Order and Anarchy

Pianissimo stared at the navi that identified himself as Broadside. For a moment he remained as stoic and expressionless as ever, not even fully taking in the emblem design of the coin. However, as he finished speaking, he remembered something.

"Heya people. Some of you know me, and some of you don't..." He inhaled "I'm J.T. Broadside.EXE's Net-Op."

A tower of steel, a massive mech towered over the battlefield, then crouched to the ground and deployed several weapon systems. The others, fighting the rather irritating opponent, including himself, all contributed to a cache of ammo great enough to unleash hell itself on a target.

"Correction: Current war potential is now at 700% and holding. Permission to re-calibrate my weaponry before firing?"
"Uhh... sure. Do whatever you need to. But remember to set-up the controls for Pianissimo."
"Affirmative"

Pianissimo himself had used a now broken targeting system to aim and fire the unholy death machine.

And now that he remembered, the cannon shell emblem near the controls was in fact the same design as the one on the coin. The next time that they had met, though Broadside certainly wouldn't have known it was him, he had been muted, with several systems locked. Had they already hit him then? "You remember me, don't you? We met due to rather odd circumstances near the NetSquare...I am Pianissimo."

Pianissimo flipped the coin over in his hand again. The other emblem, meanwhile, was unfamiliar. "What is this?" he asked, only half trying to project his voice. The result was the same wavering quality that had happened when he spoke to Arcaster before Broadside and those other three navis showed up.

Duke's voice crackled through a window that had just opened nearby. "What would you have us do with this?" he asked, indicating the emblem. "We have no way of contacting JT, if that's what you want."

Meanwhile, Arcaster had spoken again, and Pianissimo did a half turn to look back at her. I see... he though, not entirely sure just what he was feeling as he noticed the complete lack of navi emblem. Pity? His own emblem wasn't just a core and source code, it was a valuable tool for him as well. He couldn't imagine what would happen if that were stripped from him.

At first she was snickering at the foolish Navi before them, trying to defend himself. "Serves you right for attacking us. Under influence, being blackmailed or not, you're now in our hands," she said and the grin grew on her face. Wanting him to enjoy the situation too, she turned to Pianissimo and noticed he was still the usual Pianissimo. "What the..." she muttered to herself and glanced at the Navi again, having decided to listen in instead of acting for a bit.

Sometimes nodding in approval, sometimes caught in thoughts, but most of the time bored. "Fine fine..." Persephone said eventually, "You handle him. I'll talk with Arcaster." Her knowledge about the one calling himself Broadside was minimal to nothing. All she knew was that he was attacking them because of his Core unit being stolen. "So they took your Core too, Arcaster... Then why are they still chasing you? Something in this doesn't make sense... They pretty much have your fate in their hands, but you maintain the strength to run. A Navi's Core is its life, so they could delete you at any time. What is it you have that they want and why do you keep on running? Let's just say... What would they do if they got you where they want you...?" Persephone thought a few seconds about what she just said and realized she got confused by her own words. She shook her head from side to side, getting things in order or even more jumbled up and then asked a last thing to Arcaster as she lifted her hands showing that she had lost track of it all, "Do you still know what's going on...?"

When Pianisisimo asked if the Navi recognized him, the response was: "Affirmative." At Pianissimo's quietly spoken question, the Emblemless Navis responded "That is what is left of my Core unit. I will do whatever is required to ensure it's safe return." He gave no indication that he could see or hear Pianissimo's Net-Op.

She began answering Persephone's questions in her usual pleasant sounding voice "They stole my Emblem, yes, but I've never heard of a Core unit before. As for why they're chasing me, I suppose that would have something to do with them having broken my Emblem.... She paused to let Persephone ask the rest of her questions, then responded once more "My guess is, they're after my Admin abilities... for whatever reason. I don't know anything more than that, and I don't even want to think about what would happen if they caught me, again." She turned her head to look at Persephone, then asked a few questions of her own... without speaking. "You're a rather strange Navi. It's very crowded upstairs, is it not? I'm not sure how you manage with this many processing threads running at once."

Pianissimo continued to half-glance at Arcaster as she spoke. It was...broken? he thought, silently wondering how she was even still here if that was the case. No...that didn't make sense. For smaller files and programs, once the link to them was deleted, the file itself wouldn't vanish. It would be harder, or even impossible to access, and for some things it would mark it to be deleted or overwritten, but it wouldn't be instantly destroyed.

After all, remnants of the last two homepage designs Duke has used still remain...that's proof enough. And navis are infinitely larger and more complex... he thought.

"I believe that by Core Unit, he means something to do with the massive mech body I last saw him in. I doubt he means the body itself, but the way I saw it work I doubt the whole thing would operate perfectly without something connecting all the pieces," he said, knowing he probably messed up his on the spot explanation completely. Turning back to Broadside, he repeated Duke's question. "So the question remains, what would you have us do with this?"

"Don't call me strange," was instantly said by Persephone after she heard it in her mind and glared at Arcaster, "If anyone's weird here, it's you." Disgruntled by this, she turned away from Arcaster entirely and looked at Broadside and Pianissimo as waited until Pianissimo was done talking before she started to talk, "Just give him the damn thing. I'm tired of this. They're gone and if little miss secret here wouldn't have gotten herself into that trap, we wouldn't even be here." She looked at the symbol of Broadside in Pianissimo's hand and continued to speak, "If he's lucky he can contact his Operator with that. They probably took it away because of this reason. No idea why they'd take it otherwise, he seems like your every day grunt." She floated sideways slightly, away from the three Navis and sat down in the air. "Tell me when you're done," she muttered and looked in front of herself.

Arcaster didn't reply to Persephone's remarks, nor did she try to stop the moody Navi from moving away. Instead, she was quietly and intently gazing upon the coin in Pianissimo's possession. When she was satisfied with her inspection of the artifact, the once-again green-hued Navi set about collecting data fragments left behind by their attackers. Her expression seemed thoughtful and distant, her virtual mind obviously elsewhere while she went through the motions of this activity.

Meanwhile, Broadside responded to Pianissimo's question, his voice still disinterested sounding: "I request that you return my Emblem and Core undamaged." The white armored Navi's disturbingly glazed-over-looking eyes were still locked upon the coin held in Pianissimo's hand.

Pianissimo nodded and strode towards Broadside. He knelt down, handing the coin over. As he did so, however, the same thought crossed through his mind as before.

Why are there two emblems?

Pushing the thought away for the moment, he handed the emblem over, deciding to worry about it later.

Standing up and turning away, he glared at Persephone. "It would seem patience is not among your list of useful traits," he said coldly before moving back to a position where he could look between the three others. "Nor is any concept of silence."

Broadside sat up, and accepted the coin from Pianissimo. He turned it over in his hands, examining it for a moment, then looked up at the assassin Navi and said "I am indebted to you." He waited a couple of moments more before standing up.

Once Pianissimo had stepped away, Broadside replaced the coin in it's socket, which triggered an immediate change. His form lost some of it's resolution for a moment as his graphic model reset itself to what it was originally. It took only a couple of seconds, and when it was over, Broadside's coloration had returned to the normal settings other Navis were used to seeing. This included his left arm, which had darkened to the deep shadowed gray that was once again at odds with the rest of his body. He reached around behind himself with his right, and pulled out the cloth sling the darkened arm usually rested in, and looped it around his neck. This done, he reached his left arm into the sling, and allowed it to rest there as it had before, but as he did so, Pianissimo caught sight of a marking upon Broadside's forearm that resembled the second symbol he'd seen on the reverse side of the coin. However, once the arm was resting in the sling, the mark was hidden from view.

"Broadside.EXE, jacking out." With this sudden and final statement, the Navi disappeared from the net. A moment later, Jared's E-mail address appeared in a small pop-up window off to one side on Duke's PET screen.

Arcaster, meanwhile, had paused in gathering data fragments to observe Broadside while the other Navi was replacing his emblem. Once he left, she resumed quietly picking up the few remaining bits of data that had been lying scattered about. Once she was finished, she walked back towards the other two Navis, her expression thoughtful. When she drew nearer, her gaze seemed to snap back to the present. She then addressed the two in her apparently normally cool tone of voice... "Thank you both. If you wish, I can return you to the Netfrica Net before we part ways."

"Thanks is unnecessary. We just happened to be their bait. And I can't stand being used..." said Persephone as she stood up, still levitating in the air, "That includes Operators, yes." Slowly she glanced over at Pianissimo and Arcaster, then shrugged to herself. "Farewell," she muttered and disappeared as she shot into the air as a beam of light.

"While I agree that thanks is unnecessary, it is more because of who I am than what she said," Pianissimo muttered softly. "Likewise, returning us..." he watched as Persephone left the net in a beam of light. "Rather, me, will be unnecessary." He gave a slight nod and turned away, just as his emblem flashed.

Bringing up a world news window, he read the urgent report about a war breaking out in Electown. A sigh escaped from the assassin, if for no other reason that he knew he would have to help out in some way.

"Hey," he added after a few seconds, glancing back at Arcaster. "Don't hesitate to call on me if something such as this happens again."

He stood, waiting for Duke to jack him out. It took a few minutes before Duke was awake enough again to do so. He noticed the e-mail address, and saved it for the future.

Finally, Pianissimo's body completely faded to black, then broke apart, scattering into innumerable black particles. While most of them vanished instantly, a few traced what appeared to be pen strokes, writing Duke's e-mail address for Arcaster to see before fading completely.

((Ah, as long as that took, that was fun. But FINALLY I get to do something else.))