Leon's House

[Insert description of Leon's house here. Too lazy to write it up right now.]

Leon walked off of the metro, still thinking about everything that had happened. He walked the short distance to his house, unlocking the door and stepping inside. He walked forward and turned to go upstairs.

Leon stopped at the top of the stairs. "Hey Illumina, did you wanna go online again for a while? I need to take a shower anyways..."

"Do you mean it? Are you sure I'm ready..?" she asked in awe.

"Yeah. I think that you were ready a long time ago. I was just too over protective and OCD about your coding to realize it..."

"Oh... well... thanks, I think. Sure, I'll go hang out online for a while. Maybe I can run into some new friends or the people from earlier."

Leon nodded and smiled slightly. He went to his bedroom and jacked Illumina in while grabbing his pajama pants and a fresh pair of undies. "Be careful, alright? I won't be here to bail you out if you need chips or anything."

Illumina nodded and giggled as she was sent into the net. "I'll be careful Leon. Go relax... even I can tell that you need to get your mind off things."

After about 15 minutes, Leon walked back into his bedroom wearing his pajama pants and with a towel around his shoulders. He went to tell Illumina he was back, just as the phone began to ring. He shrugged and walked over to pick it up.

"Hello? Oh! Hey man, it's been a while! What's up? ... Uh huh... She's doing great, finally ready for the net... Tested her out earlier today, and wound up having to take down some HeelNavi's and a slew of virii... Yeah, you can come and get her anytime, I'll even let you take my PET that she's installed on. It's about time I get rid of it anyways... Huh? Nah, it's okay. I don't need any payment, I'm just glad I could help you out. Remember to be nice to her, or she might end up ripping you a new one, haha! Anyways, I'll see ya this weekend. Night."

He hung up the phone and walked over to the bed. He noticed that Illumina had already jacked out, and figured she had heard at least some of his phone conversation. "Hey Illumina, I'm back, and I have some good news for you! Your original netop just called, and since you're ready for the net, I told him he could come pick you up at any time. He seemed really excited to be able to some get you. So, he'll be over this weekend to pick you up."

"Really? He's coming to get me? Well... that's good I guess. I'll miss you though," she replied slightly melancholy.

"And I'll miss you. But, it's not like we'll never see each other again. He is an old pal of mine, I'm sure he'll be over for a drink sometime. And we can talk once he passes out form his two girlie drinks, hahaha..."

"Tee hee, I guess that will work. Thanks for helping me out and making sure I'm ready to take on the net. It means a lot to me."

"No problem. Just take care of yourself. I don't want to have to reinstall you because you got deleted or something."

"I will. And you take care of yourself."

And so, a few days later, Leon's old friend came by and picked up Illumina.

Leon then went and picked up another PET kit, should inspiration strike him for a new navi of his own. Several weeks passed, and nothing had struck him as all that interesting of an idea, until one day he heard his neighbor singing. She was pretty good, and he thorughly enjoyed it. Then inspiration struck! He would make a navi who used her songs as weapons. He set about the coding of the navi, and was done with that in a few days.

Then came making the case of the PET. He had grown quite used to hit quirky PETs, and as such wanted to continue the tradition. Thinking back, he remembered that one of the most unusual instruments he had ever seen was a ocarina. Doing some research, he found that by slightly modifying the shape of an ocarina, he could use it to house the PET. He set about making his Ocarina PET, and after a few more days of tinkering his new navi was ready to go.

He woke her up and went through the standard installation procedures. He then spent a few days chatting with her and tweaking her programming so that it was somewhat as he wanted, but with enough variables in it to allow the navi to seem as realistic as he could make.

A few days later...

Leon woke up early in the morning to the sound of Celeste singing. "H-hey... why are you waking me up already...? It can't be past 8 yet.."

Celeste replied with an angry sounding "Hmph." She continued in a bored sounding tone. "Just because you're lazy doesn't mean that I'm going to waste my entire day in this PET alone. You should go someplace and relax while I go to the netsquare and sing some. Maybe I'll make some fans who will want to give me stuff."

Leon rolled over and pulled the covers back over his head. "I'll do it later. For now I'm still tired."

Celeste sighed and muttered "You asked for it..." before singing at the top of her voice. Angered, Leon shot up in bed and yelled "FINE! I'M UP! LAY OFF THE SHRIEKING!" Celeste quickly did so, and watched Leon go out the door and begin his morning routine.

Some time later, Leon came back in to the room and picked up the PET. "Well, I guess I'll go to ACDC or something. Have fun in the netsquare. Break a leg or something like that." Celeste tried to reply, but being shoved into his pocket, her voice was muffled and unable to be understood. Leon then walked out the door and took the metro to ACDC.

Leon hurried off the metro, thoughts of the past and what might occur floating about in his head. He booked it to his apartment, quickly unlocking the door and tossing everything not entirely needed on the floor and couch.

Hmph... I suppose I should take the few backups of old Requiem things I have... he said as he slid a picture to the side, revealing an old-style combination lock vault. Now to open this baby.... right.... left.... right................. there! The vault opened, with several manilla envelopes tucked away neatly inside. There was also.... a can of soup? What's a can of soup... Oh! I'll have to remember about that in case I need to help 'remove' some security from our way later on... He thumbed through the envelopes, and grabbed the one marked with a tombstone engraved with the symbols of several navis. He shut the vault, made sure it was securely locked, then slid the picture back into place.

He turned to the closet and grabbed a pair of shades to put on, based on the heart-shaped shades that Soulman would don in Ayumicross. He also quickly changed shirts and hoodies, since he had been sitting in ACDC for quite a while. He re-deodorized himself, brushed his teeth and zipped back down the stairs and out the door, shutting it tightly and locking it behind him. He then set off in search of Shin... who said to 'Meet him in Electown'. Thanks Shin... nothing like being specific...

Leon returned from his meeting with the new Requiem and sat down on the couch. Oh couch, you never fail me. Always here when I need something to lean on... or to relax in, he thought sarcastically to himself. Oh well. I guess I should have Celeste go bust some more...

"Hey slacker. Go jack in and head to ACDC. We've got a bit more work to do, ya know?" he said slightly exhausted sounding.

"More? Fine. Maybe I'll meet more people to call friends. You know, you could make some more frie-"

"And you'll stop there. I'll make friends when I feel like it. I'm in no hurry to be tied down with a ton of social obligations and be forced into things I don't want to do. You can make as many friends as you like, but don't push me into making friends... Anyways, I have plenty of friends."

"Sure you do, Leon." Celeste replied defeated. "Jacking in, captain anti-social."

And Celeste was off to ACDC.

... And she was back in the PET. And just in time for Leon to see a flyer slip nder his door. He walked over to pick it up and read over it.

So... he finally released a new system that didn't have all the bugs in it huh? Took him long enough... Leon thought to himself. I guess I should go get the upgrade tomorrow...

"What's up Leon? What's it say?"
"They released a new Signature subsystem. The current one is being rendered obsolete once you jack out... So... I guess that means your obsolete for the evening. We'll go get the upgrade tomorrow though. For now... lets just sleep. It's like 2 AM."

"Sure, I'll set the alarm for you to get up at noon like usual."

"Thanks. Your sarsasm is noted and filed. Into the trash can."

Leon picked up the PET and headed upstairs, placing it on his desk and then getting in his night clothes, and then going to bed for the day.

Leon woke up the next day before Celeste had a chance to bug him. He groggily grabbed some clothes for the day out of his dresser and shuffled to the bathroom, placing the clothes on the counter and hopping into the shower for a quick morning pick me up.

He emerged form the bathroom about 20 minutes later, having brushed his teeth, shaved, and gotten dressed. Celeste had still not woken up, it only being 11:30. He picked up the PET and rattled it, jarring her from her sleep.

"Morning, lazy" he said sarcastically, walking out of the room with his thumb muting the speaker so as to not have to listen to her throwing a fit. He went downstairs and placed the PET on the counter, while he ate a quick breakfast and ignored the still ranting Celeste.

He picked her up and walked out the front door, her still rambling about how rudely she had been woken up. Leon eventually reached the metroline and took the train to SciLab, making sure to mute Celeste during the ride so that none of the other passengers were angered.

Leon returned home with a much less verbal Celeste in his pocket.

Leon took Celeste out of the pocket and and started talking at her. "So, grouchy... I think we should make some more cash. This new system is nice... but it isn't anywhere near strong enough to emulate your old abilities. So... I've made a whole new set of abilities for you. They're still based on your voice, since your voice is just a channel of your energy. So yeah... Anyways. Your new abilities are a healing ability and a single target attack."

"Nothing like completely changing everything Leon..." she said rather upset.

"Sorry, but the new system's programming language is just too strict for me to pull all the tricks I used to. I'll look into finding some ways to make it work like before, but no guarantees. And even if I do find a way, we'd still need more power. So jack into Electown and try to bust some, ok?"

Celeste sighed sadly. "Ok... I'll head in. I'm still not happy about this though." She burst into a cloud of cherry blossoms, which shot off the top edge of the screen and into the net.

Celeste no sooner returned to the PET from Electown when they received their response from Majin.

"Leon, Majin says Scilabs."
"Already? Wow, quick guy... Anyways, lets head on over and meet him."

Leon grabbed his hoodie and keys, rushing out the door and hopping on the metro to Scilabs.

Leon arrived back home after his trip to SciLab. Home sweet home, I guess.

After entering the apartment, Leon set immediately to downloading Celeste's data into his PC. It didn't take long at all, and a pleasant ding meant that the transfer had been completed successfully. He then proceeded to quarantine her and uncompress her data, allowing her to run as usual. He also set up multiple monitoring programs and a few other random items, before leaving the PC and Celeste.

He turned his attention to Miyu once again. "So... you want to be my navi, huh? You know, there's a few things I need to check first. Like your battle ability." He pointed the PET at the jack in spot and sent Miyu onto the net. "So, we're gonna test that, ok? Plus.. if you're anything like your mom, this might help you feel better."

After a long run of virus busting, and a surprise encounter with some freakish virus engineering navi, Miyu returned to the PET.

Looking in the corner of the pet, he noticed that he had an e-mail from Wes. Opening it, he read through it quickly, and fired off his response.

Leon rubbed his chin. "So, he needs more storage? I wonder what he could possibly need that much storage for..."
"Who cares, I just want to sleep for a while" Miyu sleepily interrupted. "See ya in about a half hour~"
"H-Hey, wait!" Leon tried to get out, but Miyu had already shut herself off to start recovering from her fights. "Well, at least she recovers a lot faster than Ayumi did..."

So... I wonder what I should do, I have a half hour to spare... and I have that match at the coliseum to attend to at some point... What a pain. I really need to stop getting myself into so much crap. He sighed heavily an shook his head. I wonder if Requiem is going to make a move now since the battle in Electown...

Leon navigated the PET's browser to the Requiem BBS, and started poking around...

After wasting some time making and eating some mac and cheese, Leon returned to his couch, and plopped down onto it. He reached over and grabbed the PET off of the coffee table, and shook it a bit. "Hey, wake up already. It's been 45 minutes, and you said you only were gonna sleep 30."

The screen slowly lit up and revealed Miyu on her knees, rubbing her eyes sleepily. "Yeah yeah, asshole, I'm awake." She muttered something incomprehensible to Leon under her breath. Damn netops. Can't even sleep without them annoying the hell out of you. She yawned and stretched, pushing her arms towards the sky. "So what's SO important that you had to wake me up, huh?"

"Well, nothing too big. I just figured you might enjoy some time in the onsen more than just crashing in the PET."

Miyu shrugged. "Well, I guess now that I'm up, I might as well go." She flashed a dark cobalt color as she changed to her normal outfit. "And for future reference, I hate being woke up early."

Leon smirked. "Don't we all..."

Miyu jacked in to the net, and headed towards the onsen.

Leon noticed that there was a reply to his question, and read it with a concerned look on his face. So... Wes wants to push our existence up, huh? I'll have to look around for some more help... and for some targets that need taken out...

Miyu returned from the Onsen, feeling stress free and sporting wet hair and damp skin. She wrung her hair out, drop of water falling form her hair and evaporating into nothingness as they fell. "Hey Leon, what are we up to now?"

Leon turned back to the PET. He had gone off to to the kitchen to grab some chips and dip earlier, and had been on the couch munching on them while she was in the onsen. "Well... I don't know. We need to do some scouting and recon for Requiem sometime, I'd imagine. We can't very well go to war with the scum of the net if we don't know the scum from ourselves."

"Are you implying that I might be scum?" Miyu asked, sounding hurt but indignantly angry.

Leon blinked, thinking for a moment about what he had said and why she got offended. "Oh! No. No no no no no." He shook his head and waved his hands in an effort to make the 'no' sound more sincere. "What I meant was, we have no idea who is on what side, nor who is causing trouble where. All we have to go on is the news, and it's rather uninformative."

"I see." She flatly sighed.

"Really Miyu, you've given me no reason to not trust you. I didn't mean it like that." He tried his best to sound sincere and earnest. "I have no reason to not trust you, same with Junior."

"Fine. I'll take your word for it..." Miyu sounded pretty defeated, and her wings drooped as if to show it. "What is the plan then?"

"I have no idea. We should ask Wes and find out. Let's go to the BBS and make a post."

"Alright... I guess that's all we can really do, huh?"

After they had gotten the leader's reply to their question, Miyu was at a loss.

"So what?" she asked angrily. "We just sit and wait for them to screw up more people's live?" She stomped and crushed an empty blue can with a "E" on it under her heel.

Leon shook his head. "No. It means we have to find a good way to bait them into attacking us or someone else first." He paused a moment, scratching his chin. "Which leads us back to doing recon."

"Great, we get to sneak around like a bunch of spy movie rejects" Miyu angrily muttered.

"Get over it, because it can't be helped. It seems like there's now a route to Net Vegas. I suspect that would be a good area to begin our recon. Since there are always shady dealings to be done there. At least in the movies."

Miyu let out an annoyed sigh. "Fine. I'll head over there. Should I go in my standard outfit or my disguise?"

Leon pondered for a second. "Let's go normal for now. No need to bring attention to your alter ego yet."

Miyu nodded and took off towards Net Vegas.

Returning from the net, Miyu sat down in the PET and started to look over her wounds. She poked and prodded, wincing a bit when she found a deep wound, finding cuts she hadn't even remembered getting during the battle.

Meanwhile, Leon was busy looking over the various BBS'es that he knew of, seeing if anything interesting had been going down. Letting out a sigh, he threw his head back and sank into his couch. "Nothing..."

Miyu, having found nearly every wound from the last busting run, used the PET to begin healing herself. In nearly no time, she had fixed herself up as good as new. She had heard Leon sound exasperated over the lack of news, and sympathized. She may not have a clear goal in life, having just switched from trying to kill the leader of Requiem to finding out they were siblings and instead becoming a member, but she knew there had to be something to do. Anything. As long as it made a difference in something.

She though for a while about what she could do to try and find some clue as to where she should be heading. All she could think of was her new found family. She didn't know much about them, nor did they know much about her. She decided to send her brother an e-mail, and see what he was up to.

Leon walked around the house, making a snack and doing some random cleaning. A few hours later, he came back and noticed that Miyu had pulled something up on the screen before she went to take a nap.

He picked up the PET and started reading the page. Apparently Sci-Labs was going to host a tournament sometime in the near future. Leon thought on it for a while, and he decided to sign up for it. Surely if Miyu had brought it up she was interested in joining, right?

Leon downloaded the application and filled it out, sealing their participation in the tournament.

Hopefully this will help us get some practice against real enemies. I'm sure we'll have plenty of encounters in the future, once things start to pick up... He looked over Miyu's stats for a moment and noticed that he had been slacking with upgrading her. Guess I should go take care of that... He pickeed up the PET and headed towards the Navi shop.

[After the shopping post]

After he returned from the shop...

He decided to wake up Miyu and start a small busting run.

"Wake up, sunshine~" Leon said in a sickeningly sweet voice while poking the PET.

Miyu yawned and rubbed her eyes. "Mmmrmmmgggllemm" she muttered. "What do you want...?"

Leon shrugged. "We're gonna go on a small run and see what's up around the nets. Maybe we'll run into someone interesting."

Miyu's face blanked. "You woke me up for this? You're a dick. You know that, right?" She uncovered herself and pulled up a changing screen to change into her normal outfit. When she was done, the screen faded away and she was as ready to go as she was going to get. "So... where are we headed?"

Leon shrugged... again. "Well.... we're pretty weak right now, in all honesty. Let's just go to ACDC and hope for the best."

Miyu blanked again. "You woke me up to go to ACDC? Again Leon, you're a dick." Letting out an angry sigh, she jacked in to the network.

After Miyu had gotten back to the PET, Leon shoved the PET into his pocket and grabbed his battle chips. Putting those in yet another pocket, he grabbed his keys form the coffee table and headed out of the house towards the metro platform for SciLab, being sure to shut and lock the door behind him.

Leon came back, and opened the door to his house. He turned the PET back on, since he hadn't bothered to yet after installing the upgrade. "Hey Miyu, Ill leave it up to you to come up with whatever you wanna use the new capabilities for, alright?"

Miyu yawned and stretched, and rubbed her eyes. "Mmh? That's a fine good morning. Especially after you shut down the Pet with no warning" she mumbled. "But fine, I'll think of something, I'm sure."

"Great, because I'm going to recharge the Pet and go to bed. We've got to get ready for the tournament coming up." He found the adapter for the Pet and plugged it in, and making sure that the battery was charging took off to the top floor. He took a quick shower and went to bed.


The next few days were rather uneventful: Leon and Miyu talked a bit about the busting they had done, their impressions of the group, and some basic battle strategies. Miyu also developed two new abilities with the upgrade that Leon had bought.

The day of the tournament had finally arrived, and Leon made sure to look his best, as did Miyu.

Leon came downstairs in a pair of carpenter jeans and a dark blue silk button-up shirt with a lighter blue and white flowery-burst pattern on it. He grabbed a nice brown and black jacket and put it on over top. "So, you ready Miyu?" he asked as he picked up the Pet and unplugged it. He felt kind of silly charging it again the night before the tournament, but better safe than sorry.

Miyu nodded and clenched her fist in front of her chest. "You bet! Let's give it all we've got!"

Leon smiled and nodded. "I couldn't have said it better myself."

Leon put his keys in his pocket and locked the door, shutting it behind them as they headed towards the platform to take them to the arena.

It seemed no sooner had Leon and Miyu left then had they returned. Swiftly getting their asses handed to them in the first round, then came back home instead of waiting around to watch the results. No need to see who the strongest is when you're clearly one of the weakest, or so Leon's train of thought went.

Leon took his jacket off and threw it carelessly onto the couch. "Well, I guess we can curse the random draw for putting us against someone with a wood folder. If it weren't for that we would have at least had a chance."

Leon wrote a message to Majin and Junior regarding the match and the outcome, also wishing them luck and encouraging them to beat the snot out of everyone they came across.

Meanwhile Miyu was still nursing her bruised body and ego in the corner of the Pet, her back turned to the screen. She sighed, and stood up after Leon had sent the e-mail. "Lets get on with it. We don't have anything else to do, so let's go get our confidence back by ruthlessly destroying some virii or something."

Leon was rather surprised to see her ready to go so soon. "Well... you certainly are your mother's daughter... just a little bit faster recovering it seems."

Miyu placed her hands on her hips and shot dagger with her eyes. "And what, exactly, is that supposed to mean?"

"Don't worry about it, it's nothing... Anyways, let's see about a mission, shall we? While getting some random viruses killed might be ok, I think heading out and doing something actually useful might help us more."

Miyu nodded, and headed to the Mission BBS to look for, or in case nothing was posted ask, for a job.