That, ScorchMan thought, had been remarkably painless. Even the shopkeeper's advice hadn't felt at all obsequious, for all that he usually couldn't stand unsolicited comments on his condition. "I'll keep that in mind, thank you," he said quietly, surprised that he meant it. "Could I...well, anyway, I should talk to my Operator. Have a good day."

He'd kept track of the directions the shop Navi (TempoMan?) had guided him through. When he made for the door, collecting his GuideProg on the way out, he only missed the door by a little bit, catching the frame in his hand and patting his way out. A crimson datastream announced his exit a few seconds later, along with a, "JACKING OUT, BARK BARK!"

<(To Kotobuki Fire Station)>

Pool: 280 pts
Caps: 100 / 150

Conflagration (80 pts)
ScorchMan's signature move. Wrapping himself head to toe in a veil of flames, his Scorch Busters are levelled against a foe for a withering blast. The colour of the flame is dependent on ScorchMan's vitality: at full capacity, the fire will burn bright yellow and smokeless, dimming redder and sootier as his inner furnace takes damage.
Effects: 50 Fire {A}, 30 HP Barrier; 2TCD

Smokejumper (80 pts)
A reconfiguration of his furnace allows ScorchMan to create a fuel-air projectile, to be fed either through his busters, or the various vents across his boots and armour. While the fuel burns too quick to create any sort of flame, the resulting shockwave is powerful enough to send foes flying, or propel ScorchMan far enough to deliver a staggering blow himself.
Effects: Microburst, Disarm; 2TCD

Scorched Earth (60 pts)
ScorchMan has made a study of using the heat of his environment as a sensory aid. By immolating his surroundings, the radiant heat floods back into ScorchMan's furnace and warms all it washes over, steadying his arm.
Effects: Medium Coal Terrain, Imbue Fire, Take Aim x2; 2TCD

Stoke (60 pts, 30 npts [20 used])
By sacrificing the use of one buster, ScorchMan can, at need, focus and divert power to his chest-furnace, cooking off accumulated impurities and raising his temperature back towards an optimal burn. Provided he has enough fuel, excess heat will welter from his chest-vents in a cross-shaped flare, absorbing any foreign flames outright and otherwise detonating to repel an incoming blow.
Effects: 30 Healing, 1-Hit Planar Shield, Charge Burner; 1TCD

-CURRENT PAIRS-



Hexadecimal: Level 13
ScorchMan.EXE: Level 5
Phase.EXE: Level 2
SandMan.EXE: Level 1

TOTAL LEVELS: 21

As follows, I'm applying for my third simultaneous pair. SandMan and Phase will remain shelved for now; stay tuned for a new pair to round off my elemental set, coming soon to New Users/Rebirths.

A Mr. Prog bobbed into the Net-Shop. In a departure from the typical design, this one was gunmetal-grey, with vaguely-canine features that mostly boiled down to two triangular points sticking from the top of its head, and a ':3' face in place of the usual wide grin. More notable was the Navi, clad in a red skinsuit and armour the same shade as the Prog, holding onto its shoulder and following it inside with unsure steps. "NOW ENTERING: TEMPOMAN'S NAVI NET SHOP, BARK BARK!" the GuideProg announced cheerfully, complete with fully voiced onomatopoeia.

"Thanks," ScorchMan replied, tinder-dry. The noise of the shop's bustle was impressive, though confusing; he kept hearing the same voice jump wildly around the store, sometimes speaking in two places at once. The store was warm with activity, rife with impressions of a tide of body heat coming and going. He suddenly realized he had no way of knowing where the front desk was, short of stumbling around feeling for something.

The thought made ScorchMan want to cringe. He edged over to the wall and listened hard, casting for anything that would give away the shopkeep's position. Maybe the register would make a noise? Could he just listen for other Navis listing their orders? There were so many voices...

To Hades with it. The blind Navi waited until he heard someone thank someone else and walked over; surely even a shelf-stocker would be able to help if he told them what he wanted, right? That part, at least, he'd done his research on. Stepping as surely as he dared, ScorchMan summoned a zenny chip and a typed list and gave his best smile, nevermind that he probably wasn't looking the right way and his helmet covered most of his face anyhow. "Hello there, I've been told this is the right place for amateur NetBattlers to purchase upgrades? I'm in need of some basics, I did the math and this should cover it." He held his hand out palm-up, gesturing for whoever he'd found to take both the list and the datachip, and perhaps kindly direct him to the actual counter.

[Purchasing:
- HP Memory x1 (1000z)
- PowerUP x1 (1000z)
- Element Shot (500z
- Process Upgrades v1-5 (1500z
- Total: 4000z]

"Aww yeah there's that Big G!"

"Oh, there he is! You get lost or summat?"

"Geeeeeeee-unit!"

"GRIFFINNNN MUTHATRUCKIN REIIIIIIIIM!!!"

The fire hall was full enough for Griffin to earn a well-deserved fanfare as he walked in, grinning to beat the band. While he recognized some of the volunteers from their afternoon's entertainment, everyone who'd ridden the engines back to the station had had time to wash the housefire off. Having stayed behind to finish handing things off to the EMTs, Griffin had missed his ride, and was still a mite blackened and singed around the edges. He had clearly transited through the city in his athletic skivvies, turnout over his shoulder, and doubtlessly left a trail of dusty footprints and smudged handrails behind him. The boys found this hilarious.

Finally the career fireman managed to escape the backslaps and jackassery, and after a bark through the captain's office door to 'WASH THEM MITTENS, BOI' and the ensuing scramble to comply, Griffin was collapsing into an open spot on the lounge couch. After plugging his PET in to charge, he keyed it open and flipped through a few tabs. All of them were lit green.

"You awake in there, ScorchMan? How're you feeling?" he asked the device. Someone handed him a bottle of bright red sport drink, a tribute he gratefully accepted, and immediately drained half in one down-the-hatch.

The screen lit up, first in a thermal red welter, then in wireframes, and then ScorchMan was yawning on Griffin's homepage. He took a moment to process the question, looking down and rubbing his chin for a moment like he wasn't sure how to answer. "Good," he nodded to himself at last, "I'm feeling pretty good." He sounded surprised to hear himself say so. His hand slipped under his visor to scratch his face. "I'll be honest with you, Griffin, I wasn't sure I was going to win that one." he spoke quietly - he could hear other people moving around the station.

"Right with ya there, dude," Chuckling, Griffin's head tipped back to hit the pillow. "I had no damn idea what I was doing for most of it," he admitted. The couch was working his magic: the more his muscles relaxed, the lower his filters dipped. "Kept wanting to jump off the bench and break through a wall, but I had to be all strategic instead. Was a damn trip."

"Heh..." ScorchMan kept stretching and flexing experimentally, prodding his stomach where the seeker-beast had stung him. Nothing hurt, somehow. Griffin's words were ringing a backward sort of familiar; idly, he poked at the thought to see how it would unspool. "It was like...firefighting, in reverse," he realized, "Right? I was doing your job bashing around in the fire, and you were doing my job feeding me the where and how!"

Griffin digested that a moment. Then, as his mind was expanded, "...Huh!" He sat back, turning the idea over in his head and finding it very much to his liking. "Dude, that's awesome. We're all, like, learning from each other, how cool is that!"

"Yes...we are, aren't we?" ScorchMan murmured, his head churning. After a moment he spoke up, "Not to change the subject, but we got a tidy little sum from pulling that off, right?" The number was in his head, but there was no telling how much Griffin had spent already. "You mind if I...?"

"Hm? Yeah, of course, go ahead! You damn well earned it...so, you want me to jack you in?"

A thoughtful hum. "The PET's already hardwired, I can do it. Only...you think I could try making the trip myself? I could use the practice, if we're gonna do this again." Left unsaid was a strange desire for time away from his Operator. ScorchMan wondered how one gave voice to that sort of thing.

Griffin blinked. "Yeah," he managed, feeling a fine-grain blend of pride and wistfulness, "Course, ScorchMan. I'll set you up with a call for a GuideProg if you need it, alright?" He held the little screen to his face in time to catch the Navi's grateful look. "Right on. Well, have fun, dude."

"See you in a bit," ScorchMan nodded, and vanished in a red streamer of light.

<(To Navi Net Shop)>

"Oh don't you worry, brah," Griffin, as a certified Bro, was contractually immune to raised eyebrows, and demonstrated his fortitude with a dominant upward flick of The Chin, "you'll be seeing me again. Count on it!"

He sauntered off, leaving a trail of faintly sooty footprints behind him.

<(To parts unknown, Kotobuki)>

The fireman did not look like he belonged in the store he'd walked into. Oh, he had a PET holstered on his hip same as just about everyone else present, and he eyed the merchandise like he knew what he was looking at. Still, something about the man, lantern-jawed, sweaty and sooty from a recent job, down to clingy athletic wear with his turnout slung over one shoulder, somehow didn't fit the image of someone looking to go bust viruses like a kid skiving off homework.

And yet, there he was. Doing a slow circuit of the room as though looking for something, standing stymied a moment, then marching up to the front counter with a comically tiny datachip reading a paltry '100z in the middle of his palm. His grin didn't seem to know whether it was trying for cheeky or sheepish. "Just two of the little ones, thanks," he helpfully pointed with the cleft of his chin to the SubChips, though there was only one thing in the place he could've afforded to begin with.

[Purchasing: MiniEnergyPack x2]
[Total: 100z

"OOOOOOHH YEEEEAAH, CANNON BALLLLL!!!" The park was empty. Foot traffic had nearly ground to a halt in the city block surrounding an elegant flower garden, pedestrians in the middle of crossing frozen like deer. Traffic was stopped altogether on one street. Everyone, everyone had their PET held out, recording.

Resplendent in brawn-cradling black raglan and the sort of athletic shorts only the truly confident could wear, the man on the bench would have raised eyebrows in a sports bar on game night. He would be front-centre on the Jumbotron all day long at the game itself. Clips of his antics were going viral in real time, ranging from drill sergeant-esque screaming into the PET he clenched hard enough to make his entire body flex, to hooting and dancing and bouncing his feet on the ground like a happy pit-bull when the plans he was screaming apparently pulled through.

The Navi's name he barked every three-to-seven seconds was, of course, bleeped out right before the '-Man'. Privacy concerns, and all.

Naturally, Griffin himself was completely unaware of his fifteen minutes of Internet-fame, only having eyes for the bombastic action ScorchMan had thrown together. Their haphazard arsenal had pulled through better than he'd ever have expected, and ScorchMan was moving almost like he used to, that signature Navi precision coming through at the right moments just so, mm, just like Grandma used to make.

Wha-ding, the PET clanged once like a fire bell and just as loud, announcing ScorchMan's safe return. Seeing the diagnostics come up, red wireframes slowly bleeding away to green, the tight coil of adrenaline in Griffin's chest finally started to unspool. Everything was good, they'd handled it -

And they'd cleaned themselves out of the resources to do it again. The spent SubChips taunted Griffin from the tiny pocket in his shorts (good for storing broken SubChips, apparently, and very little else). "Ahh well, those weren't that much!" The big man clapped his knees, and a great many people silently, simultaneously thought 'oh finally' as he rose to his feet and started on his way, hooking the sooty firefighter's turnout over his shoulder and his gunmetal-grey PET on his hip.

Then a certain few of those people realized he was headed straight for one of the shops on the corner, and, well, whatever they thought of the half-dressed young man with far too many muscles and not enough volume control, he was moving with far too much purpose to be stopped now.

<(To Chip Shop)>

Too much. Whatever ScorchMan had processed of being close enough to the monstrosity for flecks of spittle to burn his face, it had been too much. He would remember it later as a bizarrely quiet, senseless second, bracketed on either side by chaos. Upon examination, he would find his internal systems had expunged the moment the instant he'd felt its jaws rear back. A grim mercy in the face of being aware for one's deletion? Another strange imperfection Griffin had forgotten to log? It was impossible to say.

For now, something was poking against his boot. Curious, ScorchMan bent down, and felt around until he'd mapped the debris: glowing still with heat, the sliver felt like a piece of broken glass or ceramic. It fit in his palm, and rasping it against his glove felt distinctly satisfying. "Mmkay, yeah, 'm done," he murmured, sounding almost sleepy. He was certain Griffin would be making noise enough for both of them, which, good. It was good he was having fun with this too - and that was the moment ScorchMan really accepted that yes, he was having fun doing this. Or was fun the right word for that searing rush of adrenaline he'd chased to his victory?

A question for a quiet moment with Griffin, sometime later. For the moment, the Navi just palmed his little trophy, and leaned back into the carmine datastream that whisked him skyward. The PET chimed a couple of times after being operated, recovery programs sweeping up a helping of the debris and processing out the good stuff - and then ScorchMan was gone, a lake of molten Net left in his wake for some unlucky Mr. Prog to discover.

<(Jacking out)>

TO: ScorchMan.EXE (ScorchBros@KotoMail.net)
FROM: HydrantMan.EXE (brandmeister@KotoMail.net)
SUBJECT: DUDE YOUR OP
MESSAGE:

S:KLDHF:GJ:ALKSFHA"S:LFJA"SLA I'M BUGGIN OUT BRO JUST LISTEN TO THIS

HE GONE AND DUNNIT

Attached is a link to a popular social media BBS for Navis - the subheading indicates a thread for sharing amusing out-of-context Operator antics. A video has been posted, helpfully captioned to accentuate the perspective gleaned from audio. The first subtitle reads 'Gymbro Op forgets what public spaces are.'Though filmed from afar and often drowned out by the cameraman's own laughter, the man generates a both consistent and impressive amount of noise cheering on his Navi (the name of which has been bleeped out aside from the -Man, for privacy concerns)]

...He sounds familiar...