Tourney Spectator Lounge

"Well..." began Anyis, responding to SplashMan.

"Well..." began Mill, responding to Aelieth.

"I found out in the last match against MachMan that..."

"... I haven't really seen much of Rigel's Navi in..."

"... a swimsuit really seemed like the best way to..."

"... study the opponent as much as I can, but this time..."

"... I need to show a little skin to make it work best, but it's not like I have..."

"... A really long sw-"

At this point even fate itself couldn't stand how awkward those parallel conversations were getting, so it intervened by displaying some new information on the bracket: the third round was over. The semifinals were on, and there were only four Navis left: Red, Valkyrie, Pianissimo, and Anyis.

Both Mill and Anyis snapped to attention at the notice, and knew it was now or never. Aelieth was right that Duke Rigel seemed a little too worn out for his own good, and maybe they'd be able to make something of that. "You ready, Anyis?" asked Mill cautiously.

"Of course. I'm more concerned about you." scoffed Anyis as she regained her normal clothes with a snap of her fingers.

"... Right. Anyway, the Divewear should be set to equip whenever you dive into water, so don't worry about making the switch manually." explained Mill.

"Got it." nodded Anyis. "Now let's go. We can't keep our public waiting."

Mill just shook his head at her fake egotism before saying his farewells to everyone in the lounge. Next stop, the reception desk...

"You've gotta be goddamn kidding me," Duke mumbled groggily as he heard the next round being announced. Still he had barely slept, maybe only for a few minutes. Silently cursing the reporter, he pushed himself out of the chair and stumbled over toward the main lobby. Those few minutes would have to be enough.

"Hm. Try not to fall asleep in the middle of the round," Pianissimo said, still speaking directly from the PET and keeping out of Mill's or Anyis's sight.

Duke gave a heavy sigh before answering. "I won't."

Rose nodded her thanks to the man. "Whatever, I was planning to do that anyway."

She had sort of ignored Sabrina and Zeo until she got her answer, but that was apparently good for Zeo. As it stood, she took his nervous advice as just that. "I guess he feels uncomfortable here and is worried I can't sense other people's feelings? She thought. Had she noticed that she actually instructed her to do the same thing twice, she may have been more annoyed. On the inside, at least.

It wasn't long before a man she had seen on the screen for the last semi-final match had entered, and as a result she quickly turned to glance at the screen. He had lost.

While she made a mental note to speak to him, she figured she should first respond to the people standing with her. She did wave to him with a smile, though. He seemed a bit nervous.

"Oh sure, we can head back." She said somewhat absently, watching as the round's competitors left. "Good luck Mill." She called quietly after him, figuring he wouldn't here.

She took a few steps on her way back to the circle and waited for the others to catch up. Once they got over she'd continue the conversation from there.

The group was much smaller now, though. It consisted mainly of Shamus, who had long since disappeared from everyone's mind as he quietly hung back away from the others looking at his PeT, and Aelieth, who had just been abandoned by Mill.

"Hello again." She said to her chess buddy when she reached the group. "My apologies for abandoning you."

...Request for information denied. Sabrina would've thought a reporter-in-training would be better at multitasking, but whatever. With a shake of the head and a sigh, she elected to keep quiet about it for a change, and instead followed Rose back to the main group. But she did want one question answered, and she was getting it answered, no matter how much Rose unintentionally avoided it. "Rose! I'm just wondering...where's SummonerMan? I haven't seen him since I came back."

Well, so much for that. SplashMan waved to his fellow Aqua Navi and her operator as they headed off for their semifinal battle. Which meant he was free to return to his operator's shoulder. Once he was back on his perch, he listed to Sabrina's question, noting that it did seem odd that the object based Navi hadn't appeared, despite his personality...then turned his gaze over to the battle. And...wow. His finger rose, pointing directly at the screens used to broadcast them. "Holy cow, a giant cake!"

"What are you talking about?" The Netopian girl glanced over at the battles her Navi was pointing at, and took a good look at the cake-like arena. "They're battling on a giant cake? Cool! You have to admit, this tournament's got variety!" Seriously, that was an awesome arena idea, and easily her favorite among the ones used so far. Though judging by the Navis' reactions, it seemed that she might be alone in that opinion...

"Hey! Wait! Ugh..." Zeo sighed dejectedly as Rose and Sabrina went back to where they were before. "This is turning out to be fun, huh?" the teen said sarcastically to no one. He put his PET back in its holster, slid his hands into his pockets and followed the girls over to Aelieth. "It could be worse, they could ignore you completely. But getting dragged around by a girl is a no go, for future reference," his Navi told him. Running a hand through his hair, Zeo nodded. "I know, I know. But I'm not going to yank back or anything. Besides, I probably wouldn't have got over there otherwise."

On his way back across the room, he strolled by Steve. By now the boy figured it was time to start getting more social and hang the consequences. "Hey, come on in, the more the merrier," he said with a half smile to the man as he passed him. That was a lie coming from Zeo, but turning people away was a jerky thing to do. "And a heads up, if you just came from the tournament, the girl in pink will probably want to interview you or something." He stopped at the original group, glanced at the other people, and then followed Sabrina's gaze to the monitors. "Oh, wow."

"You've got to be joking." came ViralMan's voice from the PET.

Cake arena. That was either the best or the stupidest idea ever. Zeo wasn't sure yet. "Uh, yeah, variety. It is pretty cool, but I can't say I'd enjoy fighting on top of a giant cake. Maybe eating one." Looking closer, he studied the semi-finalists. "They look tough and...decidedly not tough." The last bit was in response to seeing Red, all ready for battle. "This is going to be good, I can tell," Zeo said to the other spectators.

Of course, no one seemed to notice how Zeo had casually muted his PET after ViralMan's initial reaction. He relayed a quick text message to quiet the Navi before unmuting the device and taking it out again. He then pointed it at the monitors so his Navi could watch sullenly. "So uh, Rose, Aelieth, what do you guys think of the arena for this round?" Zeo asked conversationally.

"Party, huh?" Steve said glumly. his hand twitched, his collapsible lampshade hat was still in his backpack. "Even got a cake, huh?" he added with equal excitement. He stepped into the conversation.

His loss still hurt him like a punch to the gut. Had he simply been outclassed, outplayed, beaten down, he'd have accepted that. But the match was so close when most everyone expected it wouldn't could only be chalked up to to Operator error. It pained him like an illness to know he had no one to blame but himself.

He didn't want to be the kind of lowlife to complain loudly about it to cheapen his former opponent's win, that was sleazy and an all around dick move. Still, he'd be happy to 'give an interview' with any one here: by showing them precisely what his Navi was capable of doing on the Net!

In the meantime, Steve said with a slightly dry rasp to his voice, "So, what's going on?" to the crowd of operators around him.

Aelieth waved goodbye to Mill only to find the expedition to talk with Duke had returned. "No worries, Rose." he smiled as Holoß floated back over to roost on his operator's shoulder, the form of Anyis draining from him as he reverted back to his usual appearance.

He was about to ask how things went over there when Zeo posed his question. "Well," Aelieth began, looking at the monitor, "It's not what I expected for a semifinal arena. But, at the same time, there's been a decent variety so far, so I guess it works. It'll be interesting to see what people can pull off using the arena, aside from eating a face full of frosting."

Steve made his way over and for a moment Aelieth tried to place where he'd seen him before remembering that this was the very same man who had alerted him and Mill that the third round was starting. It was hard for him to determine what was causing the rasp in the man's voice; he could just be thirsty, though the look on his face suggested that there may be some ulterior cause, such as the loss of a match. Deciding not to comment on it unless the man (he hadn't caught a name last time he saw Steve) brought it up himself.

"Hey there," he smiled, trying to make Steve feel welcome, "We're just talking about the tournament at the moment... well, the arena at least." He offered his hand to Steve. "I'm Aelieth."

Rose heard Sabrina's question this time. "Oh, Summ's, " She trailed as she glanced at the empty holster sitting on her belt. "In my PeT, over there." She said, as she pointed at the seat her PeT was indeed sitting in. He apparently was listening, though, as he appeared briefly in hologram form. "Why? Was someone looking for me?" he asked with an eyebrow raised. Pushing the PeT's wireless range he teleported over to the group, standing on a nearby chair.

"Well then, he's over here now, so that solves that." Rose thought, hoping that this was more of a solution than a problem, but assuming the worst in the back of her mind.

In response to Zeo's under the breath comment about the girls dragging him around Rose could only roll her eyes figuratively in order to avoid offending anyone. But she did think it was wrong to include her in the dragging, and rather strange to loop her with Sabrina for that, since the two had followed her on her independent trip across the room.

In response to his publicized question, however, she responded aloud. "It certainly is," She picked her choice of words carefully as dozens of words flew through her mind, "Interesting." Less acceptable alternatives included foolish, lame, unique, ridiculous, strange, and outlandish.

SummonerMan rolled his eyes at this and let out a breath. "Yeah, that's a nice way of putting it." He said, with some sort of obvious message lying behind the bitterness of the words about such a sweet subject.

When Steve, who she had correctly identified from the screen that had shown the battles, approached the group, she planned to respond again. Aelieth beat her to it, though. He also introduced himself to Steve, which was something the female operator had done when the man had been in the lounge earlier. She did still smile, though.

And then she managed to address Zeo's comment, which she decided would be a good idea. "Actually, since we're all just hanging around and being social, and I wouldn't want to interrupt that, I think the interview could wait." She said calmly with a smile. "However, if you'd like to exchange e-mail addresses," Rose continued, now focusing her energies on Steve, "I'd be delighted to contact you later for the benefit of my NetPaper, Gazette.Net."

SummonerMan looked at the upper left-hand corner of his skull as Rose entered some cross between Reporter and living advertisement. "It's almost prostitution." He thought. "I mean, with smiles and handshakes instead of sexual favors, but the basic concept is the same."

Of course, he didn't find the paper to be that trivial, so he respected her relatively effective methods and dealt with it in his usual way.

...She was keeping her PET unattended? That was definitely NOT the smartest thing she'd ever heard. After a silent nod, and once Rose had her attention focused elsewhere (which didn't take long), Sabrina started to head towards the lonely electronic device.

BEEP BEEP! BEEP BEEP!

Barely two steps later, her own PET gave off its 'you've got mail' sound. But she was a tad preoccupied with retreiving other people's possessions, so..."Hey, SplashMan! Do me a favor, and check out the e-mail for me, okay? I'll read it later."

"I'm on it!" The aquatic Navi's hologram vanished, as he reappeared in the PET to fulfill his operator's wish. "Let's see, I bring it up by doing this...oh hey, look who it's from!"

"Don't care. Unless it's from Dad or Mom, not interested right now."

"It's not, but it's from-"

"Not interested right now!"

With a sigh, SplashMan opened the mail anyway, knowing that any effort to try to get her to pay attention was futile. Hmm...looked like it had some kind of attachment. Probably couldn't hurt to download it while he read...

And as that was going on, the PET belonging to one Rose Dunrae was snatched from its seat. Luckily, the hand that grabbed it belonged to one Sabrina Jetto. "Got it. Now to return to sender!"

PING! Download complete. And he hadn't read the entire e-mail yet. Nothing seemed any different, though...wait, that was odd. To one side was a small button, with a circular arrow on it. That wasn't there before...looked like the main PET screen had it as well, so Sabrina could access whatever it did as well. He should probably read the rest of the mail to find out what the button did, but what was it that Sabrina told him? It's no fun if you know exactly what's going to happen? He wasn't so sure about that, but considering who it was from, it couldn't be bad. And thus, he walked over to the button, raised one finger, and pushed it...unaware that the figure of a mermaid had appeared directly behind him when the download was finished.

Not noticing the sudden intense flash coming from her own, the girl with two PETs in tow returned to the main crowd, specifically Rose. "Hey, Rose! I really think you need to keep this with you, even though you're not really using it." She offered the other girl her PET as she continued. "I mean, I don't think anyone here would steal it, but you never know when some nutjob might come in..."

"Yeah, really! You're just asking for it if you leave something like that out!"

"Right, Splash..." Sabrina trailed off as she realized that the voice that just spoke was feminine...and coming from her own PET. Before she could whip it out and check, a hologram appeared on her shoulder...a female Navi with a spear, and one that took up significantly less horizontal space than SplashMan. "What the?! What are you-"

"Doing here? I'm your Navi, duh! ...Well, kinda. It's a little complicated, but since SOMEONE was too busy to read their mail, I guess you don't have time to hear it."

"...HUH?" If one squinted, they could probably see the question marks forming over the Netopian girl's head. "It's fine if you want to switch forms, but what's with the 180 in your personality?"

"Because this IS my personality! Deal with it!" After a quick smile to make sure all who cared that she wasn't too serious, the mermaid Navi turned towards the main group, and took a small bow. She had a feeling she'd attracted a little attention by now, what with the fact she was Sabrina's Navi, but not SplashMan. "I know you guys, of course, but you've never really met me. I'm SplashLady, SplashMan's sister!"

"Oh, Yo. Steve." Steve replied to Aelieth, shaking hands before Rose approached him again.

"Interview? Uh, I guess so." Steve said, scribbling his email onto a scrap of paper and handing it back to Rose. "I mean, I'll do my best, I guess. I'm not too good with interviews." His mouth actually twitched into half a smile.

Then... Sabrina... (he was pretty sure that was her name, anyway) came up and handed Rose her PET. "Heh, theft is the last thing I need to worry about with my old heap." he said, digging his ancient model PET out of his pocket. "This thing is older than I am." He hooked it onto his belt loop, then took his long overcoat off and tossed it over the back of one of the chairs. There were a lot of people in this room, and so a tee shirt was much more comfortable.

Zeo soon stopped staring at the monitors and quickly looked at everyone in the room. The old/new guy, Steve, tossed off his coat and seemed to get more relaxed. Sabrina was preventing Rose's PET from being stolen by technically stealing it. In the process, Sabrina's own PET flashed brightly, which he noted. The boy repositioned his terminal, holding it out in front of him. "Not much going on, I guess," Zeo said to his Navi. ViralMan shrugged. "At least you made some conversation. If you try anything now you might screw up, so just wait. That Sabrina girl's bound to start a conversation eventually." The Navi crossed his arms. "Point me at the monitors again, I was watching." Zeo obliged.

He turned towards Sabrina as SplashLady presumably made herself the center of attention. "Hmm, was that the flash I saw?" he said to himself quietly. Hey, new conversation. ViralMan was right. As if he had heard his operator, ViralMan chuckled. "What did I tell you? She didn't exactly start it. but it had something to do with her," he said. "And while I'm thinking about it, since when can PETs generate holograms?" Zeo scratched his head. "I'm not sure, I haven't checked if this PET can. I'm a bit preoccupied now, I'll look later."

After putting that off, Zeo studied SplashLady with a frown. It changed to a smile a moment later. "Wow, you're pretty cool. You look a lot more interesting than my Navi," he said to her. ViralMan kept silent and self-consciously looked at himself. Zeo directed his next words to Sabrina. "So, did you split your Navi in two or is she another Navi? She apparently already knows us."

"Nice to meet you, Steve." Aelieth said once the other Operator had introduced himself. Others were taking their turns in the conversation, so Aelieth allowed his eyes to wander as he listened to his comrades' various thoughts and comments. During his mental travels, his eyes happened to fall upon a monitor showing the progress of the tournaments. Weird... he thought, focusing a bit more on what was being displayed. One of the fights seems to be over already... that was fa-... his thoughts stopped short as he recognized an armored boot poking out from beneath a collapsed candle. He knew that boot. A blank expression blanketed his face as he realized that the match hadn't even started yet. The voices of the others continued to buzz in the background.

Holoß, however, was having a much more enjoyable time now that yet another Navi had appeared. His hologram blinked out of existence, reappearing a fraction of a second later before SummonerMan, wearing the other Navi's appearance as he greeted the newcomer. He was about to try and introduce himself (his skill at pantomime would be a large factor in whether or not this would be a success), but suddenly blinked over to Sabrina as a new voice rang from her PeT. Reappearing as Splashman, he was surprised to see an entirely different Navi perched upon Sabrina's shoulder. The bar of light that heralded his transformations zoomed up his body again as he mirrored SplashLady, her smile replaced with a confused expression. He changed back into SplashMan, the same confusion showing in his eyes, as if asking where the original SplashMan had gone to. A question mark appeared above his head, accentuating the silent query.

Uh, hello? Rose seemed to be in La-La Land all of a sudden, and right as she was giving her her PET...oh well. Sabrina reached out, grabbed Rose's arm, placed the reporter's PET in that arm's corresponding hand, and released. There, problem solved. "Now don't go losing it! I mean, could you even imagine how much of a pain it'd be to get it back if you did?"

Though both operator and Navi heard Zeo's following question and knew who it was intended for, the latter chose to answer it first. Probably because she actually had a clue about what had happened. "It's kinda hard to explain, really...I'll just give you the short answer: it's a combination of both." SplashLady really wanted to comment on his compliment, too...but that'd be kinda vain, so she decided to just smile and keep quiet about it.

...And that was about all that was going on. Boooooring. "Hey, Sabrina. I'm all for socializing, but uh...I'm getting an itch to fight, ya know? Something hard, too!"

"Hard, huh? ...Well, Netopia wasn't easy when we busted here earlier. Think its Rogue Net's tough enough for you?" Ha, Rogue Netopia. There was no way she'd possibly want to-

"Sounds like a challenge to me! Let's go!"

...Why did she even bother using logic anymore? Clearly all it did was cause headaches. "Uh...well, if you're sure..." She wasn't expecting a challenge like this...but oh well, maybe they'd get something awesome there. Now, for a good place to jack in...aha, that statue with the port just outside. There wasn't anything between her and it, even though there was some distance between them. All she had to do was properly point her PET towards where the port was, like so...approve access into the Rogue Net, like so...and shout, 'Jack in! SplashLady, Execute!', like so.

"Jack in! SplashLady, Execute!"

Like so.

(I'm off to Rogue Netopia...so long, jerkwads >:0)

...

Well, it seems that Valk's sudden lose due to a random candle falling has left Shamus's mind void of thoughts. After a short while... Shamus finally jacks Gear out of the network, gets up, and leaves the Colosseum.

Steve's head jerked slightly at the words 'Rogue Net'. After all the cost it had took for him to discover it, even disregarding the fiasco in Electown, to hear it used as such a casual tone was... disconcerting. One thing was certain, however: SplashMan was much more powerful than his ranking in the tournament showed, something that Steve privately related to.

But that wasn't what was really bothering him. When he had discovered Rogue Net, it had also meant the possession. Could SplashMan possibly suffer the same affliction?

Not able to pass up the opportunity to observe a fellow powerhouse Navi, Steve turned to Sabrina. "Oh, Rogue Net? Not many folks can get into there, and the whole place is wild. Mind if I send my Navi along? Moving in numbers never hurts down there, plus I'd like to have something to do while waiting for the tournament to end." he asked.

"Wow, that was quick," Zeo commented, looking at a window on his PET.

ViralMan glanced out at him. "Yeah, that candle falling was pretty anticlimactic though."

"What?" Zeo asked. "I was talking about this reply on my mission request," he replied, searching for a spot to jack in. He watched Sabrina run outside and send her Navi into the net. "Hey, what are we doing?" ViralMan asked, confused. Zeo wasn't sure if Sabrina would come back, but he followed her out to the port and sent his own Navi into the network before retreating back inside as subtly as possible. "Find the NetSquare portal," he said, "and make your way to Yumland Net. That's where the mission will take place. Tell me when you're there."

Still a bit confused, ViralMan sighed, shook his head and walked towards the NetSquare portal.

((ViralMan's off to Yumland. Zeo is still here.))

Rose was surprised to watch as her friend went over and picked up her PeT without her permission. Rose's eyes visibly widened with shock, though she recovered face very quickly. "She's just trying to help." Rose thought, calming herself as she kept an eye on her friend and tried to continue paying attention to the other people and battles. "She couldn't have known that she'll be delaying my downloads and could get in trouble for doing something like touching other people's stuff."

Rose watched, interested, as one battle ended and another continued. She found herself somewhat saddened by the result of the ended battle. She figured Shamus did, too, as he left shortly after that. Though her second favorite competitor was out, she was now left to root for her friend and first place hopeful Anyis.

Of course, that battle wasn't going incredibly for poor Anyis, but Rose continued hoping and rooting for Mill and the girl herself.

Of course, she was so caught up in the battles that she wasn't being observant enough to comment on things people were saying. She turned back to her friends as Sabrina closed the PeT she had lifted back into it's rightful owner's hands. Rose managed a quick, "Thanks," before she moved off from the group to begin busting.

Rose then watched as Steve, too, wandered off to try and join her.

And then as Zeo and his Navi jacked in as well.

SummonerMan said a quick "Whatever." As he rolled his eyes and disappeared back into his PeT. "Figures, I show up and everyone leaves. Whatever, I see no need to stick around for long. " He thought. He hadn't really enjoyed that copy-cat Navi's "imitation" of him, and though he had restrained himself from saying or doing anything about it, said navi still hanging out out there wasn't a factor contributing to him wanting to hang around.

With most of her friends busy, Rose turned back to her good friend Aelieth. "Hey there." She said again, with a little half wave and awkward smile. She hoped he'd have something to say, though she felt up to ad-libbing something.

Completely ignored by SplashLady, Holoß turned back to see what SummonerMan was doing only to catch him disappearing back into his PeT. A pouting demeanor came over the Navi, even though he had no lips to pout with, and he skulked back to Aelieth's shoulder, switching back to his own form as he sat down, crossed his arms and glowered off into the distance. Without other Navis around, there was no fun to be had for him.

Aelieth remained oblivious to Holo's newly acquired foul mood as Rose tried to pick up the pieces of the conversation. "Hey yourself," he said, returning her awkward smile with one of his own. "Well... it seems that the others are starting to get a little bored of the lounge," he said, noting the already apparent fact the rest of the group had decided to throw camaraderie to the wind and go off to do their own things. Casting about for topics, his line of thought fell to the future.

"So, any plans after the tournament? Aside from writing up the piece on the fights, that is..." he asked before realizing that the question could be interpreted as him wanting to know something completely different than the original purpose of the question. Heat rose up the nape of his neck as he hoped she didn't read into the question any further than face value.

Eh? Oh hey, it was Steve. And he wanted to team up with her. Admittedly, she was interested in seeing how good DruidMan was after he got so far in the tournament...plus, there was safety in numbers. Nope, Sabrina couldn't think of a single reason not to join forces. "Sure thing! I just finished a battle, so now's a great time for you to come in! Come on, let's rock!"

Steve smiled. The last time he had team busted in Rogue Net, it hadn't turned out so well. It could only be an improvement after that!

"Oi, lazy." Steve said into his PET, where Druidman was snoozing in a hammock tied between two trees. "Wake up, I'm sending you into the Net."

"I'm lazy, dude?" Druidman remarked, cocking an eyebrow as he tumbled out of his bed. "This is coming from the guy who ate a koolaid packet and washed it down with a spoon of sugar and a glass of water because you didn't feel like stirring it up, man?"

"Whatever, shortstack." Steve replied. Now he knew that both he and Druidman would be okay, because if they had no problem ribbing each other, nothing else would bother them.

And with that, Druidman tore a hole into the fabric of the net, and dived into the deep, dark, unknown.