For a time, a major thoroughfare of SciLabs was blocked off by a quarantine barrier. What the glowing wall's purpose was, few could say; no matter how long one spent devoting their craft to the scientific cathedral, there would always be clearance levels never breached, some never discovered. So it was that most who'd seen the barrier, or even been present when the evacuation alarms had blared their chilling tolls - had simply rerouted their travels, and asked no questions. It was the way of things, in their world of secrets.

Those few who had overseen the barrier, whatever their intentions, had found nothing. The cause of the incident had fled - disappeared, really. There had been something like a jack-out's digital signature, but the language was indecipherable static, and the PET address had tried very hard to convince SciLabs' computers that the assailant had gone everywhere. There was undoubtedly at least a couple angry mutters about unstable glitch-junkies, or something to that tune. Of the quarantine target, though, there could be no sign.

And when it returned, seeping into a forgotten corner of the Net far from its early exit point, so too did nobody notice, at least not immediately. Oh, they would soon enough, no doubt; the foreign contaminant had been anything but subtle on its rampage. For now, it oozed through quiet nooks, casting little feelers up from its surface. The air shuddered at their touch as they sucked at it, tasting for life.

In time, a thin sort of protrusion grew on its surface. Its shape was an abstract of a body: shoulders, the suggestion of limbs, the back of a head where it drifted face-down. It did not move. It made no noise, save a faint creaking groan that echoed from the whole pooling white, like metal or wood under immense strain. Or was it the Net making the noise, in response to this trespasser? Whatever the source, noise traveled far in quiet places. Any listeners would hear it well before the creeping white sprawl came into view.

[Searching for first meal {Hex: 180 HP, Ego: 90 HP}]

Upon leaving Prose to her own devices, ScorchMan found himself immersed in the deep sort of quiet that only large empty spaces could contain. Finding a window confirmed the theory, a resounding lack of noise a telltale sign of abandoned wildspace. Even the atmosphere felt stagnant; had there been any wind, the rush of air through the industrial corridors might have hinted at their elevation. Griffin might have said something, but occupied as he was with his workout, ScorchMan's perception stayed limited to his own senses.

Metal gave way to brittle gravel underfoot, and very soon to an altogether new texture. Curious, ScorchMan kneeled to run a glove through the cooled stone. The sensation felt oddly moist, comparable to a fresh-baked loaf of bread: solid on top, but soft enough to give if pressed. He inched a little closer, reached a little further out to the residual warmth - and all at once his senses came alive. Smoky tang of melting rock and skittering scrabbling tapping crawling all along a tunnel wall filled to bursting with tiny moving starbursts of heat heat heat and the deeper he felt the more the plug of the tunnel began to feel very, very thin.

A vision only for the sighted: Griffin rolling his shoulders, PET in hand, setting it down in front of him as he knelt on the gym mats. It was time for the Griffin Reim Abdominal Power Hour (GRAPH for short) that had landed the fireman the December page three years in a row, and a few interviews in fitness magazines besides which. "Dude, save some for the rest of us!" Mr. April cried out in dismay as Griffin arched his spine in a yoga-inspired stretch that highlighted just a couple of things. To Prose's viewscreen, positioned on the floor just in front of Griffin, he almost looked to be crawling towards the camera.

With the PET on the floor, Leo and Mr. April were out of frame, their voices fading to background noise with the microphone pointed away. Griffin's face looked just as good wearing mirthful humour as it did when the laughter died off, and what was left seemed considering. A world away, this close to a viewscreen, Prose had a solid chance of feeling strongly and distinctly eyed up and down. He opened his mouth, ready to say or do something that would no doubt escalate things further, when the other screen on his end lit up yellow-orange.

"Griffin, I'm gonna need chips very soon!" ScorchMan shouted. His Operator didn't reply verbally, but the ensuing scrabble and receding pound of footsteps as Griffin booked it out the room told him enough. A blast of flame propelled ScorchMan back through the bottleneck between rooms, busters trained on the growing sensation of heat. "Prose, we've got incoming," he turned partially towards the other Navi, too aware of how little time he had. All in a rush he called out, "Keep doing your thing, I'll try to hold them off!"

Bit by bit, the subterranean room revealed itself. Following behind Prose, ScorchMan's map of the room started with a rough outline traced in heat: in smooth walls gleaned from his flames brushing at even planes; in the gusts of thick hot air above the lava floes, how high they rose and where the heat settled in the room. All of this, ScorchMan learned as it intersected his own sphere of influence, which he drove around the room one careful step at a time. Clearly in no hurry, he seemed content to run careful hands over console banks and guardrails, feet shuffling unconcerned over bits of melted terrain.

The accidental streaming service floated along beside ScorchMan - the two men had begun squatting with every catch of the medicine ball. "You ever skip a leg day in your life, Leo?" he called over to the titanic Mr. August, and received a cheerful finger with the next toss. At the bottom of his squat, rugby shorts rode high, Griffin glanced aside to the camera just in time to catch the affronted look on Prose's face. Already grinning from the exertion and bro-time, his handsome mug flashed for just a moment a wordless, coquettish 'who, me?'. "So!" he summed up, addressing the PET while still facing Leo, "We know, or at least we're pretty sure the Myriad came from this place, on account of him digging up into ScorchMan's hot tub. Why..." he popped a squat, sank a second one even lower, and sent the ball back with a deep, emphatic thrust of his hips, "...would it have been in here?"

"It feeds off corruption...stored energy going stagnant?" ScorchMan mused, tracing a guardrail through the living quarters. At this point the Navi was more or less a walking torch for Prose and Griffin's benefit: from his back and shoulders, a crackling yellow bonfire swayed around his head. The shadows he cast seemed almost alive in the forgotten room, jumping like ghosts between the banks of consoles. "If you think you can get something from these, go ahead," he motioned towards the console banks, indecipherable without Griffin's assistance. He could call his Operator - but any danger seemed far off yet, and anyway the grunts of exertion were starting to sound...involved. Better leave the man's gym time be. Instead he called behind him, "I'm going further in, yell if you find anything," and proceeded further through the bored tunnel.

Somewhere in Kotobuki, the squat-off of Mr. August and Mr. December had ceased to involve anything resembling actual squats. Each pass of the medicine ball now prompted a quick dance, albeit typically involving enough gyrating and thrusting to still count as exercise. Griffin made a loop of his arms and basketball-hooped the ball before winging it to Leo, who flipped an arm around to swing the ball between his legs for a teabag fit to crush a lesser man's pelvis. It was truly impossible to tell whether the show was explicitly done for the PET's camera, an unconscious reaction to simply having a camera present, or completely natural behaviour for the two men.

Finally, Griffin began to flag. Ruddy-faced and wearing the beginnings of a good sweat, he tossed the ball back and stepped back, splashing a proffered water bottle over his head before downing the rest. "Alright, whatcha got bud?" he ambled over to the PET, peering into the darkness at the back of the structure. "Still dark as hell back there. ScorchMan, while Prose does her thing, can you check the back of the room behind you? Just uh, maybe cool your jets, it looks a little flammable in there." Watching as his Navi dimmed his burn to a cool red glow before heading in, Griffin stepped back towards the mats for another round. Onscreen, it looked almost as though ScorchMan were falling into a dark hole; hands outstretched, a dim outline in a lightless metal cavern, his blindness lent experience to his careful footsteps.

There was no knowing what drove the white, or how it perceived the world beyond itself. Whatever sensory input it gleaned, it knew there was nothing left in the quarantine to chase. Branches rose up to catch against the tracer beams. What were they learning from the contact? It was impossible to say.

Perhaps it was something like tasting scents in the virtual atmosphere. Perhaps a little wooden doll, taken like a cutting from an old root, would have a signature unique to her that felt like fractals, heartwood, and known-before. Maybe the intelligence guiding the quarantine would learn something to that effect, or maybe they would be distracted by the faint vacuum pull the white exuded. Foundation, atmosphere, even light seeped into the liquid mass, caught in Hex's forest in a process not unlike trees absorbing carbon dioxide.

From beneath the waves, a high-pitched keening peaked and cut out. No barrier could keep Hex from its Administrator, for they were one being, one body. Metal skin shredded to nothing, Ego's halos vanished under the surface with one last spattering of red sparks. All was silent, save for a low groaning that could only be the Net itself.

Egomorph was a lump of Hex in stolen skin. Without a mouth, she could not scream. Without arms, she could not fight. Without a body, she was lost in Hex's undertow. Helpless, bodiless, denied the most basic of agency, it would be so easy to succumb to despair. Would, if not for the endless reminder that the undead world in her head would never rest. There would be no peace, no last rites for them or for her, until the white was destroyed.

All that passed for the white's thoughts were in her head. Realization began to take hold: it had not forgotten its brain, merely decided thought was unnecessary for the moment. The moment Egomorph became an uncooperative variable, the white understood the directives governing its behaviour needed rectifying. It had left the freedom of thought as Ego's last refuge. It would not make the same mistake twice.

White flooded the Conduit. Red light bleeding from the borehole depths, Egomorph the Administrator reactivated, and Ego the consciousness winked out. No longer mindless, the sprawling white paused its advance in favour of looping tentacles over themselves, building a structure of veins and intertwined bodies that brought to mind a network of roots (or, perhaps, neurons).

For a time, the processor simply pulsed. Though every byte of Hex's mass was identical in structure, a scan of the light, depending on what they were looking for, might have come out looking remarkably like the data patterns of a Navi's central cortex. Before long, from deep below came a static drone, [system threat neutralized > Administrator updated > [heartwood/fractal/familiar] not found > data profile saved

Somewhere in the Net's internal framework, a burrowed root began to retract. Oozing white swirled into a whirlpool as Hex drew in all of its newly-acquired mass: what internal goal had been met to merit halting its advance, nobody was left to say. Only Hex's crafted processor was left, still burning with noxious light even as it slid towards the borehole. From out its depths came one more batch of ominous words, [processing > ERROR: insufficient resources > processing > data recovery incomplete > scanning], and then it was gone, vanished into itself.

The Net fell silent, the dust of Hex's wreckage settling. The window was finally closed.

<{RETURN TO OPERATOR}>

There wasn't much time for Griffin and ScorchMan to ponder the implications of the rogues and the recall point. Perhaps there could have been, had the Navi not chosen to silently nod his understanding and skip to the action, making his way to the Myriad's point of entrance. As ScorchMan walked, a burst of yellow-white flame erupted from one boot and curled itself into a tight sheathe around his cuisses. Stamping the ground and pushing his weight down on his burning limb, a glowing red patch bloomed across the Net's checkerboard floor, radiant with heat. In seconds, a swimming pool's worth of molten metal bubbled and shimmered before ScorchMan and Prose. The hot air buffeted ScorchMan's armour and sent ribbons of fire fluttering from his vents, while over his boots lapped the consistent pull of a current, suggesting a shoreline to a nearby river.

The living furnace waded into the lava like a hot bath, with all the sighing and languidity that entailed. Though he couldn't see his feet, ScorchMan's head still tipped down as though considering them, then kicked off into a slow backstroke. He shrugged an arm out to wave to Prose before arching back and diving, surrendering to the pull of the current. "Yell if you need me," Griffin called out just as his viewscreen sank into a glowing red blur. ScorchMan was the barest hint of a silhouette, kicking to keep the current at his back, arms out for when he inevitably found a wall.

A muffled 'oof' - and there was a wall. 'Brrf' - and there was another. Swimming blind was one thing, and as ScorchMan quickly discovered, swimming blind down a twisting chute added a whole new dimension of awful. There was nothing for it but to stay braced for impact, keep kicking, and occasionally scrabble along the walls when the magma pushed him into a corner. As first impressions went, it was hardly the most flattering display Prose had likely seen, if she was indeed following close enough to catch ScorchMan's fumbling.

One more curve made its presence known to ScorchMan's senses, namely the tactile subset. Gauntlets and helmet met wall with a muffled clong of metal on metal, and then he was shooting upward: strange, but now was not the time to be asking questions. Now he was - falling falling oh jiminy what the f- - splashing down into a lava pool, and finally ScorchMan felt level ground. "Well," he grunted, chest-deep and slowly wading out, "that went well. Still there, Griffin?"

"You know it," came Griffin's voice between grunts of exertion. The window floated obediently behind ScorchMan as he pulled himself free, now displaying a full quarter of the Charity Calender. If Prose had made any close study of its contents, she might have recognized the fridge-like proportions of Mr. August, leaned up against the squat rack and shooting the breeze with Mr. April, who was nothing resembling small but still appeared dwarfed by the giant man. Hair and beard both shaved to the skin, the giant man's outfit matched his calendar getup, namely a pair of tiny scrum shorts, a sweatband on his forehead, and absolutely nothing else but a thick coating of wiry brown body hair. Mr. April, built like a runner, was in somewhat more conservative jogging getup, but clearly thought nothing of playfully swooning into his coworker's naked chest as he cheered Griffin on.

Griffin was the middle ground of the three men, both in proportions and dress. He was also the only one actually working out so far, pumping himself on the pullup bar like he weighed nothing. "Light up a little, ScorchMan? It's pretty dark wherever you landed," he paused midway to peer at the PET-projected screen. His Navi obliged by venting fire until he'd made himself into a walking torch. Flickering light bounced across the metal cavern, Griffin's brow furrowing as he took in what he could from ScorchMan's position. "Well, big ugly didn't make this space by itself, that's for sure. Probably found this space and set up camp? Check that back corner, can you tell where it got all melted? Yeah, that way, maybe that's its way in and out."

"Copy that." Feeling his way in, ScorchMan felt for the lava's heat, bouncing his own fire off it to feel where the walls were resistant, where they'd weakened. "Say, Griffin?" ScorchMan called out, while it was still just the two of them. His Operator grunted in reply; a little hesitant, ScorchMan asked, "Did Prose seem alright to you, while she was explaining the Rogue Networks? She sounded a little, uh, off." He stopped at the end of the room, illuminating as much as he could for when the other Navi rejoined them. He got the feeling fumbling around blind wouldn't end well, not when they were presumably right in the predator's den.

"No clue, bud. Maybe she was thinking about something else?" Butter wouldn't melt in Griffin's mouth. He finished his pullups, clapping Mr. April on the shoulder while the slighter man made to take his place. If the camera feed still pointed at the cage, and if Griffin sidled right into frame to start throwing a weighted medicine ball back and forth with Mr. August, that was clearly just coincidence.

A carpet of white ate into the ground. Steel and glass were dragged into Hex's borehole, broken under boughs that chewed as they pulled, every pulse of digestion pushing up more, more, more. A forest of writhing tendrils overgrew the quarantined space, radiating from the leftovers of the white's feeding frenzy. Leavings of metallic slurry spread across the surface like liquid armour, blossoming with faces.

Arrhythmic contractions grew the pit wider, deeper. More mass, more Hex, more for the white horizon beyond its depths. Ego could feel it suck down the fresh matter; it might as well have been her own throat. The bolus of fresh growth was large enough to scrape a sliver off for Vasilia without being noticed, small enough to look like a drop as it reached the ocean.

It would never stop, if nothing was done.

Somehow, even full of the feeling of chewing, her mind was still hers. Perhaps she'd finally numbed to it. Perhaps amidst its gorging, Ego thought, the white had forgotten she existed at all. It wouldn't surprise her; no matter how many voices cried out in her head, Ego could still reach down and feel Hex's shores underfoot, and understand how very, very small she was. Still, if she could just slow it down a few seconds more...

A murmur, a mantra, "I am you, I am you, I am you-" Glaring through the silvery eyes of a metal woman (̷̢̛D̵̨́r͢͢͝҉e͠͏͠ì̷̛s̶̕͢͟ş̸k̡͝ŕ͘͘͜,͏́͘ ̸̸̢́͘m̕͟͠y͠͏͟ ̸̡̧͟ņ̵̀͜͟a̷̷̢m̧̢͘͢͡ę̧ ̛͞i͡s̨͏̶͟͞ ̸́͜҉͠D̡͠r̵̛e͜͢͢͞҉i҉͟҉́͡s͝͡͏ķ͜k̶̷r̢͝)̶̸̧, Ego stood at the white's edge, brawny arms stretched wide and thinking desperately of oneness. Bloody red light crackled and made a beacon of her silhouette, some sparking against the encroaching sprawl, the rest circulating back into the Conduit's engine. Once a doorway Vasilia had fled through, the space on which she stood was only distinguished by the white's path forward, and the ruins left behind. However futile the gesture, the meaning was universal: you shall not pass.

Alas, all meaning in the universe was lost on Hex, for it had no brain. All the white registered was resistance, and thus a direction to advance its grotesque waves. Horror after horror rose before the Administrator: teeth, hands, tentacles, knit with oozing black veins into a formless melange. The curl of its crash downward might have resembled waves in an ocean, lent a predatory gravity.

The white wall pounced.

Oh, to be the one piece of Hex cognizant of pain! To be the one thing standing between the Net and a slavering maw that knew nothing of hurt or fear - all the Support Program could do was scream. The cacophony had died down to a groaning scrape. Finally audible and unheeded by any need for breath, all Ego's rage and despair split the air in an unceasing wail.

She felt its grip fill her, for Egomorph was nothing but white wearing a dead woman's skin. Ego's body was the white's body: moving her was moving itself, consuming her was consuming itself.

Hex eats everything. Consumption of self was intrinsic to the white. The wall of gnashing buried Egomorph -

- only to collapse, flailing, as the woman scythed through its tendrils with sweeps of her silver arms. Fuelling her, reaching from the Manifest Conduit through her was a world devoured, its remnants maddened beyond words. In undead perdition they had screamed, in undying defiance they now roared.

Hex's jaws closed over its own Support Program, pulling her in. Egomorph refused.

Hex ripped and tore at the column holding up her body. Egomorph refused.

Mouths all over her. Mouths inside her body, a mouth that was her body. Gibbering, feasting on itself, consuming more, more, always more.

Egomorph let it, even encouraged it, arms stretched wide to embrace the storm of teeth. A little more, just a little more, and it would chew right through her to its own connection. The window would break, the severed sprawl of white would rot into static, the little fractal-born witch with the pretty name would be safe. It would be enough. It had to be enough.

FastArmour [40 HP Casing, Hex]
E1. Distracted by visions
Warding Touch [15 Healing, Vasilia]
1. Pull the walls in
One For All [Link Hex & Ego's HP]
Crimson Cascade: Hex [10 Null x 2 hits {A}]
E2. Block Hex's path
E3. Command: Activate [Random effect, allies = Ego, Vasilia; 1TCD]
2. Entry: Vasilia [80 Null {A}, Break, Glitch]
3. Return Egomorph
E4. Resist
4. Movement: pursue Vasilia
Glitch Eater [50% chance to target Vasilia or Egomorph. If Vasilia, targets Routine Override; if Egomorph, targets Fissured Growth]

Requesting permission to unshelf Phase, to use as my third active pair.

Speaking in relative terms, ScorchMan was young and untested for a Navi. As with many of his kind, he was built for specialized job support, with his daily life a regimented, routine closed circuit that neatly separated everything he knew from everything he didn't. Only rarely did ScorchMan's world expand to fit a new depth in his understanding, each instance a milestone - and this conversation seemed like it was going to be another one. Several times, Prose's explanation used terms the Navi had no context for, and his face made no secret of the fact from 'rogues' onward, but he could piece enough dots together to make a game attempt at nodding along. "I think I get it," he said cautiously, once Prose finished her outline, "at any rate, seems like I'll be doing the Net a favour by getting rid of it."

"Too right," Griffin nodded his agreement. Finishing off his stretches, he segued into squats without missing a beat, first on bodyweight, then with a loaded barbell across his shoulders. Even with the weight, he didn't sound the least bit breathless when he spoke up, "So assuming big ugly didn't get chased up here by something bigger and uglier, there must be something screwed up underground, right? Something that drew it up to the...normals, right?" A slight adjustment of stance put Griffin in profile; the smooth glide of quads and hamstrings resumed. "It couldn't have been that far away, if it noticed ScorchMan's bathtub and came to see what's up. Dive down there, and you'll probably find both your bogie and whatever's distracting it from heading home," the firefighter continued, casually putting lie to the notion that more brawn equalled less brains.

The slighter half of the Beefcake Duo had gone quiet, mulling over Prose's words. A small shard of shiny black carapace blinked into ScorchMan's glove, who didn't seem to notice he was fidgeting with it until he pricked his thumb by accident. "I think you're right," he started, facing a point between Griffin and Prose's voices and addressing both at once. To Prose he nodded, gesturing down to the fragment, "It's not exactly closure I'm after. Yeah, I could've just pointed the authorities at the problem and washed my hands, but if it's something I can do something about..." the words fled him.

Hesitant, ScorchMan tried again, "I guess I don't like the thought of giving the Myriad a chance to find someone unprepared for it. That's just, no. Not happening, not on...heh! Not on my watch." The Navi's jaw curled into a rueful smirk, and let the fragment blip away. From beside him came a very Griffin-y 'eyyyyyy', but ScorchMan paid it no mind, choosing instead to reach down for those deep parts in his core that governed fire and heat, and pull. "Yeah," the burning man said, his body awash with curling flames, "I'm ready. If you've got a plan, then just tell me what you need and I'll do what I can. Oh, and uh, maybe stand back."

You wake up.

You are awake.

You fall asleep.

You wake up.

You are awake?

You are asleep.

You wake up?

Your body is a leaden weight, inactive, sedentary.

Disgusting. Pointless.

Stumble to the bathroom. The mirror is gone. When did that happen?

Your hands are bandaged.

Why are you even here?

There's nowhere else.

A beep. Mail from nobody. Net damaged, repairs needed urgently. Will you help? You don't want to, but you need money. You pick a quadrant and make yourself type, each keystroke a brick you will never see, never touch.

Never feel.

That's fine. This is what you wanted, right?

To be alone?

Untouched?

You don't want to-

-finish the thought, coward.

awake. asleeṕ̧̛.̛̀ ͞a͘w̛͘a͏͜͠k̡e̴̵̛.̨ as̵̕͠l̴e̷̢è̴p͘͠.͘

"Uh, that's Mr. December to you, thanks much," Griffin waggled a finger to the camera as he walked off-screen. The soft sound of rustling clothes ensued - from just outside the frame, he called coquettishly, "Kotobuki Firefighters' charity calendar, three years running? No big deal or anything." The rush of a faucet, then the quiet shake of a toothbrush going to work.

"There, that's fine," Cutting his Operator off, ScorchMan made a stopping gesture with a hand once Prose's reconstructions started putting out heat. Walking slowly forward into the wireframes, the walking furnace lit himself up, fire pouring from his body until he stood at the centre of a rippling bubble. With a simulated deep breath, ScorchMan pushed his awareness out and felt for where his heat brushed against the reconstruction. Memory supplied the rest, "That's right...I was flying around, and it tried to shark me just as I landed right...there." He nodded his understanding, barely registering Prose's teasing.

Before ScorchMan could begin, he was interrupted by the sound of a door swinging shut. A hand reached to grab the PET, giving the camera a thighs-up view of Griffin walking down the hall in rugby shorts and a loose tank top. "I can answer that, bro. This lazy mook was chilling in his lava bathtub that he made torching a bunch of viruses, and he stayed in there so long his feet got stuck! Next thing you know, big ugly's rolling up on him like 'yo, snacktime!'' Hey ScorchMan, it cool if I get my gains on while you do your thing?"

"Knock yourself out - and my feet did not get stuck," ScorchMan griped, looking put out in a very literal sense. Flames dying down to a red smoulder, his rippling sphere of influence faded in short order. Without turning to face the other Navi, he started, "I dunno anything about this thing, all I know is Griffin yelled 'big damn lava spider' and the next second it was running me down. Got me a couple times, but I kept ahead of it." At that he huffed a bit, expression twisting as he recalled the mad scramble, and summed up the rest, "Then, it was just a matter of Griffin having exactly the right chips for me to get clear, and blast it before it finished the job."

"Not to mention pointing you in the right direction," Griffin chimed in, hooking his PET to the handlebars of an exercise bike and walking a slow lap around the fire hall's gym. Stretching and unsubtly flexing for the camera, the mottled red of old burn scars were plainly evident along one arm and shoulder. At that point another fireman in athletic wear appeared in the doorway and wolf-whistled, prompting Griffin to bring his arms up, bracket his head with his biceps, and affect a pin-up pose for maximum peacocking. His voice filled the small room, "Yeah, can't say we've been doing this long, but ScorchMan over here? Pretty badass in a fight."

"Yeah, well, I had help." With an emphatic lean towards Griffin's voice, the flames licking from ScorchMan's armour flared back up to a strong yellow burn. Despite the imposing stance, his words were almost hesitant, "So, as long as I'm working with you, can I ask...what was that thing, anyway?"