Back again

The Metro station was busy, today... ACDC had changed little in four years, but tourism had gone up a lot, since it seemed most people liked visiting small towns to get away from the big city life... and what better town to visit than the hometown of the famous Lan Hikari? Feh. It annoyed him. All it meant for him was just more more traffic trying to get from place to place...

The Metro quietly pulled up to the station, and a cheery voice rang out through the semi-crowded car the young man was in. "We've now arrived at the ACDC station, please exit through the doors on the left side of the train. Thank you for riding Metroooooooooooo~ Metrolines, have a nice day!"

...Ah, but how good it felt to be home.

The doors to the car opened up, and after a short pause, a young man stepped out through them. Dressed in a plain white, long-sleeved shirt, a blue vest, a pair of simple pants, a simple pair of black shoes, and carrying a bag, the young man did anything but stand out amongst the crowd of tourists. He walked over to and up the stairs out of the metro, filing past the few tourists coming up and down them, and stepped out into ACDC proper. He took a deep breath, savoring the smells-- he was home.

Trenn Hiyazaku was finally back in ACDC.

A short walk and a few teary greetings and hellos later, and Trenn was back home, and upstairs in his old room. Everything was exactly the way he had left it before he went off to college, save for one thing...

Trenn opened up his bag, and pulled out a small poster he had had one of his friends make while he was at college. He grabbed four tacks from the small organizer on his PC desk, and he found a blank space on his wall, over the head of his bed. He unrolled the poster carefully, and stuck it against the wall, straightening it a few times and then carefully pinning each corner to the wall. He stepped back to admire his work for just a moment, and grinned. "Good to see you... Soundman."

The truth is, it wasn't an ordinary poster-- he went to a technology college, not an arts and crafts studio. The thin, paper-like material displayed a small, 3-dimensional hologram of Trenn's old navi, Soundman, for a few seconds, before he pressed a holographic button along the poster's surface, turning the display off.

Trenn sat down in his computer chair just as his PET began to rumble, and he pulled it out of the holder, turning it on.

A holographic Wiz popped out and promptly went around the room giddily hugging everything, shouting something about "Home", and "How it was so great to finally be back in Trenn's messy room" (To which Trenn looked a little annoyed), before he reappeared back in front of Trenn. "Trenn~! Can I go online? I wanna see how the network's changed since we left!"

Trenn thought about it for a second, and nodded. "Alright, sure. It's too bad that the college wouldn't let me keep any of my chips or upgrades for you, though. It sucks being weak again."

Wiz nodded then spoke, trying to stay on the positive side. "Yeah, but hey, you got that cool Voucher for a free Level 2 Process upgrade, and you got to keep our HP Memories, right?"

Trenn silently agreed, then shook his head. "Whatever. Let's just go already." Trenn pressed a button on the front of the PET, and with a small "Beep" and a flash, Wiz's image disappeared... he was jacked into the 'net.
Wiz appeared back in the PET, now fully healed in a burst of light, only for two progs to come up to him and start editing his code. "Treeeeeeenn, what're you doing?" he asked, curious. Trenn didn't reply, so he asked again. "Trenn?" Still, no reply. Wiz closed his eyes, and a small hologram of him appeared in front of Trenn, who was busy coding... with headphones on.

Wiz smacked his forehead and solidified a hand, pulling the headphones off of Trenn's head slightly, but just enough for him to notice. "Hm? What is it Wiz?" Trenn inquired, looking at Wiz with a puzzled look.

"What're you coding?" Wiz asked, cocking his head to the side slightly.

"I'm upgrading your Tri-Shot. I saw some parts of the code that I could optimize, so..." Trenn scratched the back of his head sheepishly, "...I thought I should upgrade it."

Wiz's face suddenly contorted into a full-face grin. "Yaay, upgrades, upgrades!" He hopped around the desk happily, eliciting a chuckle from Trenn. "If you want me to finish though, you should shut down for the moment. I'll be coding for a while, and you'll need to shut down for the changes to take effect anyway, so..."

Wiz nodded. "Okay, Trenn." The hologram closed it's eyes, and slowly faded out of existence as the real Wiz shut down. Trenn merely replaced his headphones, and set back to work at finishing up the code, now with a smile on his face.
A while later, Trenn pulled the headphones off, and grinned at his work. Sure, it had lowered the offensive capability of the sig, but it had enhanced Wiz's life span... in the form of constantly repairing a small amount of damage. That would be handy.

Trenn closed the code-editor with the push of a holographic button, and rebooted Wiz's program with the push of another, stretching as the program went through it's boot routines, checking to make sure that things were okay.

50%... 80%... 100%, start up complete. Trenn voiced the dialog on the screen as it appeared in his head, with the final phrase being "Check complete, startup finalized. Wiz.exe, 100% ready for duty."

Wiz opened his eyes with a start, and looked around. He yawned and stood up from where he was laying on the floor of the PET, stretching once he got there. "Are the upgrades done, Trenn?" he asked.

"Yeah, I finished 'em. Wanna go on the 'Net and try 'em out?" Trenn queried, looking at Wiz with a friendly smile.

"Sure Trenn!" Wiz quickly ran over to the virtual manifestation of the Jack In port of the PET, and saluted Trenn. "Ready to go, Trenn!"

"Alright then, go ahead through. The PET's still connected." Trenn said with a chuckle, watching the screen. Wiz saluted once more, and ran through the portal happily. The things that boy did... it still amazed him. He chuckled, shook his head, and put the headphones back on, looking at the PET screen. Ah well, nothing like a live test run to try out an upgrade...