bunnyfic 06, 07
Suck. I'm still behind by a day. 8D; *totally not proofreading anymore* ヤfreakingバイyo. Lies. I always proof. :( *anal* But the effectiveness of doing so varies a lot.
Errant entity 21-K.
( 06: anti-decentralization )
Nikaido sighed, full of stupid and feeling melancholy. Did nobody like bunnies these days? The hawk had been so potentially interesting, too. But then without warning it had just up and self-destructed like a lame virus had gotten it-
Actually, that virus had looked pretty cool. The bird's beak had suddenly swollen to twice or thrice its natrual size all bulbously before its skin had split backwards like a peeled banana to reveal rows of disgusting, ugly teeth. And usually Nikaido was okay with weird-looking teeth because he had some too, out in the real world, but these ones, these ones had inverted themselves out so quick, following the beak's split skin, and just proceeded to eat the hawk whole right before Nikaido's eyes. Like, just omnomnomnom... right down to the very last tail feather.
Needless to say though, while the show had been riveting, Nikaido hadn't kept watching for very long. He'd run. Because what if the damn thing was contagious? What if the slobber dripping out of the sky was acid? He didn't want to be eaten alive by his own teeth. Because that was kind of a terrifying idea.
-but all that had been a while back anyway. He'd logged out since then, and pre-emptively gone somewhere else (skated back underground, surfacing a little later in another district) before they could pin and trace and corner him in the stupid warehouse. And then he'd logged back in and tried the field scenario again. Looking for people.
With about the same level of unsuccess.
All he'd met this time around had been one little girl, who'd been cute at first (she'd been like, six or something). Until she'd picked him up and squished him like a toy and put a ribbon around his neck and taken him running and tried to force-feed him a carrot. Did nobody like bunnies these days?
It'd been the carrot, really. He didn't like carrots, and just because he was a bunny didn't mean that was going to change.
He'd run off after that. And was currently sitting in the middle of another green expanse of field, far from the little girl, with his chin on the ground and paws curled up under his little fuzzy white self, lifting and thudding his long ears down on the grass beside his head, one after the other, in a steady, boredly depressed rhythm. Whump. Whump. Whump...
The grass still smelled nice, at least. It still felt nice, too. The sky was still pretty, and so was the field, and Nikaido could see almost all around fairly well with his long-sighted bunny eyes.
What he couldn't see, however, was the fox that slowly and vaguely incompetently swaggered up in the blind spot right before his own face.
It was a most generic of foxes, its fur a rusty kind of reddish brown with socked paws, a white underbelly and dark-tipped ears. Its bushy tail, tipped with white, swished from side to side as it sauntered. Such a creature might ordinarily have been mesmerising to watch, but this one lurched about with an amazing lack of grace.
By the time Nikaido was bored enough to stop messing about with his own ears and started using them to actually hear again, the predatory creature was almost upon him-a fox was still a fox, even if this one was looking kind of drunk. A rustle of grass gave it away, and the closeness of the noise made Nikaido's head jerk to the side.
His tiny round eyes rounded even more as he met the fox's black beady eyes straight on.
Terrified, Nikaido froze. The fox also froze. Nikaido stared at it out of one eye, and it stared right back with two.
Irrationally, Nikaido felt a flash of anger. If this was someone's idea of a practical joke... The thought burned away a bit of his icy fear. Suspicion started to ebb just the tiniest bit as well when still the fox made no move. Standing so close without an introduction, what was the point in that? Nikaido was about to sit up and announce his name, when suddenly the creature jumped.
Nikaido gave a little bunny shriek as he leapt away by reflex and tumbled backward, just out of reach of the fox's paws, scrambling.
The fox lunged again though-fast, its earlier drunkenness seemingly evaporated-and just that quick Nikaido found himself pinned under one heavy black paw. He squeaked in terror. It kind of hurt, actually. And he couldn't just log out now, or change out of the bunny avatar either, since his form was currently in the middle of an interaction.
His form was currently stuck in the middle of an interaction. Nikaido squirmed but it didn't help. If anything, the paw just weighed down heavier. The fox didn't look like it was going to eat him-yet, anyway-but Nikaido didn't fancy his chances of just waiting around to find out its plans. The rabbit avatar could see upwards and behind him and left and right perfectly fine, and there was going to be no escaping this creature without cutting some serious corners.
It was kind of hard to call up his clipboard of coded offensive shortcuts, though.
It was kind of hard, in fact, to do anything at all.
Nikaido squeak-muttered a curse as his human heart skipped a beat-his lagomorphic one was already racing. He'd kill it. This fox, it was going to die. Nikaido didn't care who was behind it anymore-whether it was the avatar of a school kid with a lame idea of bullying, or a hacker with nothing better to do, or the most incompetent government agent he'd ever seen yet. It was going to die.
He was going to kill it.
With a mighty, angry bunny roar, Nikaido jarred the scenario into submission.
Sort of.
Or he thought he might have done so, for the faintest of moments, until the next second when the entire landscape dissolved into static and fell away and even the damn fox disappeared-
Correction, it didn't disappear: it changed forms. Nikaido himself changed forms. And the scenario switched from fields to the ocean.
Nikaido freaked out, and mentally scrabbled for his clipboard while he could. If he could. It wasn't seeming likely.
Interactions... some interactions were universal: they were the common kind that translated easily cross-scenario and cross-avatar. Most, though, required their executors to be in the same virtual space. In the same scenario. Doing more or less the same thing at the same time. You could be invited to a friend's scenario. Or, if you knew each other well enough, you could just each think up the same scenario directly from login.
You could alternately be dragged kicking and screaming over scenario borders if you were on the wrong end of the right set of codes-something that had never happened to Nikaido before personally, but damned if he hadn't heard about it occurring and there was sure as hell a first time for everything.
The fox's paw had grown exponentially and strung out into some kind of net-a net attached to a boat-a boat that was no longer a fox. Nikaido was in the water. He was still struggling, but he still couldn't do much. The code was tight.
"Nice catch," he heard someone say distantly, maybe from the boat, followed by laughter and a sheepish thank-you. He could hear. His ears were still good, if not better than in rabbit form; everything was distant though. The stupid net was weighted with electrobarbs that zapped him like bad static. It hurt, and getting out was really Nikaido's only immediate concern. Getting out. But he didn't know how to use this form's goddamn useless fins yet (what the hell was he at the moment, anyway?), and he wasn't exactly being gifted with the space in which to learn. His codes had been tailored to his bunny avatar, and with no time to switch them over-
He really didn't want to die.
If they caught him here-it was government, he assumed irrationally, it had to be, but-if they trapped him in this scenario, or killed him, then it would only be a matter of time before they found his physical location and then he might as well just kiss goodbye to his soon-to-be-terminated body. With no consciousness around to defend it, it would be as good as gone, skates or no skates, and he really didn't want-
'Help!' he tried to call out. 'Somebody!' It...
It came out more like a sharp, bleating cackle though, like he was goddamn laughing at himself. And the net started to haul in, its barbs digging into whatever he had that passed for skin; time slipped through the fingers he didn't have, running out, and he still couldn't work his clipboard. He really, really didn't want to-
Not here, not like this, not in a way he didn't choose, not stuck online in a bloody-
Indignant, he shouted in incoherent frustration and pain and anger and-
The water beside him exploded upwards in a roar of rushing spray and suddenly the net stopped being electric as its tether to the boat was severed by the tentacle of a massive fucking kraken of all things, metres and metres long as it rose itself to the surface.
"Holy shit!" Nikaido heard a shout from the boat, and, "Oh... my god..." as well, voices still distant but for entirely different reasons now. Nikaido stared at the monstrous sea creature of myth-such things weren't supposed to exist in an ordinary scenario, right?-from under the lines of the net with a sense of awe. For the code. It... was unthinkable.
It seemed... vaguely annoyed? As far as Nikaido was an expert in the body-language of gigantic squidthings anyway, which wasn't very far but the kraken definitely looked that way when it laid a smackdown on the little boat with a second tentacle, smashing its engine room and hull straight down the middle with no apparent effort. The boat's two occupants scrabbled for the bigger bits of driftwood the tug had suddenly become, and Nikaido cheered, very pleased now that his current form had a stupid laughing kind of voice.
His laughter stopped the next second though, when he felt a tentacle wrap around his waist and the drag of the kraken retreating back down to the deep with Nikaido's virtual body in tow, barbed net and all. No way, Nikaido thought in despair, out of the oven and...
But his third panic session for the day (three too many) was cut short when suddenly he wasn't attached to the dolphin anymore-he could see that it was a dolphin finally as it disappeared, inert now that his consciousness had left it, under the water's bobbing mess of wrecked boat. Nikaido floated in the sky, apparently weightless and ghostlike. Strangely invisible. It felt really weird. He had no body. He needed a focus...
"...he's gone," he saw and heard one of the drifting men say. "The dolphin errant."
The other just stared at where the kraken had been. "...did he log out?" he asked eventually.
The first one shook his head slowly, vaguely, as if stunned. "I don't think so. He got overridden. Hell, we got overridden. Your scenario... M15, the kraken is not supposed to exist. He would've been God-fucking-zilla in my cityscape. Whoever that bastard was is one hell of a slicer."
"Right," said the other. M15. But strangely enough, he was still smiling. He changed the subject with little apparent care. "So, you know... About that new boat you were talking about coding me..."
That was the last Nikaido got before the water jarred into static and he was forcibly yanked out of his second scenario that day.
Errant entity 74-M.
( 07: the damsel )
"...hi," Tamamori said, having finally managed to execute the code that forcibly pulled the bunny boy's consciousness from the ocean scenario. No mean feat. It had been hard enough to kick him out of the dolphin form in the first place, from an outsider's standpoint. But sometimes, these things had to be done.
And done correctly, of course. Tamamori hadn't bet on the other knowing what to do without a virtual body. And hadn't bet on him knowing how to follow Tamamori to his blueroom either. Using different forms took practise-using no form at all took even more practise. And the blueroom's code was an in-between function that wasn't supposed to exist, either-for anything more than a nanosecond anyway, while proper scenarios loaded.
Tamamori liked camping there, though. It was pretty much like hiding in the code of a loading screen. And better yet, the more advanced the netgear, the faster said loading screen was skipped right over. More hardcore hackers and stuff... they went right by...
...
The bunny boy seemed to be a bit mentally displaced.
"Hello?" Tamamori tried again.
That got the bunny boy's attention. He blinked, registering Tamamori's presence. Suddenly, a bit late, his face turned angry. "Who the hell are you?"
"Tamamori," Tamamori said simply, and tilted his head a little. "The hawk, the kraken. Hello."
The bunny boy blinked again, then tilted his own head in curiosity. "...you look kind of girlier than what I was thinking. Is that your real face?"
"It's my real face," Tamamori said, mildly happy and far from offended. "Thank you."
"Uh, sure," the bunny boy said. "I'm Nikaido."
"I'm assuming that's your real face, too?" Tamamori asked. People didn't usually go out of their way to make themselves look stranger online. And this Nikaido bunny boy guy was sort of odd-looking.
"Got a problem with it?" Nikaido demanded. But then broke out into a grin. "I like my face."
"Good for you~" Tamamori said smoothly. If he were in Nikaido's position, he mightn't be so gracefully accepting but... well. Each to their own.
Nikaido looked around for a moment. Seeing no chairs around, and no measure of relativity either, he simply tucked his legs up under him, sitting cross-legged now. His height didn't change.
Tamamori himself leaned casually against a benchtop that wasn't there. At least Nikaido seemed to be used to zero environment scenarios as well, he thought. That was good. Or at least, it was less annoying.
He waited patiently for the other to talk. Because he probably had questions.
"...so," Nikaido said without too much delay, "what the hell kind of code was that? I mean the kraken. And the virus that ate the hawk. But mostly the kraken."
Tamamori shrugged his virtual shoulders. "Powerful code?" He suppressed a grin.
"No shit, Sherlock?" Nikaido raised a half-exasperated eyebrow. Short fuse, Tamamori noted. "I mean, that was kind of overkill on the little boat thing, wasn't it?" It hadn't even really been a boat so much as an advanced wooden doughnut with a fifth-rate engine tacked on the back.
"Maybe," Tamamori allowed. He glanced at his fingernails. "But a sure bet's always better. I mean, if you've got an advantage, why not use it, right...?"
"Right," Nikaido said. "I guess." He didn't really get it, though. Sure bets were no fun; and besides, the more people who knew that kind of powerful codesman was out there, the more people would be gunning for him-or, more specifically, gunning for the secrets behind his code. Furthermore, the more people who saw code like that, the more people could theoretically copy and modify it. If you revealed your hand too much, you'd just end up with more competition in the end...
Though he supposed the two guys on that beaten up little tug weren't going to pose much of a threat in that regard.
"What about the teeth that ate the hawk?" Nikaido asked, probing further.
Tamamori didn't really mind too much. Nikaido wasn't asking about the coding specifics, after all. "Just a virus," he said. "Harmless enough."
The bunny boy screwed up his face funny. "Harmless? That thing was nasty."
"Well, the hawk had to go," Tamamori snickered, amused by Nikaido's strong opinions. For Tamamori, the teeth had been the surest way to get rid of the bird quickly and cleanly, and so that's what he'd used. Aesthetics didn't factor in to things like destruction and survival.
Though since they were speaking of that scenario again... "You shouldn't use such a vulnerable guise, you know," Tamamori said absently, "that bunny form..."
Rather, the form itself wasn't the problem, so much as the way he'd seen Nikaido use it. Nikaido was the type to be easily distracted, and offensive more than defensive. The rabbit was a prey animal, designed to be on guard all the time...
...
Nikaido pouted. "But I like being a bunny."
"...suit yourself," Tamamori said. Well. On the other hand, there were certain things you just didn't pry into, and avatar choice was one of those. As far as Tamamori was concerned, bunnies were just small and cute and ate and had sex a lot.
...yeah, on second thoughts, he didn't really want to know.
"So anyway," Nikaido said. And then paused for a moment, as if the words were stuck and he was fighting them out. He frowned. "...so, thanks, okay? For saving me back there."
Abruptly, Tamamori felt the tips of his ears turn red a bit, and made a mental note to program such embarrassing responses out of his real face avatar. "You're welcome?" he said, glancing up to the right as if there was something else to look at in the blueroom. "It was just because you gave me your contact sequence in the field scenario. But then I had to go. And when I logged back on and thought to look for you, you were just getting sucked into that ocean one, so..."
"Right," Nikaido grinned. "So you jumped in like a superhero."
Tamamori flushed. "Nonono, I-"
"Anyway," Nikaido cut back in, with a strange kind of gruffness in his voice. And looked away. "Thanks. I'd probably be dead now if not for you."
"You're illegal, then?" Tamamori said, opportunistically switching subjects.
"Well, yeah," Nikaido sulked. "Why the hell else would they have been trying to reel me in? That was a government boat, right? Despite... itself." He seemed annoyed that such a little thing had taken him down. All because of that damn fox... that he'd been bored enough to miss approaching right in front of his face.
"Mm~" Tamamori hummed in agreement.
"Anyway, I-"
Whatever it'd been Nikaido had been about to say was cut off when Tamamori's blueroom resumed with the silent, between-your-ears sirens.
"-what the hell's this?" Nikaido winced instead, looking around.
"Chasers," Tamamori said distractedly, calling up his maps for the second time that day. "Proximity alarm." Maybe the bunny boy was bad luck. It was a bit much, after all: they'd tracked Tamamori's location down when he'd been in the field, and then there had been the run-in with the boat pair online, and now they'd tracked Tamamori's physical location down again...
Twice was only a little uncommon, and bad enough besides. But to be seen three times in one day was just...
...
Annoying.
Tamamori pouted a little, studying the glowing figure trundling along (at least it was only one this time) on his two maps.
Out of the millions of legal contact sequences, and the thousands of not-so-legal accesses on top of that, what was so special about his today? Had the boat pair made it back that quickly, and dispatched a real life chaser already? It shouldn't have been that easy for them... Annoying.
"I'm going," Tamamori said mildly. "You should probably get out of here, too." Not that Nikaido was in the way or anything. In fact, the other was only looking at the glowing structures and plotted lines on Tamamori's maps very quietly, but regardless: "If they've got my contact sequence, then they might trace its interactions to yours pretty soon, and..."
"That's District 18?" Nikaido said instead, totally ignoring Tamamori. He squinted at the maps, tilting his head. "You're off the lower main?"
"You know the area?" Tamamori asked, only half interested. More mental power was busy considering his escape options.
"Know it?" Nikaido laughed; that got Tamamori's attention. "I'm less than a klik away."
"..." Tamamori frowned at the other. "Run?" Was Nikaido stupid? If a chaser was on Tamamori's tail, and Nikaido was in Tamamori's vicinity, then hello, the chaser was near Nikaido too, even if the seekers hadn't pinned his location yet. (Maybe.)
"Nah," Nikaido snickered though, the teeth of his real face avatar set in an amused smirk. His eyes disappeared. "Sit tight, okay? I'll be right over."
Tamamori stared at him.
"Hey, hey~ trust me," Nikaido grinned. "You're not the only one who can play superhero, okay? ♥"
He logged off.
But Tamamori did not, as Nikaido had suggested, 'sit tight'. If anything, after logging off himself, he walked away from his net access location slightly quicker than usual. He didn't fancy betting on anybody's odds but his own. For all he knew, the kid who called himself Nikaido was actually a government agent. So what if the bunny had been attacked? It might all have been a set-up. Maybe that was why Tamamori's 'luck' had been bad...
...
He seriously doubted that was the case, and his gut sense agreed, but still. He hadn't survived this long by taking a lot of chances and depending on people all the time. And so he walked.
And he walked.
And less than a few minutes later, his ears pricked up at a distinctive hum: the combination of repulsors and miniature reactors-very expensive technology, and a sound Tamamori was never going to forget from-
He pulled off his hood and cut out his netgear, looking around with his own eyes, almost desperate for a glimpse of one of those people. Those skaters. And in particular, maybe the one who'd-
The shadow of a figure fell across Tamamori's patch of sun. Tamamori looked up as the hovering boy pulled off his goggles. Tamamori stared. It was Nikaido, it had to be. He looked just like his avatar, and-
He had skates.
"One chaser out cold~" the boy snickered, grinning. "Took longer to find you, you know, since you moved. I would've found you quicker if you hadn't."
"Being elusive is the point when you're on the run," Tamamori said curtly, but brushed the matter aside as Nikaido dropped down to land and deactivated his footwear. Tamamori pointed. "Tell me where you got those," he demanded. "Now."
Nikaido gave him a funny look. "Later," he said. "We gotta get underground."
Tamamori blinked. "What?"
Nikaido pointed to the surface of the alley they were currently in. "Un... der... ground..." he said slowly, articulating himself like a retard. "To... es... cape... from... bad... gaiz? In case they wake up again or get back-up in?"
Tamamori gave him a blank look.
Nikaido gave him an even blanker one right back.
"...you burrow?" Tamamori asked.
Nikaido's expression melted into pure scorn. "Are you stupid? They can't trace anything past the insulating layer, right? So underneath that's the best place to hide out hands down! How've you done it all this time?" Impatient, he grabbed Tamamori's wrist and dragged the other forcibly over to a nearby drain cover.
"Anti-infrared suit!" Tamamori protested, and baulked. "There is no way I'm going down there."
Determined, Nikaido lifted the grate and dropped in. The pipe was only maybe two metres in diametre. A little cramped, but not bad. And completely dry. It wasn't a stormwater drain or anything-the Capital's carefully regulated atmosphere didn't do rain anymore. Being just an emergency drain in case something broke and flooded, this one was less-than-rarely used. Because maintenance was carefully regulated, too. The government was good at things like that. Keeping everything in order.
Nikaido squinted back up at Tamamori. "Whatever the hell your anti-infrathing is, I don't have one. I have to go. And you're coming with me, or I ain't telling you nothin' about these skates."
"..." Tamamori made a pained noise in the back of his throat, torn. But with one last look over his shoulder (and at the sunlight), he slipped into the drain after Nikaido and pulled the grate back in place over their heads, following the other down, down, down...
1- i need to stop doing these things at like, 5am. the last day of nano does not finish when you sleep. D:
2- the sheer number of stupid bunny jokes/white rabbit allusions, i did not realise until after. =∇=;; maa. nikaido always gets the short end of the stick.
3- ...3 was eaten by the fact i didn't cover all the points i wanted, in tamamori's part, but it still ended up the longest yet. =Δ=;; ah well. SENGA NEXT. 8Db
Errant entity 21-K.
( 06: anti-decentralization )
Nikaido sighed, full of stupid and feeling melancholy. Did nobody like bunnies these days? The hawk had been so potentially interesting, too. But then without warning it had just up and self-destructed like a lame virus had gotten it-
Actually, that virus had looked pretty cool. The bird's beak had suddenly swollen to twice or thrice its natrual size all bulbously before its skin had split backwards like a peeled banana to reveal rows of disgusting, ugly teeth. And usually Nikaido was okay with weird-looking teeth because he had some too, out in the real world, but these ones, these ones had inverted themselves out so quick, following the beak's split skin, and just proceeded to eat the hawk whole right before Nikaido's eyes. Like, just omnomnomnom... right down to the very last tail feather.
Needless to say though, while the show had been riveting, Nikaido hadn't kept watching for very long. He'd run. Because what if the damn thing was contagious? What if the slobber dripping out of the sky was acid? He didn't want to be eaten alive by his own teeth. Because that was kind of a terrifying idea.
-but all that had been a while back anyway. He'd logged out since then, and pre-emptively gone somewhere else (skated back underground, surfacing a little later in another district) before they could pin and trace and corner him in the stupid warehouse. And then he'd logged back in and tried the field scenario again. Looking for people.
With about the same level of unsuccess.
All he'd met this time around had been one little girl, who'd been cute at first (she'd been like, six or something). Until she'd picked him up and squished him like a toy and put a ribbon around his neck and taken him running and tried to force-feed him a carrot. Did nobody like bunnies these days?
It'd been the carrot, really. He didn't like carrots, and just because he was a bunny didn't mean that was going to change.
He'd run off after that. And was currently sitting in the middle of another green expanse of field, far from the little girl, with his chin on the ground and paws curled up under his little fuzzy white self, lifting and thudding his long ears down on the grass beside his head, one after the other, in a steady, boredly depressed rhythm. Whump. Whump. Whump...
The grass still smelled nice, at least. It still felt nice, too. The sky was still pretty, and so was the field, and Nikaido could see almost all around fairly well with his long-sighted bunny eyes.
What he couldn't see, however, was the fox that slowly and vaguely incompetently swaggered up in the blind spot right before his own face.
It was a most generic of foxes, its fur a rusty kind of reddish brown with socked paws, a white underbelly and dark-tipped ears. Its bushy tail, tipped with white, swished from side to side as it sauntered. Such a creature might ordinarily have been mesmerising to watch, but this one lurched about with an amazing lack of grace.
By the time Nikaido was bored enough to stop messing about with his own ears and started using them to actually hear again, the predatory creature was almost upon him-a fox was still a fox, even if this one was looking kind of drunk. A rustle of grass gave it away, and the closeness of the noise made Nikaido's head jerk to the side.
His tiny round eyes rounded even more as he met the fox's black beady eyes straight on.
Terrified, Nikaido froze. The fox also froze. Nikaido stared at it out of one eye, and it stared right back with two.
Irrationally, Nikaido felt a flash of anger. If this was someone's idea of a practical joke... The thought burned away a bit of his icy fear. Suspicion started to ebb just the tiniest bit as well when still the fox made no move. Standing so close without an introduction, what was the point in that? Nikaido was about to sit up and announce his name, when suddenly the creature jumped.
Nikaido gave a little bunny shriek as he leapt away by reflex and tumbled backward, just out of reach of the fox's paws, scrambling.
The fox lunged again though-fast, its earlier drunkenness seemingly evaporated-and just that quick Nikaido found himself pinned under one heavy black paw. He squeaked in terror. It kind of hurt, actually. And he couldn't just log out now, or change out of the bunny avatar either, since his form was currently in the middle of an interaction.
His form was currently stuck in the middle of an interaction. Nikaido squirmed but it didn't help. If anything, the paw just weighed down heavier. The fox didn't look like it was going to eat him-yet, anyway-but Nikaido didn't fancy his chances of just waiting around to find out its plans. The rabbit avatar could see upwards and behind him and left and right perfectly fine, and there was going to be no escaping this creature without cutting some serious corners.
It was kind of hard to call up his clipboard of coded offensive shortcuts, though.
It was kind of hard, in fact, to do anything at all.
Nikaido squeak-muttered a curse as his human heart skipped a beat-his lagomorphic one was already racing. He'd kill it. This fox, it was going to die. Nikaido didn't care who was behind it anymore-whether it was the avatar of a school kid with a lame idea of bullying, or a hacker with nothing better to do, or the most incompetent government agent he'd ever seen yet. It was going to die.
He was going to kill it.
With a mighty, angry bunny roar, Nikaido jarred the scenario into submission.
Sort of.
Or he thought he might have done so, for the faintest of moments, until the next second when the entire landscape dissolved into static and fell away and even the damn fox disappeared-
Correction, it didn't disappear: it changed forms. Nikaido himself changed forms. And the scenario switched from fields to the ocean.
Nikaido freaked out, and mentally scrabbled for his clipboard while he could. If he could. It wasn't seeming likely.
Interactions... some interactions were universal: they were the common kind that translated easily cross-scenario and cross-avatar. Most, though, required their executors to be in the same virtual space. In the same scenario. Doing more or less the same thing at the same time. You could be invited to a friend's scenario. Or, if you knew each other well enough, you could just each think up the same scenario directly from login.
You could alternately be dragged kicking and screaming over scenario borders if you were on the wrong end of the right set of codes-something that had never happened to Nikaido before personally, but damned if he hadn't heard about it occurring and there was sure as hell a first time for everything.
The fox's paw had grown exponentially and strung out into some kind of net-a net attached to a boat-a boat that was no longer a fox. Nikaido was in the water. He was still struggling, but he still couldn't do much. The code was tight.
"Nice catch," he heard someone say distantly, maybe from the boat, followed by laughter and a sheepish thank-you. He could hear. His ears were still good, if not better than in rabbit form; everything was distant though. The stupid net was weighted with electrobarbs that zapped him like bad static. It hurt, and getting out was really Nikaido's only immediate concern. Getting out. But he didn't know how to use this form's goddamn useless fins yet (what the hell was he at the moment, anyway?), and he wasn't exactly being gifted with the space in which to learn. His codes had been tailored to his bunny avatar, and with no time to switch them over-
He really didn't want to die.
If they caught him here-it was government, he assumed irrationally, it had to be, but-if they trapped him in this scenario, or killed him, then it would only be a matter of time before they found his physical location and then he might as well just kiss goodbye to his soon-to-be-terminated body. With no consciousness around to defend it, it would be as good as gone, skates or no skates, and he really didn't want-
'Help!' he tried to call out. 'Somebody!' It...
It came out more like a sharp, bleating cackle though, like he was goddamn laughing at himself. And the net started to haul in, its barbs digging into whatever he had that passed for skin; time slipped through the fingers he didn't have, running out, and he still couldn't work his clipboard. He really, really didn't want to-
Not here, not like this, not in a way he didn't choose, not stuck online in a bloody-
Indignant, he shouted in incoherent frustration and pain and anger and-
The water beside him exploded upwards in a roar of rushing spray and suddenly the net stopped being electric as its tether to the boat was severed by the tentacle of a massive fucking kraken of all things, metres and metres long as it rose itself to the surface.
"Holy shit!" Nikaido heard a shout from the boat, and, "Oh... my god..." as well, voices still distant but for entirely different reasons now. Nikaido stared at the monstrous sea creature of myth-such things weren't supposed to exist in an ordinary scenario, right?-from under the lines of the net with a sense of awe. For the code. It... was unthinkable.
It seemed... vaguely annoyed? As far as Nikaido was an expert in the body-language of gigantic squidthings anyway, which wasn't very far but the kraken definitely looked that way when it laid a smackdown on the little boat with a second tentacle, smashing its engine room and hull straight down the middle with no apparent effort. The boat's two occupants scrabbled for the bigger bits of driftwood the tug had suddenly become, and Nikaido cheered, very pleased now that his current form had a stupid laughing kind of voice.
His laughter stopped the next second though, when he felt a tentacle wrap around his waist and the drag of the kraken retreating back down to the deep with Nikaido's virtual body in tow, barbed net and all. No way, Nikaido thought in despair, out of the oven and...
But his third panic session for the day (three too many) was cut short when suddenly he wasn't attached to the dolphin anymore-he could see that it was a dolphin finally as it disappeared, inert now that his consciousness had left it, under the water's bobbing mess of wrecked boat. Nikaido floated in the sky, apparently weightless and ghostlike. Strangely invisible. It felt really weird. He had no body. He needed a focus...
"...he's gone," he saw and heard one of the drifting men say. "The dolphin errant."
The other just stared at where the kraken had been. "...did he log out?" he asked eventually.
The first one shook his head slowly, vaguely, as if stunned. "I don't think so. He got overridden. Hell, we got overridden. Your scenario... M15, the kraken is not supposed to exist. He would've been God-fucking-zilla in my cityscape. Whoever that bastard was is one hell of a slicer."
"Right," said the other. M15. But strangely enough, he was still smiling. He changed the subject with little apparent care. "So, you know... About that new boat you were talking about coding me..."
That was the last Nikaido got before the water jarred into static and he was forcibly yanked out of his second scenario that day.
Errant entity 74-M.
( 07: the damsel )
"...hi," Tamamori said, having finally managed to execute the code that forcibly pulled the bunny boy's consciousness from the ocean scenario. No mean feat. It had been hard enough to kick him out of the dolphin form in the first place, from an outsider's standpoint. But sometimes, these things had to be done.
And done correctly, of course. Tamamori hadn't bet on the other knowing what to do without a virtual body. And hadn't bet on him knowing how to follow Tamamori to his blueroom either. Using different forms took practise-using no form at all took even more practise. And the blueroom's code was an in-between function that wasn't supposed to exist, either-for anything more than a nanosecond anyway, while proper scenarios loaded.
Tamamori liked camping there, though. It was pretty much like hiding in the code of a loading screen. And better yet, the more advanced the netgear, the faster said loading screen was skipped right over. More hardcore hackers and stuff... they went right by...
...
The bunny boy seemed to be a bit mentally displaced.
"Hello?" Tamamori tried again.
That got the bunny boy's attention. He blinked, registering Tamamori's presence. Suddenly, a bit late, his face turned angry. "Who the hell are you?"
"Tamamori," Tamamori said simply, and tilted his head a little. "The hawk, the kraken. Hello."
The bunny boy blinked again, then tilted his own head in curiosity. "...you look kind of girlier than what I was thinking. Is that your real face?"
"It's my real face," Tamamori said, mildly happy and far from offended. "Thank you."
"Uh, sure," the bunny boy said. "I'm Nikaido."
"I'm assuming that's your real face, too?" Tamamori asked. People didn't usually go out of their way to make themselves look stranger online. And this Nikaido bunny boy guy was sort of odd-looking.
"Got a problem with it?" Nikaido demanded. But then broke out into a grin. "I like my face."
"Good for you~" Tamamori said smoothly. If he were in Nikaido's position, he mightn't be so gracefully accepting but... well. Each to their own.
Nikaido looked around for a moment. Seeing no chairs around, and no measure of relativity either, he simply tucked his legs up under him, sitting cross-legged now. His height didn't change.
Tamamori himself leaned casually against a benchtop that wasn't there. At least Nikaido seemed to be used to zero environment scenarios as well, he thought. That was good. Or at least, it was less annoying.
He waited patiently for the other to talk. Because he probably had questions.
"...so," Nikaido said without too much delay, "what the hell kind of code was that? I mean the kraken. And the virus that ate the hawk. But mostly the kraken."
Tamamori shrugged his virtual shoulders. "Powerful code?" He suppressed a grin.
"No shit, Sherlock?" Nikaido raised a half-exasperated eyebrow. Short fuse, Tamamori noted. "I mean, that was kind of overkill on the little boat thing, wasn't it?" It hadn't even really been a boat so much as an advanced wooden doughnut with a fifth-rate engine tacked on the back.
"Maybe," Tamamori allowed. He glanced at his fingernails. "But a sure bet's always better. I mean, if you've got an advantage, why not use it, right...?"
"Right," Nikaido said. "I guess." He didn't really get it, though. Sure bets were no fun; and besides, the more people who knew that kind of powerful codesman was out there, the more people would be gunning for him-or, more specifically, gunning for the secrets behind his code. Furthermore, the more people who saw code like that, the more people could theoretically copy and modify it. If you revealed your hand too much, you'd just end up with more competition in the end...
Though he supposed the two guys on that beaten up little tug weren't going to pose much of a threat in that regard.
"What about the teeth that ate the hawk?" Nikaido asked, probing further.
Tamamori didn't really mind too much. Nikaido wasn't asking about the coding specifics, after all. "Just a virus," he said. "Harmless enough."
The bunny boy screwed up his face funny. "Harmless? That thing was nasty."
"Well, the hawk had to go," Tamamori snickered, amused by Nikaido's strong opinions. For Tamamori, the teeth had been the surest way to get rid of the bird quickly and cleanly, and so that's what he'd used. Aesthetics didn't factor in to things like destruction and survival.
Though since they were speaking of that scenario again... "You shouldn't use such a vulnerable guise, you know," Tamamori said absently, "that bunny form..."
Rather, the form itself wasn't the problem, so much as the way he'd seen Nikaido use it. Nikaido was the type to be easily distracted, and offensive more than defensive. The rabbit was a prey animal, designed to be on guard all the time...
...
Nikaido pouted. "But I like being a bunny."
"...suit yourself," Tamamori said. Well. On the other hand, there were certain things you just didn't pry into, and avatar choice was one of those. As far as Tamamori was concerned, bunnies were just small and cute and ate and had sex a lot.
...yeah, on second thoughts, he didn't really want to know.
"So anyway," Nikaido said. And then paused for a moment, as if the words were stuck and he was fighting them out. He frowned. "...so, thanks, okay? For saving me back there."
Abruptly, Tamamori felt the tips of his ears turn red a bit, and made a mental note to program such embarrassing responses out of his real face avatar. "You're welcome?" he said, glancing up to the right as if there was something else to look at in the blueroom. "It was just because you gave me your contact sequence in the field scenario. But then I had to go. And when I logged back on and thought to look for you, you were just getting sucked into that ocean one, so..."
"Right," Nikaido grinned. "So you jumped in like a superhero."
Tamamori flushed. "Nonono, I-"
"Anyway," Nikaido cut back in, with a strange kind of gruffness in his voice. And looked away. "Thanks. I'd probably be dead now if not for you."
"You're illegal, then?" Tamamori said, opportunistically switching subjects.
"Well, yeah," Nikaido sulked. "Why the hell else would they have been trying to reel me in? That was a government boat, right? Despite... itself." He seemed annoyed that such a little thing had taken him down. All because of that damn fox... that he'd been bored enough to miss approaching right in front of his face.
"Mm~" Tamamori hummed in agreement.
"Anyway, I-"
Whatever it'd been Nikaido had been about to say was cut off when Tamamori's blueroom resumed with the silent, between-your-ears sirens.
"-what the hell's this?" Nikaido winced instead, looking around.
"Chasers," Tamamori said distractedly, calling up his maps for the second time that day. "Proximity alarm." Maybe the bunny boy was bad luck. It was a bit much, after all: they'd tracked Tamamori's location down when he'd been in the field, and then there had been the run-in with the boat pair online, and now they'd tracked Tamamori's physical location down again...
Twice was only a little uncommon, and bad enough besides. But to be seen three times in one day was just...
...
Annoying.
Tamamori pouted a little, studying the glowing figure trundling along (at least it was only one this time) on his two maps.
Out of the millions of legal contact sequences, and the thousands of not-so-legal accesses on top of that, what was so special about his today? Had the boat pair made it back that quickly, and dispatched a real life chaser already? It shouldn't have been that easy for them... Annoying.
"I'm going," Tamamori said mildly. "You should probably get out of here, too." Not that Nikaido was in the way or anything. In fact, the other was only looking at the glowing structures and plotted lines on Tamamori's maps very quietly, but regardless: "If they've got my contact sequence, then they might trace its interactions to yours pretty soon, and..."
"That's District 18?" Nikaido said instead, totally ignoring Tamamori. He squinted at the maps, tilting his head. "You're off the lower main?"
"You know the area?" Tamamori asked, only half interested. More mental power was busy considering his escape options.
"Know it?" Nikaido laughed; that got Tamamori's attention. "I'm less than a klik away."
"..." Tamamori frowned at the other. "Run?" Was Nikaido stupid? If a chaser was on Tamamori's tail, and Nikaido was in Tamamori's vicinity, then hello, the chaser was near Nikaido too, even if the seekers hadn't pinned his location yet. (Maybe.)
"Nah," Nikaido snickered though, the teeth of his real face avatar set in an amused smirk. His eyes disappeared. "Sit tight, okay? I'll be right over."
Tamamori stared at him.
"Hey, hey~ trust me," Nikaido grinned. "You're not the only one who can play superhero, okay? ♥"
He logged off.
But Tamamori did not, as Nikaido had suggested, 'sit tight'. If anything, after logging off himself, he walked away from his net access location slightly quicker than usual. He didn't fancy betting on anybody's odds but his own. For all he knew, the kid who called himself Nikaido was actually a government agent. So what if the bunny had been attacked? It might all have been a set-up. Maybe that was why Tamamori's 'luck' had been bad...
...
He seriously doubted that was the case, and his gut sense agreed, but still. He hadn't survived this long by taking a lot of chances and depending on people all the time. And so he walked.
And he walked.
And less than a few minutes later, his ears pricked up at a distinctive hum: the combination of repulsors and miniature reactors-very expensive technology, and a sound Tamamori was never going to forget from-
He pulled off his hood and cut out his netgear, looking around with his own eyes, almost desperate for a glimpse of one of those people. Those skaters. And in particular, maybe the one who'd-
The shadow of a figure fell across Tamamori's patch of sun. Tamamori looked up as the hovering boy pulled off his goggles. Tamamori stared. It was Nikaido, it had to be. He looked just like his avatar, and-
He had skates.
"One chaser out cold~" the boy snickered, grinning. "Took longer to find you, you know, since you moved. I would've found you quicker if you hadn't."
"Being elusive is the point when you're on the run," Tamamori said curtly, but brushed the matter aside as Nikaido dropped down to land and deactivated his footwear. Tamamori pointed. "Tell me where you got those," he demanded. "Now."
Nikaido gave him a funny look. "Later," he said. "We gotta get underground."
Tamamori blinked. "What?"
Nikaido pointed to the surface of the alley they were currently in. "Un... der... ground..." he said slowly, articulating himself like a retard. "To... es... cape... from... bad... gaiz? In case they wake up again or get back-up in?"
Tamamori gave him a blank look.
Nikaido gave him an even blanker one right back.
"...you burrow?" Tamamori asked.
Nikaido's expression melted into pure scorn. "Are you stupid? They can't trace anything past the insulating layer, right? So underneath that's the best place to hide out hands down! How've you done it all this time?" Impatient, he grabbed Tamamori's wrist and dragged the other forcibly over to a nearby drain cover.
"Anti-infrared suit!" Tamamori protested, and baulked. "There is no way I'm going down there."
Determined, Nikaido lifted the grate and dropped in. The pipe was only maybe two metres in diametre. A little cramped, but not bad. And completely dry. It wasn't a stormwater drain or anything-the Capital's carefully regulated atmosphere didn't do rain anymore. Being just an emergency drain in case something broke and flooded, this one was less-than-rarely used. Because maintenance was carefully regulated, too. The government was good at things like that. Keeping everything in order.
Nikaido squinted back up at Tamamori. "Whatever the hell your anti-infrathing is, I don't have one. I have to go. And you're coming with me, or I ain't telling you nothin' about these skates."
"..." Tamamori made a pained noise in the back of his throat, torn. But with one last look over his shoulder (and at the sunlight), he slipped into the drain after Nikaido and pulled the grate back in place over their heads, following the other down, down, down...
1- i need to stop doing these things at like, 5am. the last day of nano does not finish when you sleep. D:
2- the sheer number of stupid bunny jokes/white rabbit allusions, i did not realise until after. =∇=;; maa. nikaido always gets the short end of the stick.
3- ...3 was eaten by the fact i didn't cover all the points i wanted, in tamamori's part, but it still ended up the longest yet. =Δ=;; ah well. SENGA NEXT. 8Db