that worked. That leaves forward." Without waiting for a response, Darklady floated on ahead.
"...Following you has gotten me in enough trouble already." Dark muttered and began to run in the opposite direction. After a few seconds of running, she noticed something moving towards her. It didn't take long for the object to come into view. It was Darklady.
"Wow, you're faster than you look." Darklady commented as she flew on by.
"What? Wait! Were you flying in a straight line?"
"It works better than flying in circles." The demoness answered, stopping to talk for a moment.
"But you took off that way, then started coming from that way..." Dark tried to explain, pointing in both directions.
"So, you're not faster than you look."
"That's not...what is happening here!?" Dark clutched her head in frustration.
"Well, maybe they know."
"Who's they?"
"The really big navi and the really small navi fighting on the platform behind you."
"There's no platf-" Dark turned around and stopped in mid-sentence when she saw that there was indeed a new platform where previously there had only been more endless walkway a second ago. She noted with a double-take that the walkway they had been on had now disappeared entirely, and she was now standing on the same platform which spread in all directions. Other walkways were now barely visible up above.
More attention-grabbing than the new locale was the sudden presence of other navis. As Darklady noted, one was very large - at least three times their own size, and it was swinging its oversized fists wildly at a half-sized girl navi jumping around trying to dodge and occasionally firing an ineffectual cannon back at the behemoth. Every step the giant navi took made a ground-splitting crunch, and both combatants' grunts and cries were clearly audible now. It was as if they were there the whole time.
Dark was flabbergasted. "When did they...or when did we...did you see what happened?"
Darklady shrugged. "I looked up, and here we were. At least I recognise where we are now. We didn't go far lengthwise, but somehow we made it all the way down to the bottom of the area. Guess we walked through a wormhole or something."
The small parka-clad navi noticed the spectators and desperately ran towards them. "Hey! Help me! This guy's gonna kill me and I lost contact with my op!" She slowed her pace a little when she noticed the dark attire of her would-be saviors. She suddenly considered the possibility all three Under-dwellers were on the same side.
Darklady took a judgemental stance. "I dunno, are you sure you didn't start it?"
Dark responded more plainly. "We just found ourselves here, and we've lost contact with our ops too. Do you know-" Before she could speak any further, a series of missiles began crashing down between them and the large navi, who was slowly but surely chasing down his prey.
"Aaah! No time to chit-chat!" The little navi yelped and fired more rounds of her cannon back at the pursuing mountain of metal. "No chips so if you're gonna help me, HELP ME!"
Darklady summoned a swarm of bats to tackle the missile-launching menace. "Well, if I get to fight someone, might as well be the one that looks like it can put up a fight. I don't suppose YOU'RE one of those missing navis I'm supposed to be looking for."
"Eh? I don't think so. I was fine until this guy shot me off my walkway higher up. That was just a minute ago. I'm IceChan, an Official. I was...searching for a suspect in the Undernet." IceChan explained as best she could while providing cover fire with her SnowCannon.
"Oh, so you're probably with Moe and Drill then. Guess we are on the same side." Darklady grinned and charged the enemy with her ShadowAxe.
IceChan didn't recognise the names, but thought it best to keep quiet while she had the crazy one on her side. While the two custom navis fought bravely, the uncustomized Dark kept a few steps back, knowing her NormalBuster would be even less effective than IceChan's snowball-launching weapon. Without her connection to her PET's scanning equipment, she couldn't learn much from this encounter, but she didn't need detailed scans to tell her the giant was another Darkloid, and that this one was a lot meaner than usual. She knew she had to do something, but unless Alia could reacquire her signal with her, there was little to nothing she could do.
Darklady swung her axe into the Darkloid's leg, where it stuck. The hard-bodied creature showed no signs of pain but it did notice her, and with a deep grunt made motions to grab her with its all-encompassing hands. She managed to avoid this but did not have time to free her weapon before she took to the air. IceChan was now slicing into the other leg with a small IceSword while its owner was focused on Darklady. The giant continued to swipe at the flying target but stamped its foot occasionally at the other pest without even looking at it.
Darklady flew low, shifted to her fire-elemental form, and began launching FireTowers at the Darkloid. The flames covered more of its body but caused no change in its demeanor. IceChan leapt back and switched to firing her SnowCannon. Darklady noticed this and rolled her eyes. "Hey, shortstuff! If you don't have anything stronger than that, stay out of it and help my sidekick find an escape route!"
"Are you sure you can deal with this guy on your own?" IceChan questioned.
"Well no offense but you're not exactly tipping the scales here!"
IceChan didn't like it. Her supposed ally was obnoxiously rude and she didn't want to admit weakness after all her talk about becoming a hero. Still, she had to admit there was some wisdom in Darklady's suggestion to help the other navi seek an exit. So with a reluctant turn, she fled the battlefield while Darklady switched to Elec and zapped the raging behemoth with a Killers Beam. At first the Darkloid actually seemed to be paralyzed, but then suddenly multiple serrated rings errupted from its body and arced through the air in myriad patterns, forcing Darklady to abandon her attack and put all her concentration into dodging.
Her efforts nearly paid off, but after nimbly avoiding five blades, the six and seventh hit home and cut deep into her leg and back. Darklady cried out in pain and began to fall, but was caught in the outstretched palm of her attacker. Its segmented steel fingers clasped around her damaged body before she could recover and squirm free. The blades spun in a series of orbits around them before finally embedding themselves back in the giant's arms, shoulders, and head. Darklady struggled in spite of the pain, but was helpless in the monster's tightening grip. She expected an imminent deletion, but was surprised to find herself instead brought eye-to-eye with the overpowering death machine. The Darkloid's face was grimacing with non-specific rage and glared into her with empty grey eyes. It wasn't a pretty sight, but she sensed no immediate hostility from her captor.
"Urgh...great. The big monkey thinks I'm the pet damsel. Well, if you're going to climb to the top of the Undernet and let me go, get it over with."
The giant made a low growl and began to slowly speak. "Nnnnet...Guaaaarrrrdiiaaaan..."
"Ah? So you know who I am?" Darklady began to get worried. This encounter wasn't as random as it seemed.
"Llllooooook....aaaat...mmmmeeee..."
Then, for the first time Darklady noticed some of the details of her opponent's appearance she hadn't in the dim light and hectic action of the battle earlier. The gears on the arms and legs, the sawblades sticking out of its back and head, the navi icon depicting a metal cog...he looked and acted so different, but was it really him? "M-Me-Metalman!?"
"Thhhiisss powwwerrr...Yoouuu haaave iiit aaalllssso...Jooiiin ussss..."
This was not the reunion with her long-lost teammate she had in mind, and she definitely didn't like the sound of his creepy offer. "Um, if this power means 'roiding up and talking in slow-motion, I think I'll pass. Thanks anyway. Nice seeing you again, by the way."
"Jooiiin ussss...orrr DIIIE..."
Metalman's threat was punctuated with a heavily tightening grip that began to crush Darklady's already injured form. She tried to scream, but couldn't get the air. How could this be happening? This couldn't be the Metalman she knew, could it?
* * *
