Bruce threw open the door to his apartment on the third floor of the high-rise he called home, then threw his duffel bag on the floor near his couch. Hitting the lights and shutting the door behind him, the operator headed first for the fridge. It'd been a long day of work after getting up early, so he was tired, but if he was going to relax, he was having a beer with it. "All right, Dare, I got a beer and I'm finally ready to listen. What was so important that you nearly got me decapitated by that swivel boom camera in take 40 today?"

"I already apologized like five times for that!" Dare spoke up from the PET at his hip. Bruce had moved to his couch, turned on the TV, and propped up his TV. After the final step of cracking open his beer, he finally raised the PET to his face, allowing his Navi to address him face-to-face. "Geez, Bruce. I've been trying to talk to you all day. I've got places to go, you know?!" Dare looked indignant, but she also looked better than she had earlier that day: changing back into her regular clothes and having run her purge program for an extended period, she looked like she was in good health but a bad mood.

"What? What's so important? I told you already that Teruko and Ante have stuff to do today." The operator took a first big swig of his drink and let out the first burp of what would surely be many tonight.

"The Will of Acquisition or whatever! I told you I was going to figure out what that was. I posted that funky message to the BBS forever ago. I've got no idea if Hoodie has been waiting there for an hour, or if he already left-"

"Or if he didn't even read the message," Bruce added. "What kind of code did you even write that in? If I get a message in my inbox like that, I send it straight to the trashbin."

"Pfft, like you take care of your own inbox," Dare chided, grinning. "Anyway, how about it? You look ready to set back a couple of brewskis. Why not put me into the Netsquare at the same time, let me try to take care of this business?"

"No reason not to, I guess. You really thinking about that, though? Sounds like a lot of work."

"Hey, I need something to do, and this sounds like a pretty exclusive winner's club... maybe," Dare commented. In truth, she had no idea what it was at all, but there were a number of reasons she was curious to check it out, and she had nothing to lose. If it turned out Hoodwink hadn't heard or didn't plan to return her message, she'd just leave it at that, but she'd be remiss of she didn't at least hear what he had to say.

"All right, I'll send you over there. While you wait for him, you can tell me about your time with Ante like you promised!"

"Eh... did I promise that?" Dare replied, scratching the back of her frizzy hair. "I'm gonna be honest, I remember what I did with Saija and Drisco pretty well, but whatever I did or said with Ante, it's kinda like a big gaping hole..."

"Really?" Bruce said, scratching his chin. "Are you sure it wasn't just something really embarassing you don't wanna tell me...? Yeah! I bet you were girl crushing on Ante, weren't you?"

"Was I?" Dare said, her face falling and looking a bit sick once again.

"Wh- you don't know?" Bruce frowned widely. "I was looking forward to joking about it, but I really have no idea. I kinda had my hands full with Teruko, so I wasn't paying a lick of attention."

"Well, I don't remember it! I hope not, though..." Dare sighed, hanging her head. "Rrrgh! Did I say anything weird?! I don't remember... gah, send me to the Netsquare and let me forget about it!"

"You're the boss!" Bruce replied, hitting some buttons to set up the jack-in.