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Meanwhile, a silver-clad young man was riding the Malwaukee Metroline with no particular destination in mind. He spent his time sitting in the lonely train car trying to think about what he was going to do next. The day had started like any other in recent memory; living off chicken feed, putting up with a companion he despised, and making more chicken feed through demeaning request board jobs. When the board made mention of rampaging chess pieces, he had a feeling he was better off keeping Kingman away from it, and seeing Drillman as soon as he jacked in confirmed that.

The last thing Nijubu wanted was to get into the stupid Net Guardians vs. Acid Hackers thing again. Hearing Drillman mention that he was with the Officials and had tracking capabilities was all he needed to make him just walk away and leave Kingman to his own devices. In retrospect, ditching the most valuable thing in his possession on impulse was a wasteful thing to do, but it was bound to happen eventually. He had been looking for an excuse to lose the sanctimonious navi for weeks.

However, now he had no navi and so no source of easy income. Prospects were grim. Then again, Nij had been stuck in a directionless rut for so long that this turn of events may have been just what he needed to push himself back on track. He could feel it, on the very edge of awareness he could tell what he really needed was still out there. He only needed to search for it. Now that he had no choice, he renewed his determination to do just that.

Somehow, he would find Desertman.

* * *

Alia's mind gradually drifted back to consciousness in response to an indistinct sensation of irritation. As her bleary eyes struggled open, she noticed that a glint of miserable sunlight had found its way through her closed curtains to shine directly onto her face. Summoning whatever strength she had available, she rolled over so she could close her eyes again and attempted to resume sleeping, but after a couple of minutes it was apparent her body was more or less ready to start the new day, so she summoned her strength again to push herself out of bed and onto her feet. After a short trip to the bathroom and then the fridge, she opted to skip any other traditional morning rituals such as bathing or changing, knowing full well she would be spending the next indeterminate amount of time in her unkempt apartment looming over the computer screen — all as it should be.

She sat down at her desk with her cold-leftover-pizza breakfast and gave the mouse a nudge, lighting up the main monitor with the same images from when she last left it, as well as activating the smaller screen of the PET still hooked up to the tower. Darklady was there to greet her. "Good afternoon, Alia. Sleep well?"

"Afternoon, you say?" Alia glanced at the clock. She couldn't begin to express the inadequacy of that sleep, mainly because she was still too tired to think straight. So she ignored the question and pressed on to more important matters. "How did it go posting the ad?"

"Done, and answered." Darklady reported, somewhat smugly.

"Really? That was fast."

"Well, it took eleven hours, actually."

Alia glanced at the clock one more time. Right. PM. "Whatever. What do we got?"

"Application's in your inbox. Donna's inbox, that is."

She brought the message up on screen and read through it. "N001.75-TY..." Alia trailed off before reading off the res of the numbers and letters. "It gave a serial number instead of a name. That's promising...No previous experience, who cares...'Please make payment to Maintenance Assistant Placement Program'? Oh, this is what...one of those agencies that make navis just to sell them to people that need the grunt work? I didn't know they responded to job requests directly."

"Isn't that just the sort of service you need? You do go through a lot of navis and all." Darklady asked, fully aware of the irony from her position.

"These guys tend to charge more than 3000 though. That's why I prefer 'hiring' the navis directly. This agency must be getting desperate or something. If they're willing to take 1500Z and NOT up front, then that's fine by me." Alia, noting that there were no other applicants anyway, sent the response along with instructions for pickup. "Alright, these navis basically sit around waiting to be employed so it's probably already at the meeting spot. Area 57.8. Head over there."

"Sure thing." Darklady acknowledged and teleported back to the net.

It only took a minute for the flying demoness to navigate to the nearby sector, where sure enough, a typical green and yellow Normal Navi was standing at attention patiently awaiting the next part of his interview. Darklady dropped down in front of him, satisfied enough that he didn't recoil in terror. His AI was probably too primitive to even register that response.

"Hello. Are you Donna?" The navi asked.

"Yeah, I'm 'Donna's' navi. You're N-zero-one...zero...uh...?"

The navi nodded. "I am N001.75-TY67-"

Darklady cut him off and signaled for him to stop. "Right, I get it. Are you connected to a PET right now?"

The navi shook its head. "No. I am awaiting new PET registration." It said everything in a completely deadpan tone with very little movement. It was clearly about as basic as a navi could get.

"Then upload this and prepare to jack out." Darklady handed him a small data crystal with the codes that would register it to the Alia's portal.

Moments later, they were both standing on a small platform in the middle of a black space. A few deactivated teleporters lined the edge of the platform. The Normal looked around trying to get his bearings while Darklady spoke into space, largely disinterested. "Here he is. He's all yours."

Alia silently scanned the new arrival on her monitor. Its specs were as basic as they were made out to be on the application. There were no active ties to the agency that sent it either, meaning they were probably going to use her fake e-mail for billing purposes. Perfect. That meant she had a nice cheap untraceable guinea pig for the next few days, or until it was horribly deleted, whichever came first. "Okay navi, I'm going to open a link for you in a minute. Go through it and await further instructions." She then opened a new window to start loading the test server from the previous day.

The Normal nodded in compliance and proceeded to wait. The bored-looking Darklady stuck around, knowing she would have to monitor the experiment again, though at least this time from one server over. After a few seconds of silence, the Normal turned to Darklady and spoke. "So, what sort of work do you and your operator do here?"

"Hm? Just scientific research stuff. Software testing of sorts. You don't need to worry about it. Your duties will be...relatively simple."

"Have you been working here long?"

She stared at him in disbelief for a moment, surprised that the bare-bones AI had a small-talk mode. She decided to go with it, having no other ideas to pass the time. "Yes, for a couple of weeks now."

"A couple of weeks?" The Normal repeated, with a slightly surprised tone.

"Okay, so that's probably not 'long' for most people, but for Alia's navis it is..." Darklady wondered if she should be saying anything to let the other navi know how screwed he was, but then again it wasn't like he had a choice any more.

"Well I meant...have you always had that...configuration?"

Great. So even the freshly unzipped rube was getting judgmental now. Darklady sighed and rolled her eyes. "No, I started out as a Normal type like you but...got an 'upgrade' a few days ago. It's actually a very useful upgrade for staying alive, something you'll probably be wishing you had before long."

"A few days ago...I see..." The navi trailed off, seemingly contemplating something.

Darklady finally began to notice how oddly the worker was acting compared to before. Narrowing her gaze and forming her axe, she cautiously approached the thinking navi. "Alright, who are you? Really."

The Normal didn't flinch, but it did look back up at her to calmly respond. "Why, I'm just a simple Normal Navi, that much is true. Though I should confess that my AI has been modified with some specific instructions."

Darklady grit her teeth, this was starting to sound very unnerving. "...Like?"

"Like the programming awareness to hide the full extent of my configuration from your operator's scans, to discreetly open your network connection to transmit information to an external location, and most importantly - to learn more about you, Darklady.exe, based on the Official reports uploaded to my memory."

In the blink of an eye, Darklady dashed forward and drove her axe into the navi's head, bringing it instantly offline. Her eyes were wide with panic and a bit of creeping bloodlust. She began to realize what a critical mistake she had made. "FFFFFF-ALIA! The navi was an Official spy!"

Alia nearly choked on her pizza, having been engrossed in the server preparation for the past minute that switching to the other window to see Darklady standing over a collapsed Normal Navi with a massive sparking head wound left her understandably flabbergasted. "What in the bloody...HOW DID YOU LET...WHAT HAPPENED!?"

"H-he said he was already transmitting information to the outside!"

"Agh! Jack out! I have to wipe the servers before-!"

"Before I can access them? Hi." A new voice came from Alia's computer. Someone had opened a voice chat interface. "Please relax. Don't bother pulling the plug or anything. I don't mean you any harm, I just want to talk."

Alia composed herself. She didn't want to do anything that might further incriminate herself and she didn't yet know how much this guy knew. "This is a private system. What do you think you're doing?"

"I'm investigating the disappearance of Darklady. Sorry I had to deceive you, but the direct approach didn't work the last time we crossed paths."

"Last time?...I see. So you're the operator of that drill-navi that accosted Darklady."

"Close. I'm a freelancer working with him. I'm not actually with the Officials. For that matter, I don't care about what you did to that navi, or whatever you were going to do to it, or whatever it is you're doing that's making you so jumpy, so seriously, calm down."

Alia fell back in her chair and sighed in equal parts relief and exasperation. Even if this guy was on the level, he was still causing her more trouble than she was prepared for this morning, or afternoon or whatever. "So...what do you want with Darklady? I assure you, she is legally my property." She cast her irritated gaze at Darklady's window, where she was looking just as wracked, though apparently not enough to hide her annoyed reaction at the "property" comment.

"Well, here's what I've gathered from my research, factoring in what I just heard from Darklady herself. Four days ago in the Undernet, a Darkloid attacked the Official navi IceChan along with two other navis. One of those two has since been identified as Darklady, a former Net Guardian under the care of the Cossack family. The other was only described as a generic Normal Navi. Both of those navis were last seen by IceChan together with Darklady badly damaged. Then they disappeared. Since then we only saw Darklady briefly two days later and she seemed to have no memory of her old friend and teammate. Now my temporary navi has met that same Darklady again, and she says she was a Normal Navi until a few days ago. I have also personally witnessed the unpredictable effects of a certain Hybrid program of which Darklady was one of the few possessors. Putting all this together, I suspect Darklady used her Hybrid program to merge with your Normal Navi, resulting in the combination of Darklady's body with your navi's mind. Does that sound like an accurate summation of events?"

Both Alia and Darklady were dumbstruck by the mysterious voice. He actually knew more than they did about how Darklady came to be. Suddenly, they weren't so eager to be rid of him. Alia cleared her throat. "Right, you figured it out. Quite astute of you. So I take it you just want to undo this merge and return the Darklady half to its previous owner?" Darklady wasn't sure how to feel about that proposal.

"That likely isn't an option. The merge cannot be undone by any normal means. However...I'll make sure you can keep your navi as she is, provided you agree to help me with this case I'm working on for the Officials."

"You mean the case where you find the missing Darklady? I don't see how those two conditions can coincide..." Alia replied, not sure where this was going, but she could tell she was going to have to agree to whatever he was talking about if she didn't want the Officials busting down her door.

"Finding Darklady was just a part of a larger, more important investigation. That Darkloid that attacked your navi was part of a group of Darkloids attacking other innocent navis, including my own, towards some unknown disastrous end. They seemed particularly interested in other Darkloids, like Darklady and my navi. Having access to Darklady would be a great help in tracking down these troublesome new Darkloids and closing the book on this case. So how about it? I could easily keep your involvement a secret from the Officials."

Alia gaped in astonishment. Darkloids? New Darkloids? This could be just what she needed for her own research. He already seemed to know more about Darklady than she did, it was almost too perfect. "I...suppose I could spare some time to support your investigation...Actually, I have done a bit of research on Darkness effects...I should be able interpret your data for you."

"I'm quite well-versed in Darkness studies myself, thank you. I wouldn't mind comparing notes with you though. It sounds like we have a deal, so I'll leave my contact information here. My name is Samuel Darklight, by the way. Also, you can keep the other navi too and do whatever you like with it."

"Darklight?" Alia recognized the name. A former Nebula member who had released a good deal of the organization's secrets on DarkChips that she had used as a basis for her own research. Was she really talking to him directly? "Uhh, yeah...I...look forward...to doing business with you!"

"Oh, and how should I address you? Was it Donna? Or Alia? Or...?"

"Ah!...Alia, you can call me Alia."

"Sure thing. Contact me when you're ready, miss Alia." With that, Darklight disconnected, leaving no trace of his infiltration except the broken Trojan Horse lying at Darklady's feet in the server lobby.

The ensuing silence gave Darklady the push to finally speak up. "Alia? Are you really going to trust that guy? After he pulled...this?" She kicked the Normal's corpse with her black-spiked boot.

Alia smiled deviously, contemplating the wealth of information she could extract from Darklight one way or the other. "Well it's not like we have much choice, but we might as well make the best of the situation." Then as something dawned on her, her smile quickly faded. "Hmm, that makes me wonder why he bothered pitching his proposal to me at all. Clearly, with his resources he could have just confiscated you before I even realized what happened, but he went with something more mutually beneficial."

"Well...he revealed himself after he realized I was really your navi, at least personality-wise. Maybe he actually wanted to do the fair thing for both of us."

"That seems suspicious."

Maybe to her it did, Darklady thought, but she had to admit there was still a good reason to be suspicious. She decided to remain silent on that matter. "So...what do we do now?"

Alia looked back at the window. "Well, we're obviously done with the 'server maintenance' for today...Get that scrap heap to a charger, it's probably still good to use for later."

"Right." Darklady shifted her axe into a hook to scoop up the spy and drag it off. It looked like while some things were changing around there, other things would continue to stay the same.

* * *