The TV was on. The Acid Hackers were watching it. The operators sat on various chairs. The navis watched from the computer. Except Bubble Man, who was sleeping. They watched as the show's mysteries unfolded. There was crime in the drama that played out on the TV, and someone was guilty of a heinous crime. And a group of young sleuths were the ones that had to solve it.

"SCOOBY DOO!!!! WHERE ARE YOU!?!?!" the cartoon yelled.

"You sure we haven't seen this episode?" asked Jeremy.

"Of course we haven't. I wanna see if they actually find a ghost in this episode" answered Johnny.

"And now to unmask the villain." Then a commercial break came on.

"I say it's old man Jenkins" answered Matt.

"Nah, I think it's that young hussy from the Malt Shop" said Jake.

"You're both wrong! It's Red Herring!!!" yelled Stuart.

"No! It's an actual ghost!!" said Johnny

"And now, back to out show." Said the Commercial

All the Acid Hackers watched the TV, intent on seeing who the villain was.

"The villain is..."

Then the screen turned a nice shade of black, as if it had been turned off.

"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO*breath*OOOOOOOOO!" the Acid Hackers yelled. This woke the resident auto-navi from his sleep in the computer.

"What the blub are you guys yelling about?"

"SILENCE" a voice said from the TV.

"What the blub was that?"

"I SAID SILENCE!!!" the voice said again. Jeremy recognized it.

"Fate? That you?"

"YES. I HAVE JUST FOUND THE LOCATION OF THE NEXT PIECE OF GAMMA."

The Acid Hackers smiled, both humans and navis.

"Well?" asked Nijubu. "Where is it?"

"IT IS LOCATED IN THE DEEPEST PART OF THE NETWORK OF THE GENJIBO CITY SCILAB"

All of the Acid Hackers let that sink in for a moment. There was a rare moment of silence. All the Acid Hackers broke it simultaneously.

"SCREW DAT!!!" they all yelled.

"I THOUGHT YOU MIGHT FELL THAT WAY. THAT IS WHY I HAVE TAKEN THE LIBERTY OF DEVISING A WAY FOR YOU TO SUCEED. YOU WILL BE RECEIVING A PIECE OF DATA AT YOUR COMPUTER RIGHT ABOUT....NOW."

The computer said, "You got mail."

"THAT DATA IS A VERY POWERFUL VIRUS. AT THE MOMENT, IT IS HARMLESS. BUT IN 24 HOURS, IT WILL BE RELEASED UPON WHATEVER COMPUTER SYSTEM IT IS IN. ONE OF THE NAVIS MUST SNEAK INTO THE SCILAB AREA AND PLANT IT THERE. ONE IT IS RELEASED, SNEAKING IN WILL BE A BREEZE."

"Wait just a blub minute." Said Bubble Man. "What's to stop the virus from effecting us?"

The computer, as if on cue, said, "You got more mail."

"THAT IS. ANY QUESTIONS?"

"I have one." Said Stuart.

"YES?"

"Who was the villain on today's episode of Scooby Doo?"

"........IT WAS OLD MAN JENKINS. NOW ARE THERE ANY RELEVANT QUESTIONS?"

The Acid Hackers shook their heads.

"GOOD LUCK."

The TV turned back on. Some other show was on the that the Acid Hackers didn't care for. They left it on, but ignored it. Then Matt said, "HAH!!! I was right! Pay up people!!!"

The rest of the Acid Hackers handed Matt 1000 Zenny each.

"Now that that's done." Said Nijubu, "I believe it is time to deliver that virus to Scilab. Desert Man should be able to take care of it, thanks to his shape shifting abilities. He'll fit right in."

On the computer screen, Desert Man nodded, and transformed into an official looking navi. "Hello, I'm an official. Watch me as I can't even capture a bunch of punks." He said in a sarcastic tone. The Acid Hackers laughed. He then grabbed the data containing the virus, and went on his way.

As he left, a news report was on the TV. "The officials have said nothing of the identity of the criminal they apprehended, but that he was highly dangerous."

Desert Man, in his new transformed state, grabbed the data package containing the virus.

"Zhe Zacha Zooom" said Desertman in his normal voice. He noticed everyone glaring at him, coughed nervously and restated in his disguised voice. "Be back soon." He said. He then left the AH computer network and headed towards the Genjibo computer network.

The computer network was a frightening one. There was a great emptiness there. And all the navis looked as if they would rather be anywhere else but there. Desert Man felt the same way.

"OK....gotta get this thing to where it'll do the most damage" he thought to himself. He began searching. He figured the most effective space would be the exact center of the network. He headed to the center.

Luckily, no one was there. He put the data package down, then pressed a button on it. This button activated a cloaking device, rendering the package invisible. He then left.

Only to run right into an official navi. The top official navi, to be precise.

"What are you doing?" Protoman inquired.

"Nothing."

"Why?"

"Um......"

"Wait a minute.....I haven't seen you before..." Proto Man pulled out a sword. "You have 5 seconds to explain yourself."

"um....It's my first day!" Desert Man blurted out.

"Oh......carry on." Proto Man than left.

Desert Man left before he had the chance to think that entire conversation through.

Later that night, at AHHQ...

"So tomorrow's the big day, I guess." said Johnny casually as he flipped through the channels on the TV.

"Well, from the sound of things, it won't be that big." Matt shrugged. "Fate made it sound like this virus will do all the work for us. There'll be no security, we stay here, send our navis in through the net, release the anti-virus when we get there, and then walk out with the Gamma piece."

"Well, if we fix the system with the anti-virus, won't the security be restored?" asked Jake.

Matt thought about it. "Fate didn't seem to think that was a problem, but if that does happen, at least the mission will end up being more interesting than it's projected to be."

Jeremy was grumbling for quite some time and finally spoke up. "Hey, don't you guys wanna know more about this Fate guy? Like who he is, where he gets all these toys, why the hell he doesn't just do all the work himself if he has the power?"

The other Acid Hackers were in complete agreement. They had refrained from looking the gift horse in the mouth long enough. Their curiousity was getting too much to handle. "He's never been quite so hands on with these missions. Obviously we need more help than usual to deal with a Scilab's security, but really, if he had viruses like this at his disposal, why are we just seeing it now?"

Matt sighed, "I don't know how successful I'm going to be, but I'm going to try to dig up some info on this guy."

"If you're going to stay up all night Googling the word 'fate' you can forget it." chuckled Jeremy. He sighed as he continued, "I already tried that."

"I have a few ideas. No guarantee they'll work though." Matt grabbed a chair and pulled it up to the computer. He sat down and took a deep breath. "I'm actually more worried this guy is watching everything we do and will do something to prevent me from getting too far in my research."

Stuart yawned and started to head over to his shed. "Well, if we find you dead tomorrow morning we'll know why, at least. Good luck with that."

"Uh...thanks."

The next morning, the rest of the Acid Hackers found Matt's still body slumped over the computer console.

"Huh." said Stuart, scratching his baseball capped head. "You know I was just kidding about that, right? Well, might as well dump the corpse before he starts to stink up the place."

"He just fell asleep here." said Nijubu, rolling his eyes. He shook Matt's shoulder a little. The drooling hacker groaned a bit as he returned to consciousness. When he realized where and when he was he groaned again.

"I take it you didn't find anything helpful?" Johnny sighed.

"Well, I did find something. Dunno how helpful though..." He saw everyone was staring at him intently, so he shrugged and opened a sound file.

"I have just found the location of the next piece of Gamma. It is located in the..." The voice on the sound file continued with the message they received from Fate the previous day. While the original voice was thunderous, echoing, and robotic, this voice was dark, raspy, and more recognizably human.

Matt explained, "I looked up some voice synthesizing programs and had Flash go and steal a good one. Sure enough, one of the most basic voice filters on it matched the pattern Fate spoke to us with yesterday. I ran a reverse filter on it and got this. It's an approximation of what Fate's real voice may sound like. Keep in mind it's only an approximation. But if that IS what his voice sounds like...well..."

Jake concluded the thought with what he was thinking himself, "He sounds like an old fart, and not a very healthy one."

Matt laughed and nodded, "Thing is, this may be the answer to the 'why doesn't he do he own dirty business' question. He has access to all this tech, but he's not in the condition to use it himself. He needs strapping young bucks like us and our super-charged navis to get the job done." It's a long shot, but it's the best explanation I have." He then pulled up another file from the computer, a text file with a viral analysis on it. "This is the only other research I could gather. It's a tad more disturbing. It's about the virus he had us plant at SciLab. I'll spare you the gruesome and technical details, but it's a mutated Class-A virus that turns the system it infects into a navi-killing machine. It also infects teleporters and transmits itself to anywhere else connected to the server it's in, so it spreads pretty fast and there's very little that can be done to stop it."

The other Hackers were wide-eyed in disbelief. Stuart was shaking his head. "Come on, viruses like that don't even exist. If it did the net would have been eradicated years ago. There's always a nut crazy enough to release something like that on the world."

Matt nodded, "Actually, this virus has been used on foreign nets a few times in the past. It caused quite a lot of damage before they could contain it too. These incidents were all in the 80's, before Hikari's navi personality innovations, before mass navi slaughter was considered a big deal. It's likely most NetCriminals who have access to this virus are smart enough not to use it since it can put an end to themselves as easily as it can everything else."

Jeremy was beating his head against a warehouse support column at this point. "And we just got suckered into using one by some deranged old psycho! Man! We're as idiotic as Fate for agreeing to this!"

"On the contrary, it seems Fate knew exactly what to do with a doomsday weapon like this. I was as worried as you until I dug up some info on SciLab security. See, SciLab experiments with hazardous material like this virus on a daily basis. Their firewalls are designed specifically to contain viral outbreaks like this in the event of an accident."

The rest were put at ease as they realized what this meant. It would be like releasing a cloud of nerve gas in a biosphere. Everything inside would die, leaving the outside perfectly safe. Now they were just left with the question of who Fate was. Jeremy summarized the clues they had so far. "Well, it seems the crazy old moron isn't as crazy and moronic as I thought he was. So we know he may be old, he has access to advanced technology, and he seems to know SciLab's systems pretty well. Do we know anyone like that?"

"Cossack?" suggested Johnny.

"After what we did to him? Yeah, he'd be all over helping us out." Jeremy responded sarcastically.

"Maybe Dr.Wily? This seems like something the WWW would do." guessed Jake.

"If he's doing it all from behind bars maybe, unless he broke out recently and we didn't hear about it."

"Well, I'm satisfied with the information we have now." said Nijubu. "At the moment, I believe our 24 hours are almost up. That SciLab should be a mass graveyard pretty soon. I say we get our navis down there and try to wrap up this mystery later. What do you say gang?"

"Jinkies!" exclaimed Jake. "Almost forgot about it. Let's go!"

Matt yawned and scratched himself. "I'll catch up with you guys later. I just woke up you know."

"We're not going anywhere. Just jack Flashman in before you wash the corpse stench off you." advised Stuart.

In a matter of minutes the Acid Hackers were in the network of another Netopian city, hanging outside a teleporter that lead into the visitor's area of the SciLab system. All was quiet at the moment. None of the navis passing by considered this group of eight was up to anything insidious.

"Did we get here too early or something? It's pretty calm here." Punk grumbled.

"I dunno, it's been exactly 24 hours since you set the virus, right Desertman?" asked Flashman.

"Zmmm...(Well, I may not have been as swift as I boasted earlier)" Desertman murmured.

As if on cue, the network wallpaper shifted from a calming blue to a flashing red. A doomsday whistle started sounding and a computer voice began to alert all navis online, "Warning: Containment breach detected in SciLab mainframe. Possible viral infection. Please jack out immediately until the problem is resolved. Have a nice day."

As the civilian navis in the area began to either jack out or run around aimlessly in panic, the Hackers decided it was time to move in.

"So we just gotta throw the anti-virus through the teleporter right? That'll clean up the place before it can kill us." said Beastman.

"Why can't we just use the blubbin' anti-virus on ourselves? Keep the system infected but not us blub." complained Bubbleman.

"Nah, both the virus and the anti-virus affect the system directly, it has no effect on navis." clarified Flashman. "Right now we just have to wait until the system has a chance to do its work."

Plantman was scratching his flowery head. "Uh, won't the security system lock everything out now that the infection has commenced?"

"Oh crap!" Flashman didn't know what to do. Sure enough, they could all see the one teleorter in the system seal itself off.

"Nothing left to do but solve this problem AH style!" roared Punk as he thrusted his spikey fist into the air. "Acid Hackers! AAATTAAACK!!"

"You mean attack the lock on the teleporter right?" asked Beastman with uncertainty.

"No, I mean everyone attack Beastman." answered Punk sarcastically. He went on angrily "Of course I mean the lock on the teleporter!"

And so everyone stopped attacking Beastman and turned on the thick firewalls layering themselves over their way in. Flashman slowed it down with a Time Stopper. Punk and Beastman attacked the wall physically, and got a painful jolt from them and were thrown back. Plantman sent his vines snaking through the ground to crush the defenses from below while Flameman and Bubbleman rained fire and harpoons on the walls from above. Noticing the walls begin to crack, Desertman finished them off with a load of Sandstone bricks crashing down from the sky. With the red lights still flashing and the alarms still blaring, they weren't quite sure if their invasion was noticed yet.

"Wow, and after all that, the teleporter itself is still in on piece." commented Plantman. The entrance was indeed still active, but noticably unstable from all the damage inflicted around it. "Maybe we should send in Bubbleman first to make sure it works."

Bubbleman had to leap up to smack Plantman in the head. He then grabbed the data crystal with the anti-virus. "There's only one blubbing thing we have to throw in, blub, and this is it!"

Bubbleman wasted no time in sending the anti-virus through the warp. Within seconds the red lights stopped flashing and the sirens stopped blaring. The computer voice from nowhere updated them on the situation. "Viral breach stabilized. Please stay away from SciLab systems until complete sterilization can be achieved. Thank you and have a nice day."

"A'ight, let's move people." commanded Punk. "Flash, how long we got until the navis in there recover?"

Flashman shook his head solemnly, "Forever. We don't have to worry about the navis in there, but we may have to worry about new navis that jack in between now and when we get the piece."

"Well then, no time to lose."

Punk pushed their soulless V1 navi through the warp first to check that it was indeed stable for them. Jeremy reported back the navis status. "He got a 42% energy drain due to the weakened connection. For each of you guys that'll be like 10% tops."

"Uh...will it hurt?" asked Flameman.

"What are you askin' me for?" shot back Jeremy. "Do I look like I've been through an unstable teleporter in the cyberworld before? Why don't YOU tell me what it feels like, genius?"

The navis shrugged and leapt in. They each shot like a beam of light through the connection line into the foyer of SciLab's visitor center. Every navi rematerialized in tact, although with a little less data. They staggered forward a bit, with a look of wide-eyed surprise on their faces. Flameman uttered a quiet "ow".

"So, it did hurt, I take it?" checked Jeremy.

"Like every digit of my programming was being ripped apart at the seams. For a brief, yet eternal millisecond, my soul was torn asunder." The other navis nodded in agreement with Flameman.

"Pfft, wusses. Get going."

The area the navis were in was eerily quiet. They noticed more warps on the other end of the platform. Security checkpoints stood between them and these exits, there were also vacant posts for sentry navis. They knew where they had to go. After a few more empty rooms deeper into the system, brutally shutting down automated security along the way, they finally ended up in the private area.

"Azhooowaza...(This is where I placed the virus. I couldn't get through any farther without more thorough checks.)" Desertman explained. It seemed this was also where the security detail rushed to when the infection began in hopes of stopping it at the source. These navis could be seen laying on the ground, motionless.

"Ah, so they're not deleted yet after all. At least the virus put them out of commission." Plantman commented.

"This virus doesn't delete." said Flashman. "It kills. These navis have been drained of all energy and vital code. There's no restoring them. These are just empty husks, they'll never rise again."

Some of the Hackers were a little shocked. They had no idea how brutal the virus was. Punk just chuckled. "Good then! The less SciLab nerds on the Cyberworld the better! This mission is starting to get entertaining after all!"

The evil navis strode through the system's halls past and over several eerily still remnants of innocent navis. Like many good places of business, there were signs along the walls indicating the directions of the various departments in SciLab. Their destination was the archives area. They finally arrived at one last fork in the road splitting three ways to three different archive s. Nobody was sure which room held the Gamma piece. They had some guesswork to deal with.

Flashman groaned. "Okay, left is the main data archive, straight ahead is the text archive, I think we can rule that out, and right is the mystery data archive."

"Oooh, who can resist the lure of the mystery door?" said Flameman, awestruck. "A Gamma piece is a Gamma piece, but the mystery door could be anything! It could even be a Gamma piece!"

"It's just unfinished experiments there, blub. I bet the real payload is in the main archive." said Bubbleman.

Flameman had to disagree. "What makes you think they weren't experimenting on the Gamma piece and couldn't figure out what it was so they stored it in the other archive? Heck, WE can't figure out what they do."

"Blub, but the SciLab workers aren't dopes like us, blub. Don't you blubs know how to read? We take a left!"

"No, we go right!"

They started yelling at eachother. They didn't even notice they were about to have company. Just as they feared the system wasn't safe from new navis jacking in once the virus was cleared out, and it was just the Acid Hacker's luck for these navis to include their nemeses, the Net Guardians.

The NG had followed the trail of the AH up to this point and saw this moment of arguing as the perfect oppurtunity to attack. The Net Guardians burst out of the shadows. Fortunately, the Acid Hackers looked up at the last minute and saw the Guardians heading straight towards them. They jumped out of the way at the last second.

"Didn't expect you losers to show up here." Said Punk.

"What are you doing here, Hackers?" Yelled Drill Man.

"What we always do: Annihi-" Flash Man suddenly stopped talking mid sentence. He looked at the Net Guardians for a second. "Where's the hell's the giant chess piece?"

Before anyone of the Net Guardians could answer, Flame Man answered. "Mr. Checkmated was probably too afraid of us and didn't come!"

The Net Guardians remained silent for a moment. They looked pissed.

Punk spoke. "Well, since I don't want to be unfair to these losers, I think I'll just go on ahead so it's a nice even six on six. Later, nerds!!"

Punk began to walk away down the left path, followed by their normal navi blank the Net Guardians thankfully hadn't noticed yet. "You!" Serenade yelled. "Stop!!" He then charged up. "Holy Shoc-"

He was unable to launch the Holy Shocker because at that moment Serenade was hit in the shoulder by a well aimed harpoon, courtesy of Bubble Man. With the energy their V1 had already lost getting there one atttack would have finished him, so protecting the peon was imperative.

The rest of the Net Guardians lashed out at the Acid Hackers.

"Flame on! Wrahhh!!" Flameman ignited his body to foil a direct charge from Drillman. Drillman got scorched by the firey navi's natural BodyBurn ability, lost control of his flight path, and careened into a nearby wall.

Serenade put all his attention on Bubbleman, since he couldn't take his frustration out on Punk. Bubbleman was the only one there with chips at his disposal, but every Bubbleshot or SideBubble he launched at Serenade was reflected right back at him. Bubs' BubbleWrap barrier helped defend him for a little bit before he soon fell to his own attacks.

Yamatoman and Beastman locked Spear and Claw, it became apparent to Beastman that the NetGuardians were no closer to their operators than they were, nobody was using chips to their advantage. Beastman decided to take advantage of this by going all out with a Wild Rush. He leapt back a separated his head and arms to launch them right at Yamatoman, who would normally block the reckless attack with one of his many Object or CurseShield chips. The samurai navi didn't need to trip up the attack to dodge it however.

Meanwhile Flashman was taking on his favorite opponent Darkman, the navi that was strange enough without switching genders every now and then. Flashman thought a paralyzing flash would put the bat flinging brick at his mercy but in the instant of the flash, Darkman disapeared. "Impossible!" thought Flashman, "My light pierces through invisibility, how can he hide?" He didn't even notice the Shadow Axe looming behind his head. Luckily for him, a stray shot of Beastman's Wild Rush knocked it out of the way before it could decapitate the not-so-bright navi of light. Hearing the collision, Flashman spun around to confront the revealed Darkman. He shouted a thanks to Beastman before continuing his fight.

Metalman had taken on Plantman, who knew his vines could be easily crushed and/or sliced by Metalman's weapons, left it all up to his gatling thorns. Metalman bravely took each hit dead on as he tried to charge in for a single punch to end it right away, but could not get close enough before even his tough armor started to crack at the onslaught of bullets. He fell back and attacked long range with his missiles instead.

Meanwhile Desertman was taking a morbid approach to Bowlman, picking up the various navi corpses lying around to block his opponent's rapid firing bowling pins. Bowlman was outraged "You sick fiend! It's bad enough what you did to these innocent people, now you're desecrating their remains!" He stomped the ground to punish the ground based navi by setting pins directly beneath him, converting some of his body mass to do so.

Desertman quickly relocated to another spot through the ground and delivered his response in his own cryptic language. "(And yet you think we actually care. We only regret you weren't here to share their fate.)"

Bowlman could not understand Desertman's words, but the soulless, condescending tone spoke for itself. Unprepared to allow this battle go any further, he decided to take advantage of the SciLab system's walls and ceiling and lofted his own ball as hard as he could, shattering the structure above Desertman, causing it to all crash down on the shocked sand pile. The rest of the hall began to crumble as well in chain reaction.

"Way to go, Bowlman!" shouted Drillman sarcastically as he took to flight mode to get off the crumbling ground.

"Yeah! Way to go!" shouted Serenade encouragingly as he got to the safe end of the hall and released the full force of his Holy Shocker to not only cause further damage to the building, but push all the Acid Hackers back into the weakest part of it. The NetGuardians had to scramble to get out of the way, but not all were successful. After Serenade's reckless attack was finished, the entire hall had crumbled away opening up the endless abyss below the cyberworld. With nowhere to stand, all the non-flying navis began to fall to their doom. Flashman, Desertman, Beastman, Flameman, and Plantman all logged out manually while yelling out curses against the NetGuardians at the top of their virutal lungs. Yamatoman and Bowlman were also caught in the crossfire, and before logging out themselves, shouted out some pretty nasty things to Serenade himself.

Bubbleman was the only Hacker left, floating above the abyss and staring down the remaining NetGuardians with bitter contempt. "You blubbing blubbers. You blubs of blubbles. You're not better than we are blub. You're just as irreverent of SciLab, not to mention your own team mates. And you call us monsters, blub!"

Serenade just gave Bubbleman a cold hard stare. "Yeah, well maybe we're not all sweet, innocent, upstanding citizens after all."

"Oh, this has something to do with Kingman doesn't it, blub? Oh, don't tell me the NetGuardians have a blubbin' traitor in their midst." Bubbleman was closer than he thought, he began to chuckle.

"Are you going to run or not? You do notice you're drastically outnumbered now, don't you?" Drillman taunted.

"Hmph. Fine. You win this round blubs, but know that your annihilation is nigh! Blub!" With that Bubbleman tossed a Geyser charge into the abyss below him, it immediately burst into an explosive stream of water that sent the NetGuardians into defensive positions. When the foam cleared, the autonavi was gone.

Meanwhile, Punk was outside the main archive scanning the record files. "Hmm, G-segment...that's gotta be it. Address 106A:0D" He turned to his blank-faced companion. "You got all that? You may have to help me look." The Normal Navi just stared at him blankly. Punk sighed. "Jeremy?"

"Yeah, don't worry about it. I'll control the navi directly. I can't send you chips through the SciLab firewall anyway, might as well do some form of operation. Just hurry it up, the other guys are already finished, and there may be four NetGuardians advancing on your position."

"It's not the NetGuardians you have to worry about, criminal."

Punk spun around to be confronted with one of the last navis he expected to find there, Protoman.exe. He was standing in front of the data room doors, Punk didn't even hear him coming. "Well, if it isn't the famous Official soldier of justice. Don't you have anything better to do than guard SciLab's trash bin?"

The voice of Protoman's operator was heard through Protoman's connection. "We know you were responsible for releasing that virus, and hacking confidential government files is a serious offence. You have no idea how much trouble you're in."

Punk grew a little nervous. It seemed unlike his own operator, Protoman was in the building, and so he would have no problem using his full battlechip arsenal. Jeremy had a plan though, he noticed the NormalNavi was being completely ignored, as usual. He could use that to his advantage. He put the navi into stasis mode and began to reconfigure its basic settings.

Protoman wasted no more time with talk and downloaded a VariableSword from Chaud. Using his unique skill with swords, he charged it with his own energy to turn it into a StepVarSword. Punk was not sure what was coming until Protoman seemed to teleport right in front of him from accross the room with his sword about to swing. Punk put his own speed to use and strafed back and to the side to avoid the attack, but Protoman knew what he was doing with the blade and his attack consisted of a trio of SonicBoom slashes that shot directly at Punk as he attempted to escape. He tried to block with his shoulder guard, but the force of the super-charged bades of air was enough to crack it, and he still took some damage. Before Punk could launch a counter attack, his opponent had disappeared. At that moment the silver haired navi dropped behind Punk from above and struck him with a Cross Slash. The pair of cuts sent Punk reeling, and Protman was already loading up a NeoVariableSword and charging it as well. It seemed this navi was not as overhyped as he thought. A NeoVariable clone appeared in Protoman's other arm as he performed the dance for the Double LifeSword technique. Punk knew that there would be no dodging blades of that range, especially combined with that annoying Fumikomi ability, not to mention he'd be taking four times regular damage. That would finish him instantly. But Punk didn't come that far to be S-Ranked by some pompous pretty boy. He tucked into a ball and rolled straight into the attack. Protoman unleashed the powerful double slash but Punk rolled right through it and bowled his adversary over. However, after the attack was completed the spikey ball shattered and Punk tumbled out of the remains of his shoulder guards into a heap on the ground. He was now defenseless, but he wasn't about to give up. Protoman was recovering and had already unsheathed a HeroSword for another attack. Punk shot his chain arm directly at him to trip him up. This time it was Protoman cught off guard as he tried to block it with his shield, only to have it shattered on impact. The punch continued to hit Protoman dead on and thrust him into the opposite wall with a loud thud. Punk readied his other fist and dashed right at the Official while his chain still had him pinned to the wall. Protoman countered that with yet another sword though, a Slasher. The blade appeared out of nowhere and sliced off Punk's arm before it could deliver the second punch. Things were not going well for the mowhawked villain.

"Hmph, finish him Protoman. Delta Ray Edge." announced Chaud.

Punk didn't know what the Delta Ray Edge was, and lucky for him he wouldn't have to find out the hard way. Just as Protoman was about to dash into action he was hit with a ZapRing and was paralyzed by the electrical field. Punk looked off to the side in amazement to see his Normal Navi V1 companion had been reformatted into a Normal Navi E class.

Jeremy laughed through the static of his weak connection. "May not be able to send chips, but there's always customization! Now hurry up and finish that guy before he snaps out of it and realizes who to delete first!"

"No! Fight it Protoman!" Chaud's shouting was in vain, with an evil cackle, Punk swung his remaining arm at full force, slamming Protoman into the door. He shot his arm one more time directly at the head, cracking his beloved shades. Protoman slumped to the ground, unconscious.

Not waiting for the resilient warrior to get back up, Punk opened the doors and charged in. He was confused to find a line of RockCubes blocking his way. Impatient, he crushed one with his mighty chain and staggered onward. The archive was eerily dark and quiet. There were data containers all accross the walls and stock shelves lined the immense, cavernous room. A quick visual scan found him the address he was looking for. It was on the left wall near the bottom. He was almost there, he just had to reach it.

"Sam" someone whispered. "Send me the Geist."

The RockCubes, as well as previously unseen Pawns and Rooks rose into the air, and flew directly at Punk.

"Oh shi-" Punk's words were cut off by the sound of teleportation, and then the thunderous collision of the objects.

"King Man." Jeremy grumbled as Punk's data returned to his PET. From his other PET he saw Kingman stepping out of the shadows. Thankfully, as usual his other navi went ignored. Jeremy pressed some buttons on his PET, ordering the Navi E to aim and fire another ZapRing. Kingman didn't even see it coming and was stunned. He then directed the navi over to data compartment 106A:0D. Jeremy had the navi open the panel to reveal a blue data crystal with a Gamma symbol barely visible inside it. "Bingo." The navi took the data and logged out.

* * *

Later, the AH navis were receiving repairs while the operators admired their Gamma piece collection.

"Four down, one to go." Stuart sighed. "These missions just keep getting harder. What are we going to have to do for the last one, literally go to hell and back?"

"Ah, it wasn't THAT bad this time, was it?" Jeremy asked rhetorically. "He was still waiting for all his praise for still nabbing the piece despite all their navis being logged out.

"Fate's obviously saving the hardest for last." Matt theorized. "I wonder what could be more difficult than breaking into SciLab."

"Speaking of which, pull up that that info on Fate again. I want to see if we can find out any more about him." said Nijubu.

Matt closed the window displaying their piece-carrying navis and opened up their data files, only to find the voice recording and all the stuff he downloaded the previous night missing. "Uh...this isn't right." He checked the hidden folders, the trash bin, the activity log, nothing. It was as if those files never existed. "Damnit Fate! If you were going to keep us from finding out more about you, you're a little late for that. What's the point of clearing out the evidence now?" Matt shouted at the moniter, assuming Fate was listening through it. "What are you trying to say?!"

"Hey Matty, did you know there's a sticky note on the back of your head?" said Johnny, pinting at the little yellow post-it that nobody noticed before.

Nervously, Jake picked it off and read it. "Uh...Fate can't be determined by scientific analysis, it can only reveal itself through time. I let you obtain the info you did for your own good, but now you must wait for the final message to be delivered before Fate brings it all together."

"Damnit, how the hell does he DO that!?" Matt screamed.

The End

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