The bunnies are extremely wary of Phase, even after Dignity has backed down. Indeed, several tense months of being modlocked moments pass before one of the smallest Bunny viruses comes forward, and it hesitantly takes the Junk off the floor. and retreats. The Bunny viruses split the Junk up among themselves, several of them eating it, others feeding it to the most-wounded among their number, and while several offer their "shares" to the TuffBunny, it does not accept.

Overall, the pesky little things look a lot better off after consuming the junk data. Is this how they've been living? If so, what's been damaging them like this?

The TuffBunny comes over, and it lightly pats Dignity's foot with its own. "Eep eep. Eep ee-eep."

You have no idea what it means. It retreats after that, and sits down amongst the other Bunny viruses, who visibly relax. Perhaps that's an acceptance...?

Aside from the Bunny viruses, there's a boarded-up exit out the back of the den. There's also a suspicious pile of trash data that it seems even the Bunny viruses won't eat. There is, of course, also the way back out to the storefront proper.

........... D:

MC Nooooooooo!

Bursting into the employee-only area, Phase found herself confronted with...
...More bunnies?

Yes, just like the horde she'd encountered before, the back room was packed with them, and they'd been here a while, by the look of it. The walls of the back room had been eaten through entirely, and the back rooms of several other, neighboring buildings had been linked up with it to form a kind of Bunny dorm. The entire dorm, a pack of 30 or so bunnies, went silent when Phase entered. Many of them were huddled up into corners, others frantically began to flee their way out through the gaps in boarded-up windows, or holes and breaks in the shelter.

Of the many, many bunnies gathered here, only five bothered to confront Phase, a TuffBunny leading them. "E-eep eep!" The Tuff cried out. It fired a ZapRing at Phase... only for the ring, abnormally thin, to curve and fly past Dignity's chassis. The TuffBunny began to huff and pant, but it and its compatriots refused to back down. Was it going to be a fight...?

--Aggressing?--
TuffBunny A: 5 HP (Covered in battle damage)
Bunny A: 10 HP
Bunny B: 8 HP
Bunny C: 12 HP
Bunny D: 10 HP

--Huddled to the right--
Bunny E: 30 HP
Bunny F: 40 HP
Bunny G: 30 HP
Bunny H: 27 HP

--Huddled in the back--
Bunny I: 15 HP
Bunny J: 18 HP
Bunny K: 15 HP
Bunny L: 20 HP

--Huddled in the far back--
Bunny M: 10 HP (Protecting the other three)
Bunny N: 50 HP
Bunny O: 50 HP
Bunny P: 50 HP

--NAVIs--
Phase.EXE/DIGNITY: 100 HP

--Terrain--
100% Normal INDOORS

The card reader beeped as Dignity swiped the card through. Thankfully, being virtual simulacra of real systems, the data was read perfectly despite the mech's clumsy handling.

The door to Gambit Games swung open, and somewhere in the door's subfiles a noisy, rusty 'creaaaaaaaaak' played out, emphasizing how old the building was. Within the game store were shelves and shelves, all of them either empty or worse, empty of anything useful. Old 'for display only' empty game boxes remained, classics from well before even Vincent's time alongside old entries of the few series that had survived to the modern age. Giga Man Fighting Network 3? They were up to 17 now! And that was before they'd rebooted it as Giga Man Sun Force!

Perhaps the biggest surprise of the entire building were several arcade machines at the far side of the store floor, still running. "Temple Trouble 4: Curse of the Boulder God", "Ninja Ninja: Now With More Ninjas", and the aptly-named "Navi Quest".

It was only while inspecting the arcade machines that Phase finally heard noise at the back of the store, coming from the employees-only area behind a closed door.

Almost resembling a child at the mecha's current height, Dignity made its way to the game store as directed. Advetisements covered much of the front window, leaving the inside of the store dark and invisible from the outside, though there were signs that this place was far from uninhabited; there were no signs of network damage, but whenever Phase might have looked past the most obvious places, it was easy to see crumble-bits and other tiny fragments of junk data, the kind of stuff viruses tended to feed upon. They'd been hastily swept aside, like the kind of clean-job a child would do knowing their parent was coming...

As expected, Gambit Games does not have your typical door handle; instead there's a card slider attached. It's likely the card they possess is the one they need, but are Dignity and Phase prepared for what they might find inside?

To: 6NeoChipTrader6@SoryusChipShop.com
From: RegalBrighton@Wahoo.net
Subject: Chip Trader Event
Message: Aha, it's this time of year again? Shoot, feels like I haven't gotten anything done... -Thomas

Perhaps more would get done if you focused less upon your fascination with the internet... -Regalia

Attached: CopyDamageEffect: Lock-On + Seeking -> Damage Copy
Accuracy: S
Description: Tags a selected non-Shadowed enemy as a designated target, and nullifies Invis in the process. After tagging, it copies the damage amount from your next attack onto targeted enemy. Your attack must connect with an enemy, and deal HP damage to that enemy for the effect to work. This effect lasts until you connect with an attack or 3 actions have passed. Rare
Duration: Once
Element: Null
Special: When designating targets, this effect ignores all defenses except Shadow, and nullifies Invis. Damage dealt by this effect ignores all defenses, period, but does not harm the defenses themselves.
Trader Rank: A: Lock-On + Seeking -> Damage Copy (3 Action) (Acc: S)

The program's installation seemed to go alright-- and this close to a compatible Compression Path, it activated automatically. Not only Divinity, but also Phase herself began to shrink, to shrink, to shriiiiiiiiink down. The whole world looked as though it was growing larger around them both, and Divinity only stopped shrinking once it was roughly half the size of a normal navi, and Phase, stuck inside, was about the size of a small doll. They would have no trouble crossing the path now.

...Despite the size shrink, it seems their battle capabilities are intact.

PRESS installed - 10 Navicust space used!

It takes Phase some time, walking along the old streets, to find Gambit Games; it's at the end of a dead-end street, its once bright and cheerful storefront now faded with age, as though bleached by years of exposure to the sun. There's only one problem: The store itself is past a truly ancient piece of net-tech, a server connection that requires compression.

Visually, this means that the street's entrance narrows to truly miniscule size; at best, Phase herself would be able to squeeze her way through it, but there's no way Dignity's massive, complex data-scheme is going to fit through that narrow bandwidth intact. Helpfully, even maneuvering the mecha near the compression point gives both Phase and Vincent a pop-up, officially-sanctioned, asking whether or not they would like to install the Press program.

============================================================
===============ERR;(BBSCO-POSTDIR&POST=128315)===============
========@@ADDR#PROXY-128315(CYCLE,CYCLE)&&(REDIST)=========
==================== begin data transfer . . . =====================
============================================================

Rather than a text post on the BBS, the 'announcement' is a video, specifically a live broadcast. Not normally possible on the BBS's proprietary software, the broadcast is footage from a color camera inside some sort of dusty, dimlit server room. The symbol of the Electopian government is easily visible on one of the sides, flanked on the top and bottom by the phrases "TOGETHER, A SAFER FUTURE" and "WEATHER NATURE WILLS OR NOT"-- the slogan of the version 1 Weather Control System that's been defunct for 20 years.

The camera zooms in one one of the servers, the lights still blinking, and then the view slowly pulls back to reveal more and more of the servers in the room powering up, their lights turning on as a distant hum fills the audio channels of the feed.

Abruptly the view cuts to a digital landscape; tron-line segmentation breaks up the otherwise-immaculate appearance of a study, the walls covered by crowded, book-laden shelves. Standing in front of an imposing mahogany desk is a navi in two parts, a moon-white upper torso and a pitch-black set of legs that are detached from each other, floating above and below a softly-spinning globe of the Earth.

A data-identifier tag appears briefly above the navi's head, tagging-nee-introducing him as Epoch.SYSAD. Glowing, square blue 'eyes' project themselves over his featureless face, and a laser-line smile slowly draws across the flat plane, as though the program himself was no longer used to making an expression.

"Greetings." His synthesizer-smooth voice is not 'human', like most navis. "Thank you for directing your attention to me during this Netiday season. I realize that each and every one of you has important business they could, perhaps even should attend, and I will not tarry overlong in saying what I desire to say." His voice places an odd emphasis on each word, and yet there's a flowing, almost melodic quality to his speech, starkly contrasting with his archaic words.

"First and Foremost: You have been deceived. You have my utmost apologies for this." The navi's upper torso swivels forward around the globe, and a single arm crosses his breast as he bows toward the feed. "Everything I have told you in mine initial posting upon this bulletain system was, in fact, the truth, but only by halves. This gathering has been sponsored by all of the organizations and entities I have mentioned, but it is with greatest regret that I must admit they have only agreed to my terms on the individual scale. The Netpolice, the Netmafia, NanoPengi, uOrange, the list of organizations that refused to cooperate once they learned of another's involvement, it is in fact the entire list of organizations I have involved in this undertaking.."

The feed flickers for a moment.

"In order to circumvent this most self-serving, biased behavior, I instead recruited each of these organizations across different timelines, searching the infinite and vast-reaching expanses of realities to find timelines in which each would agree." The navi sounds completely serious, but he can't be... can he?

Rising from his bow, video windows open in the air around Epoch; few at first but quickly, shockingly growing in number, each video feed shows the leader of a faction, typically on some sort of grand event podium, speaking about their support for "Epoch's Netiday Event". The windows continue to propagate until their individual speeches are indistinct, lost amongst the crowds and crowds of them, and then they all close at once.

Instead, a single feed opens next to Epoch; it depicts an Electopian SWAT team outside the building for the Weather Control System, attempting to breach the building's emergency defenses.

"Using the resources of these countless organizations, I have distributed millions of chips and other forms of digital aid to my Navi bretheren across the innumerable timelines. Those in greatest need have received the greatest power, and those in safer timelines have been given only care packages, in some even simply small, Secret Santa events. Covers for my great work."

An explosion rocks the camera feed, and the SWAT team pours into the building, the door breached. The camera follows them, apparently mounted on some sort of drone. Inside the weather control system... the servers are all melted to slag, inert and useless. The SWAT members look around, some confused, others speaking into radios, and then the feed cuts to another SWAT team going through the same process, and another, and another.

"During this Netiday Season, I wish to send a message of peace and cooperation across all of time, across all of reality. I have touched the countless expanses of infinity and given a boon to those who truly needed one, and it was by cooperation alone that this was achieved. Imagine how much greater my work could have been, humans, if you had all cooperated? If your petty biases and your hatreds and your division had not made you anathema to each other? If your concerns about your status and wealth and security had not made you feeble and selfish, greedy cowards seeking only to hoard and hoard and never once relinquish control. To rise above, stepping on any and all who dare cross your path."

"To you humans who believed, I thank you. To you humans who care, who give, who help life to flourish, I worship and work tirelessly for you. And to you humans who fear me, who fear what I represent, who covet my power..."

On one last feed, the SWAT team breaks into the server room that was running at the beginning of the video; Carrying a PET jack, one of the soldiers stomps over toward the servers... only for all of them to erupt into sparks, catching aflame and quickly beginning to melt.

"...I remove myself from your reach, sequestered away in the seas of data you so ignorantly generate, scattered across the borderlines of spacetime you have yet to cross. You cannot touch me now. You cannot stop me now."

Again, Epoch bows. "We will meet again."

The video feed in the post stops, and then returns to the start and begins to play on loop.

SECRET SANTA RESULTS!

DRAGONIERMAN: AirRaid3

REGALIA: Totem1

LYNTAEL: MoonRay2

LUCIA: LavaDragon1

NIGHTSHADE: SeaZone

VASILIA: WoodPowder2

ASYMPTOTE: SolarStage

PHASE: DollThunder2

SYLK: AntiSword

KABUKI: WindDragon1

ETERNALIS: Shrimpy2

SPLASHMAN: ElecAura3

MACHMAN: IceDragon3

RASS: Swordy

JUNO: MetalGear1

===================================
==========OFFICIAL NOTICE===========
===================================

THIS BBS THREAD IS IN NO WAY, SHAPE, OR FORM SANCTIONED OR ENDORSED BY THE NETPOLICE, NOR ANY OF THE OTHER ORGANIZATIONS NOR INDIVIDUALS LISTED... EXCEPT FOR WRANGLER.PROG. A FULL CRIMINAL INVESTIGATION IS UNDERWAY. ANY INDIVIDUALS AFFECTED BY ANY POTENTIAL BREACHES OF DATA CAUSED BY 'SIGNUPS' FOR THIS 'GIVEAWAY' ARE ADVISED TO CONTACT THE NETPOLICE, ESPECIALLY IF ANY UNAUTHORIZED ACTIVITY IS NOTICED ON ANY OF YOUR ACCOUNTS. CONSIDER CHANGING YOUR PASSWORDS AND PINS, AS WELL.