Tourney Spectator Lounge

"Well..." DNR said looking towards SplashLady, looking honest with his red eyes. "See... for the time we have met... well... I've grown... enthralled by you and your love of the ocean... " DNR said with a heavy gulp in his holo-throat.

Rose responded to Steve briefly. "Yeah, I'm in the second round, too. We're against Marius and his Navi Voulge."

SummonerMan casually observed in a mix between morbid interest, fascination, and mild dissatisfaction as DNR bumbled his way towards winning over the man of his dreams. "Well, if he weren't being deceived and failing so much, I may be more entertained. If he's going to be tricked I'd want him to succeed, and if he's honestly going after a woman, I'd want him to fail. With both happening at once, it's much less enjoyable." He thought to himself, as he multitasked watching the battles and the courting.

...Enthralled? Not exactly the wording she expected, but...apparently she was cuter than she thought when she was like this. "R-Really? Well, I..." She didn't really feel the same way, but she couldn't just say that... "S-Sorry...but I don't think it'd work out..." SplashLady could feel her face warm up...was she...blushing? It didn't feel very good, whatever it was. "Just..trust me on that."

With the present battles in a lull, Sabrina looked over to her shoulder, only realize that it didn't have any Navi holograms on it. Instead, she was way over on Polonius, looking really embarrassed as she talked with DNR. She should probably go over and see what that was all about...but that would involve getting up and walking over there. Pass.

<Oh for the love of the abyss...> Void muttered before moving his hologram between the doctor and the mermaid. Putting a hand on the doctor's shoulder, Void tried to reason with the 'DNR of love', <As much as you two are obviously falling for each other, need I remind you that you may be fighting each other soon, obviously you don't want to have your love stopping you from winning the tournament.>

<Besides...> Void said, whispering so only DNR could hear, <She may be trying to trick you encase she does have to fight you. What navi could look like that and act so naive?>

Void started heading back to Damian's shoulder, <Trust no one, you never know what tricks could be tried in a tournament...>

"So this is the place, right?" Na'im said as he entered the lounge for tournament spectators, "The place for the fight." Looking across the room, he noticed some people were already active in conversations and various activities. Not wanting too much of it, he shifted his sunglasses up on his nose and decided to focus himself on the fights already busy.

Coming from her PET like a ghost out of a wall, Djinni appeared into a view in her holographic form and floated towards Na'im's head. After reaching the top, she looked around happily without paying attention to the fights already participating but more so to the people who were in the room. "Do you think these people want to hear me sing?" Djinni asked as she tapped Na'im's head with her hand, although it didn't come with any effect.

"Don't think so," Na'im muttered, "They go with the flow. When someone's talking, there's usually someone else talking too. A conversation isn't fun on your own, but it would be with a crew." He then sighed quietly and continued, "I don't feel like talking though."

Djinni pouted and turned around to look at the fights going on already as she started to speak, "You're no fun."

"Hey dude... void... guy... I keep profesisonalism AND personal stuff separate, ya dig." DNR said with a slightly annoyed sigh. "You know... people saying that usually want to trick people too... how do I know YOUR not tricking me either huh?..."

Polonius looked towards Sabrina curiously as he sat nervously besides her. He was about to talk to her about something but then... that odd guy came in. Maybe it was because he looked different than the others, but Polonius waved towards the newcomer, bowing somewhat as he said "Hey there... the name's Polonius and welcome to the Lounge! It's kinda... getting... crowded here..."

...Falling for each other? Did he not even listen to what she said? ...Oh well, DNR seemed to be taking it in stride. In fact, he seemed to be annoyed at it as well. Better let him take care of that...

Now free to look around for whatever reason, SplashLady did so, noticing the newcomer and his Navi. "Hi there! I'm Splash-" ...What the...? Why was that Navi pretty much non-existant from the waist down...? "Oh my gosh! What happened to your bottom half?!"

Void gave half a shrug at DNR's biting reply, <Hey, I'm just trying to be nice. Sorry if that came out untrustworthy, but it's good to know you're not judging things at first glance...>

Setting down on Damian's shoulder, the shadowy navi sat down and watched the new net-Op team come in. <Hey, check out the winning team...>

"Huh?" Damian said, looking at the dark skinned pair, "They look like they've been battling for a bit. And is that...?"

<Yeah, it's a myth based navi, you don't see too many of those...>

"Well there are some harpy and others running around."

<True, but they're more ingrained into pop culture.>

"Meh," Damian sighed, slumping down into a chair, "They're interesting, I wish I could see them fight. Them being mythos and all..."

Burt shook his head wearily, having zoned out. "Wuh... Oh, right. The spectator's lounge. We were training, weren't we, Exxy? How's your training going?" the professor asked his navi with a relaxed smile.

"Pretty bad, considering you nodded off early on and I wasn't about to go out searching for viruses without any chip back-up or anything in an area we've yet to even explore," Exorcist sighed, trying to put things as politely as she could manage. "I should have been a little louder I suppose, but you know that's not really my specialty."

"It was a nice nap. Good rest can be its own benefit, you know," Burt said with satisfaction, stretching his lanky arms above his head and loosening up his joints. "Well, it looks like things have gotten super busy while we were napping, eh, Exxy?" he commented, swiping hair from in front of his eyes irritably with one hand, then wiping the thin stain of drool from his shoulder where he'd been resting his head.

"I haven't really been napping, but yes. Apparently a few more matches have ended out, including one of our possible opponents. I wish we could learn more about him before our match came up," she mentioned, clasping her hands in her lap idly as she kicked her legs, sitting on the same rock she'd been sitting on for about a quarter of an hour.

Burt jumped up out of his seat and wrapped his scarf around his neck, dismissing the subject of his upcoming opponents. "The best way to scope out the competition is to learn more about the operators, riiight? Let's go learn more about that cutie Rose Dunrae," he muttered in a quiet voice to his navi, wiggling his fingers eagerly and then shoving them into the pockets of his slim jeans to hide the disturbing motion.

"I don't think pestering that little girl will help us out any... C'mon..." Exorcist sobbed woefully, resting her head on her hands as her operator went back to scoping out the room.

As the operator started to make his way over to his target, he found an eye-catching navi floating around the head of an odd-looking, dark-skinned man. "Ooooh, she's cute! And she's got breasts about the size of yours, that's my ideal size!" Burt cooed, crossing his arms across his chest with no hint of shame in admitting the role of his own fancies in Exorcist's design. "Maybe even a little bigger, but I guess that's okay. A genie! That's pretty cool."

Exorcist's eyebrows rose and her ears perked up at the mention of the navi's being "a genie." "Wait, do you mean like a djinn? I believe that djinni fall into the category of malevolent spirits, meaning it would be my job to try to dispel such an apparition. Wouldn't that be the case here?" she asked Burt, standing up from her rock and resting one hand on her hip, poised for action.

"No, not at all! There are benevolent navis with stupid operators that don't realize that they're making their navi's theme that of a malevolent spirit. It's the same as if somebody made a SuperDarknessEvilMan just to sound cool, right?" he asked, laughing it off with a bogus explanation. "Besides, the guy looks religious! Maybe he'd buy in to Counterinfectualism?" he gestured, flicking one relaxed palm in the operator's direction.

"Religious people tend to have reason to stick to their religions, don't you think? Then again, I should remember who I'm talking to, Mr. One-Night-Sudden-Revelation here," she sighed, sitting back down and resting her head on the back of her hand.

Strolling over casually, Burt stopped with his hands in his pockets next to Na'im, giving a seemingly friendly smile. "Hello, friend! That's a very beautiful navi you have there, what a full... tail she has! Probably a competitor, right? Good luck in your contest, hope your opponent defaults like mine," he laughed snarkily, leaning back but keeping his hands in his shallow jeans pockets. Whipping one out, he grabbed up his PET and showed it to the operator. "This is my navi. We're busy training right now. What do you think, eh? She's a knockout, right?"

"Burt, please! Not everyone wants to ogle women all day like you seem to," Exorcist groaned, rising up from the rock. Realizing she'd probably given off a bad impression, she made a point of bowing to the operator. "Sorry for Burt's behavior, my name is Exorcist. It's good to meet you."

"Haw, he doesn't care! He's a dude! Dudes like pretty girl navis!" Burt guffawed, throwing one arm around the man in a chummy way before he had a chance to protest. Burt had finally eased up, though, giving him the window of opportunity he was likely looking for to draw away from the professor's vile clutches.

Steve turned to talk to Rose. "Voulge? I'm not familiar with that Navi." he shrugged. "I've only really started interacting with the Netbattling communities recently. I only know of a few Navis and Operators, like DNR here." he continued, gesturing to Polonius.

Steve heard the door open again, and a rather large bald man walk into the room. Some other competitor, he figured. Draining the last of his root beer, Steve slammed the can on his head to crush it, tossed it lazily over his shoulder into a trashcan near his chair, then got up to go to the machine to grab a second.

"'Scuse me, gents." Steve said to Na'im and Burt as he went back to the machine and, observing it carefully, hip checked it from the side, dispensing a new can. "Gotta love these old ass vending machines." he chuckled as he cracked the seal on his second drink, this time orange. "Oh, uh, mums the word on this one, eh?" he added to the pair as he took a swig.

In an instant Na'im turned around and found a pack of wild humans huddling around him. Quickly finding his calm point, he held a few fingers of his right hand against his forehead while closing his eyes and started to speak quietly to himself, "What did I do to deserve this... Something is stirring, something is amiss..." Turning to Polonius, Na'im opened his eyes again and put a hand on Polonius' shoulder. "Crowded indeed," he said quietly, then grinned at him and started talking with a normal volume again. "Welcome to the lounge, you say? It's as if you own the place for a day. I'll be sure to enjoy myself."

At the same time Djinni had started shouting at SplashLady asking about her lack of ass and legs. "This is simply how I was made!" Djinni shouted as she waved her arms frantically while remaining in her place floating above Na'im's bald head, "Genies are claimed to be spiritual beings to look like this! And if you ask me, I'm perfectly fine with it!" After saying this, she puffed up her chest proudly while putting her hands against her sides as a large smile formed behind Djinni's veil.

But unlike the others that had started talking to him, Burt was the only who had created a spark within Na'im's eyes. After the Operator had put an arm around Na'im, Na'im did the same and grinned wide. "Got some interesting designs for me?" he said to Burt, "I'm sure your Navi has plenty for me to see."

"Hey!" Djinni shouted as she dropped herself, chest first, on Na'im's head to look down at him and Burt properly, "I thought my design was to attract fans!" Slowly but surely a few gears and cogs were tilting into their proper places until the penny of thought fell in a dark deep puddle of stupidity. "Oh!" she continued shouting and pointed at Burt from her position, "Maybe this guy wants to become one of my fans!"

"From the looks of it, it won't take long for him to be a 'fan'," Na'im said as he glanced upwards, then turned his eyes to Burt, "You look like a guy that has an interesting path, my man. It'd be interesting to have a chat with you."

Enigma had given up on the group as soon as DNR began 'revealing his feelings' to SplashLady, and instead focused his attention on the remaining battles left in the first block. Looking bored, he studiously ignored the goings-on of the spectating area to try and figure out who he would be up against next.

Ceres, on the other hand, hadn't really lost interest in the people around him as much as he had zoned out to watch TV. With a sudden jolt, he realized that there were two newcomers, so he waved to each in turn and offered, Hey, guys, I'm Ceres, rather distantly.

This is boring, said Enigma bluntly. I wish everyone else wasn't taking so long.

It'd be interesting if we could do NetBattles in here, just for fun, replied Ceres thoughtfully, intent on not offending anyone in the room like he probably had before. What d'you guys think?

"Wah!" Somehow, SplashLady hadn't suspected yelling as the primary consequence of pointing out the most obvious part of Djinni's anatomy...well, most obvious to her, anyway. "S-Sorry! I thought maybe you had a process error or something you weren't aware of..." Sheesh...way to get off on the wrong foot-...Yeah, she was really glad she hadn't said THAT aloud...

She teleported her hologram to atop Na'im's head, extending her right hand as she held her spear with her left. "Really, I'm sorry about that! I didn't know...anyway, my name's SplashLady! It's nice to meet another myth based Navi!" Granted, she was based off a mermaid that starred in a TV show, but it wasn't a total lie. "And you are?"

"...Eh?" And once again, Sabrina had no idea where her Navi was. ...Oh, there she was, on top of some new guy's head. And with him was...Burt?! Suddenly she felt like she was trying to resist a sudden urge to puke...at least this time he wasn't being weird with poor Rose. So, she turned back towards the matches and started to watch them again...but every so often she made a point to look over towards SplashLady, just in case she needed a quick bailout...

Steve took silence as compliance, and then continued back to his seat. It sounded like the two ops were talking about oogling their own girlie Navis. Steve found that highly pathetic, and he had to fight down a swell of pity for the pair. They were free to do whatever they wanted, and could program their Navis however they wished, he really couldn't care less.

He plopped himself back into his seat once more and answered Ceres' comment. "Netbattle? Here? Please, that wouldn't be very fun. There's no folder restriction outside of the tournament, and I know for one that if I had even half of my chips that I'd wipe the floor with 75% of the Navi's competing here." he said, rather egotistically. In truth, it was more of defense mechanism, as being around so many Netops was making him more and more nervous.

Polonius, feeling somewhat ignored, returns to the others on the other side. "So Steve, what do you do for a living? more over, what compelled you to make such an interesting navi? I just gotta know." the med student asked in curiosity, opening his PET to reveal a first aid kid inside. He checked his inventory while he waited Steve's answer.

DNR meanwhile, was talking over to Druidman, his voice progressively getting louder in some form of protest. "Man... this totally sucks Gluteus Maximus Druidman... I try talking to new people and all it's gotten me is being berated and people ignoring me and my netop... You know how it's like not being understood? Kinda like people just using you for some purpose and then leaving you with nothing as soon as another person comes along. I came to this tournament to have fun and to actually make friends man!"

Don't be a prick, Ceres snapped at Steve, his anger rising like mercury in a thermometer as his expression changed from boredom to contempt.

You're one to talk, Enigma retorted coolly, inwardly hoping it would calm him down instead of provoking him and causing more drama. Steve, hasn't this tournament already proved that you never know what's going to happen?

How am I-- Ceres began before realizing what his navi meant. Blushing deeply and settling deeper back into his chair, the hotheaded operator muttered to himself under his breath. How am I supposed to deal with these people if they keep doing such stupid crap?

Enigma, seeming satisfied with his operator's tamed attitude, turned to Druidman and DNR. Hey, Druidman, I didn't actually get to meet you, he pointed out, making a private decision to stay out of his operator's drama if the navis proved to be any better at small talk. Ironically, just as he said this, DNR mentioned that everyone was ignoring him; in response, Enigma waved at him almost sarcastically.

"Er, well, I'm independently funded." Steve said somewhat evasively. "Apparently, I provided some people with some services a few years back, and now I'm pretty well taken care of." he added. "As for Druidman, I've had him for about as long as I can remember. I don't even recall if I bought him or he was given to me or whether I even programmed him myself." he shrugged, "Druidman doesn't remember either, which is the really odd thing about it." he shook his head. "Sorry about sounding so mysterious and elusive, but I honestly don't remember. I try not to think about it too much."

Druidman, meanwhile, resumed his conversation with DNR. "Yeah, I can relate to feeling like someone is only using you for something." he said. "But don't worry about any of these dudes, anyway. I mean, really, who cares, man? Let love and peace flow, dude. Don't force it, man. Nature made a river for a reason, and that reason isn't to be turned into a irrigation ditch. You catch my vibe, man?"

Steve then turned to Ceres. "Prick? Okay, whatever you say, kid." he rolled his eyes. "Mighty defensive, aren't we? I don't recall saying which section you were in."

Druidman waved to Enigma from the confines of his box seat. "Hi there, Enigma, right? You're an Amorph, dude?" he added looking at the way the Navi seemed to be configured.

"Yeah... yeah I do catch your "vibe" man! Geeze, your quite the sage Druidman..." DNR said as he scratched his head with a bit of a smile. "But yeah, beating up navis will most likely be fun and all but spontaneity is what the fans clamor for. I mean I had the Global Network people procure the folder that I'll use... Imagine the surprise when I have to use the water folder... Heh... this'll be a bit of a loop..."

"How fortunate... I rather use my own skills to make DNR..." Polonius said.

"Exscuse me... YOU made me? Didn't you... oh I don't know, get paired to ME by your father because I was one of the lead experts in heart surgery?" DNR interjected, with a bit of a smirk.

"Oh right! S-sorry sir!"

"Yeah... I'm your boss, that's right." DNR said with a bit of a nod. Polonius' little mistake possibly fed DNR's ego a bit, but just for a moment.

"But um yeah... so I'm now training under DNR's supervision in my med school education" Polonius said with a nod.

DNR simply waved back towards Enigma, somewhat genuinely interested in what the navi had to say.

"Oh, she has plenty to see alright, if you catch my drift," Burt grinned, elbowing Na'im in the side playfully and raising his eyebrows. "But we'll save that for another time, maybe. But enough about me and Exorcist for now, aren't you a cutie? I'll be your biggest fan!" Burt cried, clasping his hands together excitedly and staring disarmingly at the space above Na'im's bald, shiny head. "And another hottie!" he shouted as Splash(wo)man showed up. "Damn, if all tournaments are like this, I'm going to have to come to more of them!" he laughed obnoxiously, not sure where to keep his eyes.

Exorcist was happy that at least Burt and Na'im seemed to be getting along okay. That made two successive encounters in a row where people had managed to tolerate Burt without snapping at him. "Perhaps I'm just not being patient enough," she thought to herself, tensing her eyebrows. Lighting back up, she noticed Na'im studying her on the PET screen and blushed in embarrassment. "I normally wear a robe and hat, but Burt and I are doing a Yoka-run training right now, so..."

"Ah! That's right. If you're looking to kill some time before your match, since I assume your navi's the Djinni that's coming up in the next round. How about it, man, you up for some team busting in Yoka? We can even get your navi a cute swim-" he started, then reconsidered, looking the genie navi over. Her outfit was already relatively non-conservative, and furthermore, she had no hips or legs to sport a bikini bottom. "Uh, okay, she can just stick with what she's got on."

"A busting partner will be fine I guess, though I really thought you said this was going to be solo-training. Still, training with a friend couldn't be a bad idea and I'll learn more about Djinni's status as a benevolent spirit as we go," Exorcist muttered, though Burt wasn't really paying any attention.

"Get in quick and we'll begin immediately! I know you don't have much time before your match, Shiny," Burt told Na'im, plopping down into the sofa in the corner and watching his PET excitedly. Listening to the other combatants chat, he smirked and cupped one hand over his mouth. "Boy, that can-smasher guy is a real grade-A jackass, huh? Wonder who's the shlub's navi? It'd suck to be that guy's navi riiight?" he giggled quietly.

Exorcist sighed at the irony, shaking her head sadly. "Yeah, I sure am glad I have a nice operator like you who will get along well with others," she responded in a canned, monotone voice, waiting for Djinni's arrival (if she even agreed to show up).

Ceres, taking a deep breath, counted to ten for the second time that day. When it didn't work, he tried twenty, forty, and eighty, finally reaching a semblance of calm at a hundred. Inhaling slightly, he mumbled something about "knew what you really meant" to Steve before resuming his sulk to watch more of the tournament on TV.

In response to Druidman, Enigma let a small smile cross his face before his hologram exploded into millions of pixels, speeding around in an indigo vortex. From the feet up, a tallish, humanoid figure was being built, the pixels assembling themselves like tiny building blocks along the way. Just a few moments later, Druidman was looking at, well, Druidman, except wildly purple. Furs, leathers, height, stature, everything; Enigma was an exact replica of the navi standing in front of him. That's right... man, he grinned. Just for kicks, Enigma drew more data from seemingly nowhere to create four hovering metallic disks around him, just like DNR used. I hope I'm paying enough attention.