Cutting through the muck

(( From His PET ))

A link appears from somewhere, tearing a gap a few feet in the air. Moments later a navi materializes, standing up in the link. He then promptly falls with a surprised yelp to the ground, face-first. A nearby Mr Prog rushes to investigate, and doesn't know if it should laugh first or report the transmission violation. It settles for a snicker and floats over to the navi, who is now quickly getting to his feet and trying to act like nothing happened.

The navi grumbles to the Mr Prog "Hey, you try forming a link just from memory. It's not as easy as it looks. Did someone move the net?"

The Mr Prog finally bursts out laughing. The link hovering in the air shrinks as it locks up and vanishes, only showing it's 'data keyhole' to anyone literally right on top of it. The Prog snickers again as it decides the laugh was worth ignoring the infraction and hovers away, with glee in it's voice "Move the net, he says". It can't wait to tell it's friends.

Trying to quickly regain his composure, as he knows his operator saw all that. "Er right, moving along", the navi mumbles as he heads through the net square to the actual link area. He passes by a few familiar faces who seem to have just as much a chance of greeting him as quickly looking the other way or leaving.

Finally arriving, he passes the edge of a few links as he mumbles "Nope", or "Not that one". Eventually he finds the one he is looking for, and before he steps into the swirling gate, he says to Reilyn "Get ready to feast your eyes on this little place called SciLab". Another moment later he disappears.

(( To ACDC ;D ))
((A couple weeks later))

[From his PET]

In a swirl of energy, a hidden link blinks to life and opens up. A navi tumbles down quickly, landing on his feet awkwardly for a moment, before the momentum carries him to the side and onto his rump. Some added nearby crates didn't help things either, as he crashed into them and sat amid the pile.

The clatter was sufficient to attract the attention of a nearby Mr Prog, who was apparently on patrol. The Prog looks up at the swirling portal and scowls, before HighwayMan climbs from the crates, rubbing his sore rear-end and bruised pride. The Prog chuckles as it says "Ohh it's you again. Graceful as ever eh? Let me guess, you meant to do that?"

HighwayMan stares blankly at the Mr Prog for a moment, before the events a couple weeks come back to his mind. This had to be the same one from before. "Uhh, yeah, I figured I'd just drop in to say hi", he said.

The Prog snorted, clearly unamused "Oh come on, you can do better than that. Transmission violation and all", it says as it motions with an antennae on it's head towards the link they both know really should be allowed there.

The navi sighs and scrates the back of his head, trying to think of something clever. Finally he says "Hey cut me some slack, pal, I was just making sure this sudden drop was where I left it".

The Prog snorts with a quick chuckle and says "Yeah yeah, go ahead to where ever your heads. That wasn't too bad. Next time get some better material though". It sends a message to a nearby worker Prog to re-stack the crates. As the navi was making his way out of the alley, and the portal shrunk again into a hidden link, he heard the worker Prog talking to the Mr Prog and was able to make out something like 'was that the clutz?' and 'move the net', between laughter.

The navi grumbled, he would be the butt of some jokes if it let him operate here. It beat popping into the middle of Netopia net and having to work his way to the net square the hard way. Locating the link area, he walked up and down the swirling gates, before finally noticing that if he idled around them of several moments, handy labels displayed for him where to go. Though he talked tough about heading into SciLab before, he realized after his trek through ACDC that he might not last too long in SciLab, and he needed to build up more strength first. Fair enough, he figured.

Stepping into the swirling portal to ACDC, he grinned as he felt the thrill and rush of being carried half way across the net world to his destination.

[To ACDC net]