With Yu taking the opportunity to jump Vincent while he was blind to the sudden cuddle, he was distracted enough to be caught off-footed when Dignity suddenly staggered. "The rats!" Vincent groaned, hindsight snapping at him as he clutched his back, "we must have missed one! Oh, I had to go and build Dignity a mile high, I did!" He mumbled a few choice curses under his breath, and stood back at attention, wincing as he went - a height as prodigious as that of Vincent Miles came with a laundry list of provisos and quid pro quos, and roughly half of them, scattered throughout his bones and muscles, were taking the moment to berate him for the day's foolishness. A young man he was most certainly not, let alone a man of sturdy build!

"Focus, Vincent," Phase's gentle chiding sounded all at once projected from a brass colossus and spoken from Vincent's own lips, giving her voice a thrumming echo only he could hear. In a moment of understanding, he abandoned the viewscreens to turn his attention to the console readouts. Phase chewed her lip a moment as she crunched the numbers before calling out, "Vincent, the Ratty's down near our left foot; if we juke left, power Dignity up and use the Shotgun, we should have enough firepower to take it and the turret thing out. We're almost out of steam though - Yu, Critias, can you give us cover?"

A triumphant cry of, "Shotgun, slot in!" later, it was time to move. Gritting her teeth, Phase worked the controls under Vincent's guidance, shifting into the now-familiar motions for strafing. Dignity's piston legs resounded with the screams of tortured gears, plates of metal grinding where they'd been knocked out of alignment. The noise was deafening, but the mecha struggled through in a mirror of her dual operators, and kept her cannon's barrel locked on the CannonGuard through her side-shifting.

Having taken his glasses off to don Yu's visor, Vincent struggled to track their second target. "Phase, you're going to have to call the shot - I can't see the rat for the distance, I can't!" he yelled over the cacophony. Yanking a trigger by touch alone, Vincent froze the left grip in place to keep Dignity moving, and reached around Yu for the temperature gauge, murmuring an awkward stream of, "hang in there, now, the ice is gone, just hang in there," as he went.

With the gift of young eyes, Phase had more luck tracking the Ratty, but not by much. Fighting the awkward angle until the darting shadow came in line with her barrel, Phase shrieked a breathless, "FIRE!" Dignity's weight instantly settled on the ice, her gun arm wheeling low as Vincent jammed the trigger. A penetrating stream of water lanced from the mecha's cannon, propelled with enough force to stay parallel to the ground all the way across the hangar floor. It hit the warehouse wall with a tremendous splash, and impact enough to punch through whatever lay in its path. Whether they'd hit anything at all was up to Phase's timing, and Vincent's reaction speed. Finally Dignity settled, chuffing thick black smoke as she fought to stay upright through the onslaught.

-Turn Summary-
1. Feint left [+10%]
2. Phase Engine: Setup [Strengthen 20, Imbue Aqua: add to Shotgun, +10 damage per hit]
3. ShotgunDamage: 50 + Spread 1
Accuracy: A
Description: A gun whose shot penetrates an enemy to hit another one directly behind it.
Duration: Once
Element: Null
Trader Rank: E: Ratty C [60 Aqua {A}, Spread directed at CannonGuard]

Under his visor, sweat beaded the long slope of Vincent's brow. Counting down the seconds Dignity's engine needed to recharge was an exquisite torture. The laboratory-grade precision on its own wasn't stressful, but keeping time in his head while maintaining battlefield awareness made for the sort of mental gymnastics he hadn't practiced since his college days. "Didn't account for this in the alpha build..." he muttered, rolling his shoulders and squeezing the cogwheel's grip. No complaint came from Phase - the arm Net-side was functional, then, jolly good.

Steam billowed and hissed; clamping her jaw shut around her protesting shoulder joint, Phase's brows nonetheless furrowed. Quizzical, she ventured, "That didn't come from us...right?" She didn't have to look far to find the culprit, jaw dropping a little despite herself as she witnessed the airborne spectacle. Then the memory of harsh, popping gunfire filled her ears, and she snapped to attention. "Crit needs our help, quick!"

The Phase Engine chimed - there was no time to think, so Vincent simply reacted. Throwing Phase's arm into cranking, he levelled Dignity's cannon at Critias, and yelled to Yu, "My apologies, this won't be pleasant, it won't!" The stream that followed his warning started as a pencil-thin tracker; upon finding Critias, a long tether of ice stretched the distance to connect the wyvern to Dignity's systems. From that initial contact point, ice spread forth, following the organic lines of his body into an all-encompassing crystalline sheet, leaving space for his eyes and mouth. "You should be safe like that, just like that," Vincent peered up at his machine's handiwork, hollering despite himself, "just keep hitting it 'til it drops!"

The donated defence had left Dignity open. Once she was satisfied Critias was safe, Phase had eyes only for the RemoteBit tracking unerring towards them, lightning rod hanging like the eponymous sword over the throne. Swallowing down the pain, she grunted through gritted teeth, "c'mon, Vincent, keep moving," Her ribs throbbed with a distinct wet heat that promised spectacular bruises later. There was nothing for it: she breathed deep against the ache, and braced herself for more.

With a deep sigh, Vincent took up the butterfly grips. Leery of Phase's shoulder, he moved gingerly through another series of pushing one arm out, then the other. Phase's breath hitched once, twice - and Dignity's size-1500 foot pushed off like a skater, ice screeching underfoot. Another tap of the trigger retracted her talon, freeing the mech to spin on her own axis as the last of her momentum petered off. The cannon would have no trouble lining up a shot if it chose to do so, so it wasn't worth worrying about. Eyes tracking the RemoteBit as he kept up his high-stakes game of keepaway, Vincent murmured, "Need to do something about that pest, I do. What was it...ah, of course!" His AquaNeedle: slot in!"

Dignity's reservoir gurgled anew. The Phase Engine snapped up the chip data and merrily set about converting it into fuel. Three sharp clicks echoed from the Titan's shoulder mortar as it swivelled in its bulbous turret. The spiral-finned arrows it shot gleamed strangely in the cold light of SciLabs, arcing high above the wind and dropping down overtop the Twisty's perch. "Beauty!" Vincent crowed triumphantly, "Didn't even code that graphic, I didn't! She's learning, make no mistake."

"Hang on, hang on," Chewing her lip, Phase took in the strings of numbers flashing across the screenbanks. A quick bit of math later, she was shouting, "That's not gonna be enough! We're outta time, we're gonna crash, we're gonna-!" only to stop, eyes wide with inspiration. Just in her peripheral, Critias was still wrestling with the airborne virus, his giant claw glinting with added jaggedy edges. If he dropped under the Satellite and flipped to create centrifugal force, just maybe... All of a sudden, from out the loudspeaker came Phase's voice, crackly and squawking in her panic. "THE TWISTY!" she cried out, "THROW IT AT THE TWISTY!"

-Turn Summary-
*Overcoat [+21 HP to Casing]
1. Phase Engine: Solid: deploy on Critias [61 HP Casing]
2. Dodge [+10%]
3. AquaNeedle1Damage: 20 x 3 Needles + Variable Targeting + Drop Attack
Accuracy: B
Description: Three needles drop on enemies
Duration: Once
Element: Aqua
Special: Variable Targeting: Allows the user to select a target for each individual hit of an attack. This means they may strike the same target multiple times, multiple different targets, or a mix of the two as they wish.
Special: Drop Attack: This attack originates above the battlefield, and falls to the ground. It gains one rank of accuracy against High Altitude targets.
Trader Rank: D: Twisty [25 Aqua {B} x 3 Hits, Drop Attack]

With destinations and pet monikers in place, QuestMan and Tutoria appeared by all accounts fully committed to their performances. If they were, perhaps, a tad lacking in experience with espionage, Tutoria was certainly willing to trust in her guidance, and QuestMan in his party's collective wisdom. The rough paper map, once provided, snapped to attention in QuestMan's hands, and unfurled as the two Navis leaned over it to get their bearings.



If the map was any indication, there were only two destinations its creators thought merited any attention. One could only be a caricature of the titular KhanMan's leering face, plastered onto an alarmingly large marker towards the far end of the market. The other, a tiny, unassuming chocolate chip cookie, sat dead centre in a cluster of uneven lines like a spider keeping its web - likely the thoroughfares they were caught in. The small markers spaced down the length of the horseshoe weren't labelled, but a quick glance at the nearest watchtower confirmed a large 'E' on a hanging banner. If nothing else, the two Navis knew where they were now.

Stymied as far as actually finding their location went, our hero moved on to the adventurer's staple of 'climb something tall, grid search until you find something shiny'. The crowds thinned out somewhat as they shuffled down the edges of the broad road to Tower E, giving Tutoria room to stand at the tower's base as QuestMan proceeded to find himself a way up. While rickety at first glance, the tri-pronged structure was lashed together with a trellis-like structure that, to the intrepid hero's adventurer senses screamed ladder.

In seconds, his feet were off the ground, scampering up the wooden beams like he was created for the job. Somewhere in QuestMan's deepest processes, something intrinsically heroic in him was greatly satisfied. The higher he got, the more the camp opened up before his eyes. The pointed tops of the tents almost seemed as waves in a multicoloured sea, bisected by writhing snakes of crowd. As QuestMan found himself a suitable perch and scanned the big tops, a flash of green and red caught his eye, a ways down the road that led to Tower G. He leaned out for a closer look.

The tent looked back. From out behind a thick (and literal) red curtain of hair hanging from the tentpole's peak, there peeked a long, rolling curve of a woman. From QuestMan's great distance away, all he could see of her were tantalising glimpses of skin seldom revealed in polite company, woven so seamlessly into the vines around her as to present the illusion that he'd caught her changing behind them. She raised a hand to her mouth, glimmering lips a perfect 'o' of affronted shock; her eyes, smoky and coy, were throwing a very different story across the market for QuestMan to pick up on. This high up, he was alone but for his thoughts, his Operator, and this stolen moment - the woman tossed her head high and levelled him with an expectant stare.

"Oi!" The moment was shattered by a sudden motion from above QuestMan's head. It was a moment only Tutoria had the luxury of bearing witness to, as the only person in the area actively watching the tower. A fearsome-looking CustomNavi had peeked over the side of his guard's perch, heavy enough in his green armour to sway the whole watchtower in doing so. "What the dickens are you doing down there? Have a little respect for a guy's workspace, will ya! Climbin' up private property, I tell ya..." Grumbling, he made to climb down to apprehend the would-be perp - the tower creaked ominously.

Unfortunately, while the profile is perfectly acceptable, the Sig Attack needs 20 points removed to be legal. A starting Navi has a point cap of 80, but active signatures from Levels 0-4 cap at 60 points (+30 Nerf points if applicable).

Feedback was an unfortunate necessity to Dignity's construction. Without being able to feel Dignity move and respond to outside influences from the cockpit, piloting and reacting to danger that was twenty feet of metal plate away became next to impossible. Thus, movement had to be two-way, and so the same gears that translated the butterfly grips into locomotion and two fully-articulated limbs would also push Phase's arm back if the hydraulics were overpowered. Up til this point, Dignity's prodigious frame had never been truly stress-tested.

Now, an idle part somewhere deep in the back of Vincent's mind noted, it certainly had. The rest of him, that particular moment, was rather occupied with yelling bloody murder. The phantom motion of Yu's puppet machine had turned its uncanny physics against him; as Dignity was tossed and thrashed about, Phase was taken on a ride not unlike a derailed roller coaster. The thin faux-leather of her pilot suit was little cushioning as her body whipped itself against the strapping of the seat harness. A rogue lever caught her in the softness under her shoulder joint; any sharper and it might have gone straight through, jacket and all. As it was, she was reduced to keening for want of the ability to abandon the controls and fold herself in half for the pain.

By the power of postmodern technology and general VR overdose, Vincent got dragged along for every excruciating moment of the ride. Phase's sobs reverberated in his skull; for a long, giant-sized moment, the world shrank down to just him and that gut-wrenching misery. The tiny scientist in his head, the note-taking gadfly who'd survived the tumbling thus far unscathed, idly mused, 'I should probably do something about all this nonsense, I should.'

And so he did.

Tipped perilously back on her talon-like feet, Dignity was moments from lifting off the ground entirely and landing on her back, at which point she'd be dead in the water and they'd be all but forced to evacuate. Just as the mech seemed ready to commit to the plummet, Phase reached, stretched against straps and gravity with a strangled yell, and caught the temperature gauge. "Wha-haa-at are you doing?" she gasped out.

Supercooled water blasted from every crevice in Dignity's chassis. Cranking for all he was worth, Vincent shouted back, "Getting us out of this mess, now please forgive me for this!" He squeezed his eyes shut against Phase's whimpering, and slammed her right arm back into the grip. In the time it took Dignity to raise her right leg and plant it home, there was a thick sheet of ice underfoot, spread in a wide, lumpy radius around the battered mech. Another jink forward with one butterfly grip, then the other, and they had enough momentum to slide the mech out from beneath the hovering virus. Phase was pale and panting for breath, but voiced no complaint.

With another twist of Vincent's wrist, Phase's right grip revealed yet another hidden trigger. The colossus gave a mighty lurch as she toggled it, a thick piton slamming into the ice from her right foot. The tortured metal of her legs screamed in protest, but held steady and began a wide pivot on her free leg. Dignity's prow veered ever nearer to centre on the scurrying Rattys. "We've got Dignity in line," Vincent's voice boomed from the console, resonating in the warm brass, "now we'll do this just as we did last time, and line up as many as we can at once. Critias, I'm sorry, but if you want to try your luck with the wind, you'll either need to wait a moment or jump. SonicWave, slot in!"

Burping dirty gouts of black smoke, Dignity's engine revved up no matter the damage it'd been forced to suffer. "Hold on tight!" Vincent called out to Yu and Critias, and lifted his arms high. The mecha rose on its anchored foot, hissing and squealing, high enough that one might have thought the titan were about to try climbing to the Twisty's perch. A gurgle of water down a hosepipe announced its true intent - as Dignity's foot crashed down, water coursed from between her toes into the ice, lacing the shockwave whipped down the hangar with an arctic chill. Vincent's piloting had put Dignity's prow level with the Windbox bearing most directly onto their footholds. A direct hit from Dignity, mighty as the mech's performance had proved, would send a splash of water from beneath fit to punch a hole clean through it, should his (and by proxy, Phase's) aim prove truer than its wind.

-Turn Summary-
*SetIce [Large Ice Terrain, circle centred on Dignity]
1. Dodge left [+10%]
2. Dodge, pivot 90 degrees [+10%]
*Strengthen 20, Imbue Aqua: add to SonicWave
3. SonicWaveDamage: 80 + Line Attack + Ground Attack
Accuracy: C
Description: Sends a narrow, but long, shock wave rolling in front of an enemy. Slow, but difficult to jump over due to its length.
Duration: Once
Element: Null
Trader Rank: C: down left side towards Rattys, WindBoxA [80 (100 to WindboxA) Aqua {C}, Line Attack, Ground Attack]

Inside the cockpit's dome, Phase was surprised to find herself relaxing into her console. As their travels took them into what somewhat resembled an old industrial zone, the Dignity's meandering stride took them to the entrance of a mightily oversized warehouse. Any anxiety over the potential of trespassing was fairly eclipsed by the desire to see what such might have required such a huge floor plan. "C'mon, guys, let's see what we find in here!" Phase chirped, steering through the bay doors and marveling over the height of the ceilings, faintly breathing, "holy smokes, it's massive!"

Several pings from Vincent's PET echoed out of Yusaku's computer bank. As the giant leaned over the console to investigate, the holographic hangar began to boil over with activity. "Well, Phase, I'd say we found something, I would, only it looks more like something found us!" he mused wryly.

Two Mr. Progs were already rushing the pair of Navis. On another day, without the warning labels Dignity helpfully provided for them, Phase would have mourned the state of the poor things, maybe tried to see if there was anything to be done for them. Today, her crisis reaction times were getting a full workout, and so she was already shouting in full Teacher Mode, "Critias, look out! Vincent, Yu, cannons at the ready!"

A beep and a sudden stiffness in her bones told Phase that Vincent had lowered his visor and reassumed the proverbial driver's seat. Distantly, she heard his bellowing as a Cannon loaded into the console. Her left arm steered the Dignity into a low stance, main Cannon hanging slung almost as though Vincent meant to scoop up the deranged Prog with the gigantic barrel. "Make the call, Phase!" the Operator urged.

Even completely at his mercy, he was still making sure she had control. Touched, Phase called down, "Critias, with me! Open fire!" A moment later, her left hand squeezed the trigger, and the low-slung barrel erupted. The glowing round fought the wind across the dwindling distance between her and her target; already Vincent was retracting the Dignity's arm, bringing her back to her full, imposing height.

Now it was Vincent's turn to call out orders. While he puppeted Phase to prime her namesake engine, he made with his other arm to wave his fellow Operator over. "Get behind me, Yu, let Dignity take the heat," he said over the roaring engine, gunning the gearshift and letting the mech's brassy overtures ring long.

It was only once the Dignity's gears had a good spin going that Vincent made for the thermostat. With three quick turns, her reservoir dumped a torrent of rime down her shining chassis. In seconds, Dignity was frozen over. Her creaking was given a mighty echo in the echoing warehouse; inside the cockpit, Phase braced herself as best she could without actually moving, and prepared to ride out the impending chaos.

-Turn Summary-
1. CannonDamage: 60 + Knockback
Accuracy: A
Description: A decent sized cannon with a single shot.
Duration: Once
Element: Null
Trader Rank: E: DarkProgB [60 Null {A}, Knock back]
2. Phase Engine: Setup [Imbue Aqua, Strengthen 20]
Overcoat: +21 to Casing
3. Phase Engine: Solid [61 HP Casing]

-Cooldowns-
Setup: 0/1
Solid: 0/1

Nestled in the apartment network, spreading out of number ten-ten was a dead space.

It was a phenomenon every Navi residing in the complex was aware of, couldn't not be aware of. In such a densely populated space, so many personal connections stacked atop one another, the Net World tended to mirror its composite reality. In this case, links to homepages were stacked into scaffolding towers of walkways and access points, interconnected and sprawling like a massive, multiplayer game of snakes and ladders. Deep in the tower ten stories up, a hole yawned where no Net seemed to exist at all. All paths around it appeared to stretch around a corner the eye couldn't track, and disappear, leaving everything on the other side of it curiously tunnelled and magnified. The effect persisted from any angle; any distance within the complex; any time one looked into the nothing that was #1010.

One such Navi did as Navis were wont, and talked to their Operator. In this instance, the Operator in question was the owner and manager of the complex; an unremarkable Electopian woman of middling age, she was unique amongst the residency as the only person ever to have spoken to ten-ten's owner. In such a tall tower, it was unlikely for any one person to say they knew everyone in the building, but most floors kept passing relationships with their neighbours at least, the sort of quick hello-goodbyes when you bump into each other in the laundry room, rarely more than that.

Nobody on the tenth floor had ever seen #1010's door open.

Packages would pile up at the door, addressed always to one Arch Voldt. They showed up regularly enough that everyone passing by had at some point peered at the labels, and learned the occupant's name. The door, though, remained shut to all who stood before it, for it opened only in the dead of night, when the halls were empty. Once or twice over the years, a curious neighbour had knocked on the door, for reasons only they might have fathomed. There had never been an answer, and so they left the door alone. Left the mystery of Arch Voldt lie, and returned to their ordinary lives.

The woman was standing before the door now, hand poised to knock. It hadn't changed in the decade or so that Mr. Voldt had moved in, white paint and a simple brass plate for the number. Nothing hung from the outside, nothing to indicate anyone lived here. No welcome mat; this, more than anything, the woman noticed.

Twice, in the ten-odd years since he'd moved in, had she actually laid eyes on the elusive Mr. Voldt. The first time, when he had bought the apartment and come to collect the keys. He'd been scarcely more than a boy then, she recalled, and an off-putting, uncanny child at that. He'd paid for the small suite in full, and spoken no more than the absolute minimum necessary. There had been no good afternoons or thank yous from him; the memory of that was still strong ten years later. No, he had simply collected his keys, made his nest, and then effectively vanished.

She would not have seen him again since, if not for an exceedingly late night that had her driving home in the early AM. Parking in the underground garage and hurrying to the door, she was momentarily arrested at the sight of a dark figure lurking in the corner. A man stared at the wall, sorting his recycling in the dead of night. It took her several long moments of overtired gawking to recognise this anomalous man as Archibald Voldt, a hand-span years of solitude later. By the time she'd regained her senses, he had finished his task, walked right by her to the stairway door, and left without a word. He hadn't even looked at her.

What was he doing in there, she wondered. What purpose was his, that he craved such solitude? Her hand was still raised to knock - how long had she been standing there? She gave the white door three smart raps, and stepped back.

It was so quiet.

What was she doing there? Had she herself been asked, she might not have had an answer. Officially, to investigate the dead space in the Net that everyone was swearing had to be from here. That had been going on awhile, though; surely someone else had tried to approach him before?

No answer. She knocked again, twice. They sounded obscenely loud, ringing down the hallway. Surely it wasn't this quiet everywhere in the complex! No, it couldn't be, the woman thought. Here, though - here, alone, she could start to imagine what was behind the white door, as she stood in the silence leaking through its frame.

She raised her arm once more, and was surprised to find it weak and shaking. How long she'd held it up to the door, she couldn't have said. Her heartbeat could have been the thunder god's own drum, and there was a coursing pulse in her ears she could feel was her blood flowing in its veins, her organs excreting and producing fluid, her bones grinding against one another. She made to knock, once more...

...and ran. Fled down the halls, sprinted the stairs to her penthouse until her gasps for air drowned out that unnatural quiet. To her Navi, who hovered anxiously nearby, she shook her head and said she was sorry, but she didn't know what the problem was.

(It was a lie, though she did not know it. Deep in the same guts she'd heard clench around her own terror, she knew that whatever was containing the sound inside #1010, was keeping everything else out too, to the point of making a bubble of vacuum in the Net around the apartment. Either he wanted nothing to get in, which she was forced to respect - or there was something in that apartment he didn't want to get out)

And so she returned to her life, resigned to the reality where the door remained shut, and she was not the solution to this particular problem. The dead space remained where it was, a local mystery forever unsolved. The woman had learned the same lesson the rest of the apartment complex had long-since accepted as fact.

You did not disturb the man in #1010.