Dead Ringer
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Rockman had spent the better part of a week trying to talk Netto out of what he'd coined as a "secret mission". They'd only just started Netto's first semester, and now he was already finding a convenient little distraction. No amount of you know Enzan is going to kill you if he finds out, or Laika will do even worse than that could get him to let it go.
The school's BBS was extremely busy, and Netto checked it enough to catch a post before it was drowned out: DRN DATA MEETUP – WAREHOUSE 8 @ 9:45PM X/X/XXXX. While he'd very recently left the Official life behind, he still recognized a pseudo-syndicate meetup post. They started calling it DRN instead of DRK for some reason– no one said they were very smart or clever– and they were sloppy to boot. College student message boards was a place they'd gotten hits, and he'd even heard that from Pen.
Rockman had tried to convince him it was just a stupid prank post. It didn't mean anything, and they had no reason to be involved, anyway. Netto wasn't an official anymore. Unfortunately, all of his argument was met with the same response: That never really stopped us before, now did it?
Never mind the fact they were out of practice, and Rockman had negative desire to break up a dark chip exchange, and he and Netto still hadn't even tried Netbattling in months— nah, damn all of that. Netto was still too optimistic, even with a fresh scar to prove against it. (Unwillingly, it made Rockman optimistic too.)
So here they were; Netto pressed through a thin opening in an empty warehouse building about three miles out from campus. The clock had not yet hit the witching hour, but he thought it probably made sense to get there early, right? No one else seemed to be nearby, so he grabbed his PET from his pocket, and used the screen to illuminate his immediate area.
"There's no one here," muttered the voice from his PET, still immensely reluctant. "Can we just go home? You know Dad is going to—"
The door on the opposite end of the warehouse began to creep open, which made Netto quickly silence his PET and press against the back of a stack of empty storage containers. Too bad he couldn't get a witty quip back in to Rockman, because he had a good one locked and loaded.
He leaned over, probably too obviously, to spy who had entered. It wasn't even close to the posted time…?
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Roll had spent the better part of a week trying to talk Ms. Sakurai out of following up on completely unverified reports. It was hard not to worry about her well-being when she was utterly swamped with both the Luminous Revival fallout and applying for colleges while trying to juggle her last school semester and what-ever was going on with the interdimensional application. Ms. Sakurai insisted that it was alright, that she'd handled worse time and time again, but when a completely unrelated, comically suspicious posting showed up on the local BBS.
What was a 'DRN DATA MEETUP'...? The date listed on the post didn't even make any sense. It was, admittedly, suspicious - but there were no details besides that. There were certainly warehouses in the area, but whatever they would be used for was beyond Roll. It only took a few hours for her to lose the verbal battle, however - her operator was too restless to talk down. "If there's a problem, I'd rather deal with it before it spawns eight other problems," she insisted.
An hour prior to the meeting time, Mayl took a train downtown to scope out the industrial sector, having narrowed down the potential meeting locations to two or three candidates. It certainly felt illegal to be snooping past barbed-wire gates and through mazes of dusty-looking buildings, but the Net Sheriff badge would give her a free pass to do a little scouting, certainly.
...As she approached one of the warehouses, however, she blinked heavily - and when she opened her eyes, a pattern of hexagons flashed in her peripheral vision, like she'd just been punched in the face. "Wh-what the hell...?" she muttered to herself, putting a hand to her head. She felt a little dizzy... but the feeling cleared a second later. It didn't seem familiar, which was good, because any explanation she could reasonably think of for that strange feeling would be, quote unquote, quite bad.
In her frustration, she approached the warehouse and carefully opened the door. Was this even a place where illegal goods would be reasonably stored? It certainly seemed abandoned, so she might as well start checking - and it was still well before the posted time, so there wasn't a huge concern of being caught.
Once she had slipped into the warehouse, she began using her PET screen as a light, which allowed Roll to scope the area as well. Something about the interior seemed... odd, however. "This ceiling is too low," she muttered to herself, her eyelids lowering. "This doesn't make sense."
"...The interior of the building does not match the outside?" Roll repeated blankly. "I will not doubt you, but... are you sure you did not miss something, Ms. Sakurai?"
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Netto furrowed his brow at the snippets of conversation he heard- he couldn't see very well, because his glasses were perfectly askew from his position. He spied the blurry frame of someone with...pink, probably, hair. They seemed sort of young, too, but maybe not that-
"Do NOT just mute me for no reason!" Suddenly his PET was screeching, which made him scramble and drop the whole thing with an extremely obvious clatter. Rockman continued as he scrambled to pick it up, "You're at a DARK CHIP MEETUP and you just THROW ME IN YOUR POCKET?!"
"Oh my god shut up shut up shut up-" Netto hushed, slamming the volume down button on the PET, in an arms race with his own Navi on who could get the volume controlled first. Of course he was losing, and Rockman just carried on, the PET's speakers echoing around the warehouse. "What if someone had jumped you! What if someone kidnapped you for the millionth time! It's not the same as when we were-"
Over Netto's shoulder, the PET had just the faintest view of their visitor, which made Rockman immediately button up. Earning a glare from his operator, Netto gave up the ghost and turned to address the other figure in the room. (Boy, why does she look so familiar...?) "Ignore that," he said, stupidly. He jabbed an accusatory finger at the visitor. "What are YOU doing here, huh?!"
This was why he was never picked for field work.
-
Mayl couldn't help but jump when that distorted voice screamed through the warehouse. Neither she nor Roll fully caught what the Navi was saying, but it certainly seemed as if their cover had unintentionally been blown. (Did that voice sound familiar...? No, it was too hoarse.)
The person who jumped around the corner didn't look the part of someone who would be snooping around a warehouse, but Mayl supposed that she didn't, either. She quickly composed herself and pointed her PET toward the stranger, her accusatory body language far more composed than her opponent's. "I could ask the same thing to you," she began, narrowing her eyes. "A 'Dark Chip meetup'? What a strange thing to bring up."
...Whatever a 'Dark Chip' was. It sounded familiar, and similar to some things she was aware of, but something with that suspicious of a name couldn't slip under her radar. Meanwhile, Roll, from the skewed view she had, noticed the odd symbol on the stranger's jacket. Why did that, of all things, register as familiar in a situation like this? She must be losing her mind.
"Regardless, I have plenty of reason to be here. I want an explanation for why you were hiding here before I even arrived," Mayl continued, staring daggers into the stranger's soul.
