Tourney Spectator Lounge

A young female member of the Colosseum Staff unlocks the doors to this particular lounge, turns the dimmer up on the light panel, and begins starting up the local network machines. Her male partner starts up the projectors, and tunes the controls. Their tasks completed, they both step out of the room; the light above the door turning on to signal the lounge was open behind them.

"The Tournament Spectator's Lounge..."

Polonius murmured to himself as he entered inside, looking rather timidly at the fresh, new network machines. "So this is it huh?" DNR said as he looked around in his hologram form, raising an eyebrow to the matches happening around them.

"Doesn't seem like they have started huh DNR?" Polonius said to the navi as he sat on a seat in the middle of the lounge, looking at the monitors.

"Then we'll have to play the waiting game~"

Rose arrived in the spectator's lounge, with both her electronic devices no longer in her hands.

She noticed the one man in the room already, and of course had to introduce herself. "Any contact is a good contact." would have been a practical way to look at it, but even without that, Rose was naturally friendly and outgoing.

"Hello there." She said. "I'm Rose. Rose Dunrae." She said with a smile, as she walked over and held out her hand for a hand shake.

SummonerMan conveniently ignored what was going on, and Rose didn't pay much heed to his lack of socializing.

"Oh um- I-I-I-I Hh-h-hello th-there M-m-m-miss Dunra---" Polonius tried to say, extending his hand towards the female reporter as the DNR hologram interrupted.

"Why hello there Miss Dunrae!~" DNR said with a bit of a bow, moving his hologram away as Polonius' and Rose's hands met. "I'm DNR.EXE, heart surgeon. The flustered man over here is Polonius Carbonium..."

"Your name... it sounds familiar... oh, I believe we emailed each other a bit about the Net War..." Polonius said with a smile, looking down to his sneakers for a quick second as he looked up.

"...Hmmm... I wonder if those videos got my goodside... no matter of course. I'm just glad there's some one to enjoy these fights with us!" The white blood cell said with enthusiasm as he gave a quick giggle.

"Well, nice to meet you two." Rose said in reply. "And yes, I remember that. You sent the video with DNR and Voltman in it, where you fought....I believe you fought along with Raion and Tremble and Aron?" She tried remembering back to the e-mails she had gotten, shifting through all the information she had received.

"I'm glad I have some company, too." She remarked, again with a smile.

And with that she walked over to a seat, two to Polonius' right, and jacked her pet into the back of it. "Neat, I have access to the video streams on the moniters through these ports." She thought, as she started downloading the live streams.

SummonerMan took the opportunity to view the streams, and continued to ignore the presence of outside influences. "Besides, there's no need to. A: They're losers, B: Nobody addressed me, so why should I bother." He thought to himself, as he began viewing the streams.

"So are you a fan of the NetBattling?" Rose asked, striking up idle conversation. She pulled out her electronic notepad, too, and planned to record his answer, "For use as a source, assuming I like what I get and get a sign off.".

Yeesh...she was really expecting more people around. Was she really that early? Oh well...at least there were a couple of people here already talking away. Not wanting to be left out of the conversation, Sabrina made her way over towards the duo, in order to make it a trio.

"Hello! Sorry for interrupting, but...well, I'm Sabrina Jetto! I'm guessing you two are in the tournament, too? ...Say, neither of you have a Navi called MachMan, do you?"

SplashLady couldn't help but facepalm. Actually, it felt relatively good, considering she now had a face in which facepalm with. "Oi...way to be direct, Sabrina..."

"Yes we're fans of netbattling Miss Dunrae..." Polonius said, looking at Rose curiously. "Now we tried battling against one of the competitors named Capuchin... we didn't do so well..."

"Right...Oh! More people! That's even better!" DNR said in his hologram form as he looked towards Sabrina Jetto and SplashLady with an enthusiastic wave "Ooohhhh... a female navi too even! Now I'm just getting giddy with glee... heheh, I'm DNR.EXE and this is my protege and operator Polonius Carbonium... no we do not know this Machman.EXE... It's an honor to met you two!"

Rose looked up from her current conversation in order to acknowledge the girl who had now walked in. "Hello Sabrina, I'm Rose." She said, happily.

"Oh, you're the girl from my trading thread. I promised an AquaBalloon to you, and you gave me some of my most used objects." She followed it up with.

"I've never heard of a MachMan, sorry." Rose said quickly, but she nodded to the assumption that she was in the tournament. "And yes, I'm going to be entering the Tournament with SummonerMan here." She said, gesturing to the pink pet at her waist.

Rose glanced through her notes quickly, and found Polonius and DNR as combatents, listed in the Sign up thread. "So I guess we're all going to be fighting in the second block." Rose commented aloud.

"Yes... I'm fighting Djinni..." Polonius gave a quick comment to that.

"I wonder if I can wish for her to fight horribly..." DNR said curiously, thinking out loud.

SummonerMan briefly wondered about DNR's comment on the newly arrived navi, as he distinctly recalled the AquaBalloon being needed for a "SplashMan" which, despite the possibility of a cruel misnomer, should imply that said navi was male. After checking over the list, his memory was supported.

However, still not really caring all that much, he watched as the screens displayed nothing much, and awaited the tournament's start.

Rose put away her notepad for now, not using Polonius' reply as she decided that a formal interview or general conversation would be better at the moment.

SummonerMan noted DNR's cruel comment with a smirk, but this would be invisible to anyone not staring into the PeT or cyberspace, so nobody was likely to notice.

"I've never heard of a Djinni, either." Then realizing that all the people in the room but her were aware of who they were fighting, Rose quickly searched the Colosseum boards for information, and found the brackets easily enough.

"I'm fighting a navi named Voulge, apparently." She said.

...Small world. The other girl in the conversation was the person she traded her TimeBomb away for? Wow...just wow. "Heh, nice to meet you, Rose and Polonius! And I'm glad you liked the chips, Rose!"

A hologram suddenly appeared on Sabrina's shoulder, which matched the appearance of a female aquatic Navi. "And I'm SplashM-, er, SplashLady! Nice to meet you too, DNR!" She looked over to the third shoulder, which had nothing on it. "Guess SummonerMan's not much for talking, huh?" She waved her spear over toward the pink PET. "Hey, SummonerMan! Why don't you come on out and say hi?"

The entire time, Sabrina just stared at the hologram Navi. "...Since when could you do that?!"

"Oh, I always could! I just never needed to before now!" The now-girl Navi looked around, wondering if anyone, particually DNR, wouldn't be completely and utterly shocked if they knew she had had this form for all of 5 minutes. Deciding the answer was no, she decided to remain silent for the time being.

"...If you say so..." Subject change time! "Yeah, I'm in the second block, against someone named MachMan. I kinda hoped one of you would at least know who he is, but oh well. I wish I at least knew who either those Djinni or Voulge Navis are, but...well, I don't. Sorry. But Djinni sounds like djinn, which is like a genie, right? So...magic-based attacks, maybe?"

"That's what I was thinking.... ohhh I just love your spear!" DNR said as he got a better look at SplashLady, curiously looking rather interested in her.

"It kinda feels odd to see so many operators here... it's like they rarely see each other and talk to each other face to face..." Polonius added as he curiously saw both groups of people.

"Yes..." DNR said with a nod. "So SplashLady... tell me a bit about yourself... and Summonerman too of course..." DNR asked curiously to the other navis, hinting a bit of more focus on Splashlady, interested somewhat in her...

"So then we should learn about each others huh?" Polonius asked, looking at Sabrina and Rose. "Well I'm a second year Med Student... science i-is rather a hobby and an interest to me..."

"Well, " Rose began, "I recently got into journalism and started my own paper, Gazette.Net." Turning to Polonius, she added "Which you already knew."

"Also, from the BBS, it seems that Djinni is a Fire cursor type, meaning that she probably uses long range fire type moves. That makes sense with a magical theme, I guess. I have no Idea what Voulge means, but he's a Fire Sword type, meaning he's probably more of a close range fighter. Mach is high speed, so I figure he must be a speed themed navi or something. He's a" she paused here for a moment to scroll through the list, as she missed his entry the first time through, "Normal wind type, so perhaps he's some sort of Fighter Jet themed navi?"

"Also, it looks like if we all win the first round, you two will be fighting in the second, based off these brackets. And assuming I still do well, I'd be fighting the winner in the third." She continued.

SummonerMan finally decided to project himself from the pet, though he disliked it. Rose assumed it had something to do with the diminutive size that was default damaging his ego.

"Well then, I'm SummonerMan." He said. "I fight mainly through summoning things, though that's slightly impaired by the standardized folders this tournament set up. And that's about it." He refused to stand on his operators should, though, and instead hovered over one of the arms of the chair, looking at the other two navis briefly before turning to the real world screens and continuing to observe the field.

"Odd..." Polonius said to himself. "It really is a small world..."

"So this Genie lady is fire huh? How delightful... I was assigned an aqua folder... should be a clean sweep... of course she probably devised a good way to defeat that... we'll have to be careful... should be an even match, thanks Rosie." DNR said with a thumbs up.

Marius walked into the Spectator Lounge with both his hands in his pocket and checking out the fancy monitor works around the room. Letting out a quick whistle, he turned to his PET and opened the holographic image of Voulge and Ignis. "Alright, we'll stay here till it's our turn for the tournament. We'll be able to make some strategies by looking into the current battles.". Voulge stood tall and nodded his head slightly while his new SP frantically yelled, "Yea! They're going down!"

Marius grabbed a seat on whatever he could find, only to see three other people in the same room. His face lit up with a smile and started to walk towards them. "Hey! You're here to spectate the tournament too, right? You guys in it too?". Marius was trying to open up a conversation, before he realized that they were already in one. "Haha! Marius made a complete idiot out of himself! tee-hee!". Voulge and Marius was surprised by the sudden change of tone of Ignis, he sounded just like a cute first grader! What is going on!

Despite the confusing, Voulge appeared from Marius' PET and started to greet to the other operators. "Excuse us for the sudden intrusion. My name is Voulge.EXE, operated by Marius Eirenikos, and finally the new addition to our member, Ignis."

"Oh hey look it's the guy your fighting Rose... wow... it's like we're meting everybody we're fighting... I'm DNR and the med student right here is Polonius Carbonium." DNR said curiously as he looked at the navi.

Marius nodded his head as a quick greeting and started to say something about himself as well. "Well...I use to be a police officer all the way back in BrightLand. But, for a...special reason, I got my self kicked out from the force and I moved here to Electopia to see if they can hire me into their force." Marius smiled and tilted his head upward, revealing the small scar over his neck. "Oh...Don't mind that", as he was covering the scar with his hand. "I got it...during police work. Because of it, I can't really sing, hahahaha" He tried to keep the right atmosphere into the conversation. Talking about his past work as a policeman could really kill the mood around here...

Voulge, on the other hand, was standing still with his lance on his right arm and getting pestered by the hovering Ignis.

Sabrina just sort of listened to everyone intently, even as another person showed up. She had to admit...it was weird how everyone from the same part of the bracket was showing up and talking. Ah well, guess she should introduce herself to everyone.

"Hi Marius and Voulge! I'm Sabrina Jetto, and this is my Navi, SplashLady! Nice to meet ya!"

Meanwhile, the mentioned Navi was kinda looking at DNR. Maybe it was just her, but he was taking a lot of interest in her..."You like it?" She twirled it around with her fingers...it was actually pretty nice to have fingers that could do that. "It's not very good in direct combat, though...the head's all dull. But I can also use it to command water as I please!" "...I think, anyway..."

"Darn, I've got nothing on you guys..." Sabrina looked over at everyone. "A med student, a police officer, and a reporter...I've never even had a job, to be honest. But I'll figure something out soon, I bet!"

"Bright land huh? Interesting... I wonder how that pleace is like..." Polonius wondered curiously as he tilted his head.

"Oh no, not at all SplashLady... your face is quite... beautiful... I'm sure you'll be able to handle such an... interesting body..." DNR said stroking his chin. "Your trident looks very formidable, I'm curious if it's better than my scalpel swords..."

"Well Sabrina..." Polonius asked as he straightened his head "You must have something you like?"

"No problem," Rose had replied to Polonius, rubbing the back of her neck with her hand in response to being called 'Rosie'.

Upon the arrival of the two new people, Rose spoke again. "Hello there Marius and Voulge." Rose replied. "Yeah, we're competing, too. I'm Rose Dunrae, and this is SummonerMan." She said, gesturing to her Navi.

"I was right, melee type. He uses a spear, which is close enough to a sword. And fire type, too, though I can't take advantage of that." SummonerMan commented aloud. "Generally I go with summoning objects, though the set folders of the tourney will throw that off a little."

Rose wasn't exactly sure how to respond to Marius' introduction, however. "Well, that's too bad." She said, after the first part. "And I'm sure that there are plenty of people who can't sing, but at least you have the sense to admit it. Some people go about denying it and it's just not very good for the ears." Rose replied with a quick smile.

"Well, we'll be fighting in the next block, first round." She said to Marius, "I'm sure it will be fun; I'm looking forward to it, at least."

"I'm looking forward to moving on to the second round, too." SummonerMan inserted, in a very bland tone, as he continued watching the screens' coverage of the tournament, which seemed to be nearing a start.

Rose shot him a harsh glare before turning back, but he didn't notice. "Well, don't listen to Summ. He's never fought you before, and he's pretty overconfident anyway, and kind of a jerk too. He's not the most polite, either, and his people skills could use work."

"A list of my flaws, just what I needed before the tournament. Don't you know anything about Morale?" SummonerMan retorted.

"Well, anyway, this will be our second ever net battle, so I'm not sure how we'll do. But I'm sure it will be fun, all the same." Rose said, smiling once more.

"But with a 100% likelihood for winning based of past encounters, and a great win streak going on, I'd say we should do fine." SummonerMan had to add.

"Summ! " Was Rose's frustrated response, before, looking back at the others.

SummonerMan took that opportunity to shrug, and went back, once more, to watching the screens.

"And uh, by the way..." Rose said quickly, "I'm not like, an official reporter or anything. It's all freelance, and I haven't been hired or paid for anything. It's more of a hobby than a job." She told Sabrina, hoping to reassure the girl.

SummonerMan then noted DNR's obsession with the "female" water navi once more. "Darn, this is going to get strange. I mean, I could tell him that it's got a gender swap, or I could let him find that his crush is(was?) a man all on his won." he thought. "Huh, what an interesting situation. Perhaps I'll just let it play out a little more before I comment." He finally decided, remaining quiet and focused.