Scene Listing || Scene Schedule || Scene Schedule RSS
Owner Pose
Forte Time passes, as time tends to do.

The spot everyone's called to isn't in Cyberspace. It's someplace else in Fall, the land of the perpetual autumn, where the sight of the physical form of the deadly Zero Virus will merely draw interest, as opposed to widespread panic.

Specifically, everyone's in... oh... let's say... Threed? Yeah, why not, you're in Threed. Welcome to the Earthbound mini-mini-arc, which lasts all of this one pose where it's described that you're in a nondescript suburb that's notable for having a circus tent and a higher-than-average graveyards per capita, and then the fact that it's Threed is no longer relevant..

There's a small group clustered around Threed's warpgate, including Lan, MegaMan.exe, a figure that could be their father... and the non-man of the hour, the Zero Virus.

Who has a large rolling suitcase next to him.

"You've got enough snacks packed, right?" asks Lan.

"Lan... programs don't eat," reminds MegaMan.
Ishirou I4 is here!

Lan had barely a chance to meet the android at the time, Megaman.EXE did though.  For those who barely had a chance to talk with him...the android looks more like a lanky teenager than a real ass adult.  His eyes, for once, are uncovered by the 'blindfold' and are a piercing blue.  His clothing looks like a military uniform, and mostly black.  

"Hello!  Also, they don't?  Huh...well, I mean...I don't have to eat, but I do enjoy it.  I really like the weird things humans come up with," he looks towards Zero.  "So how are ya feeling?" he also notices the guy old enough to be their father.  

"So...hi?  Don't think we met?  I'm I4."
Damocles Damocles is still around, as well.  Partially because he had to come back for his staff.  They don't exactly sell those at Hel*Mart.  However, even after retrieving that, he hung around, mostly to see the story to its conclusion.  Got to know how everything resolves.

Currently, he also has his hood down.  His face is very normal, which might be surprising given the 'dark wizard' look he normally has.  His skin is pale, his hair brown and a little shaggy, his eyes light blue, sporting a pair of wireframe glasses that he really doesn't need, but are iconic to the image of himself he has in his head.

The Professor got dealt with, so far as he knows.  As asked, he shoved that guy into a suitcase and delivered him earlier, and as far as he cares that's the end of the story.  That guy can die in prison or escape and conquer the world for all he cares. 

"You need something, though," He remarks to the conversation about robot snacks.  "I have no idea what you use for energy.  Uranium-bites?  Promethium Popsicles?"
Forte "Yuichiro Hikari," says the man, extending a hand to shake. "You're with the Paladins, right? I'm a researcher at SciLab - essentially our government's ministry of the internet. Speaking of, our network officials send their thank you for your... delivery," he adds, that last part towards Damocles.

"(The officials are exclusive jerks,)" says Lan, under his breath.

"I am doing well, and I am eager to take my new journey," says Zero Virus. "Doctor Hikari has graciously done some maintenance on my code, and thus I should be stable and in good health for the forseeable future."

"We just kinda... take in energy from our surroundings?" says MegaMan. "I'm not sure how it works."
Ishirou "That's basically how it works for androids like me, actually.  Though we can go without being in a mana filled area for a very long time," I4 says, casually.  "There are other things I can do to try and keep up mana, but it'd be very hard to just starve me of it."

He takes the hand of Yuichiro, "Yes, I am!  Honestly, I'm surprised you guys don't have a more active presence!  I also have literally a million source code updates I could provide your security systems on this internet.  It's a mess!"

He looks towards Zero, and nods! "Well good, I will admit I was trying to work with your code while you were handing me my insides, so I had to make some less than optimal decisions.  I'm glad someone was able to work on you better than I was!  That, and you were able to trust so quickly after what happened with the Professor."

"Already, you're growing up pretty fast!" I4 says with a bright smile.
Damocles "No returns," Damocles responds to the thanks with a nod and a slight smile.   His instincts tell him not to trust this doctor guy.  From a weird unknown lab, kind of comes out of nowhere to help clean up at the end...

Wait a second, that basically describes Damocles too!  Definitely don't trust him, then.

Although honestly, if this guy wants to become 'king of the internet' or whatever, good luck to him.  Emperor knows that place could use a central government if only to redesign the roads in there.

The 'draw energy from your surroundings' thing is interesting.  Maybe they're powered by the Warp!  Though the Immaterium would need to be way, way more stable here than what he's used to for them not to be horrific monsters if that were the case.  Actually, wait.

"Hmm.  You know I came across something not too dissimilar to that in my research a while back.   Powerful, magically constructed entities that were sustained from energy they leached out of their environment. Far more powerful at the cost of far more energy, mind.  Enough that they could potentially ruin the landscape if left unchecked.  The whole thing was a treatise about why they needed to be prevented at all cost."
Forte "It is indeed a mess, and if you can make updates without breaking two other things at the same time, we could use you down at SciLab," says Yuichiro. "As far as active presence... it's us versus an entire internet full of hackers, malware, glitches, and who knows what else. We've had to rely on volunteers and issue bounties to get any breathing room."

"Yeah, well, if you'd just ease up on the restrictions, maybe you'd *get* more people!" says Lan.

"Lan, the certification exams are in three weeks, you can be patient," says his father with a tone indicating that they've had this conversation before.

Zero nods back to I4. "Yes. Trust is hard, but I am managing. It does help that Mr. Hikari was mentioned in my code by name - his father was a work colleague of my creator."

Yuichiro, who Zero is facing away from right now, has a 'Let's not delve into this' look on his face, and goes to change the topic. "The energy physics are a bit... odd, but it doesn't seem as though a navi is going to drain his or her surroundings to *that* extent. It's much closer in magnitude to 'breathing oxygen' than 'altering the landscape'."

"And speaking of..." says Zero, turning to face the portal, and gripping the suitcase in hand.
Ishirou There is a bit of awkwardness on I4's part when draining the landscape was mentioned about AI.  It passes, as he remembers that it wasn't exactly completely confirmed...just enough to make doubt appear.  Sighing, he turns back towards Zero with a smile.  "The first step is always the hardest.  We could definitely use someone like you over in my world, but it's a very dangerous place."

"Though my world is hardly the most dangerous, nor the most in need.  Then again, if you're just looking for adventure...well there is a big world out there!"

I4 does slip Yuichiro a card, it has his contact information on it.  He might have been encouraged by a certain someone to get cards.  "Well, Lan...remember that patience is also important to being someone trying to help the world.  Impulsiveness has a place, sure...but knowing when and when not to act is important!" a beat, "Even when I need to listen to my own advice sometimes!"

He holds a hand up for a 'high five' for the others.  After all, they just did a big thing.  Will you let I4 hang?
Damocles "Well sure," Damocles answers the remark that Navi are not likely to devour the world, "But I have to wonder if the underlying mechanics are the same.  Given the completely different methodology for creation, if the vector for aesthetic absorption is the same, that should suggest--"  He cuts himself off when he suddenly remembers that this isn't even close to why any of them are here.

Achem.  "Yes, well, something to look into later, I guess." 

Zero makes motions to begin his journey.  Damoles is sure it will be filled with wonder and adventure and a lot of stuff Damocles won't ever look into later.  "Good luck on your wanderings through the multiverse.  Try not to turn into a horrific abomination of Warp energy intent on consuming all life." 

A brief pause, and he adds, "Actually, might be best to stay away from any universe with an 'Imperium of Man' in it entirely.  You will -not- find much to recommend it."
Forte "I'll keep that in mind," says Zero. "Going to visit some more... peaceful places first."

"Thank you all again, so much."

He steps into the warpgate...

... and he's gone.

---

And that's the story of the Zero Virus. Cyberspace returned to something approximating 'normal' in the coming days. With samples taken from the original, a cure was found and made available, and the whole incident soon faded into memory.

But while that's the end of the story of the Zero Virus, it's not the end of the story of Cyberspace. In fact, something else was beginning.

It started with letters. Two of them for each of I4, Damocles, and severalothers - one physical, painstakingly calligraphed, sealed and hand-delivered by courier.

<The Gospel Research Institute would like to extend to you an invitation to collaborate on some upcoming research projects. Knowledge-share, full transparency, and a chance to exercise your unique skills for the betterment of all are guaranteed.>

The other is a form letter, emailed, that briefly gets stuck in the spam filter for I4 before some paladin tech gets it unstuck.

It's an invitation to a Network Officials' fundraiser.

Unfortunately, the dates are conflicting - and presumably you can't be in two places at once.
Ishirou I4 waves off Zero, with a smile.  "Well...I hope he finds what he's searching for," I4 says, though jealous in a way.  He's still got a duty to fulfill, and can't go out doing random adventures.  Which, he supposes, he's so into these Paladin missions...he gets to at least pretend he's on adventures.

After the break-up and time passing, two emails come in.  One is a very interesting one, about knowledge and sharing.  They had him at knowledge.  The other is some fundraiser...meh.  Who were even the Network Officials again?  Oh right, that thing that Lan was interested in?  Well, he'll pass this to some other paladins and let them do that.  Instead...

He'll show up to the GRI.  Even though he had a feeling about the name Gospel.

For some reason.

Maybe it'll be different this time.
Damocles Given that Damocles's base, called simply The Tower, is built inside an island of rationality within The Warp, a courier would have a hard time reaching it. However, Damocles does have some connections in The Watch which can deliver messages to him, and it's through that connection that his mail arrives. 

So, two options.  Well, three, because Damocles could also feed both letters to a Bloodletter and forget the whole thing.  However the 'Scholar of Magic' does love working with universities, and ever since his experience there he's been very keen on mapping the similarities between that world's technology and other worlds' magic.

The other offer is less interesting.  Partially because he never really trusted the 'Network Officials' much, but mostly because he doesn't actually have a lot of money.  Daemons, he has a whole tower full of.  Money...Actually there is probably a lot of money in The Tower as well, just behind all the daemons.

Anyway, a Scholar isn't really a scholar unless they're recognized by some schools, so Damocles types up a nice RSVP, and programs his floating Servoskull to remind him to head down there.
Forte The warpgate address this time doesn't take those invited to the realm of Fall... but to Spring.

To an otherwise generic-looking modern world whose significance isn't immediately obvious until familiar imagery starts to pop up. Images from the Cyberspace in Fall. Familiar location names. Other little hints.

This is the real world - that is, Cyberspace's real world. The country of Electopia, and the city of Kotobuki. It's a nice place, if a bit un-notable. Decent street food.

The Gospel Research Institute is a fairly large building - about seven stories tall, in modern architecture stylings. There's a pair of small statues out front - a wolf to the left of the entrance, and a bird of prey to the right of the entrance, both striking a threatening pose towards the other.

The front lobby is festooned with a sort of generic corporatism - trade magazines, comfortable lobby furniture, TV's showing generic 'research' b-roll on a loop with the red G logo inserted into the stock videos as appropriate, and a sign-in desk.
Ishirou The street food was a nice diversion for I4, who came early to try it when he looked up the place online.  Of course, he looked it up online!  Don't you?  After partaking in some side dishes, thinking of some more ideas for his cooking project, he finally gets on course.  

Noting the wolf and the bird of prey, which he thinks is weird for a group about sharing.  Wouldn't you use cooperative animals?  Like...ants or prairie dogs?  Maybe they're just not as cool?

Moving into the front lobby, I4 checks in with his full designation: Inspector 4, Model 31c.  I4 was just used for ease of communication.
Damocles Damocles can immediately tell the difference between this realspace and the cyberspace.  Cyberspace has a sort of buzz in it, that is like magic, but isn't magic.  Paramagic?  That sounds like the kind of crackpot theory that gets a wizard laughed at by other, more mainstream wizards. Of course all the business with the Daemon Gods probably put Damocles on that bus already, so no worries there.

The Eagle and Wolf statue feel very familiar to the Sorcerer.  Give the eagle a second head and the Ecclesiarchy would fall to their knees in fervent praise.  The rest of this area is a lot less welcoming if only because it's all so small.  Stupid world is not made for the Astartes Gentleman.

Somehow Damocles squeezes his way in, in time to see I4 signing a book. He didn't expect to run into him, but is also not surprised.  The android was also a scholar of some kind, he recalls.  "Ah, good to see you again, I4.  I see the Institute (or whatever they call themselves) invited you as well."  The Chaos Sorcerer sidles up to the book, and when it's unoccupied signs his name as best he can with fingers the size of baseball bats using a pen the size of, well of a pen.
Forte Very soon, a blonde besuited man comes out to usher I4, Damocles, and etcetera in - doing a bit of a double take at seeing just how tall Damocles actually is.

(By comparison, seeing the vaguely androidish I4 doesn't seem to faze him.)

"The, ah, the board will see you now..."

The meeting room is just down the hall on the ground floor, going past the elevators on the way - elevators that have keycard, fingerprint, *and* iris scanners on them. The elevator doors don't look like they're made out of stock materials, either - something heavier and harder to pull open, and probably backed up by some hydraulics.

(The door to the meeting room, by comparison, is just a door.)

"Right this way, gentlemen..." says the man, while doing some visual comparison between the size of Damocles and the size of the meeting chairs available, and coming to the inevitable conclusion that it won't work out. "I'll just, um... I'll be right back to get your seating sorted out," he says, and runs back to the lobby.

There's a trio of people at the far end of the meeting room, sitting at the table. "Gentlemen," says the head, an old man. "Welcome to Gospel Research. Thank you for taking our invitation... we have much to discuss. I'm Gauss Magnus, the head director."
Damocles Damocles notes the oddly reinforced building with some curiosity.  He taps some of the more reinforced looking walls with the top of his staff, listening to the sound they make to judge just how reinforced the material must be.  

His expression is unreadable, thanks to the fact that his face is completely shrouded in all-consuming darkness, two glowing cyan eyes gently smoldering to give him the only appearance of a face that he has.  Still, for a pair of glowing eyes, his expression is friendly enough.

When they finally reach the meeting room, Damocles bows, both as a greeting and to be able to fit through the doorway.  "Good to meet you, Director.  I am Damocles.  I must say, your facilities aren't exactly what I expected.  I can't tell if this building is an institution of learning or of war.  It would remind me of home, if not for the lack of skulls everywhere."
Ishirou I4 returns Damocles' greeting with one of his own, "Oh hey!  Yeah, it seems so.  I am curious about what they mean in their offer, so I figured I was curious enough to check it out.  I am guessing the same for you?"

I4, thankfully, looks very human despite being an android.  One might wonder why an Android for making war was made to look A) very human and B) actually kind of pretty.  The answer is that Indus is shallower than the DLC for Tales of Zestria.  

The Android greets Gauss with a simple wave.  "Hello, I'm Inspector 4, Model 31c, or I4!  I am both a representation of the Paladins and Indus, my home.  Though I have to agree with Damocles' assessment.  It does seem very similar to my detachment center than a place of learning."
Forte The couch from the lobby is brought in for Damocles to sit on. He can at least fit in it.

"Yes... there are reasons for that," says Gauss. "To speak frankly, we are engaged in fairly dangerous research - things that should not fall into the wrong hands."

"... And there is some disagreement as to if our hands are the 'right' ones, as well, which is another reason for the precautions."

"Disagreements that include our world's government bodies," says the woman to Gauss's right, brusquely.

"Ah - I should introduce, this is Countess Ann Zap, my dear sister-in-law... and to my right is Whip Caramel, our foreign investor who is a woman of few words."

The young woman, who is most certainly not Princess Pride in disguise and under an alias, simply nods.

"Gospel Research is investigating... for lack of a better term, glitches in reality," says Gauss. "And to what productive ends those glitches can be put to use."
Ishirou "Glitches?  You mean the fact that your internet is horribly put together and really would need a major overhaul.  Also, the fact that it works so well now is both fascinating and also a miracle?  Or, was there something else specifically?  Like the viruses that are a plague?" His eyes look to each person with purpose.  Maybe he's trying to gauge them, or size them up?  

"Also, what would you do with these glitches?  How can they be put to use?  What applications are there?  Obviously, there is a hesitation on using them, and disagreements on just how they should be.  My curiosity here is if you're opposed to your governments, why would you invite someone from the Paladins?"

"Or is it because I'm with them?  That you want legitimacy brought to it?"
Damocles To be completely honest, 'Whip Caramel' is where Damocles almost just checks right out of this endeavor.  'Gauss Magnus' might be the name of a Main Battle Tank that developed sapience and thought it could infiltrate the humans by putting on a fake mustache, but at least it's the name of a man of action, and not an overpriced coffee.

However, his check-out checks right the hell back in when they start talking about 'glitches in reality'. He even leans forward a little, obvious in his body language (if not his facial expression) that he's now fairly engaged.

"Glitches in reality?  You're talking about localized Warp variance?  Sorry, let me back up a step. We're talking about locations where the absolute laws that create reality have, for some reason, frayed, and another, parallel reality that follows a completely different set of laws is getting superimposed?"
Forte "Not the viruses, the viruses are for the most part man-made, or have evolved *from* man made efforts... The virii are, like it or not, part of the system at this point."

Gauss raises a hand, palm forward. "Not to say that we wouldn't all benefit from that particular plague being wiped out, but it's not the topic of today. The glitches are caused by *unintentional* damage, for the most part. Bugs in the code."

"... I don't think these glitches are trying to institute a parallel reality, but... I don't think I can rule that out?"

"The uses and the applications, you'd have to ask our researchers yourself, but... first and foremost, as to why you're here. Legitimacy would be welcome but..."

Gauss makes a 'Trying to be diplomatic' face. "... Our local government, specifically the branches we're having to deal with, is... stubborn. They may do as they will regardless of what outside endorsement we may or may not get."

"You're here as outsiders of action, and specifically ones that have at least some experience with our world so far."

Gauss clicks on the meeting room screen, which shows a purple geode - one that should look very familiar to I4, since he has a few of them in his lab already. "These are the leftover elements of glitches, to simplify down a complicated concept to a few words. We're trying to get our hands on these for research material, to also simplify down our goals into a few words."

"They most commonly appear after certain events - pitched battles, panic situations, disasters... but when those happen, the network officials tend to lock down the area and confiscate all of these fragments, or outright destroy them, perhaps."

"And so as to why we're seeking your assistance... we'd like to sponsor your efforts towards solving problems as they come up in our world, the exact same sort of problem-solving, disaster relief, etcetera efforts you'd be doing *anyway*. If you're the principal actors on the scene, you have a strong case for getting your hands on any of these bug fragments that may appear..."

"... Which of course you then kindly donate towards our institute."
Damocles "Oh," Damocles says, clearly a little disappointed at that proposal.  "I must say I'm a little disappointed.  I'm a research scholar who specializes in aetheric energy principles, with multiversal convergence being my current focus.  I had hoped your interest was a bit more scientific and a bit less..."  Damocles looks down at his staff, then back up to Magnus.  "Hit stuff with stick-ic."

"If I may," He adds, sounding a little more energetic, "I might suggest a more...collaborative project?"  He waves his staff through the air in front of him, and as he does, all around him, light begins to form.  This light quickly collapses into shapes, weaving elderic patterns into the air.  Quite literally elderic, woven inside formulas that the scientists would recognize as fundamental quantum physics dealing with the interaction of subatomic particles and exchange of energy.

"I think you might be dismissing the subdimensional angle of things too quickly. I could be persuaded to help you acquire research material.  However, what *I* want, personally, is to be able to study the way energy flows through different levels of reality.  This world's, mmm, shall we say 'unique architecture' provides an invaluable place to perform that kind of work, and I think you'll agree understanding it ties directly into your primary goal of controlling this, 'glitched space', as you called it."
Forte The three board members take in the show, and then glance between themselves - and then Gauss pulls out a phone and checks something on it.

"Deal," says Gauss.
Damocles Damocles's eyes take on a slight, happy arch as the illusions around him flash out of existence.

"Excellent!  I look forward to working with you." 

Damn, now he really wants a whipped caramel coffee.