Beginning again...again

Jacking Pianissimo out as well, Rigel echoed the thoughts of his navi. "Swing...whatever you do, stay alive."

He was in shock from the whole ordeal as well. Soulman...Ayumi...that undernet navi...it all seemed to run together. If Soulman had been deleted...what would become of Requiem? Or had it already fallen apart? He himself had fallen out of contact with them, but Swing hadn't. Yet Rigel never bothered to ask what had become of it, even before releasing him.

Hearing Kazu's 'apology', Rigel remembered something...something he hadn't even mentioned to Kazu seven years ago, when the experience was still relatively fresh in his memory.

"To disappear...I tried that once. Back even before I designed Swing, when Mysterioso was my navi. I became a wanderer in the real world, and he only frequented the deepest parts of the net. I guess the first sign that it was going to be hard to just vanish completely from the world came when Mysterioso started having to solve everything himself...due to general incompetence among the NetPolice and even a large percentage of the netbattling community."

Rigel paused. The story seemed easier to tell than it would have been seven years ago, despite now having to rack his brain for the details.

"I guess what really brought me back was having to start over. About three months before first meeting you, we found an area of the net beyond the Undernet. We came across several monstrous entities there that managed to beat Mysterioso within an inch of his life. But for some reason he vanished before one of them could land a final blow. No traces of being deleted, and he certainly didn't jack out. Heck, I tried jacking him out after he disappeared, but nothing happened."

Rigel sighed. Other than thinking he saw Mysterioso a few times, he never did learn any more about what had happened.

"The rest is pretty much history. I design Swing, and am essentially forced to return to society. Since then, I've had even less luck trying to just disappear, even after falling out of contact with Requiem."

Rigel sighed once more. "Sorry, didn't mean to give a speech."

Kazu didn't appear to be listening as he typed away at his computer, clearly multitasking. A BBS flashed across his screen over the image of his Navi jacking out in a spectacularly dramatic fashion, followed by his email, a live feed of his homepage, and another BBS.

Sarah looked like she was about to speak for him, but Kazu made his presence known before she could start. "Not your fault," he said simply, and let the words hang in the air for a few seconds. "Someone once told me, in times of uncertainty, to tell myself something that I thought I knew, and then to tell myself the exact opposite and try to accept it."

Kazuhiro didn't look away from his computer, but Sarah glanced at him, making it clear exactly who had told him that. "I mean... This happened to us. We didn't want to come back into the spotlight. It's not our fault."

Sarah smiled and looked back at Rigel. "We walked into this willingly," she said, echoing Kazu's words. "We wanted to become who we once were. It's all our fault."

After a few seconds, Kazu stopped typing. His screen displayed a desktop covered with icons-- no Web pages, no feeds from his viewer-progs, and no Navi, at least until a ghostly white image appeared in a window in his bottom-left corner, an androgynous white face with an expressino so blank that Sarah almost didn't see the small smile on its features.

Can you hear us, Pianissimo? It asked, in an odd double-throated croak. You find yourself in the same situation as us. Are you ready to become worthy of succeeding-- that?" With the word that, it pulled up an image of the Sexy Trio in battle on Kazu's desktop. He is your challenge and your legacy. I'm sure you already know ours. And with the word ours, it pulled up an image of Miyamoto 404 on his homepage, staring upwards through a grove of small, meager trees at the peaceful night sky, with his cloak and scarf blowing in an invisible wind.

Sarah glanced between the others around her for a full minute while they were talking before finally realizing what was happening. "So," she said simply, "I was right."

In response to the seemingly blank face, a hologram of Pianissimo suddenly appeared next to Rigel, leaning against a pillar on the net and smiling slightly.

"I'm ready and try and succeed what he once was," he said, as an image of Swing staring across the ice plains of Sharo appeared, Wo Dao held at his side and his swordsman robes billowing in the icy wind. "He had his own legacy to live up to, though. I doubt he'll stop trying to achieve that just because he's an independent navi now."

A second image appeared, a navi in futuristic armor, with sword and axe strapped to his back and carrying a deadly-looking lance.

Rigel, meanwhile, looked quizzically at Sarah. "You were right?" he asked. "What do you mean?"

Sarah looked over at Kazu, who looked up from the laptop to look Rigel over for the first time in years. Time really had changed both of them, but apparently not enough. Some things just didn't change. In response to Swing's appearance, a small hologram of a female version of the white- faced Navi appeared over the screen of his PET, which was attached horizontally to the side of Kazu's laptop. It stared straight ahead with empty, blank eyes, then vanished as she entered the Net.

"She was right about the oppsites," he said, tapping his PET. "I said the opposite of what I initially thought... and got myself to accept that it was possible."

Kazu was silent for a few moments. Sarah spoke up.

"Is that... Mysterioso?"

"It is..." said Rigel darkly. The scene shifted yet again. Mysterioso was in an area of the net, heavily damaged, and trying to fight off what appeared to be undead heelnavis.

"This may be the end for me, Duke," he said, dodging one of his enemies' attempts to rip his arm off. The Rigel of the time, meanwhile, was actually panicking. "Such power...and I still can't jack you out. Is there anything left you can do?" "There might be," answered Mysterioso. "However...I may still never see you again if I do it." They didn't have time to discuss it. A massive surge of electricity had struck where Mysterioso was standing...but he was gone.

Rigel seemed to lose himself in thought as the scene faded and the hologram of Pianissimo returned. "Seven...almost eight years since that day...and still I know nothing. I've already accepted that he may have been deleted. It's him being perfectly safe I'm not so sure of."

The image of the ivory-faced woman reappeared, hovering in the air over Kazu's PET, and this time her expression was clearly more intense than before, and something was happening in the background.

"Such an age we live in," said Kazu quietly, but he cut himself off as he noticed his Navi's situation.

"I don't mean to be rude, but looks like I've got a job to do. Are you with us?"

Without waiting for an answer, Kazu laid out his chip folder on his lap and started operating with the rapid-fire precision that had earned a name for him all those years ago. Not even bothering to announce his chip choices to his Navi as was the norm among most younger NetBattlers, Sarah watched as her companion multiple-loaded one chip after another into the heavily modified PET.

"Interesting," she said, after a few seconds, partially to Rigel and partially to herself. "It's been a while since he explained about his PET to me. I know it's heavily modified, but I forgot the rest."

With a hurried apology to Sarah, Kazu turned back to the computer screen, clearly too absorbed in the task of operating Titania to accomplish any kind of human interaction. Sarah, too, leaned closer to him to observe.

"ACDC's changed since I was last here," said Kazu as he slotted-in two chips. The odd thing was how he did it. His PET had a single chip slot on the face, but Kazu used two of the three extra ones on the side simultaneously, then hovered his finger over a button in the top-right corner as if he needed to press it at the exact right moment.

"More nasties, and more CustomNavis to deal with them. I guess with prosperity comes scavengers."

"More nasties indeed. Looks to me like they've tried to assemble an army," said Rigel, sending three chips to Pianissimo in one fluid motion. "Four against almost thirty. Hardly seems fair."

Rigel watched as Pianissimo cut through sound itself, before he and the others went to work on the virus army. Soon, two bush-like viruses were down, as well as all the bunny and spikey viruses. Each of the most powerful, each of what was probably the most annoying, and...two others. Some of the others were damaged as well. Rigel added a few words to his comment, as though he knew this would happen.

"Not fair for them, that is."

Indeed, the viruses' counterattacks were uncoordinated and largely ineffective. A cannon managed to blast Pianissimo, but it didn't even slow him down. Indeed, Pianissimo was already back in the fray.

"Shotgun, if you would," he said after attacking the strange bat-like viruses. Rigel wondered why he was getting rid of the sword chip so soon, but didn't argue. Inserting the shotgun chip into his own PET, he looked over at Kazu's, wondering why he needed to simultaneously insert chips into different slots.

"I'll be back in a minute," Rigel said to Kazu, getting up from the bench after watching Pianissimo and his allies lay waste to the group of viruses before them. "Going to get a few upgrades to Pianissimo."

Only waiting a few seconds for a response, Rigel walked away toward the Metroline, cape blowing in the wind as it trailed behind him.

Kazu looked up from the news on his screen just in time to see Rigel's back. "Hold on!" He said loudly, standing up. "I was just going there." He got no response; Rigel was already out of earshot. You probably deserved it, Kazu told himself. You've been paying more attention to your computer and your Navis than your fellow humans.

A little irritated, Kazu's dark hair tossed as he turned hgis face back to the screen, but he was interrupted by the one exception to the reprimand he had given himself.

"We can continue the battle from home," she said, placing one hand on his shoulder. "It's getting late, and I've been looking forward to something to eat."

Kazu sighed and looked up at her, one of the few remaining symbols of his past. It brought back memories, but now he wasn't sure if he wanted them. It was a new age dawning, and until now he hadn't considered himself part of it.

"I'll take care of things," she said, taking the computer from him. "Just drive."

In the dimming light, she tried to perfect his technique of balancing the computer on the way to the car.