"We're through! Cut the power, now! Downshift Tower's output back to initial transmission levels!" shouted Emily immediately, ordering mission control into action to spare her Navi any unnecessary quantum bombardment.
The nice thing about hyper-lightspeed was that just as fast as the particles flew, so did the changes in those particles. As soon as Tower got the transmission from NAXA HQ to shift back to a low-order beam, the rain of dense and destructive Lumians stopped, even the incredible 5 parsecs away where Mir was. That was several kinds of a relief for Mir, whose blast shield attached her LTC shattered after one final impact with an inbound Lumian cluster. "Oh my god... If this is what Navi spaceflight is going to be like in the future, I may not want any part of it after all!" gasped Mir as she finally let her anxiety go, now that her safety was finally assured.
"I'm really, really sorry Mir! We'll definitely have better precautions against a lost connection in the next mission!" Emily apologized profusely to her Navi for the desperate measure, but her mind ultimately went back to the main focus. "But... right now we need to keep moving! Hurry straight to the network and find Apollo!"
"... Right, okay." replied Mir with a nod of her helmeted head, coming to grips with the fact that this crisis wasn't about her. With a quick flash of her boosters, Mir raced through the open tunnel the asteroid previously blockaded. She had gotten caught up in this mess around the halfway point from the destination, so she still had another good 5 parsecs to fly before making contact with the mystery network. She was on orders to enter the alien digital plane ASAP to locate Apollo, so without a moment hesitation upon getting there, Mir dove right in...
The Interstellar Frontier
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((Music))
Ten parsecs away from any terrestrial network, Mir stepped out of the safety of her tunnel of light onto a rainbow bridge.
Directly beneath her as she left the beam was a pathway of solid light of variable color. The center of the pathway was violet, which shifted down the visible spectrum the closer toward the sides it got. As the pathway approached red, the light bridge decayed, dissolving into nothing rather than forming solid edges. Behind Mir. the bridge warped around the Lumian beam, creating a distorted but solid bend around the column of light it left in the network. Up ahead, the bridge decayed into nothing not too far away, but it was only one of many broken pathways forming a haphazard web stretching out around Mir. Only a few of them looked fully intact, though. Some were much more thoroughly decayed than the one Mir was on, while others had been warped by other bridges the way hers had been by the Lumian beam. Rather than becoming more solid, however, most of the other warped bridges were split apart or dispersed around another bridge that had cut through it, leaving floating fragments far too small to stand on. Although the rest of the bridges were demonstrably solid, and there was enough of an approximation of gravity to stay standing on the one she was on, Mir could feel almost no weight. Flying between them would not be too difficult.
Between some of the pathway fragments, there was nothing but empty space. Between others, however, there was a fog of static stretching between them, as though trying to hide something else within. Mir would have to get closer to find out what, if anything, was hidden there however, as from her current perspective it looked like nothing more than a featureless haze.
Beyond the reaches of the patchwork of light bridges, Mir could catch her first glimpse of what deep space looked like from within a network. It wasn't solid black, or even filled with stars like the night sky seen from the real world. Rather, Mir found herself looking at a continuous fog of radiation rendered visible. Most of the sky was either a deep blue or purple, while smaller patches were covered by clouds of lighter blue and green. More rarely, smaller patches of yellow would stick out, with dots of red within each of them. The radiation fog was, for the most part, static, although every now and then a brighter beam would streak across the sky, leaving a trail of light in its path before beginning to dissolve into nothing.
It was when one of these beams passed through the bounds of the network, threading through a hole in the strange patchwork of light, that Mir could hear the first of any sound whatsoever since entering the network. Even then, it was nothing more nothing more than a jumble of senseless noise, with no pattern to it and nothing back home to compare it too. The noise faded into nothing as soon as it came, but the beam that seemed to carry it left a more lasting mark on the network it had passed through, creating a new broken, already decaying bridge in the space it had previously occupied.
Apollo was nowhere to be seen, but flashes of light from somewhere overhead suggested that something at least was nearby.
Ten parsecs away from any terrestrial network, Mir stepped out of the safety of her tunnel of light onto a rainbow bridge.
Directly beneath her as she left the beam was a pathway of solid light of variable color. The center of the pathway was violet, which shifted down the visible spectrum the closer toward the sides it got. As the pathway approached red, the light bridge decayed, dissolving into nothing rather than forming solid edges. Behind Mir. the bridge warped around the Lumian beam, creating a distorted but solid bend around the column of light it left in the network. Up ahead, the bridge decayed into nothing not too far away, but it was only one of many broken pathways forming a haphazard web stretching out around Mir. Only a few of them looked fully intact, though. Some were much more thoroughly decayed than the one Mir was on, while others had been warped by other bridges the way hers had been by the Lumian beam. Rather than becoming more solid, however, most of the other warped bridges were split apart or dispersed around another bridge that had cut through it, leaving floating fragments far too small to stand on. Although the rest of the bridges were demonstrably solid, and there was enough of an approximation of gravity to stay standing on the one she was on, Mir could feel almost no weight. Flying between them would not be too difficult.
Between some of the pathway fragments, there was nothing but empty space. Between others, however, there was a fog of static stretching between them, as though trying to hide something else within. Mir would have to get closer to find out what, if anything, was hidden there however, as from her current perspective it looked like nothing more than a featureless haze.
Beyond the reaches of the patchwork of light bridges, Mir could catch her first glimpse of what deep space looked like from within a network. It wasn't solid black, or even filled with stars like the night sky seen from the real world. Rather, Mir found herself looking at a continuous fog of radiation rendered visible. Most of the sky was either a deep blue or purple, while smaller patches were covered by clouds of lighter blue and green. More rarely, smaller patches of yellow would stick out, with dots of red within each of them. The radiation fog was, for the most part, static, although every now and then a brighter beam would streak across the sky, leaving a trail of light in its path before beginning to dissolve into nothing.
It was when one of these beams passed through the bounds of the network, threading through a hole in the strange patchwork of light, that Mir could hear the first of any sound whatsoever since entering the network. Even then, it was nothing more nothing more than a jumble of senseless noise, with no pattern to it and nothing back home to compare it too. The noise faded into nothing as soon as it came, but the beam that seemed to carry it left a more lasting mark on the network it had passed through, creating a new broken, already decaying bridge in the space it had previously occupied.
Apollo was nowhere to be seen, but flashes of light from somewhere overhead suggested that something at least was nearby.
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Nothing could describe what Mir was feeling better than true awe. Time and time again she had imagined going up into space just as was the case now, but what laid in front of Mir now was beyond any kind of expectation she could've created. It wasn't just her, either. A cloud of dumbfound silence sank in over NAXA mission control, because this digital crossroads in outer space was something Earthlings had never witnessed. Visually it wasn't nothing that couldn't be recreated with maybe a day's worth of coding, but... this messy and haphazard mix of luminous bridges was not man-made. This was the Net world's nature, free of any sentient influences. Mir, Emily, and all of mission control had just witnessed those interstellar forces at work even, as that noise-inducing beam drew up another broken light bridge in the distance.
"Incredible..." said Emily breathlessly, finally breaking the silence with a sentiment that probably everyone in the room shared.
"Yeah... It's almost unnerving to stand here." added Mir from her own first-hand observations as she peered through and around the radiating fog. Despite the fact that she wanted to be the Navi to make this trip in the first place, Mir couldn't help but feel a little hesitation now that she was here. With a good look at everything now, though, she could finally put that hesitation into words. "Everything on Earth's Net is made with an intent, a designed purpose... A network existing just because it does is kind of scary to imagine, for any Navi."
"Huh... Um, anyway! We're recording the coordinates for this network right now, so research expeditions can come back later. We need to find Apollo! Can you see any trace of him, Mir?" asked Emily, catching herself from losing her focus to this fascinating discovery.
"No... I barely know what to make of any of this, period. This fog is just a huge cloud of interference... There's no logic to the sights or sounds, let alone tracks Apollo left behind." answered Mir, shaking her helmet left and right as she responded.
"... If Apollo's still around, he'll definitely be where the biggest commotion is. Going down quietly would be the last thing he'd do." explained Glenn suddenly, removing himself from the corner wall he had been quietly leaning against, anxiously tapping his foot from time to time with nothing to do. "My PET still can't link up with him through all that mess, so Mir's going to have to start looking somewhere. Go for the noisiest and flashiest sector you can find."
Mir hadn't noticed it immediately due to all the audio static distracting her, but there were indeed an abnormal number of light flashes from an area above her. "Egh, that's a precarious climb... Clearance to advance, Emily?"
"It's as good a bet as we have right now... but be careful. There's no telling how unstable those bridges are." cautioned Emily after giving her consent.
"Right... Well then, I'm going." announced Mir as she re-ignited the boosters on her backpack and in her leg guards, hopping from her current bridge up a little to the next one, and the next one after that, and on and on towards the unknown activity...
Actions:
--Advance towards the flashing (Movement)
"Incredible..." said Emily breathlessly, finally breaking the silence with a sentiment that probably everyone in the room shared.
"Yeah... It's almost unnerving to stand here." added Mir from her own first-hand observations as she peered through and around the radiating fog. Despite the fact that she wanted to be the Navi to make this trip in the first place, Mir couldn't help but feel a little hesitation now that she was here. With a good look at everything now, though, she could finally put that hesitation into words. "Everything on Earth's Net is made with an intent, a designed purpose... A network existing just because it does is kind of scary to imagine, for any Navi."
"Huh... Um, anyway! We're recording the coordinates for this network right now, so research expeditions can come back later. We need to find Apollo! Can you see any trace of him, Mir?" asked Emily, catching herself from losing her focus to this fascinating discovery.
"No... I barely know what to make of any of this, period. This fog is just a huge cloud of interference... There's no logic to the sights or sounds, let alone tracks Apollo left behind." answered Mir, shaking her helmet left and right as she responded.
"... If Apollo's still around, he'll definitely be where the biggest commotion is. Going down quietly would be the last thing he'd do." explained Glenn suddenly, removing himself from the corner wall he had been quietly leaning against, anxiously tapping his foot from time to time with nothing to do. "My PET still can't link up with him through all that mess, so Mir's going to have to start looking somewhere. Go for the noisiest and flashiest sector you can find."
Mir hadn't noticed it immediately due to all the audio static distracting her, but there were indeed an abnormal number of light flashes from an area above her. "Egh, that's a precarious climb... Clearance to advance, Emily?"
"It's as good a bet as we have right now... but be careful. There's no telling how unstable those bridges are." cautioned Emily after giving her consent.
"Right... Well then, I'm going." announced Mir as she re-ignited the boosters on her backpack and in her leg guards, hopping from her current bridge up a little to the next one, and the next one after that, and on and on towards the unknown activity...
Actions:
--Advance towards the flashing (Movement)
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Despite the decaying nature of the light bridges, Mir found it surprisingly easy to jump between them. All it took was enough thrust to hop off of one, and then she could cruise the rest of the way to the next. In this way she was able to continue to climb toward the disturbance. Along the way, several patches of static fog rationalized themselves as she approached them, looking oddly like familiar network architecture. One became a small pathway of random panels as she passed by, while another looked more like a network gate, except for the fact that it was being used as a connector between two light bridges. But as she passed, they faded back into static, as though they were never there at all.
Finally, Mir found herself on a vertical bridge that broke into a larger cavity in the network, largely devoid of the paths that had weaved across the rest of what she had explored. With the random and accidental network, it wouldn't be an unfair assumption that there simply wasn't any that had been made in that space, but it also wouldn't be irrational to assume they had simply been moved. Not with the massive nest-like structure on the other side of the expanse.
It was in fact the first part of the network Mir had seen that looked anywhere resembling orderly. Around a single point, the bridges of light that had made up the rest of the network so far appeared to be broken apart and clustered together, with something that could only be identified from her distance as a very bright light situated at its heart. She only had a moment to look before something considerably smaller and more humanoid flew into view from behind one of the bridges and fired a jet of rocket thrust at it, then a wave of interference erupted from within the nest. Everything around it distorted into an indiscernible haze of color, leaving a cloud of interference blocking any view of the nest.
Seconds later, a series of light bridge fragments came drifting out of the cloud, leaving their own trails in their wake that created new, if much smaller and more precarious, pathways.
Finally, Mir found herself on a vertical bridge that broke into a larger cavity in the network, largely devoid of the paths that had weaved across the rest of what she had explored. With the random and accidental network, it wouldn't be an unfair assumption that there simply wasn't any that had been made in that space, but it also wouldn't be irrational to assume they had simply been moved. Not with the massive nest-like structure on the other side of the expanse.
It was in fact the first part of the network Mir had seen that looked anywhere resembling orderly. Around a single point, the bridges of light that had made up the rest of the network so far appeared to be broken apart and clustered together, with something that could only be identified from her distance as a very bright light situated at its heart. She only had a moment to look before something considerably smaller and more humanoid flew into view from behind one of the bridges and fired a jet of rocket thrust at it, then a wave of interference erupted from within the nest. Everything around it distorted into an indiscernible haze of color, leaving a cloud of interference blocking any view of the nest.
Seconds later, a series of light bridge fragments came drifting out of the cloud, leaving their own trails in their wake that created new, if much smaller and more precarious, pathways.
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"... Well, found Apollo." reported Mir, if only by the strictest of NAXA's operational codes as she stated the painfully obvious. While his physical form was somewhat obscured from that distance due to all the interference, not one person in mission control could mistake that excessive amount of rocket thrust for anything else. "Just what does that bonehead think he's doing? Does he realize he's destroying a discovery for the ages?"
"It looks like... he's fighting against the interference?" noted Glenn uncertainly after intently staring at the main monitor as it replayed the clip of Apollo several times. "That last blast looked like its retaliation against Apollo."
"Of course... Can't he just stay put like a good little rescue target?" sighed Mir before pausing to think. "Wait... the interference is fighting back? That doesn't even make sense."
"Some sort of firewall, maybe? No, the countermeasures are too haphazard to be automated... Perhaps it's just a digital representation of the solar radiation present throughout the interstellar medium..." muttered Emily as her brain quickly tried to analyze the unknown danger on this network. Given a more immediate task at hand, though, she managed to reel herself in and get back on point. "Um, anyway... Catch up to Apollo before we lose our visual on him, Mir. We can decide how to proceed after he's re-linked to Glenn's PET."
"On it. Gotta stop him from damaging valuable research subjects, regardless." nodded Mir while discretely admitting her own priority in the matter. Whatever her motive was, though, Mir re-ignited her boosters and began hopping between broken light bridges again to reach her fellow astronaut.
Actions:
--Advance towards Apollo (Movement)
"It looks like... he's fighting against the interference?" noted Glenn uncertainly after intently staring at the main monitor as it replayed the clip of Apollo several times. "That last blast looked like its retaliation against Apollo."
"Of course... Can't he just stay put like a good little rescue target?" sighed Mir before pausing to think. "Wait... the interference is fighting back? That doesn't even make sense."
"Some sort of firewall, maybe? No, the countermeasures are too haphazard to be automated... Perhaps it's just a digital representation of the solar radiation present throughout the interstellar medium..." muttered Emily as her brain quickly tried to analyze the unknown danger on this network. Given a more immediate task at hand, though, she managed to reel herself in and get back on point. "Um, anyway... Catch up to Apollo before we lose our visual on him, Mir. We can decide how to proceed after he's re-linked to Glenn's PET."
"On it. Gotta stop him from damaging valuable research subjects, regardless." nodded Mir while discretely admitting her own priority in the matter. Whatever her motive was, though, Mir re-ignited her boosters and began hopping between broken light bridges again to reach her fellow astronaut.
Actions:
--Advance towards Apollo (Movement)
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As Mir advanced over the light platforms toward the battle, she rapidly drew closer to the cloud of interference. Too rapidly, in fact. The cloud was expanding, as most waves do, and overtaking the remaining bridges in Mir's path. As it swept over them, the light distorted along its path. Pieces of them brightened, or faded out of view, or abruptly shifted in tone as though the colors were inverted, all while the bridges themselves were warped into broken, knotted shapes. Up ahead, Apollo fired on the cloud, punching a hole in the interference and flying through before it could close around him.
Then, before it could reach Mir, the cloud thinned, leaving gaps large enough to easily fly through. Beyond the wave, the remaining bridges had molded together into a single path, twisted and knotted as though having been tied together but rapidly decaying. And at the end of it, Apollo was still floating near the nest-like structure.
Inside it, Mir could still see what didn't amount to much more than a bright light, but like the bridges the light appeared to have some semblance of form to it. Although it remained contained within the nest for the most part, it was clear even from Mir's distance that it was moving. After all, while at some angles the "light" appeared to be attached to the cage around it, the rest of it had just expanded and...uh-oh.
The nest distorted into an indiscernible mass of color again as another wave of interference was released and rapidly approached the two astronauts.
___
Mir: 120 HP
Apollo: 300 HP
Unknown data entity: ▒₦≈♪Ω↕
[Unidentified interference pattern approaching.]
Then, before it could reach Mir, the cloud thinned, leaving gaps large enough to easily fly through. Beyond the wave, the remaining bridges had molded together into a single path, twisted and knotted as though having been tied together but rapidly decaying. And at the end of it, Apollo was still floating near the nest-like structure.
Inside it, Mir could still see what didn't amount to much more than a bright light, but like the bridges the light appeared to have some semblance of form to it. Although it remained contained within the nest for the most part, it was clear even from Mir's distance that it was moving. After all, while at some angles the "light" appeared to be attached to the cage around it, the rest of it had just expanded and...uh-oh.
The nest distorted into an indiscernible mass of color again as another wave of interference was released and rapidly approached the two astronauts.
___
Mir: 120 HP
Apollo: 300 HP
Unknown data entity: ▒₦≈♪Ω↕
[Unidentified interference pattern approaching.]
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"Hah... Hah... We can keep doing this to the ends of the galaxy and back, damn alien... I ain't losing to you...!" taunted Apollo through heavy breathing as he stared down the next incoming wave of interference. He and the data nest had been going back and forth like this for hours, with Apollo one by one breaking through the hazardous waves the alien emitted. Without any connection to his PET or Battlechips coming from Glenn, Apollo could only attack with brute force and evade, and despite his stubbornness there probably wasn't much fuel left in his figurative tank. He had to jump back to the quantum transmission somehow, but with this crazy thing dogging him constantly...
"Argh, blast it all! Eat full throttle, alien!" shouted Apollo in frustration as the interference wave closed in, before flipping all 5 of his backpack thrusters forward to launch one last ignition blast with every bit of fuel remaining. The engine cones began glowing bright red as heat built up within them, until...
*WHAM*
The entire ignition process aborted as something crashed into Apollo's exposed back, forcing him to turn his head away from the incoming interference wave to see just what had... "Lab rat...?! What the flying scrap are you-"
"I AM NOT A LAB RAT!!!" shouted Mir angrily, after having gained Apollo's attention by throwing her shoulder into his back with a booster-assisted tackle. Not planning to stop there, Mir lifted the LTC up and jammed it point-blank into the rocket Navi's side before announcing, "Re-establishing link!".
"Hey, wait, what are- Yeooooowch!!!" yelped Apollo as Mir pulled the trigger and launched a round of Lumian bullets right into him, causing him to flinch in pain and twist his various thrusters in random directions. "You goddamn little... What was that for?!"
"Apollo!" shouted a sudden, different voice from within Apollo's comm system.
"Glenn?!" gasped Apollo in shock, suddenly reconnected to his PET and Operator back on Earth. Once that registered, though, Apollo's attention was right back on Mir. "Damnit lab rat, did you really have to do it like that?!"
"It was fastest, and do you really think we have time to spare?!" countered Mir before pointing over at the rapidly approaching interference.
"Ergh... Glenn, I need a launch, now!" grumbled Apollo before barking a demand back to his Operator. Lacking the time for words, Glenn quickly obliged by slipping a DashAttack chip into his PET and shooting it a few hundred trillion miles into space. By the wonders of Lumian quantum transmission, Apollo received the data in an instant, causing his main and secondary thrusters to re-align on his back and dropping one of his two heat shields down in front of him to grab. "Hang tight lab rat, this is going to be rough!" announced Apollo just before wrapping his free arm around Mir's waist and yanking her in next to him behind the heat shield.
"Whoa! Hey! ...Where do you get off calling me that after I saved your life?!" responded Mir indignantly just before Apollo ignited his thrusters.
"Liftoff!!!" yelled Apollo, ignoring his makeshift passenger as he went full throttle, accelerating to top speed in moments before crashing his heat shield flat into the interference wave...
Mir's Actions:
1) Resync Apollo to his PET
Apollo's Actions:
1) Grab Mir
2) DashAttack1 (90 damage {C}, Impact, Line Attack 5, Movement) @ Interference wave
--TURN SPLICE--
"Argh, blast it all! Eat full throttle, alien!" shouted Apollo in frustration as the interference wave closed in, before flipping all 5 of his backpack thrusters forward to launch one last ignition blast with every bit of fuel remaining. The engine cones began glowing bright red as heat built up within them, until...
*WHAM*
The entire ignition process aborted as something crashed into Apollo's exposed back, forcing him to turn his head away from the incoming interference wave to see just what had... "Lab rat...?! What the flying scrap are you-"
"I AM NOT A LAB RAT!!!" shouted Mir angrily, after having gained Apollo's attention by throwing her shoulder into his back with a booster-assisted tackle. Not planning to stop there, Mir lifted the LTC up and jammed it point-blank into the rocket Navi's side before announcing, "Re-establishing link!".
"Hey, wait, what are- Yeooooowch!!!" yelped Apollo as Mir pulled the trigger and launched a round of Lumian bullets right into him, causing him to flinch in pain and twist his various thrusters in random directions. "You goddamn little... What was that for?!"
"Apollo!" shouted a sudden, different voice from within Apollo's comm system.
"Glenn?!" gasped Apollo in shock, suddenly reconnected to his PET and Operator back on Earth. Once that registered, though, Apollo's attention was right back on Mir. "Damnit lab rat, did you really have to do it like that?!"
"It was fastest, and do you really think we have time to spare?!" countered Mir before pointing over at the rapidly approaching interference.
"Ergh... Glenn, I need a launch, now!" grumbled Apollo before barking a demand back to his Operator. Lacking the time for words, Glenn quickly obliged by slipping a DashAttack chip into his PET and shooting it a few hundred trillion miles into space. By the wonders of Lumian quantum transmission, Apollo received the data in an instant, causing his main and secondary thrusters to re-align on his back and dropping one of his two heat shields down in front of him to grab. "Hang tight lab rat, this is going to be rough!" announced Apollo just before wrapping his free arm around Mir's waist and yanking her in next to him behind the heat shield.
"Whoa! Hey! ...Where do you get off calling me that after I saved your life?!" responded Mir indignantly just before Apollo ignited his thrusters.
"Liftoff!!!" yelled Apollo, ignoring his makeshift passenger as he went full throttle, accelerating to top speed in moments before crashing his heat shield flat into the interference wave...
Mir's Actions:
1) Resync Apollo to his PET
Apollo's Actions:
1) Grab Mir
2) DashAttack1 (90 damage {C}, Impact, Line Attack 5, Movement) @ Interference wave
--TURN SPLICE--
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Launching straight into the interference wave did one thing at least. It broke through what was, by all appearances, a solid wall of unidentifiable data. Apollo's heat shield crashed straight into the wave, and the wave gave way, allowing the two astronaut navis to punch straight through it. The downside of all of this was that beyond the outermost edge the interference wasn't solid in the least. And pushing through the haze of static and color that followed was not quite as simple as breaking through a wall. For a moment, their vision faded, as everything from the the data entity somewhere ahead of them to the shield in front of Apollo's face dissolved into the cloud as though it had never been there. Then, every possible stat on both the navis' and their operators' ends began displaying false readings and errors.
In particular, HP readings began displaying impossible values, greater than their current upgrades allowed for. Terrain data began displaying for an environment that didn't exist. The chip that Apollo had just used for his launch appeared to still be usable, while on Mir's end her two most recently used chips appeared to have already been expended. Glenn's PET then received a warning that Apollo's heat shields had broken and that he was currently stationary, but as the haze of interference broke, he appeared to still be holding onto Mir and flying out of the wave, with both shields still intact. While most of the anomalies righted themselves as Mir and Apollo returned to normal space, or at least as close to 'normal' as an accidental network in deep space inhabited by an unknown data entity, their respective PETs continued to receive error messages.
Meanwhile, the wave of interference they had just passed through began to break up behind them, leaving a string of junk data in the wake of Apollo's flight. Ahead of them, the entity Apollo had been fighting appeared to contract, leaving more empty space between the solid light structures that made up its nest and the brighter light that could only be assumed to be the creature's body. Meanwhile, junk data and scraps from broken platforms began flying toward the nest.
___
Mir: 120 HP [Glitch - Invalid data: Battle stats periodically display erroneous readings.]
Apollo: 300 HP [Glitch - Invalid data: Battle stats periodically display erroneous readings.] [Heat shields: Intact, but displaying as broken (ERROR)]
Unknown data entity: ▒₦≈♪Ω↕ [???: Currently drawing in junk data]
Terrain: [Invalid Terrain]
In particular, HP readings began displaying impossible values, greater than their current upgrades allowed for. Terrain data began displaying for an environment that didn't exist. The chip that Apollo had just used for his launch appeared to still be usable, while on Mir's end her two most recently used chips appeared to have already been expended. Glenn's PET then received a warning that Apollo's heat shields had broken and that he was currently stationary, but as the haze of interference broke, he appeared to still be holding onto Mir and flying out of the wave, with both shields still intact. While most of the anomalies righted themselves as Mir and Apollo returned to normal space, or at least as close to 'normal' as an accidental network in deep space inhabited by an unknown data entity, their respective PETs continued to receive error messages.
Meanwhile, the wave of interference they had just passed through began to break up behind them, leaving a string of junk data in the wake of Apollo's flight. Ahead of them, the entity Apollo had been fighting appeared to contract, leaving more empty space between the solid light structures that made up its nest and the brighter light that could only be assumed to be the creature's body. Meanwhile, junk data and scraps from broken platforms began flying toward the nest.
___
Mir: 120 HP [Glitch - Invalid data: Battle stats periodically display erroneous readings.]
Apollo: 300 HP [Glitch - Invalid data: Battle stats periodically display erroneous readings.] [Heat shields: Intact, but displaying as broken (ERROR)]
Unknown data entity: ▒₦≈♪Ω↕ [???: Currently drawing in junk data]
Terrain: [Invalid Terrain]
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Despite reality seemingly collapsing on them in the midst of the interference wave, Apollo and Mir managed to break through to meet the unknown core. The nest-like structure shrouded whatever was actually inside with a barrier sewn together with broken bits of the light bridges Mir had scaled to get here, and as well was filtering the garbage data their assailant was inhaling. Could it not launch another interference wave in succession, and needed to recharge? That would certainly be a relief to both Navis if true, as they were very aware already of what kinds of problems this foreign junk data could create. "Blast it all, are you working or not you damned shield?! How could junk data short us out so easily?" grunted Apollo as he yanked his still held heat shield by its mechanical arm, which was not cooperating with the astronaut's usual commands.
"It's a completely foreign data language; our programming can't do anything but throw errors at the influx off all this junk... but besides that, would you let me go already?!" yelled Mir through her helmet's comm system to Apollo, who was still lugging around his female counterpart by the waste like a sandbag.
"Tch..." hissed Apollo as he cast Mir aside, letting her reorient in the zero-gravity environment. "So? My triumphant rescue party is here, but I'm not seeing a way out right now."
"Tower's transmission will still be lined up for another 30 minutes, but the outbound link is being distorted by all the foreign data being projected by... that." explained Emily in reference to the data entity while she (and the entirety of NAXA mission control) sorted out the myriad of false errors being thrown on her own and Glenn's PETs. "... By the way Mir, the LTC isn't actually jammed, despite what it may say."
"Huh?" responded Mir thoughtlessly before looking down at her weapon's display screen, which was presenting a strange and fragmented double-image of both the FireBurn and Shotgun firing protocols from back during the asteroid tunneling. "What the...?! Oh no, come on... The input is responding, but the output doesn't even... Yet, you're telling me it's still working Emily? Ugh..." Mir's lips quickly twisted into a frustrated scowl as she tried to navigate the cannon's interface, only to be met with odd and inexplicable results.
At the same time Apollo was still fighting with his bugged heat shield, muttering some unsavory explicatives in the process, leaving Glenn obligated to take hold of the situation and get everyone past these pointless glitches. "So Apollo and Mir are both trapped unless we can get rid of the disturbance's source. Sounds simple enough." concluded Glenn from Emily's explanation, before picking a Battlechip out from his folder and lifting it up to show between two fingers.
"What? No, you can't!" gasped Emily at the prospect. "This is a completely unknown entity, we can't delete it! We don't know how strong it is, what its programming looks like, where the data is hosted... We need to study it! And-"
"You're going to put research ahead of survival?!" barked Glenn, which shut Emily right up and brought mission control to a momentary halt. "Survival is the number one priority in any mission. Don't pretend NAXA has never thrown away a potential discovery just to make sure I, and all the other astronauts in program history, made it back in one piece. There isn't a damn thing in the universe more worth it... right?"
"Ah... right..." answered Emily hesitantly, feeling terrible for having forgotten her place in this whole affair.
"That's it, then! This thing's been pissing me off for the last 2 hours, and I'm going full throttle on it!" shouted Apollo, throwing his maybe/maybe not messed up heat shield to the side while pulling one of his four attitude thrusters forward and immediately shooting a burst of firey red propulsion at the nested data entity.
"Well, we need to suppress the junk data flow if nothing else..." sighed Emily as she began picking out Battlechips to send. "Mir, can you try to be careful?"
"I can try, but I don't have a clue where this thing's weak points are... It's just going to be lucky either way." admitted Mir as her Operator delivered a pair of guns through the PET. The LTC's display screen was a garbled mess still, but the input sequence for chips was muscle memory for Mir at this point, so she blindly tapped in a few commands and successfully loaded both weapons into her cannon, prompting the Lumian tank on the backside to begin filling with quantum ammo.
"Keep your distance for now, Apollo. We can't trust your shield still, so just keep the thrust up and try to disrupt the in-flow of this junk data." commanded Glenn as he slotted in just the one chip he was already holding.
"Roger that!" confirmed Apollo as he flipped forward the other 3 small thrusters attached to his backpack and readied them for ignition. "It's a big target, lab rat, so try to not miss."
"I don't miss." stated Mir bluntly as she pointed her LTC at the data entity. That said, she didn't really know WHERE to not miss. "Emily, can I get a target?"
"Um... The nest's data structure seems less stable at this point, if these preliminary scans are right. It may just be another glitch, though..." suggested Emily, albeit without a shred of confidence.
"Better than nothing." said Mir as she adjusted her aim to suit Emily's coordinates and pulled her cannon's trigger. Apollo followed suit and primed his thrusters, letting fire spit out of them in conjunction with the quantum beam emitting from Mir's weapon. Being the far faster projectile, Mir's quantum Cannon bullet reached the target first, followed not far behind by Apollo's FireBurn thrust emission. Mir then pulled the trigger again, launching an electrically charged ZapRing comprised of a Lumian loop, while Apollo lifted his heavy main thruster forward over his head and began dumping extra fuel in it from the spare tank on his backpack. A powerful blast of propulsion jumped out of the main thruster, forcing Apollo to ignite his attitude thrusters in the opposite direction to keep stable. The Lumian ZapRing and self-charged propulsion burst streaked through the empty space between the Navis and foreign entity as the bombardment began...
Mir's Actions:
2) Cannon (40 damage {A+}, Knockback) @ Unknown data entity
--Rocket Science (Passive Take Aim to:)
3) ZapRing1 (50 Elec damage {A++}, Stun 1) @ Unknown data entity
4) Dodge
Apollo's Actions:
3) Buster Normal Attack (40 Fire damage {A}, Seeking) @ Unknown data entity
4) FireBurn2 (105 Fire damage {A}, Line Attack 3) @ Unknown data entity
--Liquid Fuel Transfer (Passive Buster Charge)
5) Buster Half Charge Attack (80 Fire damage {A}, Seeking) @ Unknown data entity.
6) Dodge
"It's a completely foreign data language; our programming can't do anything but throw errors at the influx off all this junk... but besides that, would you let me go already?!" yelled Mir through her helmet's comm system to Apollo, who was still lugging around his female counterpart by the waste like a sandbag.
"Tch..." hissed Apollo as he cast Mir aside, letting her reorient in the zero-gravity environment. "So? My triumphant rescue party is here, but I'm not seeing a way out right now."
"Tower's transmission will still be lined up for another 30 minutes, but the outbound link is being distorted by all the foreign data being projected by... that." explained Emily in reference to the data entity while she (and the entirety of NAXA mission control) sorted out the myriad of false errors being thrown on her own and Glenn's PETs. "... By the way Mir, the LTC isn't actually jammed, despite what it may say."
"Huh?" responded Mir thoughtlessly before looking down at her weapon's display screen, which was presenting a strange and fragmented double-image of both the FireBurn and Shotgun firing protocols from back during the asteroid tunneling. "What the...?! Oh no, come on... The input is responding, but the output doesn't even... Yet, you're telling me it's still working Emily? Ugh..." Mir's lips quickly twisted into a frustrated scowl as she tried to navigate the cannon's interface, only to be met with odd and inexplicable results.
At the same time Apollo was still fighting with his bugged heat shield, muttering some unsavory explicatives in the process, leaving Glenn obligated to take hold of the situation and get everyone past these pointless glitches. "So Apollo and Mir are both trapped unless we can get rid of the disturbance's source. Sounds simple enough." concluded Glenn from Emily's explanation, before picking a Battlechip out from his folder and lifting it up to show between two fingers.
"What? No, you can't!" gasped Emily at the prospect. "This is a completely unknown entity, we can't delete it! We don't know how strong it is, what its programming looks like, where the data is hosted... We need to study it! And-"
"You're going to put research ahead of survival?!" barked Glenn, which shut Emily right up and brought mission control to a momentary halt. "Survival is the number one priority in any mission. Don't pretend NAXA has never thrown away a potential discovery just to make sure I, and all the other astronauts in program history, made it back in one piece. There isn't a damn thing in the universe more worth it... right?"
"Ah... right..." answered Emily hesitantly, feeling terrible for having forgotten her place in this whole affair.
"That's it, then! This thing's been pissing me off for the last 2 hours, and I'm going full throttle on it!" shouted Apollo, throwing his maybe/maybe not messed up heat shield to the side while pulling one of his four attitude thrusters forward and immediately shooting a burst of firey red propulsion at the nested data entity.
"Well, we need to suppress the junk data flow if nothing else..." sighed Emily as she began picking out Battlechips to send. "Mir, can you try to be careful?"
"I can try, but I don't have a clue where this thing's weak points are... It's just going to be lucky either way." admitted Mir as her Operator delivered a pair of guns through the PET. The LTC's display screen was a garbled mess still, but the input sequence for chips was muscle memory for Mir at this point, so she blindly tapped in a few commands and successfully loaded both weapons into her cannon, prompting the Lumian tank on the backside to begin filling with quantum ammo.
"Keep your distance for now, Apollo. We can't trust your shield still, so just keep the thrust up and try to disrupt the in-flow of this junk data." commanded Glenn as he slotted in just the one chip he was already holding.
"Roger that!" confirmed Apollo as he flipped forward the other 3 small thrusters attached to his backpack and readied them for ignition. "It's a big target, lab rat, so try to not miss."
"I don't miss." stated Mir bluntly as she pointed her LTC at the data entity. That said, she didn't really know WHERE to not miss. "Emily, can I get a target?"
"Um... The nest's data structure seems less stable at this point, if these preliminary scans are right. It may just be another glitch, though..." suggested Emily, albeit without a shred of confidence.
"Better than nothing." said Mir as she adjusted her aim to suit Emily's coordinates and pulled her cannon's trigger. Apollo followed suit and primed his thrusters, letting fire spit out of them in conjunction with the quantum beam emitting from Mir's weapon. Being the far faster projectile, Mir's quantum Cannon bullet reached the target first, followed not far behind by Apollo's FireBurn thrust emission. Mir then pulled the trigger again, launching an electrically charged ZapRing comprised of a Lumian loop, while Apollo lifted his heavy main thruster forward over his head and began dumping extra fuel in it from the spare tank on his backpack. A powerful blast of propulsion jumped out of the main thruster, forcing Apollo to ignite his attitude thrusters in the opposite direction to keep stable. The Lumian ZapRing and self-charged propulsion burst streaked through the empty space between the Navis and foreign entity as the bombardment began...
Mir's Actions:
2) Cannon (40 damage {A+}, Knockback) @ Unknown data entity
--Rocket Science (Passive Take Aim to:)
3) ZapRing1 (50 Elec damage {A++}, Stun 1) @ Unknown data entity
4) Dodge
Apollo's Actions:
3) Buster Normal Attack (40 Fire damage {A}, Seeking) @ Unknown data entity
4) FireBurn2 (105 Fire damage {A}, Line Attack 3) @ Unknown data entity
--Liquid Fuel Transfer (Passive Buster Charge)
5) Buster Half Charge Attack (80 Fire damage {A}, Seeking) @ Unknown data entity.
6) Dodge
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The aim of every single one of Mir's and Apollo's attacks was dead on. All of them reached the target and flew straight through the openings in the nest to the mass of data within with no trouble. Kind of amazing, really, given the circumstances. It was when they made contact with the entity that things started to get strange.
A flare of data erupted from the point where the cannon bullet hit, instantly filling the space between the brighter 'body' of the entity and the less bright nest structure and closing the gap that the bullet had passed through. There it remained, at least for the few microseconds before fire from Apollo's thrusters reached it through another gap. The entity contracted even more within the nest at the moment of impact, then flared out in all directions. This sudden expansion was met with the FireBurn emission, which only caused the entity to flare up even more, briefly pushing through the confines of the next. Despite the lack of an atmosphere, the space around Mir and Apollo suddenly became extremely hot. Apollo's final shot pushed him away from the epicenter of the sudden flash of heat, while Mir was able to fly out of it before firing the Lumian ZapRing. While the two shots appeared to push straight through the entity, parting the data around them, an intense light filled the void the two navis had just vacated. A new rainbow bridge grew between them, extending off into the distance.
The entity's body, if it could be called that, retracted again, although the 'holes' left by the last two projectiles lingered for a few more seconds before closing. Despite appearing to have gone straight through the entity though, the propulsion blast and zapring had not reappeared on the other side.
___
Mir: 120 HP [Glitch - Invalid data: Battle stats periodically display erroneous readings.]
Apollo: 300 HP [Glitch - Invalid data: Battle stats periodically display erroneous readings.] [Heat shields: Intact, but displaying as broken (ERROR)]
Unknown data entity: ☺$≈♪∑↔ [???: Currently drawing in junk data]
Terrain: [Invalid Terrain]
A flare of data erupted from the point where the cannon bullet hit, instantly filling the space between the brighter 'body' of the entity and the less bright nest structure and closing the gap that the bullet had passed through. There it remained, at least for the few microseconds before fire from Apollo's thrusters reached it through another gap. The entity contracted even more within the nest at the moment of impact, then flared out in all directions. This sudden expansion was met with the FireBurn emission, which only caused the entity to flare up even more, briefly pushing through the confines of the next. Despite the lack of an atmosphere, the space around Mir and Apollo suddenly became extremely hot. Apollo's final shot pushed him away from the epicenter of the sudden flash of heat, while Mir was able to fly out of it before firing the Lumian ZapRing. While the two shots appeared to push straight through the entity, parting the data around them, an intense light filled the void the two navis had just vacated. A new rainbow bridge grew between them, extending off into the distance.
The entity's body, if it could be called that, retracted again, although the 'holes' left by the last two projectiles lingered for a few more seconds before closing. Despite appearing to have gone straight through the entity though, the propulsion blast and zapring had not reappeared on the other side.
___
Mir: 120 HP [Glitch - Invalid data: Battle stats periodically display erroneous readings.]
Apollo: 300 HP [Glitch - Invalid data: Battle stats periodically display erroneous readings.] [Heat shields: Intact, but displaying as broken (ERROR)]
Unknown data entity: ☺$≈♪∑↔ [???: Currently drawing in junk data]
Terrain: [Invalid Terrain]