Wave's Allure
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"Dark Messiah Cross!!"
Triese wasn't sure what she was going to get out of watching the Luminous Revival finals for the fifteenth time, but some part of her deep down hoped that she would manage an absurd breakthrough by catching the tiniest of details. Lan had been feeling horrible lately, and she refused to elaborate on why, other than that she needed to prove that she wasn't a monster. Try as she might to reassure her, Triese knew that Lan wanted answers more than comfort. Some explanation about why things ended up the way they did, about why her and her Navi siphoned so much power off of an inexplicable element like bug fragments.
Bugs were something even her dad, who was obviously way smarter than her, couldn't figure out, so part of her wondered why she was even trying, but she refused to let Lan's plight slip away from her, especially when it worried Iris so much. So she and Lurerre ventured into the Undernet, farmed as many bug fragments as they could, and built a test environment for Triese to mess around with them in; Lurerre was nervous about the whole ordeal, but she relented after Triese insisted that she would perform experiments in the absolute safest way possible. Her makeshift laboratory was condemned to a separate server, which she only ever connected to with her PET to get Lurerre inside. Nothing bad was going to get out of here if she could help it.
And so began the trial and error. Triese had messed around with programming in her off-time, but she hadn't really tried to make something custom before; part of that was because making something like a Battle Chip seemed to be above her paygrade (and also cheating!!). But this was for Lan, and she really needed to do something to repay Lan!
She kept thinking back to how the viruses in Reg's world had happily accepted the bug fragments they'd brought. If viruses still liked them, and they were different enough now to just... substantiate in the real world, then there had to be some sort of connection, right?! Especially because Lan's eyes kept turning red and stuff! And all the other weird things! There was some bizarre magic throughline going on here, and she was going to figure it out by jamming a million random things together until something weird happened!! Put a Mystery Data in there! Light the BugFrags on fire! Stick them together! Bind them with rope! Electrocute them! Teleport them and drop them from a million pixels above her homepage! Edit random values she didn't know the meaning of in a hex editor!
"I cannot help but wonder," Iris had mused to her. "If there is some sort of 'humanity' to these bug fragments. After all, in the coding sense, bugs typically only exist because of human error..."
It was now the weekend, and Triese had spent the past hour lounging on her bed scrolling through the chatroom. There wasn't even a conversation going on at the moment - she was just backreading, perhaps out of the same vain hope that kept her rewatching Luminous Revival. Maybe she should just ask around. Surely there had to be someone who came from some world where bugs were all solved and super well documented. But even Reg, who had a whole 400 years of extra knowledge under his belt, seemed to not know anything...
"Lady Triese?" Lurerre interjected, after a particularly lengthy stare at an old conversation surrounding the incident on the train that Lan didn't like talking about. "You've been quiet. May I recommend doing something else today?" She paused. "I hate to admit it, but I don't believe that further BugFrag research will bare any fruit, for now. I am worried that if you resort to more volatile substances-"
A red square flashed on Triese's PET for a second, though she didn't notice it.
"Yeah, yeah, I knoooow," Triese sighed. "I mean, there's only so many inanimate objects that have meaningful differences to test, and I'm, like... I'm not going to throw things that are sentient at the bugs, that's just wrong!" She slammed her hand on the bedsheet in frustration, tilting her head back. "Are we really going to have to do something crazy to find an X-factor? I just feel like a kid glueing her toys together! The bugs aren't reacting at all!"
Another red square flashed in the bottom right. Triese always carried bugs in her PET, of course. She needed them to feed viruses. They never did anything when they were just being stored there, anyways.
"Lady Triese, there's no need to..." Lurerre began to protest, before giving up and trying to change the subject. "Why not... er... call Iris? Or something like that? I'm certain that she would like to, uh... hang out..."
Location Data Location History
ACDC Town Electopia 123928x1740y150076z
ACDC Town Electopia 1239608x1730y132035z
ACDC Town Electopia 123001x1759y191205z
ACDC Town Electopia 122789x1730y110689z
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXThe data scuttled around like a bug, having festered ever since it connected to that broken, empty Net with not a single Navi left. It was filled with unrecognizeable data, only compatible with Triese's PET through some miracle of fate, it was truly a miracle that it didn't kill Lurerre on the spot just for existing there Fatal error at access0x000000
Before Triese could respond, a harsh noise emitted from her PET's speakers, startling her so badly that she launched backward into her headrest. The noise kept going, and in desperation, she slapped her PET face-down to muffle the noise. "Wh-what the-?! What is that?!" she shouted. "Lurerre?!"
"I-is there an error-?" Lurerre's muffled voice wondered. The noise changed pitch just as Lurerre dived deeper into the PET's internals; it wasn't often that she needed to manifest inside of the system memory rather than the homepage, but she hadn't noticed anything there, and they weren't connected to any network, so there was no other explanation for oh my God what the hell is that. "Wh-what is this...?!" Lurerre shouted, stunned when she materialized inside of the small, dark room only to find a jittery, flickering red mist covering everything. "Lady Triese, there appears to be a serious technical problem with the PET-"
Any attempt at problem solving was interjected by a buzzing noise coming from behind Triese in real life. She turned her head only to just barely catch a chatroom portal closing right behind her. "What-" was all she could get out before the same sound buzzed to her right, and then just in front of her, and all around her... "Why are portals opening?!"
She hesitated for a little too long. It wasn't like anything could have prepared her for a situation like this, and it all happened too quickly to really process, but maybe if she hadn't locked up out of some inexplicable fear, some irrational idea that she was going to fall asleep and find herself strapped at a table
againbecause she wanted to know too much, then she could've bought herself a few more seconds. Instead, a portal opened up directly underneath her, right on top of her bed, that scooped her and her PET up and closed right behind her.
After the first few seconds of shock passed and Triese came to, she found herself hidden away in the trees just next to a park that she'd never seen before. Her pupils dilated from how much light was immediately beamed into her eyes. Not just natural light - neon lights as well, shimmering in the air to mimic a water fountain, or form a plaque on a nearby statue, or as part of the outer facade of some store named "BIG WAVE"-
"L-Lurerre?" Triese muttered to herself, rubbing the side of her head. Her PET was right next to her, no longer emitting the harsh noise but having had its display completely consumed by static. In a panic, Triese scooped up her PET, holding it close to her face. "Lurerre?! Are you there?! Please tell me you're there!" she whispered harshly.
"- - - -her- - - int- - - -re - - n- -," an incredibly distorted voice, still barely recognizable as Lurerre, said. "L-a- - - - j-a-c- - - - s-o-m- - - -e-r-e-"
She needed to find some place where she could actually talk to her Navi. Right! She could do that. Definitely! As soon as she... figured out where she was.
Slowly, she managed to right herself and dust herself off, jumping out of the trees once she was ready. She was lucky that there was no one else around, given that she probably looked like a horribly lost child right about now. She really... really had no idea where she was. At least it was pretty... and very well-kept. She got the distinct sense that this park had probably been renovated fairly recently, with how modern it looked.
-
After a spirited one-sided discussion about wave battle strategies from a very eager Claud, Geo was feeling a bit spent. It was quite a lot to process. He was just going over there to trade away his extra cards, how'd he get roped up in talking about bubbling techniques anyways?
"I didn't think you could use Whistle like that..." Omega-Xis muttered over his shoulder, projected from his Hunter-VG, "Hey Geo, think there'd be someone in that chatroom thing that'd know of more things to use Whistle on?"
"To be honest Mega..." Geo responded a bit distantly, "I don't know if we should poke into the chatroom too much. I get the feeling like if we draw its attention, something bad may happen."
"Eh," Omega-Xis tossed a claw about, "Anything that comes our way, we'll handle it."
"I suppose so..." he mumbled, exiting Big Wave, "I'm just worried about provoking something."
"You provoking something?" Omega-Xis guffawed, and continued talking as Geo's attention was drawn elsewhere.
His eyes had landed on someone wandering the park that looked... distressed. How odd, she didn't seem from around here.
"Hey Geo," Omega-Xis leaned in close to whisper in his ear, "I'm sensing a huge amount of Noise from that device of her's, you wanna go see what's up?"
Before he had finished asking, Geo was already heading over. Sure enough, the thing in her hands sounded rough and had that distinct red on the screen. Already Geo was feeling that scratching feeling in the back of his throat that he'd come to associate with Crimson.
"Excuse me, um," he pushed past the feeling and gave her a small smile, "Do you need some help with the Noise coming from your device?"
-
Yeah, she still had no idea where she was. That didn’t matter! It would be difficult to figure out where was a good place to jack in, given that she didn’t have any visuals on her PET screen, but there had to be some place nearby that… would, uh… work… definitely… certainly…
As Triese wandered the park and continuously pressed the jack-in button, hoping she’d randomly come across a comp that’d let Lurerre access a monitor other than her PET screen, she slowly realized that there were no jack-in points around her. Which was very weird! Given how modern everything around her looked…!
She blinked. If there was nowhere to jack in, then… but… no, that made no sense, she’d know if this was Reg’s world, wouldn’t she?! This place didn’t look like where Reg was from! But without being able to see the chatroom - or use her PET in general - she would have to do some serious prowling around to figure out what was going on here, and that would mean she would get seen and possibly cause a big mess and then the time police would finally get her and-!
Too late. Someone had already approached her. She was in the middle of a public park, after all. When the stranger greeted her, she composed herself as quickly as possible, attempting to channel some of the Big Liar energy that she’d used at the DART gala - but he immediately made that way harder by dropping a proper noun she’d never heard before. “N-Noi-“
She stopped herself just in time, realizing how telling it was that he had said device and not PET. Unfortunately for her, he’d already seen it - so she’d just have to play along. “U-um! Yeah! It seems like there’s, uh, a problem with the display,” she nervously explained. Was it safe to say her Navi was in there? If this still could be like Reg’s world, it was better safe than sorry. “I’ve never had anything like this happen before, so, y’know, I’m, uh, pretty confused!” Blink. “I guess you do tech stuff…? If you’re, uh, asking!”
She kept the device pretty close to her chest, like she wasn’t going to give it up even though she was literally accepting his offer for help. The disorientation from being throttled here with no warning was beginning to set in - she wasn’t able to hide her distress nearly as well as she did in Reg’s world. There, she knew what she was getting into.
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"Uh, yeah, you could say that," Geo responded, watching the poor girl worriedly.
Whatever was in that device, she must value it a lot, protecting it like it was alive. He glanced down at Omega-Xis in his Hunter-VG, neatly and quietly tucked away, and being awfully considerate of the distressed girl before them by doing so.
But to describe Noise like it was a problem with the display and that nothing like this had ever happened...?
It was like she wasn't even here for what happened three years ago with Meteor G. But perhaps, that wasn't all that surprising. A thought crept into Geo's mind, if he was wrong about this assumption, well, no big deal, but if he was right...
"You... Wouldn't happen to be from the chatroom, would you?" he broached quietly, just in case he was wildly wrong here and could make some mumbled excuse about being misheard.
-
Triese's immediate reaction to the boy's 'accusation' was to wince and silently curse herself, like she hadn't done a good enough job of blending in - but then she thought about his words for longer than two seconds, and she lowered her shoulders a little. "Wh-what do you..." she muttered, her eyes darting back and forth confusedly. "Y-you mean what I think you mean, don't you...?"
She gave her PET screen another nervous glance before relenting. "I-if you mean, like, the big interdimensional one, then, yeah! If you don't, then you didn't hear anything, okay?!" she blabbed, sighing as she puffed her cheeks. "I-I don't even know how I got here, so I guess I wasn't really going to hide anything, but still!"
It wasn't helping Triese's anxieties that she wasn't sure if Lurerre was safe and sound. Her Navi wasn't going to speak up in the presence of a stranger, but it would at least be nice to know if she was there, right?! "D-do you know, uh, any other electronic devices with a port around here? I-I'm worried about my, uh," she continued to blab. "Device. My screen." It was clear she was still trying to hide what was going on, as if the person hadn't clocked her already.
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"Ha! I knew it!" Omega-Xis burst aloud as Geo scrambled to cover up his Hunter's speaker.
"What we mean to say is," he projected as an attempt to cover for his partner, then settled back down with, "We are too, so um, chances are we already know each other! And uh, as for your device I... Have a hunch about it, but maybe we should talk about this someplace not out in the open..."
He quickly scanned the area. Not a lot of people were out walking this time of day, but standing in the middle of the park was making him feel a little exposed so...
"How about by the river?" he asked, pointing over his shoulder to the embankment behind Big Wave, "It should be quiet enough there," he shot out his hand and blinked as he suddenly remembered his manners, "I'm Geo, by the way! AdAstra in the chatroom."
"And I'm Omega-Xis!!" the aforementioned alien roared as he appeared in a pixelated flash beside Geo.
"Gah! Mega!" Geo squeaked and admonished his partner with a hiss, "Don't scare her...!"
"What're you talking about Geo? All I see in front of me is a very brave girl, isn't that right?" he tilted his head smugly and gave the girl before them a reassuring nod.
-
Triese tried her hardest not to yelp and draw even more attention to herself when Omega-Xis appeared in front of her so suddenly. Her awkward stare lasted for entirely too long before she composed herself by rubbing her hands on her cheeks. Well! Well. He didn't even remotely resemble a fairy like the way Silver did, but she had to assume it was something similar...? Right...?
Fortunately, Geo's clarification helped Triese to orient herself quite a bit. "Oh! Oh! Okay! Phew! I was really worried that I was gonna say something I shouldn't, but I think I've seen you around!" she responded, her normal energy slowly returning to her. "I'm the water droplet! AquaNeedleLover! I'm in the chatroom a lot!" With a sigh of relief, she did a little twirl, shying away a little from Omega-Xis' strange... compliment. "Okay, yeah, let's get somewhere quiet so we can, like, actually talk about things!"
Despite being the stranger here, she was first to skip right over to the river, kneeling down and laying her PET on the grass as she waited for Geo to follow. "My PET opened a bunch of portals by itself," she explained. "It's never done that before, so I think something went really wrong with it...? A-and, uh, I don't even know where this is, so that makes this a lot worse?" She scrunched her lips. "I could tell you things about where I'm from, but I dunno if that'd even help if we haven't talked much!"
-
The water droplet... That made sense given her outfit and demeanor when she wasn't worried over being thrown into an unfamiliar world.
"Ah, so that is a PET," Geo noted, taking a seat next to it and her.
Omega-Xis leaned over and hummed pensively at the glowing red display, "Yep, that's definitely Crimson. Boy are you lucky you ran into us! We know a thing or two about this stuff."
Geo sighed. How did a PET accumulate so much noise? The how wasn't that important, not right now.
"Crimson is something that crystalizes when Noise gets way too high in something, it's really dangerous if you don't know how to deal with it. We'll have to bring this over to the Noise experts at WAZA, they've got the specific equipment and know-how to fix this," he scowled in thought, if only he still had the Noise Control Program, then he could probably do something about this right here and now, "Hold on I'll see if I can get in contact with one of them..."
He shot Dr. Goodall a message and went back to staring at the PET, completely engrossed in its retro design and pondered how it was all put together. They were probably going to have to take it apart a little to be able to hook it up to the Crimson analyzing equipment, so it was probably a good idea to figure out what kind of PET this was. Maybe it was because he wasn't as much of an expert on old tech as he thought he was, but this PET looked just a bit different from what he was familiar with. Regardless, he continued to stare at it and break it down in his head as if this was the only thing around for miles.
-
Triese gave Omega-Xis the most unbelievably lost look imaginable, her hands nearly scooping the PET back up out of fear that acknowledging the issue would somehow make things worse. "I-I, uh," she sheepishly admitted, tilting her head at Geo. "I don't know what Noise... is? Or Crimson... or WAZA..."
With another sigh, she shook herself like a dog drying themselves off, then pumped both of her fists. "Okay! We need to get some things straight, don't we? Did I even introduce myself? Oh, man, I'm so sorry, I'm so gonna get lectured later!" she blabbed out, talking about as fast as a tornado spun. "I'm Triese Abysa! I think I might be from the past or something like that, 'cuz I don't really know what you're talking about, and I've only ever seen someone kind of sort of like Omega-Xis once before!" He was definitely a lot scarier than Silver, that was for sure... but that was kind of cool in its own way, wasn't it?!
She stared at the sky, a sparkle in her eyes shining a little. "I'm, uh, I'm from 20XX, if that matters, but don't tell anyone, 'cuz I don't want to get in trouble," she continued. "But I've been to a different 24XX planet thingy before, 'cuz I've got friends there! And I've been to other worlds, too, and stuff, so you don't need to worry about me getting, like, time sickness or something. I just don't really know what you guys are talking about."
-
"Hey Geo, you gonna explain anything, or are you gonna just leave the girl hanging?" Omega-Xis huffed, waving a hand in front of his face.
Geo blinked and remembered himself, "Oh! So you really wouldn't know anything about this would you!" he reeled, "I guess first off, welcome to 22XX!
"And sorry I didn't explain earlier, but basically Noise is something that all electronics make, but it gets to be a problem the more advanced the electronic. I guess that's why I'm a bit confused as to why your PET of all things is having issues with it, but I'm sure Dr. Goodall at WAZA will know something. Uh, WAZA's this agency in charge of space travel and defense that dealt with a big Noise incident a couple years back, so they're kinda the world expert on these things..." he rattled off quickly, "I think that's everything...?"
"Now hold on! What did you mean by 24XX!?" Omega-Xis griped fervently.
"It's true, I think, Mega," Geo commented, "I remember seeing someone in the chatroom mentioning being from that year."
"That's unreal..." he grumbled, folding his arms across his chest.
-
Triese listened intently and pumped her fists as Geo finally willed himself to explain everything. "All electronics...?" she wondered. "W-well... it doesn't seem like this is normal for a PET, yeah! I kinda wonder if it exists where I'm from, if it's every electronic device, but since I haven't heard of it..." She curled her lip. "Oh! Okay, it's the space agency! I get it, now!"
She bounced in place and grinned at Omega-Xis' expression of disbelief. Unrelatedly, she couldn't help but wonder about the Mega nickname... She guessed that his name did shorten to that, huh?! What a weird coincidence. "It's true! My friend Reg's from there! It's a little sad there, but I think it's sad in most places, just in different ways," she said, before a lightbulb went off in her head, and she began to dig in her purse. (She was lucky it was also scooped up by the portal...) "Actually, I've kinda got time-contraband already... These glasses thingies! I think they're called a Visualizer? I had to use them to see these viruses that were-"
She stopped herself when she held the glasses just a little too close to her face, spotting something weird in the corner of their lenses. Narrowing her eyes, she held the Visualizer closer to her face, and realized what she saw was a road literally floating in the sky. Her train of thought entirely derailed, she stood at the sky for a moment, mesmerized by there suddenly being a floating maze above her head. "W-woah," she mumbled. "What. What. What?"
-
"V-Visualizer??" Geo sputtered incredulously, taken aback for a solid couple of seconds.
He almost didn't believe her until it was clear she was seeing something with it. Was this just... what happens when people get access to an interdimensional program?? People from 200 years in the past getting technology so rare in his time that he hardly ever even heard of someone else using it? It left a queasy feeling in his stomach.
Omega-Xis, however, was getting a kick out of Triese's enthusiasm. He shifted his wavelength and came into her view with a cheeky peace sign, ensuring he appeared as a mysterious ghost invisible to her peripheral vision.
"Yo," he chuffed smugly, "This your first time seeing a Wave Road?"
-
When Triese noticed Omega-Xis' body cutting off out of the corner of her eye, she repeatedly lifted the Visualizer to make sure she wasn't losing her mind. "Y-you... wow, you really are just like Silver," she couldn't help but mumble to herself. She gazed back at the Wave Roads one more time, her eyes shining with glee. "A-and... yeah, it is! I haven't even heard of them- where did these even come from...?!"
She bounced in place, a thousand ideas running through her head. "They're kind of like Cyberworld roads, aren't they? But in the sky," she thought to herself. "I wonder why the future I went to doesn't have these? But I guess every future planet isn't really the same as the other, right?" She continued nodding along to herself, stopping briefly to gaze at a random Mr. Hertz; she had seen a picture of one at some point, hadn't she?! "The world I'm from, the Net's all messed up, so I think we've all got super-different planet future histories!"
Her enthusiasm drained when she lingered on her PET for a little too long, though. "B-but! Um! We should get a move on! My Navi's still in there, I think, so I'm really worried!" she realized. "I hope that it's just a problem with the PET and that she's not in trouble because I've been standing around blabbing like an idiot-"
"-f-f----n-e, L-a--y--- T---s--e," a distorted voice came from her PET. "-ayi-- aw--a--y--- Cri----"
-
"What's Silver...?" Omega-Xis grumbled mostly to himself as Triese bounced along to wherever her whims were taking her.
Everything else that Triese was describing greatly unnerved Geo. Something about the future not having Wave Roads? And her own Net being messed up? Although, if he recalled correctly, there was also someone in the chatroom who had mentioned that their whole world was under the influence of some dark apocalyptic force, so maybe that program just brought together hurt and broken worlds...
He was shaken from his thoughts as the strange cracking sound scratched at his eardrums.
"Let's talk about this on our way to WAZA, ok?" Geo suggested, beckoning her over to the wicket on the other side of the river, "It sounds like your Navi is still working. So that's good at least."
Working was a generous way of putting it, Geo knew, but it was actually kind of impressive that the PET was holding up so well to the Noise. Crimson, however, was weird and stable and also a ticking time bomb, and memories of how volatile the stuff could be quickly came to mind. Thankfully a train for WAZA would be arriving soon, but for Geo, it would not arrive fast enough to calm his building nerves.
Omega-Xis picked up on this and deftly intervened with a conversational topic of his own, "Triese! Why don't you tell us all about these strange 'planets' you've visited. Me and Geo here haven't done much traveling around any futures or whatever, so clue us in on things! How're things going out there in the extended chatroomiverse!"
-
Triese was quick to follow Geo across the river, though she was sticking awfully close to him now that they were a little more exposed. She smiled brightly at Omega-Xis' question, but felt it was probably best to keep her voice down for now... They'd never know what kind of people could be eavesdropping at any moment!
"Yeah! Yeah! Sure! I mean, I'm gonna keep it on the down-low, since," she began, pausing as her eyes shifted around. "I don't wanna get caught. But, uh, don't worry, I'm thinking of cover stories already!" She had already posed herself as a kind of amateur historian at the gala, which would probably work just fine here, too, given she was about to present a PET to someone from the future... It helped that there was a bit of truth to the cover story, too. She did like history! It's just that, also... On these alien planets, the stuff she liked... was the history... or something like that... (Was she history...?)
"It's a little hard to describe what goes on in the chatroom, but I've been to a couple places! I think my friend's been to a lot more than me, buuuuuut," Triese began, tapping her chin as she ran through the past few months' events in her head. "I've been to a 24XX place a couple of times! They've got holograms and viruses that make weird ground to live on and stuff! I also went to a beach party once, in a world where we had to wear this metal stuff so we wouldn't become evil or something like that? I didn't really understand it! And there's a couple other worlds that are sort of like mine, but a little further ahead, 'cuz they didn't have an Internet breakdown like we did..." She curled her lip. "Now that I think about it, I haven't been to that many places! I should explore around a little more... Y'know, as long as the time police aren't real and aren't going to get me..."
-
The train arrived promptly and Geo quickly spotted a pair of seats far enough away from anyone else. Omega-Xis, seeing as his job of conversation starter was successful, went back into the Hunter for now.
It was hard to imagine at first, but now that there was a real actual person in front of him from the chatroom, it really cemented the whole thing. This wasn't just some text on a screen, these were real people from real worlds.
But from what it sounded like, all these other worlds seemed as variable and different as the people that came from them. Maybe he should visit some one of these days, explore a bit himself!
"Time police aren't real, or at least, I haven't encountered any," Geo mused.
"I feel like if there were any we'd have heard of them by now," Omega-Xis griped from the Hunter, "Considering..."
Geo peered down at him, taking a moment to remember Clockman and all that, then gave him a nod as it all came back to him. He wondered if that Lan would show up in the chatroom at some point...
"You know, if the time police aren't real," Geo pondered, tilting his head, "There's probably nothing stopping us from sharing technology and information across time and space. That must be how you got your visualizer right?"
"What're you thinking, Geo? You wanna give her spoilers for what happens?" Omega-Xis asked.
"Well, I mean..." he hummed, thinking a bit, "If it can help someone, then sure, why not?"
-
Triese took a moment to stare in wonder at how the bus seemingly glided through thin air with the help of some holographic tracks - it really was the definition of futuristic, wasn't it?! But! She had to act like this was normal! She was in the future again! She was definitely from here and knew everything and nothing was going to out her as being a time criminal!!
She couldn't help but lean in a little as Omega-Xis' voice trailed off, but Geo's follow-up question instantly encouraged her into going on a tangent. "Well! Okay! So, like, here's the thing! Here's how I think about it!" she began, keeping her voice down just in case. "So, think of it like a school of fish, right? If a fish breaks off from the school and starts swimming at an angle two degrees differently from everyone else, and it keeps swimming straight forward, eventually it's going to veer way off-course, right? It's like, um, it's like the butterfly thing! If all our worlds are different, then that means our futures are probably even more different! So it doesn't matter if we share time travel info stuff, because we're not even going to have that future!"
Pausing briefly, she fiddled with her Visualizer again. "Um, with that being said, 'tho..." she muttered. "I don't really know a lot about my friend's future? They had to do this thing called the Net Reset, and I don't remember why, so they don't really have Navis anymore. There's holograms... and the viruses are in the real world... and, uh." Her lip twitched. "Well, there's some other stuff, but I dunno how much that has to do with it being the future! That's more just the other worlds having all this cool tech stuff, like, um." She tapped her chin as she recalled Ellen's infodump at the beach party. "Like that Cross Fusion stuff, and I think there was something like it called a EM-Wave-something."
-
"Butterfly thing...?" Omega-Xis piqued with a grumble.
"Probably the 'Butterfly effect'," Geo clarified, "It's the idea that something small can cause massive effects down the road, like a butterfly's flap causing a typhoon overseas."
"Well that's stupid," he griped.
"What's way more concerning is this future you keep talking about... That doesn't sound good, I wonder what caused all that," Geo hummed, holding his chin.
"You thinking you could do something to stop that? Won't that cause a paradox?" Omega-Xis pressed.
"Not necessarily," Geo shook his head, "Since we're obviously dealing with the many worlds hypothesis, which I guess isn't really a hypothesis anymore, anything we do isn't going to effect their future, but we can learn how they arrived at that future and avoid anything that causes that. It'll probably be pretty hard, I'm just one kid, but there's gotta be something I can at least do, right?"
Omega-Xis huffed and chuckled in the Hunter, "We'll have to track one of them down, pretty sure that lightning bolt kid in the chatroom is one of those future kids."
"Maybe, but we can do that later," Geo shifted in his seat to better face Triese, "What's Cross Fusion?"
As the train hovered across the ground on a growing and shrinking rail made of light, it passed through futuristic suburbs and then into forests, heading towards a mountain range in the distance. The trees were too dense to really get a good view of it all, but once they broke through the forest, the view opened up showing far off cities of towering buildings shining in the daylight.
-
Triese was indignant at the idea that a very smart and reasonable conclusion for why all the worlds were so weird could be dismissed so easily, but at least Geo was showing the right amount of sympathy. "Oh! Yeah! The lightning bolt person! They're my friend, too!" she enthusiastically admitted. "Well, um, to be honest, I don't really fully understand why things ended up the way they did, but that's just kind of how things are sometimes, right?"
She paused, looking a little sad as she scratched her chin. "Like, with all the bad stuff that happened in my world, I guess. Sometimes it's just random. You can't really stop a... weird bug, or whatever," she speculated. "But you're right! There's always something we can do, to make sure the future's better!" She gave Geo a bright smile, before souring and glancing at her bag, as if to mourn the current state of her PET. "I guess I was trying to do something useful like that earlier, but whatever this Noise stuff is is interrupting it..."
Any disappointment she felt instantly evaporated as soon as their view changed to overlook the mountain range. She really was easy to please... but what was she going to do, not marvel at the spectacle of big futuristic cities?! It was cool the first time, and cooler the second time, and... oh, oh!
Sneaking the Visualizer closer to her face, she spotted the distant mazes of Wave Roads that covered the city. She didn't verbally react, worried that finding this too cool would draw too much attention to her, but her mouth popped open nonetheless... and that enthusiasm immediately carried over once Geo asked her the question of the hour. "Th-this is so cool, wow, wow, it's like a movie or something, but- um, um!" she excitedly rambled as she composed herself. "Wow, I'm surprised that all the future places don't have it! Although I guess it's a secret... I think...? But, um, anyways, it's when an Operator and a Navi can fuse together with this thing called a Synchro Chip!" Her fists were clenched with excitement as she explained. "I-it's not a thing where I'm from, but it's apparently real in other places, and I really want my friend to try it! But she doesn't want to..." She puffed her cheeks, feigning annoyance. "It's weird, right? I mean, if they could do it, who wouldn't want to do a cool transforming thing...?!"
-
"Yeah Geo, who wouldn't?" Omega-Xis ribbed.
Geo made an off-kilter smile, coughed, and quickly regained composure, "That sounds really cool! I can't believe they had such a technology in 20XX, even if it was a different 20XX than the one I'm familiar with. Combining with a Navi, huh?"
He smiled pleasantly, he could easily imagine someone with a bond like Lan and Megaman doing something like that.
"Yeah, normally you'd need an alien," Omega-Xis guffawed.
"Mega...!" Geo hissed, raising his arm up to grimace at him.
Omega-Xis threw back his head in a roaring laugh for way too long before gathering himself for half a second and then said assuredly, "Aliens aren't real, everyone knows that."
Geo let out a sigh, then glanced over at Triese with a light-hearted smile. Surely she could tell that was a joke, right? Even if it was extremely, very much true.
