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By: Stefan Gagne--twoflowr@pixelscapes.com
C:\>
C:\>cd slayers
C:\SLAYERS>cd virtual
C:\SLAYERS\VIRTUAL>dir
Volume in drive C is CEE
Volume Serial Number is 186D-18F1
Directory of C:\SLAYERS\VIRTUAL
IMPRO EXE 10,002 05-20-99 6:14p
FANFIC ZIP 584,874 05-20-99 11:17p
PRESENTS TXT 2,591 02-26-98 3:02a
-------- --- 2 02-26-98 3:02a
CHAPTER 1 ??????? 05-22-99 1:09a
FILE_ID DIZ 411 05-22-99 1:09a
6 file(s) 597,890 bytes +
2 dir(s) 9,192.05 MB free
C:\SLAYERS\VIRTUAL>type file_id
File not found - file_id
C:\SLAYERS\VIRTUAL>type file_id.diz
@X0F SLAYERS VIRTUAL CYBERPUNK ELSE [01/0?]
@X0C컴컴컴컴컴컴컴| <2FLOWR> |컴컴컴컴컴컴컴
@X09 .---------------------------------.
@X09 | cracked by stefan gagne
@X09 | indie distro by improfanfic
@X09 `---------------------------------'
@X0E컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴�
@X0B
@X0E[wIN95/98/NT/DOS]컴컴컴컴컴컴컴[sEP 1999]
C:\SLAYERS\VIRTUAL>type chapter.1
The sun hung overhead like a darkly glowing yellow ball, illuminating the pockmarked landscape. Plumes of smoke rise and merge into the leaden sky. Despite that... no movement. A still picture of a wartorn field.
Then, over the hill, leaping comes a young girl -- narrowly avoiding death as a fireball impacts behind the hill, sending up a sheet of whitehot fire. She stumbles, but rolls once, her purple/black cloak whipping behind her, and skids backwards,hands in the casting position just as the beast emerges from the flames, intent on pouncing...
"FIREBALL!"
A streaking globe of orange light zips from her hands, and burns right through the monster. It howls, and is torn apart, fading into nothingness.
The girl takes a breather. But only for a moment, before rolling back to her feet and sprinting. Almost there. Almost to the castle. Redorange hair flapping behind her, along with her cloak, sprinting to make up for lost time. Focused.
A figure in a considerably brighter outfit touches down next to her, the soft glow of her Raywing spell dissolving. She can travel just as fast on foot as the older girl, though, and plays wingman to her run.
"Lina, I wiped out the left flank!" she cheered, flashing a V for victory, a standard taunt. "We're clear up to the castle!"
"Good," Lina responded. Watching, as the few guards at the gate started to get ready for the approach. "We're not out of the woods yet, though. Three more at twelve o'clock."
Amelia nodded, and flanked around, with great superhero strides, her little pink cape flapping. Lina just rolled her eyes, and drew her sword -- she didn't want to slow down to spellcast, and could probably spook 'em off with a blind rush. But her companion had other ideas.
"This'll be easy with my Talisman of Ultimate Protection!" the girl chirped, flipping it off her belt and onto her wrist. "Watch out, you evil castle guards!"
Lina faltered. "Amelia, DON'T use that--"
It was too late. One of the guards noticed the item, and just looked confused, not battle ready.
"Hey, HEY!" he shouted. "What're you doing with one of those? They're not available anywhere except the sixth dungeon, and only to class ten magic users!"
Lina skidded to a halt.. and the battle paused, for lack of a better word. She thought fast.
"Well, of course!" she grinned at the guard. "We've been at this for awhile, you know! You pick up a few things. The sixth dungeon was too easy, anyway -- the Kobold Den was worse, even! And Amelia, you KNOW you can't use that yet until you get more experience points!"
The girl looked at her glowing ward in confusion. "But you said--"
"I SAID I'd show you the commands for the ward when you were ready. Ahem. Guys? Shall we continue?"
But it was too late. The lead guard inspected the object.. Amelia pulling her wrist away and trying to hide it behind her back, whistle, nothing's wrong. He wasn't fooled.
"We haven't FINISHED the sixth dungeon yet," he said. "I should know, I just got back from trying to debug the traps. Now. How exactly did you get that item without cheating?"
"I.. ah... oh, forget it. This is boring. Waste 'em, Amelia."
"Wh--"
"DIEM WIND!!" Amelia shouted, routing her magic points directly into the talisman. The hacked object proved its worth.. a gale force hurricane, personally downsized for your non- protection whipped along the castle wall. The two amateur guards were tossed willy-nilly, arms and legs waving, losing complete control over the interface.
The lead programmer wasn't daunted. Less than a second after the wind kicked in he flashed red, and activated his own debugging mode. The wind clipped through him like he was never there. (Which, on a technical level, he was not, nor was anyone.)
"Hackers," he scowled, as if it was akin to 'pestilence' or 'plague' or 'Teletubbies'.
"Amelia! Plan B!" Lina shouted, tossing her sword away. It was a physical object, and there was no physicality involved. Not when trying to keep a legitimate host from kicking you off the server.
"Right!!" Amelia chirped. She flashed once, Lina's custom reality kicking in around her person.. and blurred past the lead programmer, into the castle. He turned, to follow -- and a wall of light knocked him aside.
Lina's hands glowed with power as she concentrated.. feeding the hidden commands to trigger her attacks, keeping an assault on him. His software recovered, adapting to the attack, and he pressed one of his own.. the two trying to find a hole in each other's defenses.
"This is a secured, private beta test!" he yelled. "You've got no business being in this game if you're not a participant, and we do NOT tolerate illegally modifying the game data!" Then he gave up on legalese and spoke from the heart. "Once I trace you, the cops are gonna be ON you, bitch."
"Bitch?" Lina asked.. not breaking a sweat countering the trace. Just raising an eyebrow. "Jesus, you're really getting into this masculine, muscling villain motif, aren't you? I bet in real life you're pimply and skinny and couldn't get a date at a Star Trek convention--"
"SHADDUP! I--"
Always get their concentration to falter. Lina immediately whipped into her toolkit, and sent the invisible commands to her keyboard. The red bolt flared into existence in her hands.
...first make sure Amelia's finished and is out, ping, yes, she is, now...
"DRAGON SLAVE!"
And data was wiped clean like an cheap vinyl under a blowtorch. The programmer just went away, his entire interface to the game scrambled like eggs, the castle itself MELTING under the strain of the virus, twisting and warping in confusion, bugs springing up and crashing huge sections that would just go away instantly....
Lina cut the attack, but the damage was done. A spiral hole sheared out of the center of the castle, rooms inside with contents blown here and there, entire cubic sectors of the fortress of evil missing, with only cheap white text reading ERROR floating where they once stood. Data does not take well to corruption. Neither do lusers like that guy.
Technically, Amelia was wrapping up things and she could probably leave now, but she still felt tradition should hold. One last step... she snapped her fingers, summoning the spraypaint can.
A chime sounded, as Amelia relocated back to Lina's side. She carried with her a large yellow folder with a metal C clamp squeezing it shut.
"I got it I got it I got it!" Amelia bouncied, waving her prize around. "The ENTIRE archive of the game! Score one for the good guys!"
Lina perked up. It all had worked out. A bit bumpy, but success is success, glorious, sweet success. She gave her partner a pat on the shoulder in congratulations. "Okay. Take it to the dump in Switzerland, mail the client. And have yourself the biggest damn ice cream cone you can find, you did good!"
The apprentice's eyes sparkled like disco balls. "ALRIGHT! We're unbeatable! Amelia and Lina all the way, the Slayerz!"
"Right, right," Lina said, dismissing. (She had NEVER liked that name.) "I'll see you tomorrow at work."
The white-cloaked girl gave a little twirl, a pose, and disconnected, vanishing as if she was never there.
One last thing to take care of, now.
When it was done, Lina vanished as well, in the mood to celebrate. Spraypainted in garish yellow all over the castle walls was a simple message. A calling card, a polite note.
LINA INVERSE OWNS YOU, LUSER.
--MORE--
You haven't heard of Lina Inverse?
What kind of pathetic newbie are you?
Everybody's heard of Lina. She's up there with the ancient data rebels of yore, like Cancelmoose and Kibo ('he who greps'). Hacker 3l33t3, but unlike Makaveli or Kevin Mitnick, she hasn't gotten caught. (Yet.) Rose quickly in the imaginary ranks of the haqxor tribes as neural interfaces stopped being for cheesy, unrealistic games and started being a legitimate model of data abstraction.
She only uses DracoNix open source OSes; she even WROTE one of her own devising. She was THERE. She was in. You weren't. It's about the scene; you got in when it was popular and inexpensive and safe and let you buy trendy clothes at the flick of a thought. You run Mazokusoft 6.0 and know as much about your computer as you do your toaster. You keep wondering what the automatic cupholder is for.
She's a role model for grrls online, a legend of power, a lusted after sex object by the sort of guys who don't normally get any play and would lust after anything claiming to be female and powerful.
Many have speculated about her. Is her real name Lina? Of course not, that'd be stupid. What does she look like in real life? The few who have gotten glimpses of her -- usually before losing every scrap of data they had been accumulating for years, she likes to knock over warez archives and MP3 bandit hordes -- claim she's a relatively scrawny redhead. Not that anybody believes that, because who would want to be anything less than a busty, lusty figure of perfection? It's not like you're restricted virtually in that sort of thing.
Where does Lina live? Some rumored that she doesn't exist, and only has an online consciousness. Of course, those are the kind of nutball conspiracy theorists who think Mazokusoft is run by demons. No, Lina probably lives somewhere. Maybe behind the walls of some multibillion dollar zaibatsu. Perhaps in the wilds of Siberia, where anybody with a satellite dish can lock out the physical world and enter the next, or as close as it's possible to enter it.
She has to be rich, given all the massive jobs she's pulled. So maybe she lives in a mansion. Maybe she's a jetsetting diplomat with men draped on every arm and connections in drugs, pirated movies, baby snatching, any number of risky, high profit industries.
One thing is clear.
Lina Inverse leads a better life than you do.
--MORE--
Slowly, she removed the black headband, the two electrodes severing contact with her forehead. Powered down the computer. Took a sigh of relief, now that she was out, done, and successful.
Lina grinned to herself. Perfect, too perfect. The company in Armenia would be pleased to get their data back from those bastards. Especially since it had evidence they could use in the court proceedings proving they owned the original copyright. In fact--
*beep* '"You've got mail!'
"Yahoo!" Lina cheered, turning to Computer #4 (the lower end piece of crap -- it was low tech, but it was harder to trace thanks to her customizations). She keyed up the letter, and read.
TO : Miss Inverse
RE : Return of data
(PGP signed)
Good work. One thousand dollars have been transferred to your account. Thank you.
Her jaw sagged. ONE?! ONE GRAND? She asked for TEN GRAND!
...what was she going to do, complain? It's not like the better business bureau would do anything about it, except maybe arrest her. She could always burn down those jerks (after they paid, naturally), or blackmail them and hope they don't send muscle men after her in real life, or...
Lina sighed. Rubbed her forehead, a headache coming on, as it often did after her runs. Headaches, ever since she was a young girl playing around with her sister's computer with the funny headband, figuring out how to make the shapes dance...
No. Not interested in revenge, not right now. A grand was better than nothing. ...even after half the cut went to Amelia. Maybe Lina could buy some, like, wallpaper.
Because the apartment needed it. It needed some re-wallpapering, the nasty yellow stuff peeling off from every Euclidian angle. And it needed rat traps. And some air fresheners. And maybe soundproofing to handle the sound of gunfire, which was her replacement entertainment for evening sitcoms. Food would be novel, as well. And the rent WAS technically--
*WHAM WHAM*
Crap. Lina checked the door, ensuring she was out of the view of the tiny peephole, and stayed very. Very. Quiet.
*WHAMWHAMWHAM.* "Miss Berkowitz! You're a week late! You in there?" *WHAMWHAM.* Hopefully the hinges would not give... "I'll be back!" STOMPSTOMPstomp.
...Lina exhaled.
Yes, Lina Inverse was victorious over the forces of lame and old. But Lina Berkowitz was sieged into her cheap hovel, with gang wars on one side, and an angry landlord on the other. This was her reality, not her virtual reality. And her little jobs and huge reputation couldn't really do much to change that.
Nor could her paying job.
--MORE--
Lina clicked the intercom button, focused on the task. Her memory sharp, acute. Precise instructions, precise procedures. The important question. She spoke.
"Do you want fries with that?"
The crackly voice distorted itself through her earphones, painfully loud. (If she set it any lower, she'd have no shot at understanding.) 'Uh... yeah, give me three orders of Biggie fries and one regular and.. what? No, I said.. okay, make that four Biggies and one regular and one Extra Biggie. Oh, and two Extra Biggies.'
Lina did the math. "..so you want three Extra Biggie fries."
'No, I said two.'
"You said two and one. Did you mean one, the other or both?"
'Two! Jeez!' the customer grumbled. 'How hard is it to push buttons, you monkey?! Get the order right, or--'
"Sorry, sorry sir," Lina said, in her best plaintive, passive voice (she was very good at it. It usually wasn't acting.) "Two fries. That will be 14.37, drive through."
'Hmph. Retard.'
Lina breathed in, once, twice. Controlled her fist of death. She wasn't very good with her temper, and tried to avoid getting into confrontations... this wasn't the net, where she could blow her problems to component atoms at a whim. And she could get fired.
"AMELIA! Two Extra Biggie fries!" Lina called.
Amelia poked her adorable little head, complete with paper hat, up from (wo)manning the grease fryer. "Right! Two Extra Biggie fries! YOSH! Here I go!"
"...you're entirely too enthusiastic sometimes, you know," Lina grumbled.
"What was that?! I can't hear you over the grease crackling!"
There was a reason Lina never ate here. She knew exactly what was in the grease. She sighed, and peeled off the headset, tossing down her paper hat.
"Amelia, cover for me, okay?" Lina asked. "I've got my three o'clock."
Amelia smiled, through the atmospheric haze of frying food. "You're so lucky, Lina! I'd love to get free tennis lessons!"
"Big deal, so I won a radio contest," Lina shrugged, taking off the apron. "I was trying to get the car. So I could actually DRIVE places. I don't even like tennis."
"Oh, I do! I had a few lessons when I was younger," Amelia said, but it must not have been TOO much younger, given her innocent little fifteen year old status. "Between that and swimming and horseback riding and yachting, I had a lot of fun!"
Lina boggled. "Why DID you leave Sailoon? You were practically royalty!"
"Why, I left to study under you, Miss Lina!"
"..I know, I know," Lina said, not trying to puzzle the logic out. "Anyway. I'm gone. Hasta."
--MORE--
She hadn't understood the motivation that first time Amelia tracked her down through the net and asked to tutor under her, and still never understood. Amelia didn't even have to work at that ratburger dive -- she just did it to stay around Lina, and observe her. Lina was a bit aggravated by it at first... but caved easily, and learned to tolerate it. Like she did basically any problem in life.
At least Amelia had the cash to have a nice apartment. Lina would take any opportunity she had to waste some bus tokens and drop by. Amelia had a nice television, and some good music, and lots of sugary food, three things Lina approved of highly but rarely had sufficient cash for. Really, there was only one luxury available to her, and it was free to begin with...
The tennis court was uptown, in a fairly respectable neighborhood where the crack dealers were kind enough to work out of sight. Lina hauled her duffel bag onto the subway car, and sat down with a book from the dime store (usually with some woman falling out of her dress on the cover) and did the Big Wait.
Going to the lessons was a severe trip out of her way. But she had them for free, and felt like using them. No other reason. No other reason at all. And it was a hell of a ride, almost an hour.
She had two options.
A) She could sit around grumbling about her miserable life and whine and do all those other things she knew she did and wasn't particularly pleased with herself for doing or
B) She could shaddup and hop online.
Lina looked left, looked right. Made sure there was nobody else on the car. She didn't want to reroute her senses into her portable if someone was nearby... a great way to get robbed. Of course, she had been meaning to pick up a proximity sensor to add into the rig, so she could tell if someone was approaching... but they were expensive, and...
Enough grumbling. Grumbling's lame. Get on with it.
She opened her duffel just enough to take out the headband, and the two trail wires. The wires were sewn in to route around the back, and hide in her hair.. the two electrodes, sensors, whatever they're called actually in the front, under the cloth, lining up with her two tiny dotlike scars. (One particularly bad day as a kid where...) Nobody could see the wire unless they pulled her hair back, so nobody would know 'Hey, this chick has an expensive computer I can rip off!'.
Finished with the hookup, she thumbed the ON switch in her bag--
--MORE--
--touching down in the middle of America Online, her cape wafting down with her. Busy commerce, chat, and craziness swirling around in patterns, millions of people on the same servers to the point of bursting, in trendy clothing and buying things. Mainstream USA. People who still used the term 'Information Superhighway'. Absolute cyberlusers.
And ironically, THE net connection provider of all hackers. This is because America Online was notoriously easy to perform some engineering tricks on... you could make yourself untraceable and carve out your own niche in their servers, thanks to the lackluster security.
Lina Inverse smiled. Her kind of town. She started up a tuneless little lullaby hum, and proceeded onward.
She strolled on down the avenue, turning a sharp left into a disused directory and down through a virtual set of stairs (THROUGH them, not walking on them; an easy way to hide is to ditch people who assume there's any physicality to this place with tricks like that) and right to the Daily Otaku.
This was a hangout for anime fans, manga buffs and various hangers on, true, but it also was her territory. Her, Amelia, a few other random hackers, some pals, friends. They had sort of commandeered the place.
Six of them were over there. Lina never had learned their real names and they hadn't learned hers. They usually appeared as panda bears and giant robots and talking penises; Lina looked like... herself. She'd never gotten the knack (or interest) to changing herself very much. But she DID like her spiffy fantasy warrior princess garb.
Lina hopped over in one bound, flicking a chair out with a command and turning it so she could straddle and lean onto the table with one elbow contacting and her chin in her palm and an eyebrow in curious bemusement. It had the right effect.
"How's tricks?" Lina asked.
"Lina Inverse! Hey hey!" a large bloodshot eyeball cheered. "Good to see you. Been awhile, yah."
"Busy on a job," Lina explained, shrugging. "MMORPG, I had to blend in and do some recon. Those things eat your time."
"Yeah, tell me about it," a small volcano joked, spewing magma. (What a jerk.) "Like, I buy this thing, and I gotta spend three days getting enough money to buy equipment, and a rabbit kills me. A forking RABBIT. Like, a stupid little--"
"Bet you raked it in. Big Armenian account according to the Gossips," the eyeball boasted. "Lina Inverse, the big money bandit killer!"
"That's me!" Lina grinned, winking. "You better believe I got my paycheck! I swear, I haven't partied that hard in a long time. Huge six course dinners, ice cream, fine wine... wooo!"
"Bet your brat pal paid for it," the volcano joked.
Everybody's chair scooted a full two feet away from the table. The volcano looked around, in as much a large lava displacement can look, lacking eyes, in confusion.
"...my 'brat pal' doesn't pay my way," Lina said. Quietly. Far too quietly. "Amelia is my trainee. End of story. And, as a result of my knowledge and experience, roughly nine times more skilled than YOU are--" She pulled up a list of data on this dork, real quick, just to make sure she could add the following. "--you pathetic Mazokusoft Sixer on your daddy's computer."
The volcano seethed, steam hissing out of its aperture. "Yeah? And maybe you're not such a tough-ass mercenary, Lina Inverse. You got all that money, huh? Let's see it."
"Yeah, right, like I'm gonna access MY bank information with you looking. You'd eyeball it."
Cough.
"No offense, Eyrie," she noted to her ocular pal.
"Bet she spent it on her girlfriend," the volcano joked to his compadres. All of which happened to be looking at something else at the time, not paying attention.
"'Girlfriend'?" Lina asked.
"Yeah, that little--"
"FIREBALL!"
Lina whipped out her most standard attack, a burning dynamic light -- which overheated the Volcano God's natural heat, and melted him into a little puddle of confused polygons. His system started to overload, baking from the intensity of the burst (denial of service), and his connection just wigged completely out -- a tiny AOL logo appearing where he was, for a moment, before he was gone.
Now, Lina understood that newbies, lusers, and twits were simply folks who hadn't learned the social ins and outs, and the technological tricks. They had a lot of potential. But she didn't have to take THAT from one... no matter how long it had been since her last date.
(Even she was a lamer at one point in her life... always posting to message boards in blaring, painful to read inverted colors, thinking it'd make her get noticed and make her cool. The real players named her Lina Inverse as a joke. It stuck.)
"You know, I never liked that guy," Eyrie said.
"Sheesh, you'd think these 'Lina Inverse, Enemy of All Who Live' tags would work in my favor sometimes," Lina joked, returning to her normal casual self.
"You know," a large buck-toothed orc on her left said in a surprisingly high pitched voice, "You really gotta be careful. AOL's been bringing down heat on everybody today."
"Oh, come on. What could they possibly do?" Lina asked, reversing her chair with a thought, and putting her feet up. "Terminate our chat privledges? Turn off our instant messengers? Make the little 'You've got mail!' voice say 'Stick it up your ass, pal!'?"
"Word has it they're looking for someone who stole an affiliate company's data," Eyrie said. "Using something called a Slave Dragon."
Lina wobbled. Just momentarily, before correcting her balance. Nobody knew the name of her special attack method, at least nobody in this circle... milk it. Get the info.
"Really?" Lina asked. "Some DracoNix fanatic?"
"You've got me. All I know is that AOL has been looking for the culprit in their typically half-assed way... searching messages for the word 'dragon,' asking people 'Have you seen a Slave Dragon?' randomly, and so on," the celery joked. "Pathetic. But whoever did this really got someone pissed off."
"Actually, I think that they've called it off," the orc said. "They were only looking for a few hours... then someone on high stopped them. Probably because they were being a bunch of obvious buttmunches. Would've spooked the perp off before he could be collared."
"That doesn't mean the heat's off, man," the eyeball corrected. "It's just gotten SUBTLE. Deep cover, matrix hoodoo. I've heard of some weird shit that specialty trackers use, man, demons and daemons... not AOL, though. Maybe some ghost specialist doing the looking--"
Lina tisk-tisked. "Eyrie, let's not dive into your conspiracy theories again, okay?"
"It's true! I've seen it!" Eyrie said. "Users who weren't users. Nobody THERE, even when we all know NOBODY is THERE. Ghosts. Monsters with three rows of teeth and ruby eyes. One of them was dogging a pal of mine who had done a data grab on some bank. You know what happened to him?"
"He mysteriously vanished under suspicious circumstances?" Lina suggested, knowing how this sort of story ended.
"Umm... no. But he acted REALLY WEIRD from then on. That counts! It does, yeah?"
"Guys, guys!" Lina said, putting her hands down on the table and standing. "Rumors! Gossip! Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt. It's all just hogwash. Nothing's going to come of this. You know how well we cover our tracks, and nothing we do is really BAD. We're just... liberating information. We don't actually hurt anybody. Information wants to be free. And money wants to be in Lina's pockets and food wants to be in her stomach!"
"Well said!" Eyrie noted, blinking madly in appreciation.
"That said, Miss Inverse must take a powder. RL," she noted. Waving once. "See you guys later."
"We'll be right here!" the orc said, friendlylike.
Very friendly. These were her friends, after all. They hung on every word Lina Inverse said. That had to count for something.
--MORE--
Lina Berkowitz's eyes opened to two surprises.
One, it had started raining outside. Not a very nice rain, a gritty, splattering downpour with a leaden gray sky. Lightning crackled way off in the distance, between the goliath (yet fashionable) uptown buildings.
Two, someone was seated right across from her, eyes on her. A boy roughly her age, in a nicely sporty suit and purple power tie. Smiling, in a highly creepy way.
Her hand went to her bag in a panic. She had a little can of mace in there. Had never used it, never had the nerve, but--
No, wait. He was looking at a point over her head. Watching out the window? Maybe?
"...singing in the rain... I'm singing, in the rain..." he sang to himself, never losing his smile. "What a glorious feeeling, I'm happy again..."
Then he seemed to notice her for the first time.
"Oh, hello," he said, as charming and pleasant as can be. "Lovely weather, isn't it, Miss Lina?"
Lina sighed, realizing he was just a harmless nut, and turned to look out her own window. At the cars below, and the storms above. "It could be better," she noted.
Miss Lina?
She quickly turned to face the stranger. Who was gone. Didn't leave, since there was no sound and nowhere to go, but was gone.
Lina wasted no time grabbing her gear and changing subway cars. To a populated one. And to shake off whatever strange vision had come over her. To wish that she wouldn't be so scared over that and would stop the light shaking she was experiencing. And the headache that built...
--MORE--
Staggering off the subway, Lina focused on the here and now. Feet on the concrete, so move.
Her headaches had a tendency to get worse as the day went on. Maybe she shouldn't have logged on; that usually triggers off one, if she's unlucky. She hummed her tuneless tune, giving her brain something else to think about, and bought a bottle of Advil from the newsstand. Dryswallowed. Instantly felt better. Against all laws of medicine, but it had always worked.
The gym was indoors, thankfully, so she could still get today's free workout despite the rain. She had neglected to bring a raincoat, unthankfully, so she got soaked to the skin -- ended up a few minutes late as she paused under overhangs to catch her breath before walking out into the 100% humidity again.
Very few folks were at the gym today. It wasn't fashionable to get wet, or to have a chance to get wet, the rich and famous had decided. She hit the locker room, stripped down and got her workout clothes from the personal locker.
Was her instructor even here? Maybe he got sick of waiting for her, and left. Of course, he had always been here, rain sleet or snow. It was really quiet in the building today--
"Lina!!" a familiar voice bellowed. And opened the door to the women's locker room. "Are you here? Boy, this place is empty today--"
A sneaker impacted with his cranium with an impressive sounding WHAM.
"GOURRY, don't come into the women's room! JEEZ!" Lina shouted, diving behind a row of lockers. "BEAT IT!"
Of course, he had been knocked fully unconscious from the blow. Lina's sneakers had a little extra OOMPH to them -- lead weights, good for workouts and kicking people in the crotch. (Not that she ever did. But she felt more confident knowing that she could.) So she just shut the door, leaving him in the hallway, and finished up.
--MORE--
Her sister had a phrase for guys like Gourry. "Dumb as a box of hammers," she'd say, "But such a handsome man."
Handsome he may be, but the box of hammers thing just got totally on Lina's nerves. They didn't get along real well. No, actually, SHE didn't get along real well -- the sop was friendly as all get-out regardless of her attitude, even if he'd quake in fear from time to time. Lina actually let some of her temper out around Gourry. It was safer than letting it out on customers or clients.
So, if she didn't like the guy, why did she keep coming back for the tennis lessons? They were free. And good.
"No, see, your backhand has to go like this--"
"Get your hands off my elbow!" Lina barked, still a little miffled from the earlier incident. "I see just fine. Like THIS!" WHOOSH.
"Err, no, that's too strong," Gourry said. "Here. Watch me. You have to have a smooth follow-through on your swing. Don't hook the elbow, and swish it back at the end..."
Lina stood back, and watched him swing his prized racket. Whoosh. A gentle swoop through the air. She had to admit, Gourry was much more coordinated than she was; probably because, you know, he was an athlete and she was just 'almost spunky'.
"Yeah yeah, I got it," Lina said, mimicking the move with some success.
Truth be told, she didn't really like tennis. She wasn't any good at it. But it was exercise, and given her couch potato computer existence, anything to stay in shape was worth the effort.
"That's better," Gourry agreed. "You know, you're really lucky! Your breasts don't get in the way of your swing, so there's nothing to hold back the range of motion--"
Lina bonked him with her racket. It was hard to tell if he was teasing her or just genuinely tactless, sometimes. "Let's take a break. I'm pooped."
Gourry rubbed his head. "...your swing's improving," he said, trying to get something positive out of that. "I'll go make some coffee. You really look cold, you know."
"It's the rain. I hate the rain," Lina said, having a seat at courtside. She nudged the small television Gourry usually played tennis videos on over, and clicked it to some channel not involving sports. The lanky blonde exited, intent on utilizing Mr. Coffee to its fullest.
Commercials. Cartoons. Cartoons. Commercials. Sports. News. News would be okay. Maybe the one stock share she owned in Dragon Systems would have gone up. The company was typically valued low, since they were open source and grassroots, and Mazokusoft had a few billion in assets, but she could dream...
"...surprising developments as they come in. To recap, the entire software firm of Big Entertainments Incorporated were involved in a bizarre mass cult suicide today. The company, located in Armenia and owned in part by Mazokusoft, had been involved in a theft of intellectual property lawsuit at the time the whole staff injected air bubbles into their veins, leaving behind only a single suicide note..."
Her attention was, needless to say, enrapt in full.
"Local authorities are baffled, as none of the computer specialists had shown suicidal tendencies before, and the note left only a vague religious statement. But the police say there is no sign of foul play, and the slayings were indeed self-inflicted. More as this develops. In other news..."
Lina got out of her chair. Backed slowly away. No. This didn't make sense. The same company she did that game-steal for. They had the case WON, there was no reason... it was ludicrous, anyway. It had to be a joke. Because if it wasn't, it was murder. She was involved with these people. They were murdered.
She bumped into Gourry at high speed, but the coffee fortunately went flying in another direction, shattering against a concrete wall and running down onto the floor.
"Lina!" Gourry exclaimed. "Whoa! What's the hurry?"
"I have to go," Lina said. Too scared to really make up a good excuse. "I have to go NOW."
She swerved around him, and ran at a flat dash for the locker room. Grabbed her bag in one swift motion, kicked the door open, and was out into the rainy streets.
--MORE--
Lina Inverse was no stranger to hunters and chases. Run and gun battles. Oh, she'd tangled with a few before -- cops, corps, people seeking fame for bagging the great Lina Inverse. With a smirk and a spell, they'd be toast, or at least waffles.
Lina Berkowitz was scared out of her mind and running blindly on empty. This is stupid, she thought to herself, get a plan, get TOGETHER, don't just careen willy nilly around here. It's uptown, but it's still not the safest place.
She grabbed the small canister of Mace out of her bag. At least she wouldn't go into this unarmed. And she had her sneakers of doom, making... loud, loud whumps on the pavement. Oh, joy. Why not hang a bell around her neck?! She opted to ditch the sneakers, and the socks and just run in her bare feet. Maybe it was a good safety tradeoff, maybe it wasn't. At least the one grand from earlier would cover new sneakers afterwards.
Public transport was the only way out. The subway... she'd passed the subway. Damn. Backtrack. Cut between two buildings, easiest way to get there. Get in a car with lots of people, stay with crowds, get to Amelia's, maybe her father could help -- he was rich, he had connections--
She skidded to a slow halt on the wet pavement, scraping up the soles of her feet. Two men were waiting for her here. Sure, they might have just been standing around in this obscure side street in the rain with no umbrellas for no reason. Maybe they had no interest in her. And maybe she was Mary, Queen of Scotts.
Lina got the mace out, and held it threateningly. But didn't simply blast away. Her hand shook.
"I'm warning you! Stay away!!" she shouted. Yeah, right, her inner voice laughed -- that'll convince them to leave you alone. Smart, Lina, Smart.
Both men looked at her simultaneously. Average looking people, nothing out of the ordinary, no creepy black sunglasses...
"Where did you put the data, Miss Inverse?" one man asked, as calmly as one might order tea.
"Leave me alone!!"
She pieced it together later, but all she knew at the time was she went from standing still to being pinned against the brick wall, painfully as the man ground her shoulders to the surface. The mace can tipped out of her hand.
"They hadn't retrieved the data when we got to them," the man said, in her face -- the average man, the faceless man. "They left it wherever you put it. They made no records. Where did you put the data, Lina Inverse?"
Her voice was dead. She wanted to speak, just to tell all, she didn't care about whatever it was and she wanted to LIVE. But she couldn't get her throat to agree, it being too seized up to respond...
The man's face twisted. It twisted, literally, bending, skewing like a cheap graphic effect, eyes flaring, teeth elongating. Three rows of teeth like jagged triangles. Ruby eyes. Demons. Monsters. Let this be over, let me wake up, Lina thought...
"AHEM."
The two men looked in the same direction, at a third man. In a fairly plain pastel rugby shirt and shorts, and toting a leather racket case.
"Leave her alone," Gourry said.
The man's face had snapped back to normal before he turned to look -- Lina prayed her eyes were just playing tricks on her again. They made no retort. On some unspoken signal, the spare man rushed Gourry, seeming to extend his hand backwards, for an extra length on a swinging punch...
The tennis instructor tossed his case in the air... his empty case. The racket was out, twirled, and.. the handle unscrewed, a long bar of light shooting from it, a blade like you'd see in a George Lucas movie. Lina stopped believing her senses immediately.
But believe or not, Gourry was on top of this guy like white on rice, with a bizarre mix of tennis swings and kendo. And, strangely enough, the man just... came apart, like a bad polygon boolean. Like a glitch in the net's 3-D engine. Gourry stood, confused, as if a glowing light sword was totally normal, but that was not...
Then man who was holding her to the wall grew a third arm, which socked Gourry neatly across the jaw. He wasn't expecting it. For obvious reasons.
Something snapped in Lina.
She SHOVED the man away, with more force than she technically had -- he slammed into the opposite wall of the side street, quickly to his feet, to pounce...
The reaction was a typical one, for Lina Inverse, and happened before she could tell herself it was supposed to be impossible.
"..FIREBALL!!" Lina screamed, accessing her code, her power, and flinging out a compressed data burst, intense, smothering, crashing, hurtling like a dynamic light source towards the target with beizer accuracy...
The fireball impacted, and meshed into the man in some explosion of bad graphics, and the two canceled out. The alley was now empty, save for Lina, Gourry, and one large headache coming on. A raging headache, focused behind her eyes, behind her forehead...
She sagged off the wall, falling to her knees. Gourry was by her side in an instant.
"Lina! Lina, are you okay?" he asked, since he was the sort to ask the obvious question.
She couldn't offer much of an answer. Fatigue hit her like a house of iron cards, and she sank into grateful blackness, and dreamless sleep.
--MORE--
Awakening to an impossible morning.
The impossible sunlight, flooding in. An unfamiliar room, an unfamiliar bed. Where was she? Was she dead? She always figured heaven would be very bright and have tasteful curtains. The clouds would be fluffy and white, not storming and gray, and the blue would be so deep you could go swimming in it if you looked long enough, stared hard enough into that infinite reach...
Then the groaning surge of her headache kicked in, and Lina realized she was not in heaven, but some part of her wished that was the case. The headache was, oddly enough, in echoing fade. It must have hit right when she blacked out... she slept through the worst of the attack. It had to be a doozy to last this long, though. They normally weren't excessively bad...
She had been getting headaches ever since first using computers. Ever since first putting on the electrodes, lining them like her sister's book said. Then seeing... shapes. Toys. Primitive stuff, back when neural links were new, expensive and risky... and basically useless, as any keyboard jockey could do the same things faster than someone poking through the sluggish mental connection.
But she was a kid, and didn't know anything more impressive. It was amazing. She spent hours in there. Studying everything, looking closer and closer, before finding out everything there was just numbers, numbers with shape, until she started looking BETWEEN the numbers no matter how bright it was and...
And she got a massive headache, her first one, and didn't go back until a week later when her curiosity kicked in again.
A lot of time had passed since. And now she was in this beautiful bedroom, with the impossibly beautiful city skyline, not a hint of the raging storm that she had collapsed within.
Stay in the present. Ignore the throbbing. Ignore the horrible dreams, of men with twisted faces, of knights in shining armor and fire, burning fire from her own hands...
Smell the Pop Tarts.
Wait. That wasn't very poetic at all.
In walked her tennis instructor, wearing lazy weekend casuals, and toting along a breakfast in bed consisting of an orange juice and four Pop Tarts of varying flavors.
"Good morning!" he said. "Um, I didn't know what you'd want to eat, and all I had was this or oat bran, and I know you don't like healthy food..."
Lina grabbed one tart in each hand and chowed down. Her stomach had started a low rumble on first scent. Munch munch munch. "Thanf."
Gourry set the tray aside. "You didn't have a concussion or anything, I figured you just fainted... so I put you in my guest room. Usually my mom stays here when she's in town, my room's too messy."
"Uh-huh," Lina said, disinterested. Her mind could only really focus on one thing at once, and right now, that was food. Food, glorious food.
"So who was that weirdo?" Gourry asked.
Then the night hit her like a sack of pastries. It wasn't a dream, was it? It was wholly impossible, it smacked of drug induced fantasy, but... no. One confirmation needed first.
"..you mean the guy who vanished when I attacked him with my fireball?" Lina asked, trying to sound as normal as possible.
"Yeah, him."
Damn. It definitely wasn't a dream.
She pushed the tray aside... food not able to occupy her mind, with Worry firmly taking root. "I don't know. I know WHY he attacked me. I think. But I don't know who. Um.. thanks for following me. Hey, wait -- why WERE you following me?"
Gourry shrugged. "You ran out. It looked like there was going to be trouble."
A dozen enigmatic questions surged, demanding answers. Lina picked the most relevant one.
"WHERE did you get a freaking Light Saber?!" she asked, a bit of the panic from last night kicking in at last.
"It's not a Light Saber. Dad was very clear about that," Gourry said. "It's a Sword of Light."
"Okay. Allow me to rephrase. WHERE did you get a freaking Sword of Light?! It's.. it's not physically possible, unless we're talking some highly classified military stuff and I thought I already had poked around those records--"
"I don't know how it works, it just does," Gourry said, as if that was enough of an explanation. "It's a family heirloom, and it's helpful sometimes. Like last night. But how'd you throw a fireball? Was that some sort of fancy special effect?"
"..." Lina replied. Not precisely sure of that, either.
Gourry looked around. "I don't have any lessons today, so I can drive you back to your apartment if you want. I'd be careful when walking around, though, this city has some weird people in it. I mean, I always hear on the news about how psychos go after really pretty girls, so I guess you'd be okay, but--"
She calmly ground the red hot fruit jelly from her breakfast into his face. "I don't NEED a ride home. I can take care of myself, thank you very much."
Take care of yourself, right, she told herself. Couple of weird shapechanging ghosts related to that Armenian company's suicide attack you and you're going to fend them off with your bare feet and your...
Her Mace was gone. She remembered that. But she didn't remember losing all her clothes and changing into this bathrobe either. Her face hit a new shade in the RGB table (#ff2323).
Gourry was busy wiping the tart smear off his face when Lina began to throttle him.
"YOU CHANGED MY CLOTHES?!"
"..yo.y.y..yy..y.yyyoo--"
She let go.
"--you were soaking wet and hurt," Gourry said. "Don't worry, I know better. I kept my eyes closed and just felt it out!"
"I see! Well, in that case--" THROTTLE. "THAT'S NO BETTER! I am GOING HOME."
She swung out of bed, tightened the robe, grabbed her clothing and stomped off to the bathroom. Slammed the door shut behind her, changed.
That was pretty rude, she told herself.
Tough noogies, she replied. Lina Inverse doesn't take that sort of thing lying down.
But you DID take it lying down, ne?
Oh, shut up.
--MORE--
Lina avoided the problem of confronting Gourry again by storming out at a high rate of speed. The bathroom wasn't real far from the front door. Maybe he'd follow, but she didn't care. Too ticked off.
Was he REALLY that dense? Well... yes, actually, he was, based on her experiences with him to date. He tended to think without his head. Maybe with his other head? Although despite the embarrassment, she just didn't get that kind of vibe from him...
No no. Focus on the present. Walking to the subway. Bright daylight, HUG the light, stay in populated areas. The freaks come out at night, not in the middle of weekend public transportation rushes.
It worked great, in that she wasn't jumped by unreal enemies, and her life resumed being as ordinary and boring as always. She did not, however, go online during the trip home. No rude surprises, not today, no way.
Nor did she go home. She wasn't totally in denial, she wasn't totally stupid. If they knew who she was, finding out where she lived would be trivial. No, she knew a good safe haven to go to.
--MORE--
Normally, visits to Amelia's spacious loft apartment made Lina feel relaxed. As relaxed as she could be in close social contact with the Sugar Beast, but moreso than her crummy home. Not today.
First thing she did was lay down the story. Amelia was a bright kid, if a bit.. odd, in her beliefs. She'd understand.
"...so they obviously don't know who YOU are, or you'd have been in trouble by now," Lina said. "We're safe here. We'll go online, get the data out of the Switzerland storebox we left it in, and post it out like bait. If whoever this is wants it, they can HAVE it, and they'll get off my back. End of story. We can have this wrapped up by lunch, and--"
Amelia shook her cute little head.
"Okay, maybe it'll take a little longer. I want to clear my tracks enough that they don't find your place. No AOL, it's too hot lately. We--"
"No, Lina, we can't," Amelia said. Quietly, seriously. "Whoever did this... is evil. If they're really the ones who killed all those people. We can't let them have this data! What if it's just something they'd do more bad things with? In the spirit of justice, we must guard it to the very end! We're the good guys, and they're not going to get away with it!"
Lina hung her head. No, she should have expected this.
"Amelia... WE'RE THE BAD GUYS!" Lina shouted, standing up. "We steal data! We trash warezmen and music pirates and corporations! We vandalize websites! We're white collar criminals. We are NOT the good guys!"
"Of course we are!" Amelia countered. "We punish bad guys who steal things by stealing them away from them, and we punish bad governments and companies who do bad things! Like those Pakistani guys who did those nuclear tests in Australia, we took down their webserver and put up links to peace organizations, right?"
"That was your idea, not mine!"
"It doesn't matter," Amelia said. "I didn't come here to learn from you just to make the world a worse place. I think I've learned a lot of good things, and I can really use computers to make the world a better place! We can't help the bad guys. I won't have any part in it."
"Fine! FINE!" Lina declared. "YOU keep the data, and let them kill you instead! You don't know what these thin.. people are like, Amelia, they JUMPED me last night! Weren't you listening to what I said?!"
(She had left out the bits that still didn't make sense, of course.)
"We can turn it over to the authorities."
"Oh, that's good. And how will we do that? 'Yes, sir, we originally stole this illegally, but we're the good guys so please don't toss us in jail for five years without even a bail hearing like you did Mitnick.' That'll go over great. You'll be the darling of the prison ward."
"Lina! I'm surprised!" Amelia said. "You're skilled at covering your tracks and encrypting data, and so am I! We can turn it in QUIETLY. Or better, we can just broadcast it to the whole net, and then everybody has it, and the bad guys can't use it anymore!"
"We don't even know what IT is!"
"That's easy! I'll go copy it to my computer, and we can see," Amelia said. "Really, Lina, don't be so worried! I'm sure we can figure out how to handle this best."
"Fine, fine. But encrypt. I mean one hundred and twenty eight bits in FULL," Lina warned. "And damn the export laws."
"Of course, of course! Yosh! Here Amelia goes!" She sprinted over to her desk, took her pretty pink headband, and tied it on. Then froze.
It was always creepy to watch someone USE a link. All senses and muscle control freeze up, as the signal has been effectively rerouted. Lina paced. This would take awhile; the file was huge.
Worry. Worry and doubt. And fear. Her anger had masked out the fear pretty well, but afterimages of the fight kept coming back. Things that shouldn't logically BE...
Her duffel bag called to her. Log on, Lina. Lina Inverse has no problems with this sort of thing. It's safe to call out from Amelia's place.
She unzipped the bag.
--MORE--
Lina Inverse didn't touch down in AOL. She logged onto a private server a friend of hers owned, completely out of the way, technologically lame. Insignificant. Perfect.
From here, she did a brief e-mail sweep. A few sites for her favorite bands had been updated, yawn. Not that she had cash to pay the rent and buy music, so she just grabbed music off the net illegally and didn't care.
Spam, spam, spam.
And a letter addressed to her. No title, just TO: LINA INVERSE. She opened it.
Ah, full video. Someone had their widgets in a row.
The figure in the 'mail' was a tall boy, brooding in a typical grey trenchcoat, with dyed purple hair. Face mask. Very goth, very trendy. Probably listened to a lot of soul-crushing music and wrote bad poetry.
"Hello, Miss Inverse," he said. "I come to you in hopes that we can settle this business cleanly, and without any loss on all sides. You're a reasonable woman, and your track record with your clients precedes you..."
She twitched. No.. just a recording. Listen to it, it can't hurt you.
"You have an item in your possession that we would like to have," he continued. "I think you know what it is, so I won't insult your intelligence. I also know from your bank statements that you did not receive very much payment for delivery of it. I don't see this as being fair, personally, and am willing to augment the amount in return for the item. Is this figure sufficient?"
...that was a lot of zeroes.
"After that, we will have no contact, and you may carry on with your life uninterrupted. Carefree. If you agree, simply reply to this letter, and we'll arrange a pickup. I understand you were attacked last night... that was not our doing. I sympathize with any harm you may have experienced. Signed, Zelgadis."
The message stopped, the video freezing on the final jaggy, blurry frame. Lina sat back, mentally, and got her wits back together, as they had fallen apart shortly before.
A way out.
She could sell off the crap, make a GOOD living for a change, maybe move, get a new identity.. anything, with that kind of money. And then she'd be safe. Safe and free. Take the money and run.
Amelia would throw a fit. She might even leave her tutoring. But for that kind of money...
It wasn't just the money. She wanted to be safe. Not to be afraid of the things she didn't understand and didn't want to face, not again. She didn't care who this Zelgadis worked for, she wanted it OVER.
Perhaps.. she could wait for Amelia to finish copying the data archive over. Then she'd quietly, very quietly copy it to her OWN computer, pack it up, and send it off to this Zelgadis. Amelia didn't have to know. The heat would mysteriously vanish and they could laugh it off and carry on with the usual pranks and online tomfoolery they always did. Because Amelia would never forgive her for doing it, and Lina didn't want to lose possibly the only friend she had--
Twinge. Her body was being shaken. She learned to recognize the faint sense a long time ago. With a jerk, she tore off the headband--
To meet a wild-eyed Amelia.
"My computer is DEAD!" she bawled, tears in her sparkly wide eyes. "It got fried! Completely fried! All my cute pictures from Nonthreatening Boys Monthly, all my music, my games, my diary and my daddy's e-mail..."
"Whoa! Amelia, Amelia, get a grip on yourself," Lina said, standing quickly. "What happened?"
"I.. I went to get the data," Amelia said. "The castle from the game. And I noticed a flux in the data that was buried before you blew the place up around me while I was getting out--"
"Ehheh," Lina said. "I guess I might have scraped up the data a little..."
"So I opened the archive," Amelia said. "And.. and my computer got infected!"
"Oh, a virus?" Lina asked. "Huh. That's weird, what would a virus be doing in some game archive? It'd--"
"It was the SHABURANIGDO virus," Amelia said. Emphasizing the key word.
Lina's world toppled on its ear.
"...you're kidding."
"I'm NOT!" Amelia said. "Just three seconds with it was enough to wipe out my computer! It's still in Switzerland, but we can't touch it when it's live!"
"Is it infecting the Swiss account?"
"I.. I don't know..."
Lina whipped her trodes back on, fast. She punched over to the storage server they were using... and saw.
A huge ruby-red blur inside the database cell, the live virus, trying to get out...
She didn't bother leaving the net to explain the situation to Amelia. She got to work. Icing it down, repacking the archive Amelia had opened, getting the monsters back in Pandora's Box. It was easy enough to do, since her apprentice had only opened the package up a crack... and at the same time, one of the hardest speed coding jobs Lina had ever pulled. She hummed along, like she usually did in her work... the bouncy, seemingly random lullaby of her life. It kept her focused on the code at hand. It helped distract her.
Fifteen minutes later, she emerged. "...okay. I have the file."
"YOU DOWNLOADED IT?!" Amelia gaped.
"Relax! It's secured again. Sixteen layers of encryption, with passwords. Encased in stone. ...I didn't want to leave it out there. Not where anybody else could possibly get at it, even in that secured Swiss dump. Now it's locked down in my computer, and I do NOT think I'll be turning it on again for awhile."
Amelia sighed, relieved. She flopped backwards into a handy pink beanbag chair. "Thank god. I thought Shaburanigdo was gone! Gone for years and years!"
"...it was," Lina said, supplying the proper tense. "The DracoNix Open Source Group finally found an antidote, the Ceipheed Solution, and killed it off. But not before it shut down the ENTIRE Internet for days, and caused billions in damage... the second great Internet Worm. Made Y2K look like a stroll in the park and Melissa look like the girl next door."
"Daddy talked a lot about it," Amelia said. "How it almost brought the world down..."
"That's why everybody's after this thing," Lina said. "Any live copy of the Shaburanigdo worm is going to be very, very valuable. Like all those nukes pointing everywhere in the eighties. Even the THREAT of it is enough."
"It's a good thing we're not giving it back!" Amelia cheered. "We've won, Lina! We just have to destroy your computer, and boom, the phantom menace is defeated!"
Lina's mind flicked back, to the offer. How she was about to dive for it to save her hide.
And doom western civilization, apparently. Zelgadis's smooth talking didn't happen to mention that little clause, no sirree.
It outraged her. The nerve! Like she could be played like that, played on her fear and desire... she was. Almost. And she may be a coward, but she was far more afraid of anybody getting their hands on the Shaburanigdo virus...
Was she?
Maybe she could retire to a wooden shack in the Ozarks after society collapses. Rather than simply die and have them take the virus anyway...
"No," Lina said. Lina Inverse would stand up to this. Wouldn't even let it PHASE her. Not when there's something important to be done.
"No what?" Amelia asked, not quite understanding.
"No, you're right," Lina clumsily patched. "But Amelia, we can't destroy the computer. It might not be the only copy. Shaburanigdo came in.. seven parts, right?"
"I forget..."
"It was a lot of parts in tandem. One could do damage, but only when all of them were unleashed by whoever started it did the world almost stop turning. ...we've got to find out if this is the only one around. And if someone could make it from SCRATCH, they could just do it again..." She madly hunted for justifications for keeping this dangerous thing around. And found a good one. "Besides, if we trash it, either the 'bad guys' will stomp us in punishment or not believe us that we exterminated the virus. We'd be in trouble regardless."
"That's good thinking, Lina!" Amelia approved. "So, we're going to be hunted down no matter what we do!"
"That about sums it up."
The girls paused.
"We're in a lot of trouble, aren't we?" Amelia asked, it JUST NOW starting to sink in.
"Basically."
"So... what do we do next?"
"I haven't thought that far," Lina said. "Bear with me, okay? I'm not used to being assertive about saving the world. Nonfictionally."
Pause.
"You got any soda?" Lina asked. "I think better with some caffeine in me."
--EOF--
Elsewhere.
Far elsewhere. Somewhere very high up, since buildings like this just weren't worth building unless you could open a window and scoop up some of a cloud. Arcology. Zaibatsu.
The office was large enough to play basketball in, and had the finest acoustics in the company -- balanced, sweet sound, pure bliss. Currently, it was playing a selection of Mozart, which the office owner was enjoying very much, thank you. He waved a ballpoint pen, as if conducting an invisible opera pit...
Chime out of tune. He frowned, and waved -- the door opened itself, but not by any sensor or mechanical apparatus...
"Sir?" the lackey asked, walking in. "We found the traces of Issac and Michael. They were.. terminated."
"Yes, well, they weren't exactly some of our finest, were they?" the executive said, sipping from a sifter of wine, still conducting the orchestra. "Ahh. Listen to that, Ozek. Mozart's Requiem. A song for the dead. He passed on while composing it, you know. Some say it killed him, eating away from the inside, until he passed out in mid stanza..."
"They weren't terminated online, sir. They were destroyed in reality itself."
The purple-haired office maven raised an eyebrow. Eyes still closed, of course. Seeming to smile.
"Oh really?" he asked. "Well well. It seems Lina Inverse has awakened. How interesting! I'll handle our end of things from now on, thank you. Tell Zelas not to be concerned, the part of our originator will be returned in Internet time, as it were. The rouge Red Priest and his cyborg will not obtain it first, and so on, you know the usual reassurances. Go to it."
"Yessir," the office toady said, quickly leaving.
No, this moment was too joyous to allow a dirge to play. The corporate man flicked his wrist, flickering out of existence, shunting himself into the Winamp software to alter the bits, to go to the next song. Then he remanifested in reality. A nice trick, if you know how to do it, and are Mazoku, spawn of Shaburanigdo...
"I'm siiiinging in the rain," Xelloss sang, along with the wonderful, wonderful music. "What a glorious feeling, I'm haaappy again..."
--END OF FILE--
---------------
Author's Notes:
This project has been sitting around for awhile. I've been busy on a lot of other things, though, and didn't have time to really give it star treatment. Since I love Improfanfic so much, and we're kicking off the Indie Impro affiliates, I figured... heck! why not?
One thing I'd suggest for potential authors; if you're completely unfamiliar with cyberpunk fiction (or scifi, for that matter) you might want to avoid signing. There IS method to the madness of technology beyond the buzzwords, after all. But given the great reaction Bot's gotten and the good work there, no doubt fun stuff will arise here too.
A few things were non-obvious, since I only did one chapter, but you can use the following if you want :
* The 'Red Priest' is Rezo; this is sort of a retelling of season one Slayers, when Lina got the Philosopher's Stone. His 'cyborg' is no doubt Zelgadis who makes a similar pitch in e-mail that he makes to Lina in episode two. (Chimera, Cyborg.. you know, it's elseworlds, baby!)
* I didn't quite explain how Lina can use virtual powers in the real world, except some hooks to her headaches and her past; have fun, kids!
* No idea where Gourry got a Sword of Light or how it works. Have fun, kids!
* Anybody seen Sylpheel lately?
That's all. Share and enjoy, programs.