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Starting an EXE Team
Name: Lee Nigma "Is making ID cards for ourselves really the best idea? That doesn't seem like something a secret crime organization would do." Lee asked as he filled in the blanks of his card while he and his team had their first meeting in an abandoned warehouse in Geo City. Ryan explained as he filled out his own card. "They're only temporary. It's so we can get better acquainted with one another. We need to know what everyone else is capable of to be an effective unit." Name: Ryan Kartei Name: Mixmasta Banzai Name: Trent Mason Name: Gary Marvin Name: Dominic Cabucha Name: Ed Brown Name: Sky Eclipse Name: Mike Hescott Name: Alan Dayman Name: Luke Sanity Name: Blackbelt Name: Fritz Fandango Name: Gauntlet Name: Kamui "Nicely done guys" Phil acclaimed. "It looks like we have a nice, well-rounded set of skills at our disposal. Except Dominic? I'm pretty sure we'll never need your...uh...'loving' specialty." "Oh, we'll see about that." Dominic retorted smugly. Phil continued to check the cards. "And Gauntlet, how are we supposed to put you to work if you won't tell us what you can do?" "That's the idea" The trench-coated redhead answered as he leaned back in an old, dusty chair. "Well, most of us already know you're Canasian, and your specialties include subterfuge and counterfeiting." Alan pointed out. "Damn. You win this time. But I'll get you yet." "Well, as our next order of business" Phil piped up. "I'll open the floor to new orders of business. Seriously, I have no idea what to discuss next." "Pfft, some leader." heckled Ed. "I say we pick an actual chief before we go any further." "Well, I have the expertise. I nominate myself." mentioned Lee. "I have the experience, y'know." added Gauntlet. "Well, I'm the only one here with the discipline." sniped Ryan. "Well, I have the looks." said Iceman. Everybody then laughed at the poor guy. "People please!" shouted Phil. "I should stay leader and I have a good reason! Because otherwise, the smart people will just waste this whole time arguing over who's better suited to lead and then the strong people will beat up the smart people for wasting time and being nerds." "You got that right!" cheered an enthusiastic Trent. "If I stay leader then things will get done faster." "Except you'll do no actual leading?" asked Mike. "Nope, I'll just take the credit for it. The rest of you can do the admin stuff you're good at." Ryan contemplated this and decided to support it. "Phil's got a valid point. The title of 'leader' is meaningless right now. We all have our specialized functions, and a completely organic democratic administration should not be impossible for just the sixteen of us." "Yeah, what he said. Except for the title not being important. Like I said, I still get all the credit." Ed decided to make another motion, hoping no one would remember how he nearly broke up the team with his last one. "We should decide on a name now. We need to express our common identity and stuff." "How about the Philanthropists?" suggested Phil. The "Nays" had it. "The Sweet Sixteen!" shouted Alan. The "Nays" had it slightly louder and angrier. "WWWW: World Four" joked Luke. After a moment of hesitation and consideration, the "Nays" had it. "How about something that plays off this Viral Ghost thing with our navis? Like Viral Navis or Ghost Infection or something like that?" mused Sky. Blackbelt was perplexed. "That stupid Viral crap that Phil put in all these things so he wouldn't be the only one with a screwed-up mutant navi? You want THAT advertised in our title?" "Hey, it may be better than it looks. A title like that could be pretty fearsome too." added a supportive Ryan. "How about Infectious Viruses? Virus Contamination? Venereal Infection? Viral Disease?" The "Nays" had it louder and angrier than ever. "Wait, what was that last one again?" asked an excited Mike. "Viral Infection?" "No, that wasn't it. But Viral Infection is much better anyway. All in favor of Viral Infection?" "The "Ayes" had it! Ryan, Mike, and Sky voted "for" while Banzai and Fandango voted "against". The rest were too lazy and indifferent to bother saying anything. "Yay! We have a name!" cheered Mike. "Now for colours. I say bright green and purple." Nobody in the room was female and therefore had no objections to the combination. They all just shrugged. "Excellent. Now I can design a logo!" exclaimed Ryan enthusiastically. "And I can paint that van I stole green and put that logo on it!" exclaimed Phil, wrapped up in Ryan and Mike's enthusiasm. "It's good to know this team has its priorities straight." groaned Fandango sarcastically. "Maybe if we're lucky we'll actually plan a mission with these navis in the next few days or so." * * * The team Viral Infection planned its missions in the next few days or so. Their goal for the moment was clear: amass enough funds to buy a swanky mansion and live the rest of their lives as kings. There were complications in the plan that the team's top minds worked on solving. For one thing there was no way they could live the lives of the rich and famous as criminals unless they were the CEOs of their own companies, but since they were looking more into the bank-robbing spectrum of the business, they needed a way to keep a low profile. And so their first mission was all about covering their own tracks. Nearby the GeoCity Official Headquarters was a bank. Not the most convenient place to stage a crime. But some people were a little reckless. It was a weekday afternoon and things were fairly quiet when five young men wearing long coats, hats, and sunglasses came in casually and hooked their PETs up to separate automated tellers. The bank security eyed them suspiciously, as well they should have. But the boys completed their transactions and left. It would be a few more minutes before the navis Woodman, Fireman, Bombman, Stoneman, and Bass started wreaking havoc in the bank's system, trying to eliminate the security to get away with any zenny they could grab. Or so they wanted them to think. While the heavy hitters caused the diversion and caused the Officials to get moving, five more members of Viral Infection were ready to take advantage of it from within the bright green van parked a couple blocks from the Official Center. One of them was Professor Fandango, and he was working intently on the advanced equipment of his own design packed into the darkened back of the van. Using Numberman's abilities, he was able to scan for all the temporary holes in security left when their allies began to attack the bank. Then within seconds, Gauntlet, Ryan, Trent, and Phil were jacked in and ready to infiltrate. Skullman used invisibility, Shadowman used ninja stealth, Sharkman used submersion, and Magicman used illusions, all to help each other sneak through the system straight to where they could access their own criminal records. Numberman's skill with code combined with his new operator's own programming expertise made the document re-writing especially quick. The navis were out of the system before their stealth abilities began to wane. The navis at the bank quickly abandoned their battle with the Officials and busted out into the Internet, where they promptly jacked out. The Officials could not trace their path, nor did they notice anyone altering their system. VI's first mission was a complete success. "I can't believe that worked!" cheered Ed ecstatically as he and the others rose their beer cans in a toast once back at their dingy warehouse base. "So much for testing the water, eh?" Ryan chuckled. "I was certain at the very best we'd make it out with the money, but only get to scope out the Officials security!" The team members were patting each other's shoulders in congratulations all around. Phil was more bewildered than anyone. "I tell ya, I've been doing enough crazy schemes to know they barely ever go right the first time. I think we finally found our calling." "Well we did plan for this for a whole two days." Fandango added seriously, but quickly switched to a more upbeat tone, "but who knew the luck variable would turn out to be the most important part of the equation, right? Hah! After we made it past that first hole we just had to keep on going!" "Shame we couldn't get any of that money though." Blackbelt sighed lightly, still enjoying the celebration more than the discussion. "Don't worry about the money. We can get away with a lot easier stuff now that the Officials are off our trails for a while." Alan chimed in. The whole point of the mission was to erase their criminal records and to plant misleading information about each member in the database. As long as they could keep their names from getting on their list again, they were in the clear. But they still needed to get some real money before they could move up and get the power to return to Official HQ for more serious prizes. * * * A small group of Investigative Officials were reviewing the security data of the attempted bank robbery earlier that day. "I've gone through every angle of the footage, there's no way to extrapolate the identity of the operators. How about that transaction data?" "Forget it. Dummy accounts. We traced them all too a mysterious registrant called 'Phil Dwithbiess'. We're cross referencing possible aliases but it seems whoever set this up was pretty good at covering their tracks." "They used PETs, didn't they? The information on them should have been picked up when they plugged in to the tellers." "Thought of that. Either those PETs are unregistered or the registration data was removed because the log files showed all blank entries. Is there anything we can use here? What about the proximity search?" "Security footage of one nearby store revealed the suspects getting into a van. The quality's too bad to make out a license number or colour, but it did have a distinctive logo on the side." The Official presented a sketch of a circle with three lines drawn inside it quadrissecting it in a vaguely down-arrow shape. "Okay, what doesn't add up here is that they're obviously skilled hackers to hide their identities so effectively, and yet they did something as reckless as a bank robbery? And they didn't even succeed? Smells fishy" "Agreed. Could be they were practicing for a bigger job and things went awry." "So what do we do now? I think we're out of clues for the time being." "Just keep an eye out for these guys. They'll likely strike again." he picked up the paper with he sketch of the VI logo on it. "And get all mobile units to watch for a van with something like this on it." * * * "...no...this is beneath me." "Orders are orders pal. Wily says you're working with me on this mission." "I am not you pal." The Life Virus sat listlessly at the edge of the platform at the high end of the WWW network situated in the depths of the West Ameropan Undernet. It was the spot he expected his throne to be, but he had just learned the organization had more important things to worry about at the moment. The navi talking to him was Jet.exe, a sleek, white armoured, humanoid navi with long blue hair and a set of airplane wings attached to his back. The flying navi hovered in the near the hulking green monstrosity who he had just been assigned to work with. All around them navis and controlled viruses were constructing the network that would serve as the organization's foothold on the net. The platforms were pale blue with skull-shaped emblems, and the wallpaper of the sky was bright white with floating red W3 logos in the distance. Valuable data crystals were hauled in and stored behind security programs and WWW soldiers were preparing their weapons for the battles waiting ahead for them. This place was currently the cybernetic center of the WWW's rebirth and the Life Virus came here to witness his subjects work towards his glorious return, but as he had just learned, it was not his return they were working towards. Jet shook his head and sighed. "Look, I know you're supposed to be the strongest virus ever and stuff, but you're not now, right? You might as well be an imitation Life Virus. You're weak enough now I could probably easily kick your ass...or whatever it is you have down there..." LV tried to ignore the insolent whelp as he gazed over the edge at the infinite W3 logos spinning through the abyss. "Okay fine, I know you deserve some respect" Jet imitated gagging behind LV's back immediately after speaking that sentence. "But we're just in shaky times right now and hey, you can't have a band with just a lead guitar, right? You may not hear the bass all the time, but it's essential damnit! Now Wily needs funding if he's going to build a new HQ and he's leaving it to US to get it for him!" "No, he's leaving it to all his spare operatives. There are six nearly identical funding missions going on right now." LV responded grimly. "So you said six and not five, that means we're going, right?" The Life Virus clenched his massive fist as he turned to his partner. "I have no choice. I follow Lord Wily's orders." He said these words with a noticeable amount of spite. "That's the spirit! All right then, we're hitting the Royal Ameropan Museum. Scuzzy found some buyers in Choina who'll pay very handsomely for the crown jewels of the Bush dynasty which are on loan from Netopia Castle this week. The security there is multi-leveled, it's supposed to have an extensive set of system-based traps as well as some well trained security personnel, and even guard program drones for good measure. With your viral abilities to disable the traps and my fighting abilities to take out the navis and drones, we should have no problem getting through. Aside from my op Scuzzy, Dr.Docman is coming along for your own support." LV felt insulted. "Support? I do not need support from humans!" "You need to be transported into the network somehow, don't you? They're completely cut off from the net, you need a human to get you through. Plus, Docman's gonna use his programming know-how to help you find and delete the traps." The Life Virus breathed a heavy sigh and turned back to his view of the sky. "When do we start?" * * *
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