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Nanaimobars

Blaire was in her element, elbow propped on the bar while she kept up a conversation with the bartender she was clearly familiar with.

Once her drink was in hand, she turned, to see that strangely clad fellow from earlier. What was up with that anyways? One of those regency romance fantasy balls that were popular about now? Renaissance faire perhaps? She did recall there being one held this weekend. Maybe he came straight from the venue.

Regardless of whatever his deal was, he was clearly looking uncomfortable while doing his best to appear otherwise. It wouldn’t hurt to try and help him break the ice.

Though, her idea of being helpful kind of just, spilled out and came off more pointed than anything.

“You just come from the renn faire?”

+++

At least she didn’t make them wait. The timing was almost perfect, actually.

Aon scowled at the swish of her tail paired with her smirk. Again they found themselves nearly reeling at the dark aura just diffusing off of her. They were really regretting their choice of atmosphere now.

The corner of their lip curled slightly. Of course they knew what this was about, but the confirmation of it being about that stupid vault was bait they couldn’t refuse.

“Haha oh I see. That coward couldn’t reach out to me again himself? That’s cute.”

Pushing themselves off of the wall they stood at a cocky little slant, one hand on hip.

“Well, I’ll tell you just as I’ve told him. I don’t have it anymore. You’re wasting everyone’s time.”

snoruntpyro

Lan always felt awkward around Triese's dad, if only because he was just so straightforwardly helpful that it felt weird. Why wasn't he asking questions about all this crap they were doing...? Why wasn't he trying to poke and prod for secret information she didn't want to share?! Maybe it was because Triese told him everything already...

She found the exterior of the casino pretty intimidating, if only because they had to have some ridiculous level of confidence to plaster that many gaudy neon lights with outlines of overjoyed humans on a building in the middle of a city. It was like it was screaming to her, "Come here! We do stuff that shouldn't be legal, but it somehow is!"

"Now, I have no intention of spending any money... You don't want to be put on these peoples' lists," Shen began to lecture as he parked the car. There was thankfully a secluded enough parking spot for Lan and Kaita to not have to waltz right in. Instead, the plan would be to wait for others to enter, and follow in after them to blend in with the crowd. "But these kinds of places will be on the lookout for loiterers. The faster you get into the network, the better."

Lan pouted as she climbed out of the car, still fretting over the dress and the bag that Mary had lent her. She could only fit so many chips in there... "Can't we just get Flammole to do, um, the thing he does?" she mumbled, not quite remembering the details since it had been so long. "To find wherever the vault is..."

"I'd certainly like to, but let me put it this way," Shen began. "I can easily explain away two children if they get caught in the network. If I get caught in the network, it won't be quite as simple." Lan immediately pouted. "I'd love not to foist it on you, Lan, but it sounds as if your friend has some experience, anyhow."

"You're a weirdo," Rock chimed in. "Can't believe you'd just trust the Net Savior thing right out of the gate. I think the kid's mom would kill her."

Much to both Lan and Rock's surprise, Shen was a bit flummoxed by the comment. "...How unflattering," he muttered under his breath, looking past the two kids into the distance. "Shall we get going, then? I can have my Navi pass along some signature masks, while we wait."

scenegraph

After overhearing Lan’s plan to carry her normal backpack around, Ring was quick to dissuade her of the notion. “How’s that going to solve anything? If anything carrying your schoolbag around as a handbag will make the problem worse, not better.”

Shyly, Mary volunteered, “I’ve got something that’d match this…” and retreated into her side of the portal for a moment, only to emerge with a crossbody bag styled to look like a vase of flowers. “Just pack your essentials into here,” she explained.

“You can get purses shaped like other things?!” Kaita marveled. His eyes sparkling, he looked at Mary. “Do you have a car purse?!”

“I’ve got one, but I don’t think Turboman would like it. It’s too pink for his tastes,” giggled Mary. “I’ll keep an eye out for you for the holidays, though!”

“Yippie! Thanks!” Obviously excited to someday have a fancy bag of his own, Kaita rifled through his own incongruous backpack, pulling out a few tools to put into the jacket pockets of his suit.

Once he was done, he got to his feet. “Okay… I think I’m about as prepared as I’m gonna get.” He turned to Lan. “Let’s go!”

scenegraph

Meiru looked around the alleyway she’d run down, even toward the rooftops, in an attempt to find the person she thought she’d run after. “Where are you?” she called. “Please come out! It’s not safe here!”

R-Blues pushed his way through the office space to the window below. He saw Desertman, the Lion Heads, and the tiny mop of hair in front of the mountainous Navi that the Lion Heads were aimed for; and leapt straight down, landing hard in front of Lan. “Dream Aura!”

He’d barely made it in time; sand went flying both inside and out of the Dream Aura as the Lion Heads, too close to completely block, were torn apart instead. R-Blues moved to block as much of it as he could from the human he’d rescued. “We need to get you out of here,” R-Blues said, his eyes fixed on Desertman. It was only then that he turned around and, while reaching a hand out to pick her up, realized, “Netto-chan?!”

…Was that a knife in her hand? If she seriously thought she was going to be backing him up with that, she had another think coming…

snoruntpyro

It was hard for Lan to keep herself straight, which made her all the more susceptible to Desertman's trap. "Wh-what the hell is..." was all she could blurt out, before her feet began to sink into the ground. It was a really weird feeling, more than enough to distract her from the horror of whatever a Mirage Space was. She knew it was useless to beg... so she yanked her foot upward instead, kicking away the sand before it could completely subsume her.

Rock continued her chase through the sandstorm, which seemed to only intensify as Desertman's growls rippled through the PET speakers. Lan's adrenaline and fear coursed through her, somehow even more intensely than it had back in the Liminal Space, and it instantly brought back her feeling of helplessness. "K-kid! Don't do anything stupid! Just- just book it!" she yelled, as a gust of sand slammed into her and knocked her back. The PET wasn't detecting any more jack-in points around them... so Rock felt even more lost in the storm than she already was.

(...If there was a Navi running around in the real world, then was the operator running around in the cyberworld...? No, that's stupid... That was an excuse, since she was being so useless... She knew she should jack out, but that Navi clearly had something to hide, and... and...)

Lan stepped back, dizzily taking in her surroundings as Desertman loomed over her. All that this 'Mirage Space' was showing to her was some kind of twisted wasteland... with the life ripped out of it. She... she couldn't die here, could she?! No! Never! Sh-she couldn't let any of this happen...!

Impulsively, she swerved her arm around to reach inside of her bag, cradling her free hand around her chest defensively. Her eyes shimmered with fear and rage as her hand shakily wrapped around the hilt of the knife she'd been keeping in her bag. A little shadow flickered over her face as she whipped the knife in front of her, breaking into a charge. "N-not... happening!!"

... To her credit, she was faster than Desertman could have expected. Maybe a little too fast. But she thrust the blade into Desertman's side with as much force as she could muster... and realized she was stabbing sand. With a knife.

She paused for a second, unsure of what she even expected.

"Gwa-ha-ha... How funny," Desertman slowly laughed, tickled by this feeble human's terrible attempt at murder. Sand quickly coalesced around Lan - who had to keep herself from stumbling over when she pulled the knife out - and formed into beastly constructs, trapping her on all sides. "You will be remembered amongst the dead for your insolence... but was it worth it, in the end?! Lion Head!"

scenegraph

Meiru squeezed her eyes shut against the sand carried by the wind, then saw movement as soon as she opened them. “Wait!” Meiru immediately gave chase, sprinting around the corner of the brick building where she’d sworn she’d seen someone retreat…

Rather than indulge Lan, Desertman simply laughed, “Gwa-ha-ha-ha-ha…” Sand began to pulse out from his main body, aiming to knock Lan off her feet and pin her legs under the sand. “Carry the sight of this Mirage Space to the afterlife!”

The building was so entirely filled with sand that R-Blues had a hard time hearing anything that was going on outside. But he could faintly hear laughter rumbling from below. He easily cut through the Sabotekoron sailing toward his head, cleaved the Sunaamu trying to surprise him from behind in half, and ran for the window outside.

snoruntpyro

It took a while for Meiru's plea to bring anything of note. The sand that had overtaken the skyscraper had begun to creep on its surroundings, carried around by an unnatural wind rippling through the equally unnatural not-Dimensional Area. But if Meiru's eyes followed the wind, then perhaps out of the corner of her eye, she would spot one person hiding behind a nearby brick building, who immediately ducked out of the way from the threat of being spotted.

Despite her fixation on getting to the center of this mess, it was hard for Lan not to notice her Navi yelling and giving chase. "Rock?! What's going on?!" she yelled, picking up the pace and turning one last corner to get a clear view at the supremely messed-up skyscraper.

Rock had lost track of the silhouette, but continued darting through the sandstorm nonetheless - even if she got ambushed, that'd still be bringing the Navi to her, right? "If that Navi ain't the culprit... I dunno who is!" she shouted back. "Kid, pass me a Fire chip! I can use it as a light, or somethin' like that!"

Lan was a little too preoccupied to appreciate Rock's ingenuity, but she absentmindedly reached for her bag, anyways. "Battle Chip, Element Flare...!" she shouted, though her voice trailed off as she stared up at the skyscraper. No one was around, having fled both the sight of the disaster and the increasingly heavy air around it. At least it made Lan less embarrassed about standing around and trying to act like she could do something about it.

...What happened to the people inside the building? What happened to the people that were in the parts of the building that didn't exist anymore...?

A cold feeling ran up her body. That realization had made this scenario feel even more nightmarish than it already was. Maybe she... should get out of here. Before more people came... and paid attention... to something as horrible and ridiculous as...

...Then, Lan felt a presence behind her, and without even thinking, she whirled her foot around to slam it into whatever had crept up on her. What a weirdly Rock thing to do, she thought, just before her eyes caught up. She nearly lost her balance when her foot whacked into... more sand? It looked like a hand... Hadn't she seen that before-

She yelped as the hand clamped down on her foot, and she managed to yank it away in time before she could lose her shoe. "Groooaaaaah," came a groan from beneath the street. Lan backed away as she nervously glanced down at her PET, where Rock was trying and failing to use the Element Flare like it was a carry-around torch.

"Gwahhh!! How dare... a human... trespass on this fertile ground?!" the voice continued shouting, as a pitfall began to form a few feet in front of Lan. "You are irrelevant! You are insignificant! You are hardly worthy... of being replaced!!"

Lan blinked heavily; she finally realized where she knew that voice from as soon as a familiar form rose out of the sand - but this time, right in front of her. Not behind a screen. Very much a few feet in front of her, which made the scale of what she was up against abundantly clear. "D-Desertman...?" she mumbled, reeling back in terror. "Rock! Rock! Um! Rock! This is bad!"

...As if solely to make things worse, Rock had finally caught sight of the Navi once more as soon as a stabbing pain went through her chest. "H-hey- stop-" she yelled as she turned her attention back to her operator. "What? Desert... who??"

"I-I... but I already..." Lan continued blubbering, before recalling that Rock wasn't even here for her battling that Navi. She couldn't even remember the last time she'd thought about Desertman, or Sunayama, for that matter. (...If Desertman was here, then where was Sunayama...?)

She stood her ground, clenching her fists and glaring back at Desertman as if she could possibly threaten this thing twice her size. "Wh-what's going on...?! I want an explanation! Now!" she shouted, her voice trembling a little.

scenegraph

Never one to pass up a dramatic entrance, R-Blues elected to enter the fusing skyscrapers by smashing through the nearest unblocked window rather than working his way up the stairs. But inside, all there was to see was more and more of the same sand pouring itself all over the street below. Surely, it had to be coming from a source, being the only thing in sight that absolutely didn’t belong in an office building…?

R-Blues noticed that, despite how full up with sand the building seemed from the outside, the door to the stairwell was still open. “Let’s start heading downstairs, then,” Enzan decided. R-Blues slid down the dune created by the sand pouring through the entrance and found the stairwell to be like a waterfall of sand, easy enough to traverse with his inhuman reflexes.

The next floor was similarly devoid of any clues; and the next, and the next. “Are we in the wrong place?” Enzan wondered.

“Enzan-sama, watch out!” R-Blues turned and plunged an Aqua Sword into a Sunaamu leaping from overhead, then cut through two more following it. Perhaps this was the right place after all…

The way the air kept thickening reminded Meiru of trying to enter the Blood Point-infested Dimensional Area back in Darkland. But what was even stranger was how she was failing to find anyone, alive or dead. “Why is this happening…?” she wondered.

“Why does Rush have to be gone now…?” bemoaned Roll. “There hasn’t been any real danger yet, but this’s still really, really bad to be wandering around in…!”

“You’re right,” Meiru said, stopping and taking a better look around. The strange textures, the red hexagons in the air… it was definitely a form of Dimensional Area. But if it wasn’t a standard Dimensional Area…

With the confidence and dramatic pose of a heroine, Meiru held her PET arm aloft. “Plug in, Roll! Transmission!”

An eerie silence fell over the warped street.

“I don’t think it works that way, Meiru-chan,” Roll finally admitted sheepishly. “I did try…”

“No people, but no viruses…” Meiru’s shoulders slumped. “What am I doing here? Some help I am…”

“Maybe we should head back to the car for now,” Roll suggested. “We can always patrol the perimeter to make sure nobody tries to get in.”

As a last-ditch attempt, Meiru called, “Hello! Is anyone still here?” Still a bit embarrassed about the failed plug-in, she turned around to take Roll’s advice.

Nanaimobars

“I’m glad you’re starting to branch out, broadening your horizons. I’ve been hoping you would.” Blaire expressed while putting herself together in the mirror of her sun visor.

“Is that so?”

She was a wholly different person away from work. Aon wasn’t unfamiliar, they had gone home with her before. They were in awe of how easily she could swap to a more extroverted personality like flipping a switch. Maybe they were a little envious as well.

Blaire could be whoever the hell she wanted to be off the clock. No public image to uphold away from her little cubicle at the lab.

“I think everyone wants to see something they’ve made go above and beyond you know? And they gave me some tight guidelines with you.” She scoffed a bit, licking stray lipstick off of her teeth before snapping the sun visor shut. “You don’t really have a lot of room to grow yourself the way they have you set up. I wish I had more say in that.”

“I’m fine. Really.” Aon lied through their teeth. At least…they had been before the chatroom…before the Starliner. Half-truths were starting to become their specialty.

“Though you’re right. My coworkers can be a bit stifling.”

“I think it’s nice that you want to spend time together outside of work, but I think it’s more beneficial for you to be able to meet new people and socialize on your own.”

With Blaire finished up, they made their way into the venue. She waved off the bouncer she was well acquainted with, as he struggled with carding an altogether strangely dressed individual, but that was none of her concern.

Once they were in, they came to an agreement that they would go their separate ways, with Blaire checking in if they needed to leave by the appointed time. She plugged Aon into the club's network before bagging her PET and hitting the floor.

Aon skipped right over the public network and into the private one, positioning themselves against a wall to keep their surroundings about themselves.

The visuals of this compspace weren’t much different than they could assume the main club space looked like, dim with the occasional flash of neon colours. Distant music thrummed at a low level as if they were in an adjacent room physically.

It made them regret this choice even more. The last thing they needed while suffering withdrawals and anticipating some bullshit was the droning in the background. Low and rhythmic and familiar.

Cosmine

There was a twisting, spiraling sensation that opened inside of him. This was confirmation of his greatest fears. Of the few people who he had ever met, they were the exception and that the rule of the Earth was ostracization.

He didn't know how to talk to people correctly. He had never seen someone his own age -- would they just be small adults? How would they act?

How should he be acting?

He stopped chasing after the shadows. Why should he even bother? They looked like they would slip away if he tried to cling to them.

What did he expect? For his beloved Earth to be a paradise willing to teach him the right way to be a child?

It was too late. The child that he was no longer existed.

He fell onto his knees, then sat onto the lunar surface, stirring up a grey cloud.

Maybe he could find some kindness here. Something that would let him sleep and dream of a place beyond this.

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