by Corrinthia Breuckner
The words echoed across sector KIT of Mainframe as the large purple game cube ascended into the sky. The CPU's had ended the evade and stall maneuvering as soon as the game had landed. Without Megabyte to command them, the ABC's had pulled away from their attacks to lie in wait for the game to end. As the sky returned to a fading blue with the rising light of the morning creeping over the far side of the Circon Industries building, the ABC's revved their engines in hopes of continuing the battle. The CPU's continued to relay the news back to the bunkers as they waited for word from the roof of Circon Industries.
"Hey," he smiled down at her, holding her just a little tighter than usual. He let out a small laugh.
"Well?" AndrAIa raised an eyebrow, glad to see him grinning instead of frowning. "What was it like?"
"It was... interesting."
"That's it?" She smirked. "I froze my ASCII off with that tiger to hear you say 'interesting'?"
"I'll tell you later," he winked at her.
"All right, lover." The wink made her giggle slightly. That girlish giggle in turn made him laugh.
"Let's find the others." They smiled at each other for another moment before turning to make their way to the other side of the large rooftop of Circon Industries.
"Indeed you did, Binky." He surveyed the bottom level of KIT sector where they had ended up after the game had departed. "Well, then. Are you two all right?"
"Sure are, sugah. Thanks for the lift." Mouse winked at the two binomes.
"Do you think Dot's plan worked? With Megabyte, I mean," Binky questioned.
"Only one way to find out, mate." Ray hopped onto Baud and looked up toward the distant roof of Circon Industries before looking back at Mouse. "Care for a lift, pretty lady?"
"Don't suppose I have much of a choice, seeing as I have no idea where my ship ended up." She sighed and hesitantly got onto Baud, still on edge due to their earlier conversation. Ray looping his arm around her waist didn't help much, but she just decided to leave things cordial for now.
"Don't worry, Miss! We shall locate your ship for you!" the commander said heroically.
"Thanks boys," Mouse nodded to them before she, Ray, and Baud ascended to the roof.
"Come Binky, let us find that ship." He looked down at his empty mug. "And see if we can't find ourselves a refill of cocoa."
"Very good, sir." Binky nodded and went to retrieve a still-functioning CPU.
"The game is over!" Slash cheered.
"We are no longer lost!"
"Yes indeedy!" Slash agreed, then looked around their new surroundings and scratched the top of his head for a nano. "Um, Hack?"
"Yes, buddy?"
"Are you sure we are no longer lost?" They both looked around the many offices and hallways that made up the maze-like interior of the Circon Industries building where they had ended up after the game had left.
"Oh. This could be a problem." Hack sighed.
"Well, at least it is no longer dark!" Slash pointed to the morning light that filled the windows of the building.
"Very good point."
"Thank you."
"OK, so let's go this way."
"I think we should go right."
"Left."
"Right!"
"Left!"
"RIGHT!"
"LEFT!"
"I think so, thanks to you." She smiled up at him. "I didn't mean for the tree to fall on top of him."
"I can't believe you knocked him back hard enough, though I think his claws brought the tree down on himself." Bob laughed lightly at the image of Dot ramming Megabyte with that branch that was almost as big as she was.
"I had had enough." The monotone inflection in her voice caused Bob to stop laughing. He nodded to her with a gentle squeeze on the shoulder. They both looked across the large expanse of the roof, its surface dotted with large turbines, stacks, and one toppled over data-tower. The data spread itself over the roof, getting Bob and Dot's feet wet.
"The data-tower must have been the tree in the game," Bob frowned as he pointed to the large fallen metal tower.
"Then Megabyte must be under it." Dot cracked her neck with a jarring of her shoulder blade before walking through the large data puddle toward the fallen tower. Dot still held a small hope that they wouldn't find Megabyte under that fallen mass of twisted metal and flowing data. She hoped that something else, a cured sprite perhaps, would be there instead, but that menacing laugh that had echoed from underneath the tree as the game left led her to believe otherwise.
"Dot, wait!" Bob called to her as she began to lift up one of the smaller pieces of metal, but she couldn't wait. Her entire plan had hinged itself on this moment. Every nano of the past three cycles lead up to this single moment. This moment would be the deciding factor. She had to know if her plan had been successful, or if she had failed. As her hand lifted up one of the metal sheets, her eyes went wide and a small gasp escaped from her throat.
"Um..." Phong thought for a moment wishing Dot was there to answer the commander. He looked at Enzo then back up at the commander. "No, do not engage. Continue to evade. We must wait for word from Bob."
"Understood, sir!" The binome saluted and shut off the vidwindow.
"They can't evade for ever," Enzo sighed, feeling antsy again.
"I know, my child." Phong stroked his beard thoughtfully. "But for now, it is all we can do."
"I guess so." Enzo frowned as he shuffled his feet on the hard floor of the bunker.
"You have a desire to be back at the battle, my child?" Phong looked at the fidgeting Enzo with a tilt of the head.
"Well... no... but yes..." He adjusted his cap and looked at Phong. "I just feel useless here, like I'm not doing enough, like I'm on the side, like I'm too basic, like I'm..."
"Like you're too young." Phong finished for Enzo, feeling that sentence could have gone on forever.
"Well, yeah." Enzo lowered his eyes.
"Your older self had this same problem, my son."
"Matrix? Really?" Enzo looked back up.
"Yes, he did." Phong smiled slightly. "He too felt left out, lonely, without friends, too useless, too basic, too..."
"Too young." Enzo finished, thinking that the old sprite sure did like to say long sentences.
"Well, yes," Phong nodded.
"What did he do?" Enzo said after a moment of silent thought.
"Well, that is a long, but short, story, my child." Phong nodded, assured that that made sense in one way or another. "But," he looked at the silent vidwindows, "I suppose we have time while we wait."
"Frosty!" Enzo smiled and took a seat. He enjoyed hearing about Matrix's adventures, no longer jealous but with more of a way to see his own possible potential.
"Well let's see... where to begin." Phong nodded to himself and poured hot liquid from a canister into a mug. He offered the mug to Enzo. "Cocoa?"
"Dot, what is it?" Bob called out as he rushed to her side, the look on her face sending a wave of fear through his files. As he neared her, the answer to his question leapt from the mesh of metal with one massive and jarring motion. "Dot!"
"Damn you!" Dot screamed as the massive form leapt on top of her, pushing her hard against the unforgiving surface of the roof. The twisted sneer growled as he rose up, dragging her from the ground with a golden-clawed hand. The sneer changed to a menacing laugh, his eyes peering down at Dot's writhing form.
"I win," Megabyte stated simply with an arrogance of undeniable truth.
"Maybe this time!" Bob took a step forward, not wanting to give Megabyte a reason to move the claw he now had wrapped around Dot's throat.
"Oh, Guardian! I didn't even notice you." Megabyte grinned arrogantly. "What was that? The noble comeback of winning the battle but not the war? Oh please, don't humor me, Guardian!" Megabyte snarled. "There is no war! I have won!"
"Think again!" Matrix hit Megabyte from behind, causing him to lose his grip on Dot. Megabyte and Matrix fell to the ground in a blurred movement of metal and flesh.
"Matrix!" both AndrAIa and Dot called out at the same time as Matrix flew past, landing in the tangled pile of the remains of the data tower.
"When will you give it up, boy?" Megabyte snarled as he rose to his feet.
"When you're no longer breathing, virus!" Matrix quipped back as he rose out of the metal pile with a hand from AndrAIa.
"Quite a long time to play these games, boy," Megabyte laughed.
"Not as long as you think," Bob glared at Megabyte from behind. Megabyte twisted around to look at Bob's glare and matched it with a snarl as he stared down the barrel of Glitch's
energy blaster.
"Right!" Slash yelled back.
"You would say right!"
"What is that supposed to mean?"
"You always get us lost!"
"I most certainly do not!"
"Do too!"
"Do not!"
"Oh, have you forgotten that time in the sewers?"
"Bah!" Slash frowned. "What about the time you got lost in Bob's apartment building?"
"Hey! That's not fair! All those doors were the same color!"
"Oh, excuses, excuses," Slash snubbed.
"Fine!" Hack turned his back to Slash.
"Fine!" Slash countered. Slash sighed and shook his head, then began to think for a moment. "Um, Hack?"
"What, you have another joke at my expense?"
"I did not mean to joke!"
"It hurt my feelings!" Hack sniffled.
"Oh! I am sorry, buddy! I was simply giving an example!"
"It's all right. You were saying something?"
"Was I?" Slash scratched his head for a moment. "Oh yes! How exactly did we get ourselves un-lost before?"
"Oh! Well we could not decide on a direction. I believe we went up."
"Up?" Slash raised an eyebrow.
"Yes, up!"
"Um, OK!" Slash shrugged, then took out his rocket pack and disappeared into the ceiling above.
"Buddy! Wait for me!" Hack dodged some of the falling pieces of ceiling. "He always has to take things so literally!"
"Seems so, luv." Ray slid his hand from Mouse's waist as she started to jump off Baud.
"Ah, Mouse. Pity to see you so alive and well." Megabyte said without taking his eyes off of the barrel of Glitch's blaster.
"Mouse! You're alive!" Bob smiled.
"Thank the User." Dot and Mouse exchanged a hug.
"I see our friend A.v.A. didn't work?" Mouse drew her eyes over the motionless and rigid form of Megabyte.
"I'll explain why later," Dot frowned.
"Quite the standoff, mate." Ray landed Baud next to Bob.
"He's lost," Matrix said as he and AndrAIa joined the circle that encompassed the virus. "It would take a miracle to get him out of this one."
"And the rebels?" Chauncy questioned.
"They have him surrounded! What should we do?"
"Take them out," Chauncy sneered.
"But Lord Megabyte is - "
"You have your orders!" Chauncy yelled and shut off the vidwindow.
"Yes..." The vidwindow in the ABC cockpit disappeared. "Sir... all right, you heard the lieutenant!" The hover tanks aimed upwards and into the centre structure of Circon Industries.
"Fire!"
"What?" Almost all of them asked in unison as she grabbed Matrix by the arm and jumped away from the circle. The rooftop shook with a rumbling force as the surface cracked and split, large pieces jutting upwards or downwards.
"Dot!" Bob took Glitch's aim off Megabyte as Dot began to disappear into a sink hole in the crumbling mass beneath them. His feet sank and twisted in the moving cracks of the roof. The sounds of the roof cracking and groaning was dark and deafening.
"Bob, I'm slipping!" Dot scratched her finger nails at the large moving piece of cement that her body desperately tried to hold onto. It jutted upwards with a sudden pop of sound before it slowly began to sink into the tangled mesh of destroyed floors and sharp rebar below.
"Oh, wonderful," Mouse got out, as the floor beneath her disappeared into a crumbling plume of dust and rumbling concrete. As she fell down the large hole, passing through several punched out floors, the fall from before and the now ironic situation ran through her mind. Saved from deletion only to fall again. A scream finally made its way past her throat as her eyes realized her body was plummeting straight for a large broken rebar spike that shot upwards like a waiting sword.
"Not this time!" Ray caught her a few feet from the waiting spike of metal and ascended back to the roof, or what was left of it.
"I'm pushing Lady Luck today," Mouse said with a racy breath, her heart feeling like it was about to explode from her chest. Despite earlier, she held as tightly to Ray as she could, assured that at any moment she would, for some unforeseen reason, start falling again.
"Who needs luck when you got me?" Ray smiled and held her just as tightly.
"Matrix, hold on!" AndrAIa clung to his arm as his feet fell from under him. Together they clawed their way to solid ground at the very edge of the roof. The ground still shook and rumbled with a deathly and dark groan, like an awaking monster from the bowels of the system.
"This whole place is going to come down!" Matrix called out over the noise as he held onto her.
"Bob, help me!" Dot dug in her hands to the chunk of rock as it turned and rocked, its last supports of rebar bending and twisting to the weight.
"Dot!" Bob reached for her, but was unable to move. He looked down and cursed. The roof had swallowed his foot and refused to let it go. He pulled on his leg and fought with the cement monster, his eyes looking back up to Dot as he heard her scream. "No!"
"Oh dear!" Phong raced over. He turned to a blank vid window and pulled up the emergency team. "Emergency team, proceed to sector KIT immediately!"
"This is bad. This is very bad." Enzo watched as the building that held everyone he held dear began to crumble away.
"I hope we did not cause this!"
"Do not be silly!" Hack said, but he too had the same worry. They had, after all, gone through the ceiling instead of the doors.
"Look! There is light!" Slash pointed upwards through the now nonexistent top floors of the building.
"But if there is light, then where is the roof?"
"Oh dear." Slash sped up his ascent to the morning sky above.
"I can't hold on!"
Dot's arms ached as they struggled to hold onto the moving rock. The rock jolted and creaked as the added weight tore at what support it had left. Below them lay the tangled mesh of electrical cables, sharp rebar, and thirty floors to the bottom of sector KIT. It was the waiting mouth of this moving beast. Dot looked down at the virus attached to her leg, his golden claws tearing at her flesh as they struggled to hold on. Her hand slipped with a scream as the rough cement tore through her fingers.
"Megabyte, let her go!" Bob still struggled with his foot, and the roof still refused to give it back to the distraught Guardian.
"Never!" Megabyte called as he looked for a new place on the roof to grab hold of. If he let go now, pain and uncertainty awaited him.
"User, please," Dot whispered as she looked at her now bloody fingertips as she continued to slide down the surface of the rock chunk. With tear-filled eyes she looked at Bob, knowing that he was unable to help her. The look of helplessness in his eyes horrified her. She let her eyes fall to her last hope. "Megabyte, please."
"I can't."
Megabyte looked deeply into her violet eyes, a deep set frown replacing his snarl of pain. If he held on, they would both fall. Even if he didn't survive, Dot would have gone with him, causing the sprites he hated deep pain, especially Bob. His claws dug into her leg as he thought about what her loss would do to the Guardian and that boy. He could taste the victory, the power over the situation.
"Please." She called to him again, the sound of her voice sending that same nauseatingly emotional twinge into his files again. It was that look in her eyes, just as before. He couldn't stand to have her look at him. That look made him do something he hated. It made him regret, for a mere nano, what he was.
"Dot..." Megabyte whispered her name amongst the noise from the collapsing building around them. As his claws loosened their grip on her leg, he took in that look on her face with an emotional sensation that he was sure she understood. He hoped he would never have to face that look again as he fell into the dark depths of the bowels of the beast, alone.
[ Ava's profile ]
[ Back to the Character Database ]
[ Main Page ]
GAME OVER.
"Matrix!" AndrAIa grinned widely as she rushed to his side. She laughed and jumped up into his arms, glad to see him again and glad to see the game leave.