Vacation in Orbit

True to his apparently bargaining intent, both SPs received thoroughly scouring status cures from the bug-navi's cleanse programs, which would leave the pair feeling like they'd been through a wringer, on one hand, but also as fully functional, healthy and strong as they'd ever been, as well, every byte of their coding picked over by such a ruthlessly thorough deep-clean.

They each received their 'rewards', and perhaps surprisingly, they contained exactly what Cryptic has said they would. Even so, quarantining the gifts initially was probably a good call. A later full quarantine scan would be able to locate, and remove, what was most likely a small tracking and relay recorder patch from Aera's frags.... If missed the worst it would have done would have been to integrate the track seamlessly into the SPs systems and trace movements through, recording whatever she did, but it certainly wouldn't cause any harm. Still, probably not something she wanted to go undetected. Looking this gift horse in the mouth was certainly the pragmatic call.

Mach's data pack also would contain a similar tracker, also easily found and scrubbed by whatever quarantine Mazer's PET could manage. All in all it seemed kinds of strange; a token gesture, almost, that such things should be found and removed so easily, considering the calibre of hacking they were dealing with. Was there more to it?

Either way, the rewards themselves were genuine and safe, and cryptic nodded at Mach's cautionary ultimatum.
"Don't worry. I don't plan on running into a navi that's quite so... combat capable, as you again any time soon. It's not really my style. A warning to you, though, big guy. Knowledge is power, and F.O.R.F.E.I.T. knows much. Weigh your alliances carefully. "

All of his arms reverted to normal hands at last, swarming about his body in a rough halo while he wasn't using them for anything. It was about that moment when the automated voice cut in again.

[Confirmation Acknowledge. NAXA Inspection Team inbound. Expected arrival in T — 1Min.]

Cryptic looked up then shook his head.
"That's my cue." He grinned and his eyes flicked from Mach to Aera. A moment later, his head slipped over to be right in front of her, stretching ahead of the rest of his body, which was dragged over to follow a moment or two later.
"And Aera... if you ever get tired of following the big guy around..." There was a brief static crackle and the navi was suddenly standing behind her, all of his many hands slipping over her shoulders and around her chest, waist and thighs in a way that would have been far worse if she were still wearing her swimsuit, but still couldn't have been pleasant as it was. "Give me a call, cutie." It only lasted an instant, fortunately, because before Aera, Vector of Mach himself could violence the navi for his invasive creepiness any further, he was gone. It was a flash that looked like his normal teleports, but this time he simply vanished from the chamber entirely. Whether he'd jacked out or simply linked elsewhere was hard to guess, but he certainly wasn't with them any more.

The trio was alone in the satellite chamber, but they weren't going to stay that way for much longer. They had maybe thirty seconds at best to decide whether to stick around until the inspection crew arrived, or to get the heck out of dodge before difficult questions could be asked. The out-bound exit was active again, if they wanted to take their chances; having been uplinked to the satellite core directly, the path would drop them out somewhere completely different from where they'd stepped into it, now.

-=Battle 10 Victory!=-

Mach Receives: 9000z, BugChain, 85 bugFrags

Quote (BugChain)

Effect: Bug Share
Accuracy: S
Description: Inflicts one enemy with all bugs and glitches the user is currently inflicted with. Rare
Duration: Once
Element: Null

MachMan tilted his head slightly with a quasi nod at CrypticMan's warning. If F.O.R.F.E.I.T. had the loyalty of a legitimately talented hacker Navi, it wasn't a stretch to assume they had other 'talented' members as well. Mach made a mental note to formulate a report to pass along to the Shogunate; if they weren't already aware of this group, an organization with the capability to hack satellites would be significant. He could probably drop an anonymous tip to the NP as well, if anything the report could alert NAXA to clean their systems.

Speaking of which, the station announced the imminent arrival of an inspection team. CrypticMan would likely make himself scarce, and Mach would look red-handed regardless if he were discovered by the team. True to his nature, CrypticMan signaled his time to disappear, but not after giving one last "farewell" to Aera. The Navi slithered his arms over her body, maneuvering over all of the wrong places. Aera grit her teeth and was prepared to give the Navi the shock of his life, but in a cruel twist of fate he logged out before she managed to repay his lecherous come-on. She gave a very visible shudder, which shook some of the built up static electricity from her armored body. "I never want to see that creep again. Seriously," she complained as she rubbed her arms.

Mach turned back to his SP, nodding in solidarity. "Likewise, he was scary in more ways than one. You two alright?" Aera and Vector both nodded almost simultaneously, both showing their eagerness to leave. Aera was still thoroughly creeped out, and Vector was severely low on energy. "Alright, let's bounce. Keep hold of the bugfrags, we'll deposit them in a quarantine folder for a good scrubbing. Mazer, we're ready to go." Mazer nodded and activated his team's log out function. The three quickly began to glow bright cyan before they disappeared one after the other, warping out of the area and back to the safe confines of the PET.

((Logged Out))

Mach and co logged out just a few moments after Cryptic himself, leaving the Satellite chamber quiet and empty. By a fortunate turn of fate, whatever the hacker had done to ensure that his own jack-out couldn't be residually traced, also seemed to have covered Mach and his SPs; when the team arrived from NAXA a few moments later, they couldn't find any legacy that anyone had been there. The leader of the maintenance team shook his head as he looked over the damage to the tower.

"Someone was here alright. Get us a diagnostic and check the internal security." Other navis moved quickly to comply.
"The interceptor's been accessed, sir, but it doesn't look as though anything was done, or changed, or even copied, as far as I can tell."
"Think it's our guy again?"
"I'd say so. That would make this the fifth one, right?" Even as they spoke, each of them was working on repairing the damage that had been done.
"Now if only we knew what he—"
"Or she," chipped in a small voice from the side, partially obscured by an open access panel.
"... or she, was actually up to."
"First time there's been damage though, sir. What do you make of it?"
"I think... I think this time, our mysterious hacker wasn't the only one here, and I think they weren't friends." Just then another navi approached with the security footage.

When they reviewed it, none of the assembled NAXA team were surprised to see what looked like the smiling face of a standard Mr. Prog zipping and teleporting about the chamber, rather than a navi. Clearly they'd seen it before. Any time the 'Mr. Prog' stopped at a terminal, it began to spin in place, and it was impossible to tell what was actually being done. When Mach and his allies arrived on the scene, though, they were not so neatly obscured. unfortunately for the NAXA team, the audio of the footage had been seamlessly replaced with a musical rendition of 'how much is that doggy in the window', which completely blocked all sound and conversation.

"Do you want us to see what we can find out about the other navi, sir?" He sighed and shook his head.
"No. Just because he come to blows with our hacker doesn't make him our friend. Let's not tip what little hand we have. Wait and see if he comes to us, or goes to the police, first. Give him a week to come forward on his own. If not, then do some digging."

They continued the rest of the repair job quietly, chatting about other things, though it turned out to be rather minimal work, in the end. Once the spire was at 100% again, they left, and the satellite continued its lonely trek through the planet's orbit in silence.

Unfortunately for Mach, their own recordings of the encounter wouldn't turn out to be that much more useful. On review they wouldn't appear to have been tampered with or corrupted in any way. By all accounts they would seem to be authentic and undamaged, except that, like NAXA's own security tapes, CrypticMan had been replaced by the vacantly smiling face of a generic Mr Prog. It was hard to tell how or when it had been done, especially since the recordings behaved as though they hadn't been compromised at all. Perhaps the status cures had given him the window he needed? Except the first recording had already been backed up on the PET by that point, and it had been affected too. Very perplexing. At the very least though, he'd been unable to tamper with nay of their actual memories of events, so Mach and Co. would still, at lest, be able to describe him and give their own accounts, if they wished... they just had no hard evidence to go with it.

((Mach and Co really didn't make friends with Cryptic at all... no FXP unless you actually want it and convince me that it should be calculated))