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.

Netto immediately took the affection; unlike Rockman, or Enzan, or Laika, he had not yet learned to be afraid of a kind hand. He wanted to make excuses for Cain. Cain was never openly cruel to him- maybe once, in a flash of anger, but not much more than that. Cain was dry, and Netto was always trying to get him to laugh at a joke or even just smile. Cain had some shitty past, and Netto felt empathetic to that. It was world shattering, to think he'd made the wrong call. "Dr. Cain - he's not like-" Netto winced, sitting up out of Pen's hold to voice an apology to Rockman. But Rockman cut him off, and spoke instead. "Cain is nothing like Regal. He's just a- worm." Netto sniffed, falling back into Pen's arms. "I think Dad mentioned something like, he's probably gonna get his license stripped too. It's bad enough...to him." Netto had voiced how much he thought this was overkill. He'd even said those words no one wanted to admit- why is Cain getting worse treatment than Regal? Sure, he'd had all his licensure stripped years ago- but they just shipped him off to a country that didn't care about his crimes. Cain was going to get punished in the only way that mattered to him; his work. But Yuuichiro had just given him a withered look, and he knew that they all wished more had been done about Regal. And more should have been done. More could have been done, if the Officials cared about this kind of crime. All they wanted to do was cover up their mistake, that leaving Regal to work in Scilabs was just a ticking time bomb, that all of their pain had been avoidable if they had just-- Netto sucked in a breath, realizing for a brief second he'd stopped breathing at all. He released his closed fists. A realization dawned on him and he stuttered out, "O-Oh. I- I can't go back to work. L-Like, ever."

Enzan remembers those cold lips. Death lips. They'd been blue, contrasted with the harsh red burns across his lover's face. He finds his fingers drifting over his lips, and struggling to recall when the exact moment his desire had begun. Was it when he was a child, and he'd seen into the power infecting his navi? Was it when he'd held Laika's body, knowing it was the divine material keeping him in this world? "Put me down on red," Enzan says, as he pushes his bet towards her. "What do you really want to know?" He asked. Maybe if he told her— Maybe something different would happen this time. Maybe his luck would improve.

Meiru blinked down at all the photographs in amazement. Another life sat there in front of her. “She went into academia? Wow,” she said, genuinely awed. In a world where Netto had never gone anywhere, where she had nothing to prove and nothing to give others as a Netbattler, she was capable of something like this? “That’s such a competitive field—she must be really talented.” Thinking of Mayl’s long hours spent mastering all aspects of her work on her own, her own time training to be able to take Netto’s place protecting Densan City alongside Enzan, Meiru could easily imagine that in a world where she dedicated that time to music theory and technique instead, she would find the potential to go far. It was just so strange to think about, even as Netto asked for more information about the Meiru in front of him. Sad, even, this feeling of looking through a door that had closed. But she had closed it with a purpose, and for a reason. “I guess we used to be called Officials, in the olden days? But I’m a Net Savior,” she explained to Netto. “I always followed you around on your missions, whether I should’ve or not. So when you disappeared, I guess it felt the most natural to me to keep going. Otherwise… I would’ve always wondered if I was doing all I could, y’know?” She smiled. “To be honest, you remind me a lot of the Netto who lives in my world, too, when he was younger.” Thinking about it, she couldn’t help but fondly giggle, “Even now, sometimes. You always sound so happy when you're talking about your friends.”

Great. It was weird. Well, he already knew this and it wasn't comforting to hear it coming from the mouth of an expert. But now he at least had confirmation. But his creation... Flashes of moments from a past he was not there for peppered his vision. Hardly any detail, barely perceptible, data broken and frayed at the edges. Perceived with the little data wrapped up in them instead of actually seen with his eyes. It was something he'd gotten used to. It wasn't obtrusive now and at this point had given up on trying to understand it. And in any case, it made him feel closer to Ellen, bizarrely enough. Cometman's face journeyed through furrowed then pensive then distant looks, landing right back onto his usual nonplussed expression. "Nope, like I said, memories just start at one point," he shrugged, "Figures that would be another thing that's weird about me. You know..." he trailed off, remembering his first encounter with Dragonman, "Do all Navis just have a lot of this knowledge built in?? Like, I tried playing chess, right? Apparently other Navis just have the rules baked into them fresh out of the box, but I sure didn't! I had to look that up! I don't know why I'm complaining about this right now, it's just," he smirked, "life's crazy isn't it?" He resigned himself to that conclusion. No one would have these answers for him. He was weird and that was just how things were he supposed.