Stopping by the Suburbs

Vita came out of the subway station, her headphone around her ears and her eyes turning over the various locations of ACDC town. It wasn't much of a ride from her new apartment in ElecTown, so being able to visit a little town was a pretty good idea. Some fun beats pumped into her head as she strolled along the sidewalk and looked at all the shocking greenery. She pulled out a small paper flying she had pulled off a rack outside a convenience store downtown and checked the crude map on it.

Being pretty new to Dencity at all, Vita had been taking her time to learn the location of everything from her apartment to her classes down at Dentech. Now, it was time to figure out where the rest of her 'resources' could come from. Battle chips, to be more precise. There was a little off-line store she had found luckily enough on the advertisement. Of course, due to her bad planning, she hadn't bothered to think about her total lack of money after arriving in town. She found a small park and sat down on a bench, watching some kids play with their PETs and challenging one another.

When Vita pulled out her PET to check the time on the current track, her music suddenly cut out and was replaced by an irritated voice. "I don't understand why you force me to listen to your blasted music!" Zetaman demanded through the headphones, causing Vita to jump and slip one of the phones off her ear. "In fact, I know that you're doing it on purpose! There's no reason to turn me into a goddamn music player!"

"Eh heh heh..." Vita said nervously, scratching the back of her head and looking away before whispering to her PET. "I thought that Navis would like Electro?" She said, suddenly removing her headphones and blocking the screen so she didn't have to look at Zetaman's angry display. "Sorry, sorry... I just haven't gotten around to programming in the extra sound channels in, sooo...."

"Excuses!" The Navi yelled back at her, the girl replacing her headphones so she could hear him. "Vita, you spend far too much of your time worrying about wiring your television set when you could be more concerned about the programs running it. Now, where are we? I haven't been able to focus since we left the apartment."

"Oh, uh... We're in ACDC town, it's a nice little suburb I found. Look, look Zed, there's a Battlechip shop just across the way. We could find some really cool programs, I bet." She said, needlessly holding up the PET towards the shop and then putting it back into her lap.

"We don't have any zenny, and we haven't battled since we arrived in DenCity. WHY-" Zetaman told her calmly, his voice rising as he continued the stressful thoughts.

"I know, I know!" Vita said, whining and frowning. "That's the other reason I came here, ya know. I wanted to check out the local nets, and I hear things around here are pretty calm." She grabbed the cord to the PET and extended it a little. "Want me to plug you in and we can check things out a little bit, Zeddy?" She asked playfully.

"...Yes." Zetaman said, crossing his arms on the display and turning away. Vita cooed lightly at the machine and looked around, finding a phone booth in the distance that had an access port on it. She walked over and sat down by it, pulling the cord out and hooking it into the access slot.

"Zetaman.exe! Jack-In!" She said, hitting a button on her PET.
[Taking place after the end of [url=http://z10.invisionfree.com/RockmanChaosNetwork/index.php?showtopic=6313]The Virtual Suburbs[/url].]

"Well, I hope you're happy." Vita told her PET, slipping her headphones on as she disconnected from the phone booth and walked away from it. "We were doing so well, and then you had to pick a fight with someone bigger than you."

Zetaman didn't respond immediately, letting the internal programming and saved back-ups of his data reconstruct him back to full health. He made a sour face that Vita could see over the PET screen, so she turned on her music and set it loud. The beats penetrated every element of the device and he covered his ears. "Okay! Okay! I get it. Play it safe next time. Geez."

"Good." Vita said, heading out of the park and towards the subway station. She wanted to make one stop before heading home...