Annihilation

The Final Piece

7:10 PM (JST) Mission Clock: 11:56

"Ahh, land ho!" Adrienne called out as the shadows of Den City's skyscrapers came into view against the sunset. The Net Guardians' long journey across the Pacific Ocean had finally come to an end. In a few moments they could begin looking for the final Gamma Piece.

The others got up from their seats to catch a glimpse of the city rapidly approaching from the horizon. An uneasy feeling struck the party. Moe turned to Carlos. "Say, does this hovercraft have brakes by any chance!?"

"Hm? No, of course not! It's simply propelled forward by the jet engine and maintains a fairly frictionless air cushion against the surface of the water."

"So how do we stop!?"

"Oh...I don't think that ever came up with my friends who made this thing! I suppose we cut the engine and hope we slow down enough before we collide with something!"

"Hope!? Maybe we should spin this thing around for a little reverse thrust, just to be safe!" Jon suggested.

"Afriad not! At the speed we're going we'd just flip upside down if we tried to do a 180! It's finger-crossing for us!" Sam affirmed as he had Kingman shut down the engines. The high-pitched hum of the turbine and rumble of the exhaust quickly died down, leaving only the sound of rushing air to keep damaging the team's ear drums (Why did you think they were shouting everything for the last six hours?) The craft continued to skip across the water on a collision course to the harbour.

"It appears we won't slow down in time." Carlos assessed, he pushed Sam aside and jacked Yamatoman into the control system. "Yamatoman! Get me manual control of the helm!"

"What are you thinking, lardass?" David protested, but Carlos reassured everyone.

"I've been to Den City several times, I know its layout well. I am simply going to steer the boat to the safest place along the shore."

"Oh, that's a relief." Cyros breathed a grateful sigh. "Some big, empty, secluded beach?"

"No, the Eastside Hospital. At least when we crash they will be able to treat our wounds as fast as possible."

The rest of the team commenced screaming in terror. Just when they thought things could not get any worse, another low-flying aircraft appeared overhead matching their course and speed. "Oh great, more of your friends, fatso?" David snapped. A hatch on the side of the craft opened, but instead of grappling hooks or gunfire, they were met with a friendlier greeting of a weighted rope ladder that dangled just above their deck. Carlos grabbed the flailing apparatus to steady it and nodded to David with a sarcastic smirk. The NG opted to take their chances in the jet rather than the hovercraft, and quickly scurried up the ladder. Once they were all in, the jet broke off and headed for the airport while the boat shot right into a seawall, creating a shattring explosion sending many civilians running for cover and several news crews rushing out of the nearby DNN television station to find out what was happening.

The NetGuardians watched out the jet's door at the damage they caused with their arrival. After a moment of silence for the loss of their beloved rocket boat, they each had to let out a cheer for the awesome explosion. "Aw, I guess your friends won't be too happy." Moe said to Carlos.

"Well, I'll worry about that later. That was a good explosion. Now who is our new ride?" Carlos looked around the cabin and didn't see anybody besides his teammates. There was just a closed door that appeared to connect to the cockpit. David, who was closest to the door, got ready to open it, but readied his shotgun just in case. The others took position to back him up. Taking a deep breath, David put his hand to the door and...knocked.

"Hello? May I ask who's in there?" he enquired politely. The others groaned and Carlos approached David to strangle him. "Oh back off, they weren't going to invite us up here to kill us."

A woman's voice answered David from the other side of the door. "It's just me, Trisha from the Officials."

"Oh. Huh?"

David opened the door to reveal Trisha flying the plane alone, she looked back into the cabin and frowned. "Moe, could you close that outer hatch already? That's a real hazard when flying."

Moe broke out of his confusion long enough to comply. "Uh, what happened to not being able to help outside your jurisdiction?"

Still noticably irritated, she explained. "Well, you didn't think I was going to let you get away with what you said on the phone, did you? It wasn't that hard to use what clearance I had with Overdrive's help to hack into the dispatch logs and forge myself a pass for this plane. Command won't notice as long as I'm back for duty by tomorrow. So here I am to help you without the Official apathy getting in the way, just like you said."

"Nice timing lady!" David thanked her sarcastically. "We only needed a ride from you and now we're already at our destination!"

"Would you rather be back in your boat-thing?" She barked back. "Besides, I brought along data tracking equipment that could help you find what you're looking for. And don't forget I'm pretty sharp in a netbattle as well as real-world combat, so I'm going to be helping and you guys are going to be grateful, right?"

"Uh, yeah...sure." David replied nervously and shrugged at his companions.

"Now sit down and buckle up, we're landing right away."

7:20 PM (JST) Mission Clock: 12:06

The AH tank had set down on the outskirts of the city. The team was once again piling out to stretch their legs. Johnny was just awaking from his catnap and was the last one out to meet them. After a stretch and yawn, Johnny noticed they were just outside the famous electronic city of the east an cheered. "All right, we're here! Hey, what did I miss while I was asleep?"

"We had a big netbattle with a rat-themed navi who tried to steal our tank and abandon us on that island and learned about Stuart's dramatic past." Jake answered non-chalantly.

"Yeah yeah, very funny. We'll see some real action here though, one way or another!"

"What's that supposed to mean?" inquired Stuart, worried about the answer.

"Dude, this is Electopia! Birthplace of hentai! Yaoi! I hear you can get used schoolgirl panties in vending machines here!"

Jeremy nearly retched at Johnny's implied plans for their visit. "Yeugh. Stay focused on the mission please."

"But afterwards we can stay for a little vacation, right?"

"Yeah yeah, whatever. I don't see what's so great about this place though, you already have plenty of porn at home and all it takes to get some used panties is a simple laundromat robbery."

"You can get all the smut and underwear you want when Gamma is assembled." assured Vidal, who appeared from the shadows pushing another cart of fuel cells.

"Vidal! How the hell did you get here before us?" Matt asked in amazement.

"I told you I'd catch up with you later, right?"

"I guess so, but that doesn't answer my question."

Vidal nodded, "Anyway, I just got off the phone with the Fate-Man. He made it to the city, but he says the Net Guardians made it here too. They managed to recruit a lot of help too. You guys had better step up the search. Don't forget to meet up with those mercenaries I hired too. They'll be waiting for you at the downtown CyberMetro station in ten minutes."

"Gee, thanks for all your help." Jeremy said bitterly. "I guess there's no rest for the wicked. Let's get to the nearest phone and jack into the net."

"So do we know where we're supposed to take the tank yet? Or are we just supposed to drive it around and blow whatever we want to smithereens?" Jake inquired.

"Sorry, but there is a specific target. We just don't know what it is yet. But for now, why don't you head to the airport and pay the NetGuardians a little visit?"

7:28 PM Mission Clock: 12:14

Bubbleman had supposedly spent the last twelve hours searching Electopia in advance of his comrades who had to catch up through a non-electronic medium. In truth, he had spent the last twelve hours relaxing on the beach. He was stretched out on his back on a blanket under a parasol flanked by two bikini-clad female navis lightly fanning him with palm branches and listening to his stories.

"This this the life I deserve blub." He said softly, his normally pouting pink lips grinning widely. "Can you blub believe the last time I tried to blubbing enjoy myself here I ended up in a blub life or deletion battle blub with my greatest enemies blub? That's the kind of life I have to deal with instead blub."

"Wow, such a cute little hamster in deadly netbattles?" one beach bimbo awed. "You're so brave!"

"Aww, you talk so funny too. You should be a comedian. Tee hee!" droned the other.

"Ladies, ladies, blub. I'm not paying you to tak blub." They giggled in response.

Suddenly, a disembodied voice adressed Bubbleman. "Bubs, this is Punk. We made it to the country, but we're a little busy. I trust you're hard at work as well?"

"What do you take me for blub? I'm not a lazy good-for-nothing like the rest of you blubs." he said, casually removing his shaded visor and putting his regular one back on.

"Well, we need you to get to the Cyber Metro station downtown immediately to meet with our hired help." Punk continued over the voice-link.

Bubbleman motioned to the girl on his left for another mango smootie. "Like, blub, how immediately? Two or three hours blub?"

"Now, you fat, blue midget! We're already late. Just find out what they learned and work with them until we come to meet you. If they found out anything big, be sure to relay it back to me. Punk out!"

Bubbleman sighed heavily. "The work of an internationally reknowned super navi is never done blub. Sorry ladies blub, but I must leave you for the time being blub."

The girls "awwww"ed until Bubbleman finally teleported out and then went off to find another guy on the beach to keep company.

Moments later Bubbleman showed up at the downtown Cyber Metro station, where Sparkman, Shademan, and Windman were waiting impatiently for their contact.

"So much for the big race." Sparkman grumbled. "Didn't find the item either, did you guys?"

Windman shook his head, but maintained his proud air. "I did identify one particularly large billboard advertising 'BigSteve.EXE's Cyber-Trailer Park', but after using my tornados to blow the entire settlement out of the way, I could not find any unusual data underneath."

Shademan shrugged. "I unfortunately spent quite a bit of time digging underneath an arrangement of trees that appeared to be shaped like the letters 'EXE', but all I found was a golden data crystal containing 900,000 Zenny which has gone directly to Samuel's wine fund."

"Well, might as well break the news to our contact when he finally shows up." Sparkman groaned, looking around. "Where is that guy? He's late!"

"I'm right here you blub-heads!"

"Who said that?" Windman bellowed, taking a battle stance. The three mercenaries looked around in all directions for the owner of the mysterious voice. "I suppose with a name like Mistman, it makes sense if he is invisible..."

"Bluuub...Blubbin' look down you blub-headed pieces of blub blub blub blub..."

Bubbleman continued to hop around cursing like a sailor as the three tall navis finally looked down to meet him. "YOU are Mistman?" Shademan inquired.

"I'm Bubbleman, blub. I don't know who Mistman is, but I'm the one supposed to meet you here blub. I heard about your blub progress blub. For now, just stick with me blub. When we do find what we're looking for blub, we're expecting a fight for it. So we still need some blubbin' muscle."

"A navi like you in need of extra muscle? I never would have guessed." Sparkman said sarcastically. "Now then, if I may be so bold as to suggest where we search next, there are some isolated platforms a few blocks down that I got a bit curious about, but unlike you guys, lack the flight power to explore them. Now that we're together, might as well finish the survey."

Bubbleman nodded and shrugged. "Whatever blub. I just hope we find this thing fast so I can get back to the beach." Sparkman then led the mercs down the road as an unseen wisp of purple smoke drifted off in the other direction.

7:30 PM Mission Clock: 12:16

"Ah, a trip to the airport that doesn't suck." Carlos commented in satisfaction as he and his team-mates settled into one of the Den City Airport's VIP lounges. Despite Trisha's lack of actual authorization, her Official badge allowed the team quick and easy access to the quiet room and its soft furniture. Carlos made himself at home on the largest sofa, instantly causing it more wear than all of the room's previous occupants combined. "I can't believe I've been to this airport so many times over the years and never snuck into or bribed my way into this lounge."

"Well, don't get too comfortable big guy." Cyros noted as he helped Trisha and Moe set up the Official tracking equipment on the room's internet terminal. "It's just about time to get down to real business."

Moe's PET was already jacked in and sitting on the desk. It eventually made a beep that drew Moe's attention back to it. "Ah, it's about time." He picked up the device and gave it a futile shake in frustration. "Where have you been? You were supposed to sit still until we could make contact."

Drillman settled back into his home for a quick recharge and waved his operator off. "That was hours ago. How still did you expect me to sit? I made my way back to Electopia and did more of a stealth run through the network. Didn't find any leads on our target and since I avoided talking to anyone I didn't learn any new information either. No sign of the AH at least."

"Well, the good news is we might not need to search very hard now. Back at max yet?"

"Sure!" The navi showed off his shined up drills and immitated flexing his non-existant muscles. "Ready to head back into action."

"Great, then I'll let Overdrive fill you in on what you missed."

Moe sent a slightly confused Drillman back into the lounge terminal, where he met up with Trisha's navi. She waved to her old acquaintance and smiled. "Recon duty, eh? That always sucks doesn't it?"

Drillman sighed and scratched his head. "It does when you end up behind on information..."

After a few minutes of the navis catching up and the humans abusing the lounge TV and mini-fridge, Trisha announced the tracking system was running. Everyone hauled their butts over to the console where she was seated to see what they had found.

"Oh, nothing. Sorry." Trisha announced sadly.

"What do you mean? How much nothing?" Cyros prodded.

"I mean there's not the slightest trace of the data fragment in the entire Den network."

"You sure it's calibrated right?" Jon asked as he leaned over her shoulder. "Let me take a look."

"The Crescent records indicate the other four fragments all had the same base-line signatures. The search system is tuned to that code and runs a precision scan throughout the region. The Officials use this equipment to great effect in tracking down known navi criminals but here there's not even a flicker. Also, you don't know anything about the interface so you might as well stop peering over my shoulder."

"I'll be the judge of that." Jon argued. At that point Adrienne noticed he was using his looming position to stare down her cleavage. She just shook her head and pulled him away by his ear. "Ow, hey! I was helping!"

Trisha continued unaware. "Maybe you guys were given the wrong city name. Or else this fragment is different from the others for some reason...Either way it looks like you're back to square one."

"Actually, I believe our search is narrowed down after all." Sam suggested. "Sometimes what you don't see is the key to finding what you're looking for." The others stared back at Sam blankly. "Sorry, I meant to say all we know is the piece isn't on the net."

"Thanks, genius." said Cyros sarcastically. "That's the first thing she said."

"Yeah, but she used the pessimistic view. Sure we don't know where it is, what's important is that we know where it isn't!"

Kingman finally broke up his operator's circumlocution with an intuited direct explanation. "The tracking system may make a precision scan, but there's no way it can scan isolated systems. Obviously it makes more sense that the piece is in a non-network system rather than completely reconfigured or in a different city."

"That still contradicts what Cossack said though." David pointed out. "He specifically said the big EXE was in the network of Downtown Den City."

Sam sighed and picked up where his navi left off. "There are some servers around the world that were once part of the major networks that have since been disconnected. The Cyberworld went through much of its early development in Den City, so it likely has quite a few of these offline network servers. We should find and search all the ones in or around Dentown before we look anywhere else."

David nodded in agreement and began dispensing orders. "Okay, we'll coordinate the search between the real world and the cyberworld then. The navis will look for any powered-down access points and we'll check out the buildings their adresses correspond to." Everyone else nodded, finding the plan satisfactory. "Alright, let's get going. Anything we should do here at the airport before heading out?"

At that moment the entire building shook with a sudden explosion. Gunfire and further explosions were heard immediately after. "Well, we should go see what that is." Moe suggested.

The Net Guardians rushed out of the room and followed the noise to the main lobby. From the third floor balcony they could see a large black and green robot firing randomly around the vicinity, causing crowds of innocent people to scatter in panic. "That looks like a military auto-tank." Trisha observed nervously. "But...I've never seen one in those colours before."

"We just had to pick a day to come to the airport when it was getting attacked by terrorists." Jon complained.

"Not just any terrorists...the Acid Hackers." Cyros stated grimly.

"How do you know it's them?" Jon asked.

"Well, Jeremy riding around on top of it cackling like a madman is a pretty big clue."

"We have to stop them!" David declared.

"...HOW!?" everyone else collectively inquired.

"Okay, I admit they're suddenly a bit out of our league, what with the armoured carrier they somehow acquired, but we have to do something. Protecting the world from the Acid Hackers is our sole purpose as a team."

"This is clearly a job for the Electopian authorities at this point." Sam reasoned. "However until they get here, we can at least protect some innocent bystanders by...even I can't believe I'm suggesting this...drawing their attention. They're obviously here just to kill us after all."

"You sure this isn't just part of their plan to get the data? Or maybe they're just randomly causing destruction like they're known to do." Adrienne theorized.

Sam shook his head. "Random destruction won't result in acquiring data in the Cyberworld, and I doubt they're joyriding since they're on a mission just like we are. They have to be here either as a distraction or an attempt to get us out of the picture, or both."

"That suggests they also know we're here somehow..." Carlos inferred ominously.

"We'll worry about the wiretaps hidden up our asses later." David stated in a dead serious tone. "Carlos, you and I are going to be the ones taking on this tank. Moe, have Trisha take you to the Officials in this town, we need to get hooked up with the military if we're really going to take that tin can down. The rest of you need to get on with the search we just planned out."

7:40 PM Mission Clock: 12:26

Shademan floated towards another lonely, degraded platform hovering inconspicuously above the busy streets of Dentown. This time he set down carefully, keeping in mind the last one crumbled under his feet. Each platform they found featured an inactive teleporterand nothing else. The one Shademan was examining was no different. It was clear these warps at one time led to other systems, but were long since abandoned. No one was quite sure how these empty roads would lead them closer to their goal, but they had nothing better to go on than Sparkman's hunch.

Taking a break as he gained his footing, Shademan looked off to his right. He could see Bubbleman air-swimming towards another platform several blocks away. Off to his right, Windman and some accompanying birds glided away from another. Not far below him on the main road, Sparkman leaned non-chalantly on a signpost. When Spark noticed his ally looking at him, he waved, mocking enthusiasm.

Shademan shook his head in disgust and began staring at his feet while pondering how wasted the day had become. He thought of suggesting to Samuel that they leave the rest of the fools to their treasure hunt and call it a day, but then something on the rim of the teleporter caught his eye. Curious, he kneeled down for a closer look.

Meanwhile:

"Alright! Let me at the guns again!"

"No no no! Just a minute! This is golden!"

Jake pleaded with Jeremy in the cockpit of the AHtank. Jeremy was originally taking the spectator position atop the tank, he claimed the violence wasn't real enough sealed in the heavily armoured pod. He changed his mind when the valiant airport security personell showed up on all sides with riot gear and were attempting to shoot him off his high horse. When he came in he kicked Jake off the guns and took his second choice of role in the raid. Matt was currently in the driver's seat, and the other three Acid Hackers were elsewhere in the city, getting ready to hook up with Bubbleman.

"We really need to get going guys." Matt said, slightly nervous. "If those NG assholes were here, they're either under rubble or long gone by now. There's such a thing as overkill."

"Yeah, and we've got a long way to go to achieve it!" Jeremy cheered, continuing to fire randomly in all directions.

"How about this? We need to save some ammo for the actual mission! We're just here for distraction and to maybe kill our nemeses."

"Distraction? If that's the plan, we didn't plan it too well." Jake interjected. "Sure 'Team B' still has the element of surprise, but we were supposed to hit hard and fast with this thing. Now we showed our strongest weapon too early."

"Eh, blame it on Vidal. This was his idea." Jeremy shrugged.

"Actually I think his plan was to have the other team keep the tank while we went and made a distraction at the airport with handguns or something." Jake responded.

"That plan would have got us killed by Airport security." Matt added. He then tilted his head and looked unnerved. "I guess we can blame Vidal for that too."

Jeremy just kept going trigger happy. "Well we're here now and we're out in the open and I'm not leaving until I see that dumbass cowboy's corpse!...what the...holy crap! It's another tank like ours!"

"What!? Where?" shouted Matt in horror as he frantically searched with his viewscope.

"Oh, wait...that's not a tank, it's a really fat guy mooning us...Hey! Some really fat guy is mooning us!" Jeremy stopped firing and began redirecting the targetting systems of all weapons on the one obnoxious target.

Jake sighed and sat down on the floor, knowing he wasn't going to get another turn any time soon. "Anyone wanna take bets on who that fat ass belongs to?

Meanwhile:

David was just out of sight of the tank behind a pile of rubble with the courtesy cart getaway vehicle he procured while Carlos went to get the enemy's attention. It was his cue to drive in and pick Carlos up and then race out the door with the tank in pursuit, but he was contemplating leaving Carlos alone with the guns pointed at his ass for just a while longer. He surveyed the area one more time to make sure everyone else was evacuated. He was surprised how little protest he and Carlos got from the falling-back security officers about two seemingly unarmoured young men venturing into the line of fire.

"Any time now sanababicchi!" Carlos shouted as he simultaneously pulled his pants up and dodged a warning shot that demolished the ground where he was standing. The tank immediately followed up by firing several automatic rounds straight at Carlos, who used his specially armoured clothing to deflect the bullets. David chuckled a little at seeing his rival squirm. It would be much more sadistic of him if Carlos weren't known for his improbable success rate in conflicts against heavily armed adversaries, with himself only armed with a sword and a supposedly impenetrable undershirt.

The AHtank stopped wasting ammo after a few seconds and began powering up another weapon. Carlos was normally quite confident, but he was still backing away quickly and watching the gun barrels closely for a chance to dodge. He could feel some unfamiliar dents in his faithful Super Alloy ß undershirt. The AHtank didn't give him much chance to dodge this time, however, as a high-pitched whirring noise was the only warning he got before a highly accelerated railgun bullet punched into his chest and knocked him onto his back. His armour was still holding, but Carlos felt the most pain he'd ever felt from a bullet.

He knew he had to get to his feet as quickly as possible, while he was doing so, he noticed David's courtesy cart zooming towards him. Instead of standing up he just grabbed the vehicle as it passed by, and crawled on as a trail of gunfire followed in the small transport's wake. "It's about time you worthless cowboy." Carlos muttered.

"Yeah yeah. You're alive, aren't you?" David twisted around blocks of rubble towards the exit, making sure to follow an erratic enough trail to confuse the AH's targetting systems. Carlos turned around and got his own gun ready, knowing it wasn't going to make much of a difference firing at that thing. He noticed the tank had stopped shooting at them and was now slowly walking towards them. Each of the four pillar-like legs of the craft shook the floor with each step.

"Hmph. They're toying with us." Carlos realized. "They want to savor killing us."

"Yeah, no kidding." David said, rolling his eyes. "We're still alive, so I think we can be thankful for that. Frankly, I don't know what I was thinkingwith this plan."

"I could have told you that!"

"You did! Several times!"

David and Carlos continued to bicker as the cart raced out a hole in the wall and then traded up for a '73 Oldsmobile Delta that Carlos conveniently had ready and waiting outside. As they sped off away from the city the tank plodded out of the building, switched from feet to wheels, and drove off after them.

Meanwhile:

"So here we are. Where do we start?" Bowlman asked his three teammates and the three tagalongs once they were all materialized in the heart of DenTown's central network. They made it there through the Airport's system while their operators snuck out of the chaos.

"I'm a little more concerned about Oniichan right now." said Naomi, fiddling anxiously. Why did they have to do such a dangerous thing on their own?"

Kingman made a small, yet ground-shaking hop to snap her out of it and get everyone's attention. "I know we're all worried about our allies now, but we have been trusted with our part in the mission."

"The boring part, you mean." Darklady grumbled. "It's friggin' annoying being sent on the scavenger hunt while Serenade and Yamatoman get to go into battle alone."

Kingman shook his head. "First of all, Serenade and Yamatoman are not guaranteed to fight, they are only there on the odd chance their operators can get them jacked into the tank."

"How hard could that be?" Metalman asked.

"Ehh...I don't know. Just take the humans' word for it. It's not easy." Kingman shrugged. "Anyway, our distribution to this side of the action was a good move as well. The tank was most likely a distraction. I expect we are more likely to meet the majority of Acid Hackers online searching for the piece, so our numbers will at least be sufficient if he run into them."

Darklady wasn't convinced, but simply rolled her eyes and flew off in a random direction looking for trouble. Bowlman watched her leave and just got more confused. "So, does she know where she's going? Because I still don't."

"None of us really know, Bowl." Metalman groaned, firing up his rockets. "But that's the point of a search. Let's just head off wherever we want and look around."

"No, wait." stated Kingman, doing another attention-grabbing hop. The Dentown civilians walking by were getting annoyed with the shaking ground tripping them up. "We're looking for links to old, dead systems, remember? Naomi, Ringman, Metalman, you guys can all fly so get up high and skim the area for offline teleporters. Dustman, Bowlman and I will ask the locals what they know of old, missing links."

Metalman nodded. "Yeah, and Dark?"

"Oh, let her be. She will most likely hunt down the Acid Hackers, looking for a fight. Someone might as well do it."

"Well, we have a lot of ground to cover! The sooner we finish this, the sooner I we can check up on Oniichan!" Naomi proclaimed before shooting up into the air inone direction.

Ringman took a deep breath, "Miss Kalinka said to do whatever you guys needed me to do, so I'll try my best to find these dead teleporters. I just hope I don't run into those Acid Hackers..." he then nervously took to the skies.

"Yeah, see you guys later. Alert me as soon as you find out anything." said Metalman as he rocketed off in another direction.

"Ehh, guess I'll ask around over there." said Dust Man listlessly as he moved down the street. "It's been a long day already, when do we take a break?" he grumbled to himself.

"Uh, I'll stick with you if you don't mind." Bowlman said to the unofficial leader of the group. "I don't really know what to ask these people, and I doubt splitting up this far will get us the piece any faster."

"Well, if you insist." said Kingman. The two navis then headed off in the direction opposite of Dust. A purple wisp of smoke seeped out from under the ground panels and discreetly followed them.

The first several minutes of searching were as fruitless as Bowlman was expecting. The ground team did find navis familiar with the area that knew of dead links, but nobody knew or cared where they originally went or how to reopen them. The air team wound up treading the same paths the Darklight Mercenaries had hours ago. They were set up for several wasted hours of hunting for a needle in a haystack.

Fortunately, they did not have too waste that much time. Their opponents had already wasted it for them. Darklady was casually axing away flying viruses until she spotted them. Several blocks away, she recognized the distinct round blue ball of Bubbleman, along with three other navis she could not quite make out. "Bingo!" she exclaimed maliciously. "Time to boil up some hamster!" She changed course and started flying straight for the platform the four navis were congregated on when something dark came out of nowhere and knocked her out of the sky. "What the?! Who wants some?" Before she could even get a closer look at her assailant she was grabbed from behind by another. The other dark figure latched onto her as well and the two began to pull her downwards. Darklady struggled to no avail, she realized she would have to resort to drastic measures.

"You hear that?" Bowlman asked his partner. "That sounded like Dark calling for help."

"Then you clearly imagined it." Kingman reasoned. "Now if I may be so bold as to suggest we keep looking..."

Darklady's voice called out once more from the distance. "Get off your butts and come help me you knobs!"

Kingman heard it that time. "Hrm, yes...I suppose this could warrant investigation."

Within moments, the NetGuardians and friends had congregated at the spot where Darklady's calls were emanating from. There they found her pinned to the ground under two formless black objects. Darklady continued to try to wrestle free from their hold but could barely move. Bowlman recognized the creatures immediately, and took the chance to relay his own strategy for once. "Metal! Hit them with your Blades! They're Shadow Souls!"

"That doesn't explain anything for me, but what the hell." Metalman said indifferently as he pulled his Metal Blades out of his shoulder.

Kingman felt the need to butt in anyway. "And make sure you can hit them without hitting Dark, of course."

Metalman was insulted. "Gee thanks, I almost forgot she was there." He responded sarcastically. Metalman then threw his Blades with deadly percision and divided the two black blobs in four. They disintegrated immediately and Darklady burst back into the air seething with rage.

"Gahh! Those bastards must have seen me coming! Just wait until I'm through with them!"

"Uh, who?" Dustman asked innocently.

"Bubblebutt and whovever else is with him over on that platform!" Darklady directed everyone's attention to the spot where Bubbleman and the DLM were investigating. "Yeah, that's right assholes, just keep pretending you don't even notice me!"

"Shademan?" Kingman said with some puzzlement. "Aren't those guys..."

"That's not who attacked you." interrupted Bowlman. "It seems someone else just doesn't want us getting close to them."

"Correct, my nemesis." said an ominous disembodied voice as purple mist began to fill the area. "We can't have you denying Fate by preventing the Acid Hackers from getting the final piece. If you wish to catch up to them, you will have to go through me."

As he finished his introduction, Mistman became fully materialized, seven times. There was an invincible, muscle-bound genie navi present for each of the NetGuardians and their allies, and they seemed intent on blocking the way to where the real target was.

Metalman groaned in frustration. "Not this guy again! I have better things to do than hunt down some hidden lamp to smash!"

Kingman sighed. "It seems we don't have much of a choice. I hope our operators catch up soon..."

"I am glad you are here this time, Bowlman. I have been waiting to settle the score." Mistman announced to his fellow #2 Ranked Undernet Warrior.

"Yeah yeah smokey." Bowlman replied irreverently. "You wanna fight? Then let's just make it quick. I have better things to do right now."

Meanwhile:

"Giant EXE." Bubbleman read aloud the tiny words written on the rim of the teleporter Shademan was investigating. "If this is someone's idea of a joke...I am not. Blubbing. Laughing. Blub." The little Acid Hacker began fuming with so much rage, steam began to shoot out of the water spout on his head. Windman finished carrying Sparkman up to join them and the bulky electric navi kneeled down to get a closer look at the object of everyone's attention.

Spark let out a crude, raspy laugh at their own expense. "Well, they got us, the assholes. Remind me to pay back in voltage to whoever gave you this information after we dig up the frickin' treasure." He then got ready to blast the ground with his sparks.

"Not so fast." Shademan warned. "I doubt the clue indicates the data is underneath this teleporter, but rather through it."

Sparkman rolled his eyes and got sarcastic. "Well okay, let's just turn the teleporter on and mosey on through it. Now where be that 'on' switch? Is this it?." He then smacked Shademan upside the head.

"Gah! Why you impudent-" Shademan began.

"Enough!" Windman commanded with his god-voice. "This circle is but a symbolic manifestation of a connection existing in the real world. We need only to ascertain where the console exists, and restore the link there."

Sparkman got ready to smack Windman, but then just shrugged. "Alright, whatever. Nathan, see if you can get us an ISP trace or something."

"Well, it could be simpler than that blub." Bubbleman said, examining the rest of the writing around the teleporter rim. "What does the rest of this say blub?"

"You cannot read it on your own? What is wrong with it?" asked Windman.

"Well, it's written in blubbledegook."

"I believe it is Cyrillic, the writing of Sharo." Shademan informed. "Why a Sharoan message is written on an Electopian program however, I have no idea. I cannot translate it myself, either."

The other two members were not equipped with that translation software either. For once they wished Coldman was with them. Bubbleman waved it off. "Well, whatever then, blub. Probably just a warning label or something."

Nathan chimed in through Sparkman's communication link. "Okay, I think I pinpointed the building where this terminal is located. I can't get information on it though, says I need special SciLab security clearance or someshit."

The others became somewhat dismayed by the implications. Windman sighed. "I suppose we cannot just walk in and turn this on then."

Bubbleman thought for a moment, then came to a sudden realization. "Well, maybe we can, blub. Just gotta show them a little Acid Hacker security clearance. Blub blub blub..." he chuckled sinisterly.

"Dude this is SciLab. They upgrade their cyberworld and real world security on a daily basis since netcriminals are drawn to it like flies. You're not going to just slip in." Sparkman brutally informed him.

"Yeah blub, well let's see if they're ready for this kinda threat blub." Bubbleman then activated his own communication link. "Yo boss, I got an address for you guys to bring the tank to..."

At that point Shademan noticed a commotion occurring off in the distance. "Say what is going on over there?"

Meanwhile:

As he and Trisha moved briskly through the stark white empty halls of the Official HQ's underground complex, Moe could swear he heard a militaristic march drum beat accompanying their steps. Moe was feeling especially uneasy about stepping into the belly of the beast again, something his friend took notice of. "Oh would you relax? The Electopian Officials don't even know about your record, and the Netopian Officials don't even care."

"Yeah, thanks. I feel better, really." Moe claimed unconvincingly.

"It's not like this is going to be anything you can't handle. Your vigilante license is practically as good as my Official one. Once we're in the war room it will all come back to you."

"What, my tendency for failure? Great, can't wait to get all Official again."

Trisha was getting frustrated with Moe's self-depreciating attitude. She would have told him to forget about it, turn right around, and go wait outside if he was so unsure of himself, but she actually did want him at her side when they started dealing with the Electopians. "Look, you had one mission and its outcome wasn't even your fault. You're supposed to be good at math, right? You know you can't determine a pattern from just one example. How about all your success fighting crime these last few months?"

"Well, I don't think that's really the same thing as the Officials..."

"Then you can look at what you're going to do today as your chance to finally redeem yourself if you feel that's so neccessary! I'm starting to think that's why David sent you with me."

"That was just because at least one Net Guardian had to be with you and David figured you and I knew each other best. He didn't even consider I didn't want to be inside one of these underground bunkers again. He doesn't even know I was in one to begin with."

"So why didn't you protest?"

"I dunno, I kinda felt I should have...but I'm not one to complain."

"Oh really? Practice that for a while then."

"Hey, I wasn't saying anything until you told me to relax."

The last of the automatic sliding doors opened up before them and before they knew it they were in the crowded Official war room. They were immediately greeted by the unexpected appearance of famed SciLab expert Mr.Famous. "Ah, Trisha Oscar and Moe Fortis I presume? Already discussing battle strategy? Excellent. That's what I like to see!"

Moe was a bit confused. "You? You're not actually an Official, are you? What are you doing here?"

"I have the neccessary clearance, and when I heard this recent disturbance involved the Acid Hackers, I insisted I join the consultation team. I have special interests in that group. I am somewhat responsible for them, you see."

"Sounds fine to me." said Trisha. "So what do we need to do?"

"Just step over here and tell Chief Ogata everything he needs to know." Famous said, directing the two young people to the central monitor console where an older man in Official uniform was waiting.

"Greetings, you can call me Ogata. I'll get to the point. I don't need all the details, just the capabilities of this tank and where you expect its target is."

Moe decided to take his friend's advice and got as professional and to the point as he could. "This is the first time we've seen the Acid Hackers use any weapon this dangerous, we have no idea what it is capable of or where they obtained it. As for its target, they should currently be pursuing my allies north of the city assuming they're still in one piece. Otherwise, they are likely after the same mystery data the Net Guardians are. Our only clue is that it exists on the DenTown network under a giant EXE."

Ogata nodded and suddenly furrowed his eyebrows pensively. "Famous, is he talking about the giant EXE I think he is?"

"Famous was just as surprised as Ogata to hear the term. "It is entirely possible. Both the Net Guardians and Acid Hackers have a connection to Cossack."

Moe was shocked and delighted to finally have a break on the big EXE concept. "Yeah yeah! Cossack is the one that gave us the clue. You know where it is?"

"We assumed it was removed from the network and is currently on a separate server, is that true?" Trisha added.

"Hrm...almost certainly." Ogata admitted after some hesitation. "To reconnect that server to the main network, the Acid Hackers would need to use that tank to break through the security at the SciLab archive facility where it is held."

"According to the reports, that tank hasn't even been near the town yet, so they may not know about it yet."

"Listen, we need to get our hands on that data too." Moe declared. "Hurry up and give us the coordinates already. We need to get there before the AH does."

Ogata just shook his head. "Son, you only need it to keep it away from them correct? Don't you think it would be safer in our highly secured facility than in your hands? All we need to do is prepare for the Acid Hackers' attack and capture them when they come for it. With them out of the way, the data will be secure again."

"I doubt that." Moe retorted. "I know the Acid Hackers didn't just build that tank out of scraps, they're a bunch of punks, they don't have the skills or resources for it. Someone is supplying them with their missions and weapons and that someone is still at large even if the AH are behind bars. He already has every other 'piece' of the set that this data completes, apparently, so it will only take until the next group he sends here to finish his collection."

"That still does not tell me why you think the data is at all better protected in your possession."

"Because Cossack told us to get it." Moe continued. "From what I've gathered Cossack was responsible for putting it here in the first place. He obviously has a good reason for wanting it removed. Perhaps he's discovered a way to neutralize its threat, whatever it is, something he can only do when we bring it to him."

"Hrm...that's slightly more convincing logic. Nonetheless, its my decision on how to deal with the situation, and our primary objective remains the fortification of the archive facility, not its intentional breaching. I will reconsider your request after the enemy tank is disabled."

Moe cursed silently. There was nothing else he could say at this point, ad Ogata's attitude seemed to indicate he wouldn't allow the transfer of the data even at Cossack's personal request. However, he now knew much more about the data's location, which he knew needed to be passed onto his teammates as soon as possible. He considered forming their own clandestine approach to obtaining the data, which was feasible given their relatively high level of clearance at the moment. But for now he would have to wait and watch.

Ogata began to distribute orders to the other Officials in the room. "Get the military dispatch to deploy as many of our own auto tanks as possible to the Dentown Scilab archive facility and have about half of them move north from there to intercept the enemy from its current location. What's the word back from the Netopian government regarding this thing's specs?"

"They're just denying involvement and refusing to give up classified information, sir." responded an Official with a headset.

"Typical. Keep pestering them. Now, whether the link is reopened or not, things are going to get messy in that sector of the network, so put out the order to all online personel to get that area evacuated. Let's move it people!"

Meanwhile:

"Those bastards disappeared again!" Jeremy fumed as he searched with his scanners and the periscope for the slippery Carlos and David, who kept inexplicably evading their pursuit behind bends in the craggy mountain paths they drove into.

"They probably drove down the cliff again. Yamatoman's operator is nuts while driving." Jake pointed out.

"Bah! He's going to get them killed before I do!" Jeremy screamed in frustration. I swear when we catch sight of them again I'm launching all the RPGs at them, enough of this 'make 'em dance' bullshit! Who's idea was it to play around with them anyway?"

"As usual, yours, dumbass." Matt muttered flatly. His attention was suddenly diverted to his beeping PET. "It's the phone. This better be good news. Flashman, pick it up will you?"

The PET's speaker began to fill the pod with Bubbleman's smarmy nasal voice. "Yo blubs. We found the giant EXE, sorta blub. We need you to go to these coordinates and turn on the server or jack in from there to actually reach it blub. Hope you blubheads saved some ammo in that blubbin' tank because security is expected to be fierce. We've spotted most of the blub NG over here too blub, they seem pretty busy with another battle though blub. I'm also starting to see Official navis flood into the area blub so it stands to reason the enemy's onto us blub."

"Receiving coordinates, Matt. I'm routing them to navigation." Flashman announced. "I'm betting this is what Fate gave us the tank for in the first place. We should get moving."

"Not until we make paste of those two slippery smartasses we don't!" Jeremy shouted. "Hey! Who turned off the lights? My targetting equipment's shutting down!"

"Yeah, seems the pilot can do that to the gunner's console if he wants." Matt admitted slyly. "We don't have time to be on a pointless chase out here if both the NG and the Officials are closing in on the main target. We're moving out now."

Jeremy considered yanking Matt out of the pilot's seat by the neck, but in a rare moment of forebearance, decided to agree with Matt's decision. "Fine, whatever. I was getting tired of running down these rats anyway. Plenty of chances to kill them later."

Jeremy moved up to grab Matt's PET to ask the gnawing question. "Bubs, you said the NG were fighting someone else? Who?"

"Blub if I know. Some smokey purple guy blub. I don't really care as long as they're far away from me, but some of these mercs you hired are aching to get their hands dirty blub."

"What about Plant, Flame, and Desert? Shouldn't they be there by now?" Matt asked.

"Haven't seen 'em blub."

"The NG must have sent their navis ahead of their operators, that's the only way they could have reached the area before the others." Matt deduced.

"Sounds to me like it's time for some divide and conquer." Jeremy said, getting somewhat excited again. "Alright Bubs, you did good on phase one of your mission, now it's time to move on to the 'kick do-gooder ass' phase. Get in there and help purple whatshisface, and take the hired help with you!"

"Blu-! Blu-! But I was just about to get back to the beach blub!"

"Time is money Bubs. Back to work. Hang up on him now, Matt."

"Fine by me. You heard him, Flash."

"Why you blubbing ungrateful blub-" and he was finally cut off by a clicking sound.

Matt nodded and gave his navi some follow-up orders. "Better get Nij on the line now. See how close they are and tell them to meet where the action is."

Meanwhile:

"Strike!" shouted Bowlman as he rolled one of his primary weapons at full force toward a cluster of approaching Mistmen. Whenever Bowlman said that word it was more a declaration of intent than a declaraction of accomplishment, particularly since enemies rarely positioned themselves such that a single ball could take ten or more of them out at once. As such, Bowlman's attack did little to stem the tide as poison mist continued to gradually fill the area and incarnations of Mistman were born as quickly as the Net Guardians could strike them down.

Bowlman barely got the chance to recover from his attack when a large purple fist slammed into his side. Bowlman was knocked to the ground in pain and the turbanned assailant was already bearing down to deliver the finishing blow. But before it could, it was swarmed by a flock of Darklady's bats. She didn't even wait for Bowlman's appreciation as she redirected the remaining bats towards the next closest targets.

Metalman wasn't too opposed to getting dangerously close to the poisonous phantasms. He decided to save his arsenal and dispersed Mistmen one by one with every swing of his unmatched fists. Naomi did an excellent job of keeping the Mist army at bay with her healthy assortment of missiles, while Ringman and Dust Man took the more defensive approach, barricading themselves behind a wall of Dust's garbage. None of the beseiged navis were getting anywhere beyond the platform however, and the poison seeping through the air was gradually weakening them. The only Net Guardian not fighting at all was Kingman, who remained in the center of the pack, struggling with his mind to deduce a solution to their mounting problem.

He knew the fight was pointless, and their best chance was to escape. The more heavily armoured members, namely himself and Metal, would easily be able to break through the smokescreen and make a break for it. The other would likely be left behind. Kingman had no idea how Mistman would react to the escape attempt either, but if he was as smart as he seemed then it would not turn out well for them. He had hidden his lamp, his only weak point, so well in the urban jungle of the DenTown network, there was very little point in searching for it. There would be no problem if their operators were there to send them chips, but there was no telling how long until they arrived either. Mistman did not appear to be trying to hard to kill them at any rate. His bodies were moving slowly, attacking only occasionally, and each one put up little to no resistance when destroyed. Mistman seemed content to let the poison and pure intimidation win the battle for him. For now the Net Guardians could hold out easily enough, but they needed to do more than that.

Kingman's concentration was broken when he noticed another SoulGang summoning had sent one of the Shadow creatures rushing towards him. Grunting in frustration, Kingman subconsciously commanded a nearby Pawn to intercept the attacker with its sword. It was after the Shadow was severed that Kingman realized that he actually had a Pawn nearby. "It is about time you got here, Sam!"

"I can see that. Give us a break though, we didn't exactly know where we were going until Moe called us a minute ago." As they were talking, Kingman could see the tides of the battle turning. As chips flooded into the Net Guardian arsenal, the Mistmen were beaten back quickly, and thanks to some Wind chips the air even got cleaner.

"So, that platform where Bubbleman and his allies were was the key to finding our target after all?" Kingman concluded. He noticed that the platform was now empty as well. Before he could wonder where they went, he was attacked from all sides by bats. "Ah! Darklady, what is the meaning of this?"

"Don't look at me, they're not mine!" Darklady defended her innocence just before defending herself literally as a hail of yellow sparks flashed into her.

"You can thank me for the bats, Kingman." A familiar voice announced from above. Kingman looked up to see none other than Shademan.exe floating above him, wings outstretched. "I must say this is a pleasant surprise. I have been looking forward to another duel with you for some time."

Sparkman, Windman, and Bubbleman all made their presences known as well, violently. It didn't take long for Kingman to set up a decent defense once some Rooks and Knights were loaded, but unfortunately for the NG, their attention was once again drawn from the real objective, and they were in the middle of another pointless battle.

"The Darklight Mercenaries." Metalman growled spitefully. "What do you have to do with this?"

"Business, what else?" Sparkman stated simply. "Some guy named Mistman hired us to help this blue shrimp, so that's what we're doing. Though I must say, getting to put you territory-stealing jerks in your place is a nice bonus."

Mistman took the cue to rematerialize and introduce himself to the mercenaries for the first time. "I am Mistman. I apologize for not meeting with you earlier, but I did not expect it would be neccessary. I have been holding these interlopers off. Tell me you at least determined the real world location of the piece's server."

"Yes, blub. And if it were up to me blub, we'd be taking five now, but the boss had other ideas blub. So you're stuck with us blub." Bubbleman explained with a noticable lack of enthusiasm.

A new voice called them from a short distance away. "Hey guys, weren't planning on starting this party without us, I hope?" The group turned to spot the rarely un-ignited Flameman galloping towards the imminent battle at top speed. He was followed closely by Plantman and a rapidly decaying trail in the ground indicating Desertman. The Net Guardians were suddenly outnumbered.

"Ah, Plantman!" Windman called out in recognition. "I hope you intend to join our side of the battle today!"

"Windman?" Plantman called back. "So, you're the mercenaries Vidal hired. Heh, don't worry, my operator wouldn't want to fight against his brother anyway. Let's show these fools what we can do, shall we?"

"Oh, this is going to be fun." Bowlman and Darklady both said with no shortage of sarcasm from the former, and no hint of sarcasm from the latter. The fighters began to pair off. Kingman and Shademan were clearly aiming for each other, as were Bowlman and Mistman. Darklady set her sights on Sparkman since he attacked her first. Metalman decided to go for the rising mountain of Desertman. Flameman went straight for Naomi and set himself ablaze as his own personal statement as to how "hot" she was. Windman took Dust Man, Plantman took Ringman. Bubbleman decided to just get behind a rock and start flooding the area with bubbles to keep everyone else busy. It was turning out to be a long day.

Meanwhile:

"The building is coming into view." Matt announced. He fed the image to the larger monitor so the increasingly bored Jake could get a look. "High stone walls and barbed wire. I guess security is pretty serious here after all." He panned the camera up and down to get a look at the tall building. The SciLab logo was emblazened on the front, which confirmed they had the right place.

"Alright, finally. So are we going to jump-slash-fly over those walls? Or is Jeremy still at the controls of the weapons?" Jake asked rhetorically.

Jeremy grinned evilly. "The answer is...KABLAMMO!" He then opened up the tanks remaining shells at the gates of the building. Stone and dust flew everywhere as the first line of defense instantly disappeared. Matt began to plod the tank over the rubble towards the front door of the building. Security forces in Official uniforms peeked out the windows and around the corners od the building to fire their handheld weapons ineffectually. The tank ignored them and began to pound away at the wall and doors with grenade launchers. Metallic shutters slammed into place covering all doors and windows. The tank shifted its attention to the walls and a large opening began to form inside.

"This almost seems too easy." Jeremy commented with delight.

"Well, then this should be good news to you." said Matt. "We've got incoming. Five o'clock...and seven, eight, six...two, eleven...crap! The scanners are showing enemy tanks coming in from all directions! How?"

Jeremy took the cue to start looking around with his viewscope. The first one he caught a glimpse of was hopping over the wall tothe right. Two more followed it from the same direction. Two more came around each corner of the building. In the rear view he could see at least a dozen fill in through the hole they made in the gates. Flashing arrows in the viewscope's Heads-Up Display pointed upwards, directing Jeremy to turn the camera to the rooftops of the facility and neighbouring buildings, where more of the enemy tanks were getting into position, with their sights set straight on the Acid Hackers.

These tanks were similar in shape to the Acidmobile. They were quadrapedal with a ball-shaped central pod and a turret-mounted weapon on the top. One noticable difference was that these tanks were less than one-third the size of the AH's, making them about as tall as the larger tank's human passengers. It stood to reason that these tanks didn't have passengers of their own, unless the Electopian military employed a lot of midgets for pilots. The smaller tanks were painted bright blue and orange, contrasting greatly with the black and green of their behemoth opponent.

"Alright, we can handle this." Jeremy proclaimed confidently. "I can see what Fate meant when we wouldn't have anything to worry about from these things. Let's just bat these little toy tanks to the side and get moving." Jeremy activated the machine gun in the tank's right arm and the autocannon in its left and began to fire at will across the approaching ememies. He was shocked and unnerved by the small autotanks' agility. They managed to dodge most of the shells with jumps and dashes. Meanwhile more autotanks began to arrive on the scene and take aim at the AH.

"Oh, this isn't good." Jake murmured.

"Relax, would you? I'm just getting a feeling for their movements. I'll be able to pick them off easily." Jeremy claimed with faltering confidence.

"No you won't. Look at the ammo reserves."

A chill went down Jeremy's spine when he realized he hadn't checked the ammo since the Net Guardians showed up. Fearing the worst he turned his head to the side of the panel wit that data. Sure enough, most of the weapons were depleted thanks to the chase of David and Carlos earlier. There were about two more seconds worth of machine gun fire remaining. All missiles and other explosive shells were used up. The left arm cannon had one shot left. The only weapons that were still mostly full were the railgun which took too long to charge to be effective against this many targets, the mostly worthless laser cannons which were only damaging to unarmoured humans, and the one-shot main cannon which had yet to be used, but wouldn't be any good at short range anyway due to the massive explosive force it strongly warned its pilots against using. Jeremy carefully considered their options for a moment before coming to a conclusion. "Yeah...we're screwed."

"Wait, why don't we make a break for it, get us and the mini-tanks far enough away from the building, then blast 'em all to smithereens with the main cannon?" Jake suggested.

"Yeah...no wait!" Matt shouted. "Look how they're taking their sweet time. They don't want to damage the building any more than it has been either. They want us to flee so they can attack in full force."

"So what do we do, just sit here in a standoff?" Jake retorted.

"I guess not. It looks like some of the tanks are equipped with different weapons. The ones on the rooftops seem to have high-precision armour-piercing guns that are currently searching out our weak points. If we stand still, we'll still be destroyed, just cleaner."

That was all Jeremy needed to hear. "Well, if I'm going to die, it has to be messy. Taking as many do-gooders with me as possible! Let's move!"

Matt had to agree and had the tank make a powerful leap over the enemies back out onto the main street. He kicked the legs into driving mode and the black death machine began to speed away from the crime scene. The autotanks immediately took up pursuit, the ones up high leapt from rooftop to rooftop alongside the Acidmobile while the ones on the ground followed behind at an even pace. Machine gun fire from many of the autotanks began to whiz past the AH's hull, it was only a matter of time before they caught up and did some real damage.

Jeremy clenched his teeth harder with ever block they passed and the pursuers got ever closer. The scanners indicated there were more closing in from up ahead. Things were not looking good for the villains, as even the main cannon would not win the battle as long as they remained surrounded, and the autotanks seemed to be fast enough to keep it that way indefinitely. "Alright, that's far enough!" Jeremy yelled, slamming his fist down. "Hit the brakes and turn us around, Matt! I still don't know what we're going to do, but no more running!"

Still running short on better ideas, Matt complied and the tank skidded to a halt and spun around on one of its legs to face down the approaching armada. Jeremy's hand tensed on the trigger of the main cannon. Warning sirens began to blare as the vessel became aware of how much danger it was in. The Electopian autotanks once more got into position surrounding the AH. Their various top-mounted weapons came to life, took aim, and on cue from a single electronic command, opened fire.

In the monitors, the Acid Hackers saw the exhaust from the simultaneously launched missiles heading directly at them for a split second before clenching their teeth, shutting their eyes, and bracing for impact.

After about five seconds of not even feeling the hull shake a bit, they opened their eyes and took another look at the monitors.

The autotanks were still firing. An unceasing flow of artillery poured out of the circle of robot soldiers towards the large black bull's-eye in the center. Yet every single bullet, rocket, grenade, and shell managed to miss its mark. Debris kicked up all around the Acidmobile as a tight ring of impact craters formed inches from the hull. One guided missile whizzed right over the pod, turned around and slammed right into the autotank that fired it. Two other autotanks standing side-by-side appeared to be firing vulcans at each other, reducing themselves to bits. One autotank equipped with a mortar launched its explosive straight up into the air, which fell straight down a moment later, demolishing its owner. A heat-seaking missile ended up orbiting the AH craft seven times before eventually running out of fuel and exploding on three other autotanks. Explosions rocked the buildings around them and more and more autotanks were destroyed by friendly fire.

After a minute, the smoke cleared and the AH tank stood completely unscathed on a concrete islandin the middle of a gunfire crater and every building around them lie in rubble, except a store named "Denim Barn", the broad side of which was as spotless as the AH. Every autotank lie in pieces except one, which carefully lined up its flame thrower, then somehow lit itself on fire. A demolished brick wall then fell and crushed it.

"...What...the HELL just happened!?" Jeremy asked, completely dumbfounded. Jake stood beside him, slack-jawed. Matt took off his shades to rub his eyes in disbelief.

"Jeremy, did you activate some kind of targetting system jammer? Flash? Punk?" Matt asked the vessel's co-pilots, who all answered in the negative. The AH tank wasn't equipped with any sort of targetting jammers. "Well, then I guess the Electopian tanks just have naturally bad aim. I guess that's what they get for putting all the government funding into Cyberworld research." Matt suddenly remembered hearing something on the news recently about Electopia's poor military funding, but didn't think it would be their saving grace in a moment like this.

"Now...we'd better get back to that building." Jake suggested.

They kicked it into high gear. Within seconds they were back where they started at the damaged SciLab facility's front door. Matt put the tank's scanners to their highest precision settings to pinpoint the location of the server they were looking for. It turned out to be in the third basement, near the northwest corner of the floor. Jake was sent out to infiltrate and activate the machine since he was comlpaining about not having anything to do. Meanwhile Matt and Jeremy used the last of the tank's ammo and its laser cannons to draw the attention of the security forces. Jake made it through the abandoned halls easily and most of the automatic security systems were offline due to the tank's attack damaging the power grid. Conveniently, level B3 was still online, and it only took Beastman to hack through the last few electronically locked doors to find the dusty storage room with the server he was looking for sitting dead in the middle of it.

The machine was lined with switches, dials, and buttons that the young Acid Hacker had no clue what to do with. He looked for a jack-in port, but all he could find were the old circular jacks used for the oldest PETs no longer made, with no adapter in sight. He asked Beastman what to do, but his feral navi was as clueless as he was. Getting nervous about missing his evac deadline, he began to look around in panic. That's when he noticed the single, unplugged power cable laying next to the empty outlet in the wall. Shrugging, Jake plugged the server in, causing it to spring to life on its own. The room was lit up by the various lights on the console, and a low, steady hum began to rise in pitch as the machine powered up. His mission a success, he left the room, locked the door, had Beastman reset the security codes to slow down anyone's attempt to unplug the machine again, and high-tailed back to the entrance for his pick-up.

Meanwhile:

A spray of bowling pins dissipated a group of Mistmen and moved on to knock over Sparkman who was left vulnerable while performing his Shadow-Maker flash making a Shadow virus in the shape of Darkman who attempted to counter with a Shadow Axe of his own but his blade was slower than the imitation DarkSword unleashed by his doppelganger so the Axe missed its mark and went out of control while Darkman recovered and eventually landed in the back of Bubbleman who was caught completely off guard and began shooting his harpoons in random directions in a panic hitting among other things Dust Man's debris shield striking them down rendering him vulnerable to Windman's birds that swarmed over the frightened navi until Kingman grabbed them with his Poltergeist along with his own object collection and hurled them towards the various enemies except Shademan who pulverized all incoming objects with his Noise Crush leaving him open for an attack from behind by Naomi's missiles while Flameman recovered from an Ice Missile dousing his flame by summoning Changkeys for support that spun around into Ringman causing him to miss the return of his ring boomerang which sliced off the top of Desertman's head leaving the otherwise unfazed sand navi blind long enough for Metalman to land a perfect panel-crushing punch directly onto Desert's core causing the heavily wounded black orb to retreat underground kicking up his remaining sand into the air which Plantman decided to take advantage of by hadding his own leaves to it and giving the nodding cue to his friend Windman to activate the debris storm combo attack they discussed before and so Windman summoned all his wind power to sweep the sand and dust and leaves into a violently cutting and abrasive onslaught that heavily damaged all the navis in range ally and enemy alike.

(deep breath)

Then the chaos came to a halt when they heard the noise. A crackling noise that drowned out any of the din of battle. Everyone's attention was drawn to the lone platform Shademan found. It was shaking in the air an glowing while electrical sparks flashed around it. A white light shot out the top as if something was coming through, but the teleportation had trouble completing. As energy poured into the area, a tremendous roar-like sound rumbled throughout the sector as if the internet itself was in pain due to whatever was trying to pass into it. Finally, the display ended with the brilliant explosion of the mysterious platform. The Acid Hackers, Net Guardians, Darklight Mercenaries, and their acquaintances, now the only inhabitants of the sector, shielded their eyes from the bright light that flooded the area. When they looked again at where the platform was, what they saw was beyond comprehension.

It was a navi, or it appeared to be. The problem was that it was well beyond the feasible scale of any navi ever designed. Its feet fell into the base level of the system, with its body rising well above the six elevations of roads and platforms below the group, with the middle of its abdomen at their own level. It rose up above the three remaining elevations in the sector, the highest walkways just barely up to its collar line. Its head almost seemed to scrape the roof of the system. The body took the form of a muscular, metallic humanoid. Its form-fitting red and blue armour was mostly plain and uninteresting, its most prominent features seemed to be its spike-knuckled fists and horned head with stern, masked face. The center of the forehead and the backs of the hands displayed the navi icon which appeared to be a bold, upper-case "G".

The group started at the still, monolithic character in awe for a long time before Kingman broke the silence. "Giant.exe...The data is hidden under this navi named Giant.exe...Of course."

"Um...so...is it under its feet or something? Up its butt?" Flameman pondered.

"Well, it seems to be broken or something since it's just standing there." Sparkman observed. "It shouldn't take us long to pick it out, even if it's huge."

As if on cue, the Giant let out a ground-shaking roar and began to move with large, slow steps. The walkways that surrounded it on all levels snapped and crumbled as it touched them. The Giant appeared to be unaware of the group, but was in a defensive mode nonetheless, with its fists held high, ready to smite anything that dared stand in its way.

"Oh boy, now it's fun." said Darklady, more sarcastic this time.

"Hey, I've got an e-mail from Moe." Sam broke in. "Uhh...blah blah Official assholes blah blah pathetic autotank debacle blah blah blah highly classified data files while they were distracted by their abysmal failure...okay here we go, it seems this Giant.exe was a sentry navi designed by Cossack about 20 years ago. It was one of the first navis ever made, and naturally this was before any scale standards were in place."

Metalman raised an eyebrow. "So Cossack made this thing that huge because nobody decided how tall the average navi was supposed to be at the time?"

After a pause due to continued reading, Sam continued. "More to it than that, it seems. Cossack was also trying to implement a program that allows the navi to adapt and gain new abilities based on what it interacts with. The navi needed an extremely large memory map to accomodate this adaptability. Seems the poor guy made a mistake in specializing in navi development while all the other SciLab guys were focusing on cyberworld development. He had to abandon the Giant when it turned out his colleagues were designing a cyberworld that couldn't possibly fit this type of navi in it."

"Looks like he fits if you squeeze him through hard enough...sorta." Bowlman said, attempting to make light of the situation.

Sam concluded the summary of Moe's message. "The Giant never made it off its console of birth. Cossack put his adaptable navi research on hold until he could figure out a way to compress the system better..." Sam then spoke in his own words, seemingly to himself. "Yeah...I know how that turned out...wait, then does that make this thing his prototype?...hmm..."

"Sorry to interrupt you train of thought, Sam..." his navi spoke up. "But if the Giant has never been out of that server before, then it stands to reason the vast extra space in its memory map is completely unused. It's...'hollow'."

"You are suggesting it will be relatively weak and easy to beat since all its mass signifies nothing?" Windman clarified. "I am not terribly certain of that. After all, it is levelling this sector with no effort before our eyes."

"My worthy opponent makes a point, Windman." said Shademan, oddly defending his rival. "At the very least this creature cannot be too intelligent, being both an unexperienced newborn and an obsolete antique simultaneously."

Sam finally made his response. "You're all right. But keep in mind if its 'Get-Ability' system works, then it could soak up powers and experience like a sponge. It would be best to find a way to disable this navi quickly, if not instantaneously, to reduce the amount of data it can gain from your attacks. I have something that just might work, but it could take a few minutes to boot it up for you. Try to sit tight guys."

The Giant was now lumbering in the group's direction. Sitting tight wouldn't be an option once the ground beneath their feet was destroyed by the wandering lummox. Mistman crossed his arms and grunted with displeasure. "Hmph. Bowlman, you and I will have to settle this another day after all. My lamp's hiding place is obviously no longer safe. Acid Hackers, do not fail to get the final piece." and with that the final Mistman dispersed into vapor, a purple beam of light shot into the sky somewhere between the group and Giant, indicating the actual position of Mistman's lamp, now teleported away. Bowlman didn't even get a chance to curse his opponent before he fled.

"We'd better move guys." Metalman suggested. "And I don't know about you, but I'm going to see if I can bust through that thing's hide nice and quick like Sam said. Ya' with me Cyros?" Metalman and the rest of the Net Guardians then split up. Some simply tried to keep their distance from the Giant while Metal, Dark, and Bowl moved in closer to attempt an attack.

"We have our mission as well, Acid Hackers! Do not let the Net Guardians win the Gamma piece!" Plantman shouted. "Windman, you and your team mates will help us, right?"

"Of course." Windman affirmed. Shademan and Sparkman agreed as well.

"I'm beginning to realize I shouldn't be helping you guys, even for money." Sparkman added grimly. "But that doesn't matter now, does it? There's a gigantic freaking navi rampaging through my town and it has to be stopped. I don't care who the 'prize' goes to, but this Giant is going down."

At the last moment, Windman grabbed Sparkman and carried him out of the Giant's path. Shademan followed the other flier while the Acid Hackers ran down another path to the side. The Giant remained oblivious to the insects that began swarming around him.

Meanwhile:

"Wake up, simian!" a sinister voice echoed through a dark and desolate location. The area's only inhabitant was a certain golden-armoured navi holding a rod.

The figure remained standing still, but it opened its eyes with a look of hatred fixed on them. He spoke bitterly. "What do you want?"

"That is all you have to say? What happened to your arrogant bravado?" The Monkey King was not in the mood to answer Fate, so he scoffed and continued. "Obviously, I still have a task for you to complete. A very large navi has appeared on the net, and you may be the only force capable of crushing it. You may not be personally interested, but you will be if I promise to release you once you have deleted this Giant."

Monkey's head snapped up. He retained his bitter grimace, but he was clearly intrigued. He had been imprisoned in Fate's chip for what seemed like an eternity. This was his first "mission" since the Net Guardians defeated him, and while he did not trust Fate to keep his word, he was willing to perform an easy task such as this to make sure. "Very well, just send me to him."

Meanwhile:

Metalman put everything he had into one punch at full rocket speed, targetted directly at the Giant's forehead. With the breaking power of his fist he should have been able to punch straight through to the other side, but something more unexpected happened. The instant he came in contact with the Giant, its entire body turned pitch black and Metalman flew right through, experiencing the sensation of being sliced by razors from all sides the whole way. He fell out the other side of the unfazed Giant's head critically damaged and nearly unconscious. His jet pack had given out and he was falling quickly into the abyss. Cyros saved him at the last moment by forcing him to jack out.

"That was Shadow defense." said Kingman, observing from a platform on the outskirts of the sector with Naomi, Ringman, and Dust Man nearby. "How did it gain the Shadow ability?"

"I'm afraid we have Darklady to blame for that." Naomi said sadly, using her X-Scanner to get a closer look at the battle in the distance. "She tried hacking at its neck with her Shadow Axe a while ago, it must have learned the technique from her weapon."

Kingman was usually one of the more calm and collected members of the team, but his frustration was growing intensely as he stood on the sidelines unable to even keep tabs on his teammates or the unlikely temporary allies that he had no chance of coordinating with. "THIS is why Sam warned us against a lengthly battle! Metalman could have finished this already! Bah, how will those fools make the situation worse next?"

Ringman was feeling anxious about not doing anything to help. "Maybe I could chase everyone down and tell them to stop attacking until your operator finishes whatever he's doing?" he offered.

"You'd just be putting yourself in too much harm's way. I doubt even Dark or Bowl would stop fighting now, and the likelyhood of convincing the Acid Hackers or the Darklight Mercenaries is even smaller. You should just jack out while you have a chance."

"No! We're supposed to be helping! I know there's not much we can do right now, but we won't run and hide."

"Hmph. Misguided, but I do not want to waste my time with an argument. Just stay close and out of the Giant's way."

Far away, closer to the Giant, Sparkman discussed a plan with Shademan. "Come on, do it already, it will totally work!"

"I give you credit for creativity, but I have serious doubts..."

"Just do it already! What do you have to lose?"

"This had better work..." Shademan then disappeared in shade and reappeared right in front of Giant's face. He then swung a Dark Sword that cut right through the Shadow defense and left a small scratch in the navi's face plate. Shademan was quickly swatted aside by Giant's hand and was nearly shot into the next sector before he disappeared in shade once again. As expected, Giant also happened to add the Dark Sword to its repertoire immediately. It formed the gigantic black blade and swiped it towards Windman, who was blasting Giant from across the area with a furious storm. Windman managed to dodge the attack in time, but the massive navi achieved its goal of stopping the winds. Sparkma, having seen all he needed, charged up with all the flashing electricity he could muster to perform his Shadow Animator technique.

"Alright ya stupid dinosaur, let's see how you fare against yourself!" connecting his fully charged electordes, a blinding flash filled the area. When it passed, Sparkman hoped to see a second Giant cleaving the original in half with a copied Dark Sword. Instead, he saw a thin, amorphous screen of flickering black behind the momentarily blinded Giant that only seemed to disintegrate into grey dust before vanishing completely.

"I told you it would not work." said the newly reappeared and critically damaged Shademan at Sparkman's side.

"Ah...uh...I guess something that big just can't get a solid shadow from such a small light source...Well, I'm out of ideas." Sparkman shrugged.

On the base level, Desertman was attempting to change as much of the ground as possible to sand in order to slow down or even trap Giant, preventing his rather destructive walking. However the task was especially difficult as the desert had to be unusually deep as well as wide to actually get the Giant stuck up to his ankles. Not far from Desertman, Plantman discussed strategy with Bubble and Flame. Just as Sparkman was inspired by the Giant's display of Shadow defense, Plantman got an idea from Sparkman's attempted exploitation of the Giant's automatic Get-Ability and low intelligence. "Bubbleman, do you think by attacking it with Bubble Lead it will learn Bubble Wrap?"

"What the blub is wrong with your head blub?" Bubbleman answered indignantly. "They're entirely different blubbing things. Just because they're both blubbin' bubbles don't blubbin' mean they're blubbin' identical."

"Ugh, whatever. Thing is, if we can teach him Bubble Wrap and an electircal attack, we can make him activate a Lightning Rod while bubbled up and he'll take double damage proportional to his size. It may not be enough to take him out in one shot, but it would be a pretty damn good start. It's not like we, or those NG morons, have made a decent start so far."

"Bleh, the DLM's plan was better blub. I vote for just leaving. This obviously isn't a job for us. It's a job for...blub...blub..."

"Megaman?" Flameman suggested wryly.

"Blub!? Like blub I'm letting that blubbin' blub blub get all the blub blub glory for our blub blub mission!" Bubbleman then swam through the air with Olympic race speed at Giant's chest with Bubble Wrap in place.

"I gotta remember to mention Megaman every time we need him to give a damn about something." Plantman said, rubbing his forehead in exhaustion. "He's got a point though, we need more firepower if we're actually going to bring this thing down."

Flameman smirked. "Firepower? Say no more! WRAAHHHHHH!!!!" Plantman knew what was coming but barely had time to get clear of Flameman re-igniting himself. Flameman didn't have any sort of plan as he charged up to Giant's foot and began running up the leg, looking like a bright, burning flea. Plantman didn't try to stop him though, he had to admire his courage in this case. Using his vines, he started to crawl back up to the higher levels.

Flameman's unique body shape did not grant him many advantages, but it did allow him to run fast with greater traction and balance than most navis. He made sure to leave lingering flames everywhere he touched the Giant as he continued to run up his body. Giant took notice of the minor skin irritation and began swatting at Flameman and the flames, but the firey navi was quicker than the massive hand.

Flameman made it all the way up to the middle of the Giant's back, a prime location to do as much damage as possible without retaliation. Jabbing both hands into the ground, or in this case the enemy's skin, he proceeded to unleash his destructive Flame Blast, eager to see how it would effect a target when coming from within them instead of under them.

Pillars of flame began to shoot out of random spots on Giant's body. The seemingly invulnerable navi was now clearly annoyed, but still thought of the geysers of heat erupting from its skin more as an itch than unbearable pain. Unfortunately for Flameman, Giant figured out one refreshing way to cool off involving the Bubble Wrap he just absorbed from Bubbleman's attack. A sphere of water quickly enveloped the colossus, dousing the flames and ejecting a soggy Flameman across the system. Plantman watched his brave ally sail smoldering and unconscious through the air. For an instant Plant was petrified with concern for his leaqst favorite team mate, but that ended when a large clump of sand shot into the air and intercepted Flameman perfectly. The ball of now slightly soggy sand fell to the base level, landing softly in more sand. Desertman let Flameman gently roll out of the cushion onto the ground where Johnny could safely jack him out.

Plantman was relieved to see someone was watching out for them. Desertman's efforts may not have slowed down Giant at all, but at least he could keep the rest of the team safe. Now Plant could worry about the problem at hand. The plan he came up with moments ago was looking as bad as Bubbleman predicted. Bubble's Lightning Rod trap was in place, and Giant likely had some electrical attacks from Sparkman earlier. The problem now was making the Giant use one of those attacks. And even if it did, would it really do enough damage? Flameman appeared to make the biggest impact so far and even that was shrugged off. It was starting to look like they really were insignificant insects trying to take on a Titan.

Things got worse when Giant looked at the palms of its hands and seemed to become aware of another ability it had. It rose its arm in the air which began glowing with a powerful energy that pulsed towards its fingertips. The smaller navis were not sure what was coming, but could tell their enormous adversary was finally going on the offensive. Everyone took cover the best they could. When the Giant was finished charging it pointed the palm of its hand downward toward the DLM and AH groups. A rain of bright green orbs of energy then began to rain down across the area. Like a deadly meteor shower, the precursor to Bass' signature AirBurst attack shattered what remained of the sector's northern half and caused the sky to darken and flicker and the ground to shake as the entire system began to crash from the damage. The navis in the line of fire did their best to evade the shots or hide behind their best defenses but those that avoided direct hits still took massive damage from the shockwaves of nearby explosions. Windman was hit directly by one burst but Pharon at least managed to recover the instantly deleted data. Plantman couldn't move fast enough to dodge so he too faced a quick deletion. Darklady's DarkAura took one hit dead on and was dissipated by it, the next shot just grazed her but was still enough to send her back to her PET. Shademan, damaged enough as it was, resigned to jack himself out before the onslaught could reach him, his operator hoping to recharge the vampire navi in his PET fast enough to jack back in and continue the fight assuming it continued. With Sparkman, Bubbleman, Bowlman, and Desertman all under rubble and under continued fire it didn't seem long for them.

Suddenly, the Giant's attack was interrupted by a white streak that weaved through the AirBursts with an impossibly perfect dodging pattern and slammed like a bullet into the creature's unprotected forehead, the BubbleWrap having been simultaneously removed by a well-timed NorthWind. The punch from the newcomer did an unexpected amount of damage to the surprised Giant, leaving the remaining spectators even more surprised as the towering monster began to fall backwards before justr barely correcting itself, shaking the ground even more with its stumbled steps. The small white navi silently continued with a follow-up attack of a Program Advance level attack that tore into the disoriented Giant with a massive ground-based shockwave and a massive air-based energy wave. The two waves of power crossed through Giant's chest, creating deep wounds in its thick armour and making the behemoth roar in pain for the first time since it appeared. Not relenting the white navi activated the Double Punishment GigaChip, sacrificing half of its own life energy to deal the same penalty to the otherwise incalcuable vitality of the Giant in a brilliant display of thunder and lightning.

As the white navi continued to pummel the bewildered Giant with unusually effective attacks, the rest of the navis remaining in the system only stared on in confusion. Finally, Sam's voice returned to the communication links to explain his trump card. "That navi is Vengeance.exe. I've been designing it with a specific purpose; the final destruction of Bass.exe. I won't go into too much detail on that, but as some of us have noticed, this Giant has a few things in common with the infamous Bass. There's the Get Ability, the basic weapon...and the fact that he's clearly out of our league. But even the most powerful enemies have weaknesses, and Bass' will be my Vengeance, and hopefully that will extend to this Giant as well."

The rest of the Net Guardians were thinking of questions for Sam, but his own navi Kingman was the first to say something. "You know, it would have been much smarter to activate Double Punishment first. More energy means a greater fraction of its overall life."

Sam groaned. "I'm still working on the AI, alright? If you really want to help, then jack out. I can actually plug your PET into the Vengeance Server to give this fighter some extra power."

"Intriguing. Well, I've done just about everything I can do here. Might as well put my faith and my strength in your agent of retribution..." Kingman nodded solemnly before jacking out.

Ringman perked up. "You saying I can contribute to this battle just by lending my energy to your other navi? Sign me up! Come on, Dust!"

Dust Man's attention snapped away from the ongoing destruction in the dying system. "If it's safer than here, then whatever! At least we'll be able to tell Kalinka we did...something...in a way."

"That's the spirit!" Ring and Dust jacked out as well and Sam plugged them all into the Vengeance Server. The plain white navi fighting Giant got even stronger and faster as it happened. However the Giant was already tempered by earlier attacks and began to recover. Vengeance continued to use different attacks to keep the Get Ability program guessing.

Down below the rubble began to disintegrate and slump away as sand. Desertman's head finally rose above as a small hill in the center of the pile and his hands lifted out the dazed bodies of his acquaintances Spark and Bubble. Bowlman was not surprised that he had to bust his own way out from under the ground. Although somewhat beaten up, these navis were still in fighting condition. They only had to figure out how to put that condition to use. Naomi soon flew down to meet with Bowlman.

"Are you alright?" Naomi directed the question at Bowl, but wasn't too surprised the bad guys gave affirmative responses as well. "So Kingman and those other two are chanelling their power into the white navi up there. Do you think we should join them?"

Bowlman looked intensely between the battle above and the haggard villains a few panels away. "I heard through Jon's PET. No thanks. I'd rather not bank everything on this one ball. Besides, somebody has to stick around to pick up the spare and make sure these clowns don't get a perfect game."

"What?" Naomi asked, confused by the pointless bowling analogies.

"He's sayin' it's all about the treasure with him." Sparkman summarized, shaking his head in disgust. "Whatever man, all I care about is saving my stomping grounds from this thing. I'm not up for trusting something just as dangerous either. Now that this thing has some holes in it I can get into, I'm going to try overloading some weak points. Just don't get in my way." Sparkman then ran off towards an upward ramp that was still standing.

"Has he taken one too many blubs to the head? There's barely anything blubbing left of this sector worth saving! Blub! Desert, it's just you and me now. I guess I have to stay and help you get the blubbing piece."

"Zawahh...Arhha showarahha zhee sooorrhh..." Desertman responded with a worried tone, looking up at the sky between Giant and Vengenace. Something else was coming into the battle to take the responsibility off their hands.

Monkey appeared from a swirling vortex in the sky and immediately used his rod to bat Vengeance away from Giant so he could start beating on it himself. A horde of lesser monkeys soon appeared to crawl all over the Giant like a swarm of fire ants on a carcass to gnaw at his growing wounds. Monkey was not in the mood for mischief this time and hammered away at the Giant's chest with large waves of pure force from his golden aura. Vengeance quickly recovered and came at Giant from the other side with unusually strong punches and kicks. The stoic navi was clearly unburdened by emotions of anger or pride that would divert his attention from his original target to the newcomer that attacked him. Monkey however, was determined to be the one to delete Giant so Fate would own up to his end of the bargain, so he stopped blasting the Giant long enough to give Vengeance another smack across the system with his rod.

"Aw hell, it's that BusterRod or whatever the hell his name is again." Bowlman groaned. "If he wins this fight, it could end up being a hell of a loss for us."

"Zoogawrah zhool?" Desertman asked Bowlman, puzzled.

"Yeah, we know that thing too, who do you think defeated him and saved the net? Knowing you jerks you're probably responsible for him in the first place."

"Ahh, Znahda shegarhha." Desertman answered somewhat defensively.

"Well, I guess that explains it, not that it really matters right now. Last time we sent him away somehow by breaking his crown. Naomi, think you can get me up close enough to him without him seeing me?"

"Maybe we should wait until he hurts the Giant some more first, he actually seems to be winning." Naomi suggested.

"Yeah, but he's also hurting King and the others since it looks like he doesn't want to be a team player. Come on." Bowlman got a ball ready and Naomi hesitantly lifted him by his arms and carried him upwards to the battle.

"So what do we do now blub?" Bubbleman asked his partner.

"...Zwe...Skahhsshazarahh!"

"You think we are going to be the ones to delete that thing? Bit delusional, aren't you blub?"

"Zhach, wehnihh sheborah!"

"Blub, you can't be serious..."

Giant tried putting up numerous barriers to protect itself, but the BubbleWraps were burst by Monkey and the Shadow was sliced by Vengeance. Giant had better success launching a counter-offensive with its fists. Its speed had slowly been upgrading from coming in contact with the exceptionally fast Vengeance. A swift right hook cut into Monkey, sending the legendary figure careening out of control, and an immediate follow up with the left drove its large spiked knuckles into the already highly tenderized Vengeance. A BodyBurn effect absorbed from Flameman instantly incinerated the monkey swarm and detonated Sparkman's mines before they could reach their targets.

Naomi tried to follow Monkey who was already recovering and flying back around Giant's backside to the front. The girl wasn't fast enough to keep up with him, especially with her heavy passenger. Just then Bowlman shouted out to her over the tumult. "Wait a sec! I just saw something over there in the Giant's ass."

"What!?" Naomi responded. She was confused by the implication, but had to look anyway, sure enough, there was an unusually bright blue sparkle emmanating from a fissure in the armour on Giant's backside. She was still disturbed. "Why were you looking at the Giant's ass anyway?"

"It's kinda hard to miss, don't you think? And it's getting so dark in here with the server crashing, that little blue light sticks out even more. Anyway, I think it could be the Mystery Data we're looking for. It is supposed to be beneath the Giant, right? How much more beneath is that?"

"So...are you suggesting we go in there and get it?"

"Look, I know what you're thinking, but I'm dead serious about diving into a Giant ass crack right now to get what we came for. If you think that's gay, I will totally prove you wrong later when we're safe and alone."

Resisting the urge to drop him, Naomi changed course. "Ugh! Later you're not going to be anywhere near me! I just wanted to make sure you weren't planning on chasing that Monkey any more, I'm tired of carrying you!"

Meanwhile, Bubbleman stood on the ground, Harpoon Gun pointed up at the bottom of the foot of Giant, which was taking a slow, large step and was moments away from flattening the poor scuba hamster. Bubbleman was rightfully terrified, but was putting his faith in Desertman's plan, even though he said he got the idea from Flameman. He took a deep breath, aimed as carefully as he could, and started shooting a continuous stream of Aqua Shots at a single point on the sole of Giant's foot. The first few harpoons stuck into the armour, but after a couple seconds they began to burst in watery explosions and bore a hole in the thick material. The foot got closer and closer to crushing Bubbleman, and soon there was no way to run. Bubble let out a long, high-pitched scream while he continued to shoot at the same spot just before the boot slammed down hard, flattening the entire area.

Bubbleman stopped screaming when he realized it worked. He was inside the hole he shot in the foot. He let out a large sigh of relief then looked up to poke at the last few cracks on the inner layer of the armour before giving way to the juicy datastream-filled innards of the Giant's body.

"Mmneruzhii, ahhna zavva shureshh zamass." Desertman thanked Bubble and told him to leave the rest to him. Bubs couldn't see much in the dark, but could feel the sand along with Desert's core rising up past him along the walls of the cubby hole, and into the wound to invade Giant's systems. Bubble shuddered in discomfort, but moments later Giant was on the move again and took another large step, leaving Bubbleman standing alone on a small mound in the middle of a footstep-sized crater. He fell onto his back in exhaustion.

Desertman's idea stemmed from Flameman's earlier Flame Blast. That attack was designed to cause firey eruptions from beneath the ground, but in this case he caused firey eruptions from beneath the skin. At that point Desertman gained suspicions that Giant's body, or at least his armour was composed of the same material as cyberworld's base terrain. Now, as he spread through Giant's interior, using his ground disintegration ability everywhere he could and succeeding, his suspicions were confirmed.

Outside, Monkey had enlarged his rod to nearly Giant's size and was lining up for a devastating blow to the head. With Vengeance capturing the creature's attention, he didn't expect a dodge. He was mortified when he swung the rod at full strength only to have Giant duck it. Only it wasn't a duck, it turned out its left leg had just crumbled below the knee and the immense navi was falling on its face.

The Giant landed on its knees and hands, it didn't appear to be in pain so much as in distress. More of the left leg began to crumble away and rain sand down to what remained of the system below. Not carrying the type of personality to give up (or any personality for that matter) Giant activated its newest ability absorbed in bits from various navis that were attacking it, flight. Giant rose once again and charged up the Air Bursts in its hands. Both Monkey and Vengeance rushed forward to finish the mountainous nightmare, but Vengeance was slightly faster. The white navi punched right through Giant's chest, which was already partially disintegrated, causing sand and dust to pour out of the exit wound like a waterfall of blood. Cracks began to spread around the holes on either side of its torso.

Monkey was furious, but continued on his attack path until a splitting headache overcame him, paralyzing him with pain. He could feel Fate forcing him to jack out. "No! NO!! It's not deleted yet!! Give me a chance!! DAMN YOU!!" but his pleas were wasted, in a golden flash, Monkey disappeared back from whence he came.

His mission completed, folders and energy drained, Vengeance jacked out on his own accord. Giant was still attempting to fight, despite the continued degradation of its body. Sparkman eventually stopped shooting Sparkwaves at it when he noticed it was pretty much over. His thoughts returned once more to his job and his pay, and he wondered if there was still a chance to salvage the data once the deletion was finalized. Looking down at the mountain of sand piling up on the ground, he dreaded the kind of seach that might be required.

Bubbleman began swimming up to Giant again upon realizing Desert would have a tought time getting out without being connected to the ground. He also hoped Desert could have recovered the Gamma piece while in there. He summoned all the bubbles he could from the numerous holes left in the area by the devastaion and spread them around Giant's sandy body. With the sand turned to mud, Giant suddenly found itself heavier than expected and drifted gradually back down to the ground. On contact with the base level, a new line of sand was drawn away from the Giant's body. A Desert hand popped out of the mound to wave to Bubbleman in thanks. Bubble swam to meet his comrade.

Having taken serious damage and with its remaining energy leaked out of its ruined shell, the Giant finally met its end with a quiet and peaceful deletion. Like a mammoth ape that fell from a skyscraper, it settled listlessly layed out on the ground and its eyes went dark. It let out one final weakened groan that was still voluminous enough to shake the ground, and then burst into red and blue pixels that evaporated quickly in the dead system's air. All of the sand created from its body disappeared along with it, leaving only three navis on the ground of a dark and desolate battlefield.

Bubbleman, Desertman, and Sparkman looked around desperately for any sign of the Gamma Piece. Stuart quickly jacked in the final nameless navi to make a quick pick-up. But there was nothing but increasing darkness in the area as it grew closer and closer to complete shut down.

"Aw, hell. Don't tell me the prize was deleted with the monster. That is complete Bullshit." Sparkman pleaded with exasperation.

"No need to worry about that guys!" Bowlman's voice called from above. Everyone else looked up to find an exhausted Naomi still holding Bowlman, who in turn was holding the data crystal they were looking for. The crystal's blue glow practically the sole remaining light source in the area. "Snooze ya lose!"

"Agreed, you shoulda run when you had the chance blub!" Bubbleman opened fire with his harpoons before he began talking. Sparkman didn't hesitate to fire a volley of Spark Shocks either. Naomi only dodged the attacks for a few seconds before the two navis finally jacked out with their prize.

The sector was nearly pitch black now, and was growing deathly quiet. The navis were momentarily paralyzed with rage, but self preservation quickly kicked in and they each jacked out, but not before Sparkman spoke into the dark, "You guys had better make sure we get paid for our trouble..."

12:30 AM (JST) Mission Clock: 17:16

The Net Guardians made themselves at home in the deluxe hotel room Moe rented in a rare splurge for the most frugal member of the team. The Officials were in the middle of pulling an all nighter to repair the damage done to one of the Dentown network's busiest servers. In the confusion Mr.Famous sent Trisha and Moe on their way, entrusting them with the Gamma piece to return to Cossack, and so they met up with their team mates and decided how to spend the night before the long journey back home. Moe decided the Acid Hackers' foiled plot was reason enough to celebrate and dip into his rainy day fund.

Much of the team decided to save actual celebrations for later, especially since they still hadn't accomplished their long time goal of bringing the AH to justice. Even though the three groups fighting Giant had to be jacked in within at least a block from each other, none of the NG could find any traces of their nemeses. At this point Sam was busy with his PETs, Kingman, Ringman, and Dust Man were feeling exceedingly drained from their experience in the Vengeance Server, but were otherwise in one piece. Sam lost months worth of progress on Vengeance by using him in such a reckless instant, but he was pleased to get a test run out of the design before it accomplished its true purpose. One of the first updates to the programming he made was to make sure the AI would activate Double Punishment first and foremost.

Metalman, Bowlman, and Darkman required less repairs and were soon in restful sleep mode with their operators settling into their beds for something similar. Jon was staying awake to tell the whole story of the day's adventure to his pal the hobo, who had been following the group around all day yet everytime someone looked at him he was drunk and asleep.

The party was not yet complete without the leaders however, who entered the room unannounced with dirty and tattered clothes about half an hour after the rest of the team. They looked unusually casual for two people who had been shot at with a tank for fifteen minutes and then lost in the countryside for four hours. David greeted the team. "Hey guys, got your message. Nice room. So what did we miss?"

"We fought a giant navi and got the mystery data, didn't the message say that?" Adrienne replied.

"Yeah, but for some reason I expected more specifics."

"So what happened to you guys?" Jon asked.

Carlos recapped their chase scene after reuniting with his other PET and Naomi. "Well, it was several close calls, but my superior driving skills kept us in one piece. If it wasn't for the worthless extra baggage here I might have been able to salvage the car as well and we wouldn't have had to walk back to town."

"Get over yourself lardass." David scoffed. "Or would you rather Serenade and I didn't crack their scanning frequencies and set up that jamming signal? I'm pretty sure just driving off cliffs like a lunatic wouldn't account for survival. In fact I'm quite surprised we survived in spite of your driving."

"I can see where this is going guys. Please just save it for later." Moe pleaded.

David nodded and plopped down on a sofa. "Right, whatever. So, we got the piece of whatever it is. Do we have any idea what it does yet now that we have time to think about it?"

Trisha offered some explanation. "The Official database files Moe and I peeked at didn't have anything except that there were five of these things codenamed 'G frags' and it was banned in every major network nation for these things to be brought together for the last twenty years. If Famous knew anything about it he wasn't any help either. Although if the files were so skimpy on the info I wonder if anybody really knows anything about it."

"Sounds like something kinda heavy." Cyros commented. "If it's something dangerous, or at least illegal, why not just delete the data?"

"Don't ask us." Moe shrugged. "Though a rough analysis of the data crystal combined with what Trisha remembers about the one she was looking after shows a bunch of anomalous stuff. Can't make head or tails of it, but it may not be easy to delete...part of it seems to be linked permanently to the net."

Carlos raised an eyebrow. "That doesn't make any sense. We got it off the net, didn't we?"

"Sorta. It uses navi's PET link for a proxy thingamajig." Jon tried to explain. "Anyway, when Bowlman jacked out with it, the crystal kinda temporarily merged with him and started using up the PET's resources like hell. When we got here I jacked him back in and transferred the piece to Dust Man. Figured since the PET it's stored on has to be given to Cossack when we get back home, plus Dust has the PET power to spare being a weaker navi type and all."

David picked himself up and stretched. "The technical genius occupying this room is staggering. I hope you guys don't mind if I run my own analysis before hittin' the hay."

Moe shrugged. "You're welcome to try. Dust's PET is over there on the coffee table."

"What table?"

"The one the hobo is sleeping under."

"What hobo?"

"Ugh, this table right here!" Moe slammed his hand down on the table in the middle of the room. He looked at David like he was retarded for a few seconds before looking down and realizing Dust Man's PET wasn't there. "Oh. Okay, who moved it? Hobo? I'm looking in your direction, you can take it out of your mouth, or whatever...Hobo?"

Jon was perplexed. "Dude, he was right there under the table a second ago, I was talking to him right before David and Carlos came in. How can one little alcoholic geezer move around so fast?"

The whole group began to look around the hotel room both for the valuable PET and the not so valuable vagabond. With eight people searching, it didn't take long to come to the bone chilling conclusion. They were robbed.

1:00 AM (JST) Mission Clock: 17:46

Rather than a hotel, the Acid Hackers wound up settling down in a more home-like environment, a condemned factory on the south end of the city. Unlike the city of Crescent that let many of its old industrial buildings lie forgotten and rot, the Electopians had immediate plans to reuse the property and the factory was already half demolished. Still, it provided shelter for now and being the middle of the night, the team had a good seven hours before people started showing up to find their hiding spot.

"This place is pretty big compared to our warehouse." Johnny mused. He was the most energetic of the group at this point since he already slept recently. "Wonder if they built robots here? I'm gonna go look around to see if they left any behind."

"If they're anything like the robots we fought today then they won't be too impressive, trust me." Jeremy said, siting on top of the tank parked in the middle of the floor. "Man, when's Vidal going to get here with that fuel? It sucked having to push this thing in here."

"Maybe he and Fate abandoned us because we failed to get the last piece." Jake suggested pessimistically. "We could be stuck here."

"Well, not here exactly." Stuart corrected. "This place will be a busy construction site by tomorrow. This country doesn't have many good secret hideout locations for us. If the WWW was any indication, we'd have to build a base in the mountains or out at sea."

"We haven't failed to get the piece yet, you guys. We just have to get it from the Net Guardians, that's all." Matt chimed in with some optimism. "If we could just reload the tank with more ammo, we wouldn't break a sweat doing that."

"Vidal is probably busy dealing with those mercenaries." Nijubu added. "I wonder if their pay will come out of our budget?"

"If I was him I wouldn't pay those jerks at all. They didn't to jack!" Jeremy scoffed, going purely on what he heard from his team mates about the cooperative effort.

"Well, whatever they do, I just hope it's not the end of the team." Nijubu sighed. "Our whole purpose was to get the Gamma pieces, and we owe all the stuff Fate supplied us with to that."

Then from the darkness came the familiar, deep, mysterious voice of their benefactor. "Ah, do not feel bad my boy..."

"Eh? That sounded close!" Matt gasped, looking around frantically. "Fate? Are you actually here?"

Then, out of the shadows strolled their buddy Vidal, a smug look adorning his face. Johnny jumped up and down and pointed at the new arrival. "Ah HA! I knew it, you ARE Fate! The ol' double fake out doesn't work on me!"

Vidal's smugness was momentarily replaced with confusion. "What? I already explained, I just work for the guy. Does my voice sound remotely like the one that spoke a second ago?" It didn't. "Anyway, we got some good news. We got the last piece after all! Fate isn't even mad or anything. Says we all played such an important role in acquiring it along with the rest of the pieces, that the NG getting their hands on it for an hour barely qualifies as a minor setback."

"Yer freakin' screwin' with me!" Jeremy shouted out in disbelief. "After all that trouble the Net Guardians just drop it into our hands? How? Where is it?"

Vidal just smirked and pointed up to the rafters. There, standing proudly on a beam, holding Dust Man's PET in a white-knuckled grasp, was a thin old man with a long, scruffy grey beard. He wore tattered green an brown clothes with miscoloured patches on the knees and elbows. Among his attire was a makeshift belt made with a rope, shoes and socks that showed his toes, a soiled trench coat, and a crushed fedora. The otherwise pathetic and homely geezer held a gaze of such evil and intensity that it completely overshadowed the rest of his appearance. He instilled fear and respect in the underlings gazing up at him. He spoke in the same deep, commanding voice in order to both answer Jeremy's question and finally introduce himself to his team. "It was Fate that brought it all together now..."

The End

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