HeatMan briefly considered blowing this kid to smithereens. He would never do such a thing, even if he were capable of it, but the temptation was there. Good thing such thoughts were morally neutral — though they made his job as a morality guide so difficult.

How could he condemn dark chips without sounding lame as hell? Up until this point, he had lucked out spending his time around people who hated the things, good guys and bad guys alike. Navi corruption actually wasn’t a thing most people wanted, contrary to what Nebula wanted you to believe. Someone voluntarily working with them wouldn’t care about that, though.

What exactly happened to Rei’s navi?

“Dark chips?” HeatMan said, similarly nonchalant. “You mean your navi’s not strong enough to win a netbattle without ‘em? And here I was thinkin’ ya got through the undernet with skill.”

Rei was further gone than expected if he worked for Nebula. Working with him was hard, but not impossible. After all, this was not HeatMan’s world, nor the Nebula he knew. Maybe this Nebula was… ineffectual. Nonthreatening. God, he could only dream.

+++

The navi moved at lightning pace, weaving through the net’s pathways with ease. If it wanted, it could have effortlessly shaken Celestra off its trail. Rather, it had different plans. Its elaborate path brought it to a wide open area at a dead end, a place that could have been a hub for life if any other navis were around. There it stopped and turned to face Celestra.

The navi’s form was of a bird, tall with blue feathers. His frame had a purple tint to it, the edges frayed with pixels straying off. Lan didn’t recognize him, but he knew dark chip corruption when he saw it. And who else could get access to that many dark chips but Nebula?

“Hey, what’s going on?!” exclaimed the navi, clearly irritated. “Can’t a guy travel the net in peace?”

“Peace?!” Lan sputtered. “But-!”

He was wasting time arguing. This navi was fast. If he got away, he would surely cause some sort of trouble. So, instead of saying anything more, he got straight to business. “Battle routine, set!”

CW: psychological torture

The sun glistened against miles of shop windows, each displaying the latest in computer technology. Twin boys shepherded their father through the crowded streets, outshining the blazing star above. They talked, they smiled, they laughed. Nothing could separate them. So long as they had each other, this fleeting moment of happiness could last an eternity.

Yuichiro Hikari awoke in a level of pain known only to the denizens of Hell. The immutable torment of SoulNet continued to tear into his heart, a sensation that returned with a vengeance each time he learned to ignore it. His chest heaved up and down, doing nothing to satiate the anguish. Exacerbated by this torment was the wretched throbbing where his left eye should have been. Though given the best medical care Nebula had to offer, it was still an emergency procedure performed with basic equipment. A full-fledged hospital, this was not. Maybe that horse should have killed him.

But he could have handled that pain if the recovery didn’t require so much rest. Until recently he had been bedridden, torn from his work and his research, the things that truly mattered. Worst of all, he was getting assaulted by those dreams again. Trite nonsense with zero bearing on his life, yet they always brought the most unbearable pain. He was weak. Until he could rid himself of these nightmares, he would not know peace.

Wallowing in misery was getting him nowhere. It was unproductive. He was not the man in those dreams, and the similarities those children bore to people he knew were coincidental. The woman he often saw did not exist. It was fiction. What kind of scientist would he be if he couldn’t separate fiction from reality?

Repeating this to himself like a mantra, he pushed himself out of bed. He walked past the light, his dresser, a hairbrush, anything that could distract him, and trudged into his office. There, he slunk into his chair and waited for his remaining eye to adjust to the blinding computer light. Popping a painkiller too many with a cold mug of coffee, he got to work.

Ah, good news at last.

Below miles of complicated code, his computer terminal blinked at him, awaiting the next command. The program he had spent his waking hours preparing, dubbed RESURRECT.BAT, was finally compiled. If only he were in the mental state to get excited over it.

Still, he needed to satiate his curiosity. He downed the rest of his coffee, then entered a simple command: run.

Activating...
Loading program... Moon.AMP loaded.
Running RESURRECT.BAT...

From here, the program appeared to hang. Other processes on the computer ground to a halt, the program taking all available resources. Yuichiro balled his hand into a fist as he watched, his leg bouncing up and down impatiently. Any time now. Any time. (Don’t think about the dream — It’s not real. It was never real.)

After several agonizing minutes, something changed.

RESURRECT.BAT successful. ARISE, VIRUS OF THE NIGHT!

With a burst of dark energy, a creature materialized on the network. What exactly it was would be inconceivable to an onlooker, much less what it was supposed to look like. Its vertices protruded and receded every which way, its textures missing or mapped incorrectly. It shambled about with jerky movements, but it moved nonetheless. The Moon virus lived once more.

Yuichiro swore under his breath. The result was embarrassing for a scientist of his caliber. Given more time, research and data he could have restored the virus in a better state — a perfect one, even. Alas, this would have to do for now. So long as its capabilities remained intact, its appearance didn’t matter.

He opened a diagnostics window, running some preliminary checks. The beast wandered aimlessly around the computer in the meantime, surprisingly tame in its nature. Whatever aggression it held was absent, or perhaps waiting on a target.

Target, target… A true test of the virus’s capabilities required one. If successful, it could rid Yuichiro of the nightmares that plagued him. Before he could do that, he needed to know the extent to which it could manipulate them. The question was: who would be the test subject?

MegaMan was usually the go-to, but Yuichiro thought otherwise this time around. The navi had other matters to attend to, he didn’t need the distraction. (His nightmares might prove too insightful.) There was always someone else in Nebula, or abducting someone to play the role…

But it didn’t have to be that complicated. With a bit more digging, Yuichiro discovered a chatroom handle within the virus’s files, right alongside his own. ShadowWolf. That boy from… that nightmare. Another dream that never happened. Why his name would show up was a mystery. Didn’t matter — the username and instance information were already there. He would be the perfect target.

“Okay, my little abomination,” Yuichiro muttered to the virus as he typed some commands. “Do what you do best. Enter this boy’s dream.”

Oddly obedient, the virus obeyed. It established a connection to the boy, one Reg Garret, sound asleep, and got to work. Within the plane of dreams, it generated an endless landscape of rock and regolith, broken only by a high-tech facility…

“You ever considered a job?” HeatMan asked a bit too bluntly. “Y’know, somethin’ safer and more consistent than tradin’ with randos in the Undernet.”

He knew enough criminals to know it wasn’t that simple. Many individuals turned to crime when a steady job wasn’t an option. At the same time, he had to rule it out as an option before finding the right way to get Rei on a better path. There was always a solution, but it wasn’t a one-size-fits-all matter.

“Sure, they pay ya big bucks now, but it’s not a sustainable lifestyle. Ya gotta deal with the officials at some point, and they’re stealin’ that change if you’re lucky — if not, they’re ruinin’ your life.”

He tried not to come across as too goody-goody. Crime wasn’t something people often did for fun, and even those who did had their complaints with it. HeatMan just had to find out how Rei felt about it.

+++

Lan fidgeted in his seat as Celestra traversed the net, the short trip feeling like an eternity. What if Nebula was already causing trouble? What if there were too many of them? What if, what if… he just wanted to get the stress over with.

At the very least, his navi believed in his woes. That should have been a relief. It wasn’t.

As they entered the proper net area, a navi whisked by them, nothing more than a blur. Nonetheless, Lan jumped out of his seat over it. “Hey, I don’t recognize that navi! They have to be from Nebula! Come on, get after them!”

The homepage matched Rei’s aesthetic, even if it was a bit lacking. The boy clearly put a lot of effort into his appearance, yet his other avenues of expression, his room and his homepage, seemed plain in comparison. HeatMan still couldn’t determine what wealth bracket Rei slotted into; was he a spoiled rich kid turning to crime as an outlet for rebellion, or was it a necessity for him to survive? Did he have the money for more customization?

The thought weighed on him as he followed Rei’s directions. He stepped through the warp pad, arriving at an unfamiliar part of the net. It didn’t take much time to reach the entrance to the Undernet, however. The foreboding aura of evil greeted him before anything else, enough to deter a navi with less bravado.

No one batted an eye as he entered the Undernet proper. Flames and a demon-inspired face did wonders for making HeatMan pass the sinister test with no effort on his own part. As such, he held no concerns over being gatekept, nor seen as an easy target — not until he faced whatever shady figure Rei had struck a deal with.

Like all parts of the Undernet, the space was inhospitable and difficult to navigate. HeatMan was content to wander his way to their destination, though, and opted to strike a conversation in the meantime.

“So why’re we lookin’ for jobs? Need a quick buck? Or is it out of sheer love of the game?”

+++

Lan scrunched his eyebrows together. “Are you okay? I could have Sherrice and Mr. Famous look at you… after we find Nebula, if that’s alright.”

He was concerned about the potential of his navi having issues, but their mission was urgent. They could already be too late to stop the trouble that Nebula was surely causing. It wasn’t like his anxiety could get worse.

“Anyway, uh, you just keep going left. You’ll have to go through all three areas of this city’s net before you reach ours.”

Maybe it wasn’t too worrisome. They didn’t go to their city’s network too often just in case someone caught on, so it’s possible his navi could have forgotten. But navis aren’t supposed to forget things like that so easily! He sure hoped she was okay; they had enough issues already.

HeatMan resisted the urge to burst into laughter at Rei’s expectation that he would do anything shady. Luckily, his resting smile did a great job at masking it.

Really, it wasn’t that funny. Despite the familiarity that had been thrust upon him, Rei didn’t actually know anything about HeatMan. There was no way to intuit that he was specially-programmed to guide his operators out of dodgy situations — it wasn’t like his name was MoralMan or something. On that note, this wasn’t the first time his operator has sent him into a suspicious situation. That came with the territory. It was, however, the first time someone had operated him with the intention of doing the wrong thing. That was the funny part.

Which brought HeatMan to an interesting dilemma. Would it be wrong to guide someone’s behavior in the right direction without their consent? It was underhanded, for sure, but wrong? That depended on which moral code he was following in the first place.

Sure, he could state his intentions up front — if he wanted to get laughed out of the PET. Who would this kid trust more, some random navi placed there to lecture him, or whatever friends he had in the Undernet? It wouldn’t work. At the same time, HeatMan didn’t feel right committing crimes in his stead with no effort put into directing him elsewhere. As much as he disliked being underhanded, it seemed like the way to go in this situation. If not the most moral, then the wisest.

Coming to a decision, he placed his hands behind his head in a relaxed gesture. “Alright, let’s do this. I’m sure I could find my way through. Plug away, kid!”

+++

Energized by his navi’s approval, Lan wasted no time jacking into the nearest device — a desk fan inexplicably connected to the internet. He took a seat on the bed as he operated, leg anxious bouncing up and down.

Celestra landed in a small homepage, devoid of customization. Whether that was due to privacy or neglect was unclear. All that sat in this comp space was a warp pad, presumably to the greater net.

…Except, when she would eventually leave, she would not find herself aligned with the various streetlights and lamps that lined the outside road. Strangely, this computer didn’t sit relative to its position in the real world, like most devices. Instead, it brought her to the network of a neighboring town, a far cry from where they were intending to investigate.

Lan didn’t comment on this. It was normal to him. They were hiding from the outside world, and didn’t want their internet history revealing where they lived. Directing it elsewhere was inconvenient, but it was safe. Of course, Lan’s navi would also be used to this by now.

Despite his arguments, HeatMan wasn’t expecting to win this human over so easily. People weren’t usually as open-minded as they tried to be. Doubting your own beliefs was a difficult thing to do; already he could feel pride welling for this temporary operator of his.

“Nice ta meetcha, Rei!” he said enthusiastically. He winked and held a hand out, then pretended to grab and shake an invisible appendage. “Name’s HeatMan! Thanks for trustin’ me.”

Briefly he considered sharing more about himself or his true operator, but decided against it. Lan Hikari was a well-known name, especially in the Undernet. If there was any risk of putting that kid in danger, he couldn’t do it. Eventually the two would reunite; for now, HeatMan was Rei Tao’s navi.

“Anyway, it sounds like you had a busy day planned out! Care to give me the deets?”

+++

“That’s what I tried to tell them!” Lan whispered harshly. “I talked to everyone, and no one agrees with me.”

The worst part was, his friends weren’t wrong. It was safer to stay inside, to let the trouble come to them, to let Nebula do their thing until they could no longer sit back. That was how they survived. However, it didn’t feel right. Lan couldn’t sit with himself knowing that he could have saved someone and didn’t. As logical as it would be to wait, the very thought felt like torture.

He closed the door and walked back over to the window. From his top-story apartment, the sidewalk looked a thousand miles away. There would be no survival if he escaped this way.

Out of ideas, he sighed and sat on the bed. “What if we tried following them on the net? Surely that’s not as dangerous.”

“See, that’s the thing!” said HeatMan vigorously. “I’m registered to your PET, but that doesn’t mean much. Navis get switched out all the time! You wouldn’t say a piece of malware is supposed to be there just ‘cause it showed up one day — not that I’m malware!”

Already HeatMan was getting a sense for what kind of person he was dealing with. Condescending and self-assured, with a smile fake enough to make a mannequin blush. Not the type who would easily admit to being wrong. This guy reminded him a bit too much of Regal to be comfortable with him.

Yet, surprisingly, he was willing to listen. Whether he would truly entertain the idea was another story, but it gave HeatMan the space to form an argument. The hard part would be finding solid evidence.

“Okay, well, I don’t know a thing about you. Your name, what you do for a living, zip. And I’m sure you know jack about me, too! For some reason or another this feels normal to ya, but surely it’s weird not to know anything about your own navi!”

Why was this person so quick to believe his own navi was telling lies? Was he that certain of himself, or simply mistrustful?

+++

“There’s no way they would let me do that, though.” Lan skipped over the request for more information on who these others were, not even registering the inquiry. After all, he spent every second with these people; why wouldn’t his navi be familiar with them? “You know they won’t let me outside by myself. ‘It’s just not safe!’ Well, neither is letting Nebula run around!”

He cracked the door open and peeked outside, placing his PET where Celestra could also see. A small boy with messy hair and a redheaded adult sat on the couch before them, heads in their own PETs. Neither noticed the door open.

“I just don’t know what to do!" Lan said quietly to his PET. "No one wants to risk going outside for a patrol, but it’d be dangerous to go by myself! Is there a way I can convince them?”

Well, that was unexpected. This new human was a far cry from Lan Hikari, a kid almost too preoccupied with doing the right thing. Contrary to this man's pristine appearance, his hands were stained with blood, or would be if he continued down this path. It reminded HeatMan of his original operator, the reason he was created in the first place. Perhaps fate had brought him somewhere his skillset could be useful, somewhere he was needed. (What about Lan?)

Nonetheless, he was here, and he had a clearer idea of what was going on. This person, for whatever reason, saw no difference between him and whatever unscrupulous navi he typically possessed. HeatMan wanted nothing more than to ask why, and how, and a thousand other questions, but he knew he wouldn't receive answers from someone who saw no reasons to ask questions in the first place.

He supposed the first step in deciphering this mystery was to lay all his hards on the table. "Alright, I'mma be real with ya," he said, placing his hands on his 'hips'. "I'm not your navi. I dunno what your usual is. There's somethin' strange going on here."

It sounded ridiculous when said out loud. HeatMan wondered if this original navi was something of a jokester.

+++

"Yeah, that's what I thought, too!" Lan said, nodding his head with vigor as his hands continued to tear through the mess of clothing. "Every time I see Nebula, something bad happens!"

He rushed to change his clothes, donning his normal apparel in no time at all. Despite his urgency, he was careful not to disturb the amulet that hung around his neck.

Once he finished getting presentable, he grabbed his PET from the top of the dresser and faced the navi inside. His navi. An odd feeling formed in the pit of his stomach -- unease. From the knowledge that Nebula was right around the corner, naturally.

"I told the others about it, but they all said not to do anything unless we know for sure they're causing problems! Something about putting ourselves and our location in danger. Well, I think we should put a stop to it before anything bad happens. What do you think?"

HeatMan was taken aback by how comfortable this human was with his presence. No strange looks, no confusion, only the annoyance of a rude awakening. In isolation, there were a number of explanations for it. It was early, and a half-awake person could fail to notice anything. Or maybe this human was the type to take things in stride, and never question what was in front of him. HeatMan had met plenty of people like that.

The state of the desk cast doubt on that theory. This person was clearly well-read, possibly even taking notes in that journal of his. A researcher? Teacher? Librarian? Whatever the occupation, this type of person loved asking questions. Why would he miss what was right in front of him?

There had to be something else going on. Getting the silly ideas out of the way first, HeatMan stuck his arms out in front of himself — yep, definitely his own arms, not some other navi’s. But did the human see him that way? He could ask, but that didn’t seem like the most productive way of doing things — not without making himself look crazy. Instead, he decided to go along with it until he had a grasp on what was going on.

“Yeah, sorry, my schedule’s turnin’ up blank,” he said with a shrug. “What’s on the docket for the day?”

The Undernet, huh? He wasn’t expecting a prissy-looking kid like this to get his hands dirty. One more thing to pique his curiosity.

+++

Lan took a deep breath, the pace of inhaling and exhaling measured, practiced. As his eyesight adjusted, he was met with the sight of a dog whose fur resembled the night sky. For just a moment, the navi felt unfamiliar. Then again, his dream had been vivid, and there MegaMan had been residing in his PET. He simply had to adjust to reality.

MegaMan was no longer his navi. Although Lan missed him, his current navi was trustworthy and there to help. This was the reality of the situation.

“Get up… of course…” Lan pushed himself off the ground, shifting his weight onto his knees, then finally standing up. A wave of fatigue nearly knocked him over again, but he persevered. He walked over the dresser, piled with half-folded clothing in a variety of sizes, set his PET on top, and began digging through it.

“Oh, by the way. I saw some people in Nebula uniforms walking around town last night. Do you think they’re here to cause trouble?”

[[ @cinnamononions + @owens ]]

HeatMan awoke from standby acutely aware that he was in a different PET from normal. (When had he gone into standby mode? He couldn’t recall.) The network space looked no different from any other PET, but something felt off.

Sight failing to establish an error, he turned to his other senses, the ever-reliable diagnostic mode — ah, yep, there it was. The PET was a different model, and its IP address landed in Choina. Either the team had decided to upgrade their security measures on a whim, or he was somewhere far from home.

He activated the PET’s cameras, hoping to get a view of where the device sat in the real world. It was a room he had never seen before, comfortable yet bland, with not a personal belonging in sight. It gave the impression of a hotel, but could just as easily be the room of someone who lacked an interest in worldly belongings. He wouldn’t judge.

No one could be seen or heard from his limited perspective. This fact above all others convinced him that he was in a new, unfamiliar place; the rest could be explained as technical oddities done out of desperation by his team to escape the clutches of Nebula. However, a room this pristine could not exist in a world riddled with SoulNet — and certainly not when occupied by seven people.

Somehow, HeatMan had been separated from Lan. This fact did not bring panic as much as it did curiosity. Sure, he was worried, but only about how Lan would hold up. He was confident in his own ability to withstand anything; there was no situation that wouldn’t work out in the end. More than anything, he wanted to know what was going on.

Light crept in from the window, yet there was no noise from the room itself. HeatMan saw one way forward for getting more information. He blasted a blaring alarm from the PET’s speakers.

“Goooood mornin’!” he shouted gleefully. “Time to start the day!”

+++

Lan jolted upright from a deep slumber. His chest heaved up and down, and sweat dripped from his forehead. Beside him sat his blanket, cast side in a big, wrangled ball.

He sat on the floor of his apartment’s sole bedroom, a pillow and a spare blanket making up his sleeping space. The actual bed in the room had been evacuated by the time he awoke, leaving him alone. From the other side of the bedroom door, dull footsteps could be heard. It was, by all measures, an ordinary day for this household.

Lan, however, began his day in distress. This, too, was not out of the ordinary. His breathing slowed as he took note of his surroundings, but did not yet dip to its usual level. As soon as he reached full awareness, he reached for his PET, kept right beside his pillow.

“Hey, I—” he paused to wet his mouth, dry and sticky. “—I had a nightmare. It was MegaMan again, and he uh, he had me in some sort of torture chamber! And…”

He rubbed his eye, struggling to adjust to the bright light of the PET. The screen danced before him, its actual contents impossible to parse. “…Well, I don’t remember the rest. But it was really scary! And I think he’d actually try it!”