First Impressions

Alabastar, Worm, Paradox, and Puck written by Rhia
Typo and Claw written by Cassandra
Dragoness by Nohbody

"Hey, you."

The dinnb youth continues on, oblivious of the fat canid coming up behind him.

"Hey, lizardboy, I said hold up."

~~No you did not,~~ comes the haunting reply. ~~And I am not a lizard.~~ All the while, the young man slowly shuffles onwards, never stopping or looking back.

"Well I did now." The wolf drops a meaty hand on the man's shoulder, hitting the thick, almost scaled skin with a loud 'slap' noise before turning the scarred youth around roughly.

~~What do you wish?~~ the dinnb asks in a monotone voice. He looks up at the veritable mountain of a wolf with his empty, pupilless gaze.

"I wanna know who let a gimp in."

~~"Gimp"?~~

"Boy, you're sure dumb. Cripple, you dumbass."

A young woman stops a way down the hall, turning her head towards the back of the canine. The chip implanted in her forehead throbs slightly, golden traces ripple across her head and down the shaved sides of her head and along her neck. The long ponytail gathered at the crown of her head sways slightly.

~~Some would argue that such an attitude in itself makes you a 'gimp,'~~ he replies in the same emotionless voice, his face as blank as an empty mask.

"I ain't the one shufflin' along like a brokedick freak, lizardboy. Who let ya in?" the aggressor says in the loud bellowing voice he's been using since first speaking to the young man.

Chip arches an eyebrow sharply, making hardly a sound in her camo pants and army green tube top. She slides up behind the canine and, with a sharp motion of one hand, boxes him across his left ear and while he recoils, follows through with a sharp strike to the left. "No, you're the one shouting like an idiot," she comments dryly, hands on her hips and a disapproving look up on her face.

The wolf yelps, unused to being on the receiving end of abuse, physical or otherwise. "Who the hell are you, bitch?!"

The unnamed man takes advantage of the distraction, and slowly shuffles away from the confrontation.

Chip grabs his ear again and gives it a painful yank. "I am your superior, and I don't like what I see. Keep it up, and you'll be on the receiving end of a flea dip and collar session you _won't_ be able to get off."

As is the manner of all schoolyard bullies, when presented with a strong counter-reaction he looks to get away, another yelp escaping his muzzle after a particularly sharp pull as he tries to escape.

"Hey!" She backhands him fully across the face with a blow strong enough to compete with most men. "Did I say you could leave?"

"N-no," he whimpers.

The former victim of the bully turns around once clear of the incident, watching with his soulless gaze, emotionless even at the abuse of his abuser.

She keeps his ear in one hand, pinched, and motions to the other lad there. "Come back here, please. I believe this Dog will have something to say to you." Chip digs her nail into the soft flesh of the canine ear. "Am I right?"

Comm slowly approaches after being beckoned.

"No... YOW! Yes!" he corrects himself after another hard yank on his ears.

"Well?, " she all but purrs, the heel of one of her boots positioned over his foot. "I'm certain this young man has other places he'd rather be."

Biting back a smart remark after a warning tug on his ear, he says to his former victim, "I... I'm sorry." Another yank, after a pause. "Sorry for callin' you a freak and gimp and all that."

Chip gives a nod to Comm, indicating it's alright for him to go.

Comm nods, and returns on his previous course, not giving even the briefest of glances back to the bully or the dinnb's rescuer.

She turns to the canine, staring him straight in the eye. "And if I ever hear of you so much as peeping at another of your associates in such a manner, I will personally escort you to the medlab to have you neutered like a pet dog, because that's what you're going to be. MY pet. Do you completely understand me, Youngling?"

"Y...yes Ma'am," he chokes out, involuntarily closing his legs at the mention of neutering.

"Good boy." She releases his ear.

Once released, the canid almost literally scampers away in the opposite direction of the scarred one's slow shuffle.

"And I didn't release you then, either!" she calls after him, and makes a mental note to look up the Newbie and report him to his Mentor.

Chip turns and looks after where the other went, following after him to make certain he's alright

Comm hasn't gone too far, limited in mobility as he is. ~~Thank you,~~ he says, a strange echoing voice coming from his mind as he continues onwards, seemingly in the direction of the cafeteria.

"My pleasure. You heading to eat?"

~~Yes, I am,~~ comes the plain reply. ~~You may join me, if you wish. I do not object.~~ \\Someone who is not mean to me?\\ he asks himself silently, confused at the change of events from his usual treatment, which had only lessened since his arrival, not ceased.

She chuckles. "Ah. A mindreader, then, I assume." Without any fuss and with a huge stretch to crack her back, Chip assumes a spot directly to Comm's side -- a silent statement of equality between her and him. A few of the newbies in the area widen their eyes at her and give immediate respect to the _pair_.

~~Psypath, to be exact.~~ He stops in his tracks, and turns to face the woman. ~~Why did you help me? You did not owe me an ob.~~

"I don't like prejudice, of any type. No one deserves abuse -- though sometimes it's needed to make a point," she amends ruefully.

Chip pats him softly on the shoulder. "You don't have to be afraid of me. I know what it's like to be different. Most around here do, it's just that.. being different makes some people angry, and they need to take it out on someone else. You seem to handle it well though. Those are the best types of people." The tech beams at him, purely genuine.

~~I endure. What else is there?~~

"Besides what?" Chip blinks, vaguely taken aback.

~~To say my life has not been a walk along a garden path would be an understatement that would make the stoutest Briton blink. I have had no time to focus on any thing besides survival. That includes my lack of social graces.~~ For the briefest of moments, what seems like a fractional smile appears, though easy to miss if one didn't look carefully. Beyond that, however, his expression remains as empty as before.

"I know. Life isn't easy. Shit, man, life is hell. But hey, " she offers a little grin, " if it'll help you.. 'endure', as you say, you can always talk to me. I'd like to be your friend." She offers a hand tipped in oddly glowing yellow nails. "I'm Chip, apprentice Second to the Hacker Master."

The thick skin covering his hand reflects the light oddly as he lifts it to take her hand in his, giving a brief handshake. ~~I am called Comm. That seems to be the extent of my life, through a convenient comm port,~~ he notes in a matter-of-fact manner.

"Then I'll have to help you make your life more than that. Ever play hoverball?" she queries, steering him towards the cafeteria.

~~I cannot say that I have heard of hoverball. It does not sound like a sport or game for me, though. I have not the dexterity or speed.~~

"Nonsense. It's a zero-gravity game. You'll be as nimble as a cat at it." She nudges him. "I'll get you having fun yet. There's more to life than pain."

~~Yes there is more to life than pain. A lack of it.~~

"You're the miserable type, aren't you?" Her tone is light, teasing.

~~When that is the only thing available to be taught, that is what one learns.~~

"Then you need a new lesson." She drags him to a table after they've ordered. "What kind of games DO you like to play? You strike me as a good chess master, though a psypath would be hard to beat."

~~Until several weeks ago, I was Subject 390CKW2. Since then I have been drugged and brought to this facility unconscious by a benefactor I do not know, busy learning the extent of my limits while I was healed of some of the more 'detailed' experiments done on me. Games have not been foremost on my mind,~~ he concludes, his tone never wavering.

"Alright, then I guess our next stop will be the computer interface to teach you how to have some fun."

~~Next stop after the next stop,~~ he amends. ~~My immediate next stop is the medical ward. It is approaching time for another antibiotic injection to keep the sore on my back from consuming my flesh while the cure is being developed.~~

"Ah, well, that won't take too long. Are you familiar with the computer interface?"

~~In passing.~~

"Ah, well then, I'll have to teach you about it. It allows for free mobility - I think you might enjoy it."

~~Perhaps,~~ he allows as he continues to work on his salad. ~~It seems, though, that my time is somewhat occupied for the immediate future, between the injections, minor maintenance tasks, and other duties that impose on my diurnal cycle.~~

Chips hides a grin. "Well, that's good to be concerned about that, but with a little help, I'm sure you could find some free time."

~~Possibly. My tasks are not self-imposed.~~

"I never implied they were. However, there is always the lesson to be learned that time made for one's self is not impossible to obtain."

~~I suppose that is true. I, however, have little else to engage my neurons. The mind of a psypath needs occupying even more than one who is not. To not keep occupied lies the path to madness.~~

"Just because you are not working doesn't mean your mind's not occupied. Take, for example, the game of Chess. Each player sits and is relatively still, not moving for hours - some for days, depending on their commitment. But always, their minds are at work, planning the next move, seeing the opponent's possible moves and how they can be counteracted. Just because the body is still does not imply the mind is as well."

Comm nods, spearing the last of the salad he was eating. ~~This is true. In the short time that I have been here, however, I have found that no one cares to play a psypath. Some believe I am a mind reader--which I am not, in the truest sense of the term. Others do not last very long, and do not wish to play someone who defeats them by a significant margin.~~

Chip laughs and claps her hands together. "Alright, then, friend, you've just made a challenge. I'll play you at chess -- no one's ever beaten me, either. They all think I'm a cybernetic Android, " she chuckles.

~~Are you?~~ he asks as he swallows the last bite, his query entirely serious.

Chip arches a brow, tapping the implant in her forehead. "This is not who I am, nor is your psy ability who you are. In the end, does it really matter just how much of me is composed of cybernetic parts?"

~~No, it does not. I am technically a cyborg myself; the muscles of my left elbow have been supplemented with artificial muscles, due to atrophy nearly rendering that joint useless. As you did not know me before today, I feel I should warn you that my humor, if you wish to call it that, is usually very subtle. Given my past, I have understandably not had much experience with expressions of humor.~~

"At least your humor isn't cruel, as some can be. As for my composition? Who knows. It all depends on your definition of cyborg."

Comm shrugs, and gathers up the dirty plates of his meal. ~~In the end, it does not matter, as you said. I do not wish to run off like this, but I am drawing close to the end of my previous injection's lifespan. I do not care to have my flesh become a feast for genengineered microbes.~~

"And Comm, " the elder member softly points out, "most here do have a difficult past. part of this place is learning to live again despite it all." She stands and gives Comm a slight bow. "Indeed, I have a bit of computer memory to clear myself. I do hope to see you again, if only in a chess match," she smiles.

~~As do I,~~ he replies sincerely as he rises, picking up his tray after returning her bow. ~~Thank you for your company. It is nice to have a conversation as equals, if only during brief periods of time.~~

"It will get easier, I promise. Being new only lasts a small while, though it may seem like an eternity."

Comm nods. ~~I am nothing, if not patient. It is a requirement, at my level of mobility.~~ For the briefest of seconds, a subtle smile graces his lips. He then turns to the disposal unit, and begins his slow shuffling pace towards it.

Chip smiles back at him, then heads to the exit as she examines her wrist, the pulsepoint of which is flashing.

****

After the injection -- an unpleasant, if necessary, experience -- Comm is assigned to perform some minor maintenance on an infrequently used subroutine. ~~My chaperone, I presume,~~ he says his soft, dull monotone, not turning to look at the door as it opens, his attention still focused on the monitor and his task.

Chip hums softly and takes a seat beside him, plugging one end of a cord into one of three jacks on the side of her neck, then plugging the other end into a port right beside where Comm is working.

Comm nods his head fractionally, pupilless eyes still focused on the lines of code flashing on the screen in rapid succession, his entire body almost perfectly still, save an occasional twitch that sends a subtle ripple down the data cord plugged into his neck. The code pauses on the screen, as he recaps what's been done so far for his partner, whom he has still not looked at, assuming the one next to him to be his mentor, a small human by the name of 'Buzz,' so named for his caffeine addiction.

Chip closes her eyes and tilts her head backwards, eyes rolling back into her skull as her lashes flutter and the code on the screen begins to burst with information, added lines, small patches, the input of code easily five times what Comm had been processing.

Comm blinks, barely keeping up with the code as it flies past. He turns to see his counterpart, and gives a short, brief chuckle as he sees who is accompanying him. ~~Where is Buzz, if I may enquire?~~

"I offered to sub in for him, as there's a small breech in one of the psywebs of our network. He considered it too dangerous to take you into." Her voice is but a tiny whisper, body almost seizing as she continues the coding.

~~I see,~~ he says absently, his focus returning to the code, silently watching Chip's work. Although his body is slow, his mind is not, quickly catching up with Chip, learning from her work.

"Here, " she says, eyes opening as the code comes to a halt. "Let's work on this together. Do you mind networking?"

~~No, I do not. It is my belief that knowledge should not be refused. Knowledge short of knowing what it is like to die, perhaps.~~

"Ah." She nods. "Plug into the second port on the other side of my neck. The main connection I have here will be accessible to you then, and maybe you can learn from some of what I'm doing. Maybe you can teach _me_ something, " she smiles.

~~Perhaps,~~ he allows, following her directions. ~~I am, as the saying goes, ready when you are,~~ he says after finishing the connection.

"Let's boogie," she rejoins, eyes rolling back again, connecting herself and Comm to the computer as the programming resumes.

~~Lets,~~ he agrees, quickly meshing with Chip, the two jointly correcting errors and applying routine improvements to the code.

Chip smiles faintly as her data flow draws Comm's attention to a hidden executable. Still coding, she innocently activates the file, bringing up a small computer chessboard in the upper right hand corner of the monitor.

~~Ladies first,~~ he says a few minutes later, a ghostly finger pointing towards the generated chessboard, though his primary focus is still on the code.

With a flicker of her eyelashes, the board is set up with realistic marble figures, and the game begins, one working on the code while the other thinks over the move possibilities

Comm makes his move, and returns to the code to allow Chip her turn. Several hours later, many of the pieces are off of the board, both sides having conquered about the same amount. ~~Check,~~ he announces, only the slightest hint of pride in his tone before he picks up on Chip's last line of code, continuing the work.

Chip carefully adjusts a piece after a moment to secure her king, then replies, with a soft joviality, "Check, yourself. En garde!"

~~Indeed~~ is his only reply, his strategy subtly shifting to a more cautious, defensive one. \\Feel free to break yourself against my fortress walls,\\ he thinks to himself, the pieces shifting on the screen as if moving on their own volition.

Chip carefully sets up an offensive strike with adequate defensive force to nibble away at the defensive confidence, setting up a very obvious strikes on one hand, while plotting another more surreptitious attack.

Comm's reaction follows a few minutes later, shifting to respond to the visible strike before continuing with maintaining the code. \\I wonder if anyone has noticed this routine maintenance has taken much longer than such a menial task requires,\\ he ponders silently, a soft mental chuckle accompanying some of the more humorous comments leavening the subroutine's code.

Chip executes one of her hidden moves and strikes out one of his bishops easily, a flicker of data teasing him softly as she edits the last bit of the coding to complete the file.

~~Touche,~~ he comments, sparing a few hundred bits of the datastream to look up the usage scheduled for this room, finding nothing planned for at least two days. Attention to the code no longer required, he focuses on their chess game, shifting to counter the new threat.

Chip smiles and wraps her arms around her legs, coming out of the seizure-like posture and relaxing her chin on her knees, just enjoying the light banter of the game, moving her pieces until he threatens them with his, the retreating, carefully attempting to outmaneuver the lad

Comm's body remains in its position, though his mind is active as the game continues. ~~Even though I have not beaten you yet, I am enjoying this game,~~ he comments. ~~Often the few matches that I do participate in end in thirty minutes or less.~~

"I admit I am slightly more able at logic than most, due to the computer processor that assists my thinking, " she murmurs, "but I find chess enjoyable. And what do you mean, _yet_?!" The Enigmite starts to laugh softly.

~~The game is not concluded,~~ is his only reply, shifting in an attempt to threaten Chip's king.

"Tsk, " she counters, sliding her king behind a guard of other pieces.

Comm moves his remaining bishop forward, trying a more indirect approach. If he notices the growing discomfort from his unshifting position, it isn't apparent in his posture. \\Let her think I am getting that sloppy.\\

Chip grins a little and taps a pawn foward to threaten the bishop - or is it to tempt the capture of the "insignificant" piece?

With a mental roll of the dice, he chooses to move the bishop defensively, choosing another play besides the obvious -- to him -- taking of bait.

Her bluff having failed, Chip gives a small pout and again retreats her king.

~~You cannot hide forever,~~ he says, once again going on the offensive, if not as obviously as the feint at her king.

"And you can't keep up your army forever, either, " she returns, effectively capturing another of his men.

~~I only need one,~~ he counters, reducing Chip's ranks by a pawn, the same pawn she was bluffing with earlier.

"But one cannot protect your king, " she bounces back, sliding one rook up to threaten his king. "Check."

~~No,~~ he admits, slipping his king out of harm's way.

Chip carefully maneuvers again, slipping up just a tad and leaving the said rook in its vulnerable position.

~~However,~~ he comments as his remaining knight is shifted to directly threaten her king, ~~I still have more than one man remaining.~~

Chip swiftly captures said knight with another piece, despite any risk it might cause her piece. "Perhaps for now."

~~'Now' is all that is required.~~ An equally swift move in reply, the bishop from the attempted bluff earlier positioned to take her king. ~~Check.~~

Chip shifts her king to one side, behind the protection of another piece. "But now is often very fleeting."

~~So it is.~~ A nearly instantaneous flick of his eyelids, and the rook that was threatening his king no longer exists as an active piece.

A swift response, moving one of her few remaining pieces up to again challenge the king from a distance so as to remain by her own king.

Without having to concern himself with code, he moves with more speed than previously, though the singular focus is tempered by the scarcity of remaining pieces.

Chip bites her lip and sacrifices a piece in order to remove one of his, grumbling inwardly at the dwindling number of effective pieces.

Another digital flick, and the assailant of his freshly lost piece disappears, leaving his attacking piece next to her king. Noting the position, his head flicks in a subtle, barely visible negative motion.

Chip reacts as would any, using her only remaining piece, her king, to take out his.

~~It would seem,~~ he comments as he gazes at the visual display, only the two opposing kings remaining, ~~that we have achieved stalemate.~~

"Typical, " Chip grins, sheepishly running her hand through her hair, retying the ponytail while her golden circuits below flicker.

~~How so 'typical?'~~ he enquires, absently flexing his right hand to work out a minor cramp.

"The only person that challenges me and I end up in a stalemate. You do realize we're going to have to play at a later date to try to determine the winner."

~~I look forward to it, actually. As I said, I rarely take more than half of an hour to defeat anyone who screws up their courage to go against me, and often not even that long.~~ His tone continues in the flat emotionless one of earlier, with only the subtle, easily missable hint of pride.

"You're very good, " Chip agrees, beginning to unplug all the cords, visibly flinching at the disconnect from the computer, then weaving woozily. "I wasn't really designed for interfacing, but I've built up the ability of the years. Makes things easier."

Comm disconnects more gracefully, though has to pause to shake his head clear. ~~Thank you. I was, for a long time, used for psypath-computer interface experiments. I was spared the synaptic overloads and subsequent deaths of my predecessors, but only at the expense of their lives. Even here, technology has its limits.~~

"Losing someone to the computer around here is rare, though, " Chip comments. "I've only seen it happen once, with someone who was far overreaching his limits, and he knew it. Not all Enigmites are sensible."

~~I assumed loss to the computer would be rare here, knowing all the implications of assumptions. As soon as I regain the use of my legs, I believe a stop in the closest restroom is required.~~

"Indeed," Chip smiles. "Come, use me as a leaning post to help get the blood flow into your legs as we head out."

Comm nods, and slowly rises from his seat, assisted by the slick surface of his chair and his hand on Chip's shoulder for support. ~~Instead of having a chip on one's shoulder, I am on a shoulder of a Chip.~~

Chip starts to giggle, but tries to keep herself steady so as not to throw him off. "Indeed you are, and not at all as irritating as one."

~~I try~~ is his only response, his left arm hanging limp as he hangs from her shoulder with his right hand, with shuffling footsteps even slower than his usual pace. ~~It is not entirely circulation that is the concern, either. In their attempt to meld mind and machine, as it were, movement controls were damaged. I do not recall the details, but the result is that I cannot smoothly shift from cybernetic control to physical control, and vice versa.~~

"Ah. If it ever troubles you, I know that the med center may alleviate some of that. You've met Alabaster, our Librarian, and her fiber optic nerve system. Granted, they can't cure it, but they can ease it." She puts an arm around Comm's back, heaving some of his weight on herself.

~~Yes, I have met her, though I did not know the details of her condition. I have enquired of Buzz about such reconstructive surgery, but as of this time neither he nor those whom he spoke with know of an immediately available repair.~~

"Well, frankly, Buzz isn't the best source for tech info. I'll have a word with one of the MedSplicers on your behalf. It's senseless for you to suffer like this."

Comm looks up to Chip. ~~Thank you,~~ he says in a nearly silent voice, a thankful smile on his lips as the two exit the room.

*****

He activated the power switch on the LED computer, and didn't even bother to type in his password. //It's more fun to hack in, anyway.//

A few moments later, he was in. He glanced at the onscreen clock. //56 secs? They would've detected me by that time! Damn these talons!//

Hack*Net is one of the more well-known computer hacking associations on the NexusNet, and for that reason he avoided it. He went deeper into the infrastructure of the system, typed in a few - well, he preferred not to use the word "stolen", they were merely "borrowed" - access keys, and then...

His fingers slowed for a moment and hovered over the keypad as he read the textbox on the screen. He grinned. //Hey, when did they put up this new firewall? Nice.//

A few mouse clicks, one educated guess, and he was through. //Haven't those middle-management-types learned not to use "password" for thier password yet?//

--
The screen scrolled down automatically, white text on a black background:

# *~Welcome to Iris~*
# -Our motto: If you've hacked this far, you don't need a password.-
#You are User #349
#Enter Sysname:

*taptaptap*

#We're sorry, "Typo" has already been taken. But we're sure that that won't
#stop you from getting it.

*click*

--
Typo: See now, RJQ? It
#~Iris message: Typo has been disconnected from chat 67.~
--
#User #349, your Sysname is now "Typo."
--
RJQ: Re, Typo2
Typo2: Someone ran me off the system, stole my sysname, can't break through his block
RJQ: Must be good!
Typo2: Yeah...
--
#You are now logged in to Chat 72.

//Wonder if that Sparrow'll show up again...//

Typo: Anyone here seen Sparrow?
HCore: hey typo. sparrow's been around today but don't know where they are now.
Viper: You want to talk to Sparrow? They'll find their way to you, if you want to talk to them.
RoseZ: yeah, sparrows good like that
BlackOut: Hang on, Typo, I'll get Sparrow in here.
BlackOut: Sparrow's busy. They'll be here in a minute.
Typo: Ok, thanks Black.
BlackOut: np

**Five Minutes...**

#~Iris Message: User Sparrow has entered Chat #72

Sparrow: Someone looking for me?
Typo: Hey, Sparrow. I was
Sparrow: Ah, k.

#Private message from Sparrow: About yesterday? Meet me in TheNest

Typo grins. //Nest? I like this already.//

*taptap*

#Private message sent: (Yeah, sure.)

Sparrow: Gotta fly, the hawks are hunting
BlackOut: Keep em diving, Sparrow.
RoseZ: cya spar
Viper: l8r bird

#~Iris Message: User Sparrow has left the chat

Typo: Keep hackin it. Later.

#~Iris Message: User Typo has left the chat~
#~Iris Message: Typo has joined TheNest~

Typo: Hey Sparrow. So what's up? Thanks for those firewall tips you gave me yesterday, helped with one today. Where'd you learn this stuff?
Sparrow: You learn as you go. It helps to be up on the new and coming versions of appz. Be a step ahead, that's your job and mine.
Sparrow: Though form what I've heard, you've got fingers of gold without tips.
Typo:You've been recruited too? I don't think it's ever gonna lose the thrill though even when I start doing this as a job.
Typo: Thanks for the compliment.

*taptaptapyanktap*

#Typo grins

Typo: Not fingers, though, talons. Made of gold either way

A pause.

Sparrow: I haven't been recruited by anyone.
Sparrow: But you're right, it never really loses the thrill.
Sparrow: Talons, huh? Must be a bit difficult at times.
Typo: Oh. I thought...
Typo: Yeah, they are, get stuck in the keys - so how long have you been hacking?
Sparrow: Since as long as I've been on the computer. Natural curiosity helps.

# Typo smiles.

Typo: Yeah, "curiosity" is a good word for it.

# Sparrow grins

A light blinks behind Typo, signaling the 5 minutes until the transport to HQ..

Typo blinks, and frowns. //I don't want to leave,// he thinks. //Why do they always need me at inconvienent times?//

Typo: Well, gotta go now, Sparrow. Happy hacking.

# Sparrow nods

Sparrow: Later

#Typo has left The Nest

~~~

An elderly man, aged with leathery browned skin, dressed rather like a Hindu monk, slips his bald head into Typo's room. The latter would recognize him as Mentor, one of the Bosses in this area.

Typo looks up, sees Mentor, and hastily shuts off the computer.

"The shuttle leaves. Would you rather not be on it?" His smile is ancient, yet has a distinct glint of vitality.

"Err, sorry," Typo mumbles. "Thanks for reminding me, Mentor."

"It is not a problem, young one."

He leads the way to where the transport awaits, filled with perhaps a third of the subjects which were in Typo's general class of prospects. A tall, wiry male stands to one side with what could be a gun and a focused look. A guard. The gaunt, deathly figure at the head of the vehicle leers at the two as they enter.

//Friendly welcome.// Typo gets on the transport and sits down. He notices that not all of the people who arrived in his group are leaving. //They told us that's normal,// he thinks, //but I don't think anything around here fits that definition.//

"Take care of them, Charon."

"Sir." The transport whirrs quietly and moves off through the city.

Typo sits back, relaxes, and sighs. //Another boring ride...//

To one side, one of the gathered moves, shifting in discomfort. The movement is continued by the next four individuals, creating a ripple effect. All five differ slightly, three of which are female, the other two being male, but are remarkably similar in facial features. Individually, their hair and eye color differ by shades, so they 'fade' from dark to light, darkly tanned to very pale, with hair from black to white with eye color ranging from indigo to a beautiful pale violet. All look religiously at the floor, but the first briefly flicks her dark eyes up at Typo and smiles faintly. The rest of Link mimics the action, then goes back to the floor.

//Cool. They're 'pathed.// "Hey," Typo says to her - //it? she?// He looks mostly at the girl who had smiled, but also glancing down the line. "Nervous?"

"A bit, " the girl sighs, a look of partial angst crossing the four other faces as one. "We are Link, " she offers, and a ripple of greeting nods pass through the five.

"Typo," he says, and smiles a little. "Glad to meet you."

Meanwhile, the transport moves swiftly through the streets, unseen and silent. it skims between two large buildings and blinks through a portal.

//1...//

A series of quick turns into portals follow, ….

//2, 3, 456...8? Oh, I give up.//

…until a hall, much like a tunnel, with lights blinking by on either side, consumes the ship, and it settles.

"Everyone catch the directions?" Charon grins, then opens the hatch door.

//Yeah, right.//

Outside waits a small group of Enigmites, all dressed in black, notably ranked by the military-style white etches near their collars. All are obvious veterans and eye the transport with serious, almost glowering expressions.

Typo looks at the gathering as he steps off the transport. He is rather intimidated and honored all at once. //Enigmites...wow, I finally made it.//

None of the figures in black smile, still watching over the new arrivals as if they were cattle at an auction. Yet for all their coldness, there is a sparkle in all of their eyes and it is hard not to respect them. Not only have they passed into the guild, they've actually leveled to the point of Masters.

From the back, a very pale figure struggles forward. Her skin is alabaster white, hair falling in silken white ringlets. She leans heavily on two braces which extend down from her arms, supports of a type. Under her pale skin, blue paths weave odd patterns, like veins, yet they flicker like electricity, lighting up. A small disk over her throat, specifically her vocal chords, flickers to life as she surveys the trainees filing off of the transport.

Typo's gaze flicks over Alabster, but he does not stare, as he sees some of the other trainees doing. //So *what?*// he thinks, annoyed at the gawkers. //They'll get over it soon enough, I hope...//

Oddly enough, even the Masters pause and draw back in respect to her. The gaze which they give to her is one of fondness.

Typo notes the respect given to the quiet woman, and makes a mental note to himself.

"Welcome, " whispers a voice from the disk, the accompanying movement of her throat implying it is her own. "I am Alabaster, the historian and record keeper. If you would approach me with your name so that I might point you in the direction of your Area Master, who will take you to the Enigmite who will be your teacher."

Typo steps in line behind Link and a blue trisaur and taps his foot impatiently. The toe-talons click on the floor. //This is taking forever...// Then, suddenely, he finds himself in front of the line, looking at Alabaster. //Maybe not.// "Typo," he says. //Here we go.//

Alabaster blinks briefly, then smiles, the gesture one of absolute brilliance.

He can't help but smile back.

"Typo, " she whispers. "You're with me, if you don't mind. If you would wait behind me while I sort the others?" Her smile doesn't fade, silvery white eyes absolutely glowing at him, evoking a sort of warmth that makes her instantly likable.

"No problem." //Cool! They can't all be like this, though...//

"Thank you.." She turns to her task..

After barely five minutes, all are assigned off to the various figures in black, and Alabaster turns to Typo. "Ready to go? Your tutor is busy with the computer, so I'll take you there. Worm is like that."

"Yeah, that's cool...Worm?" He tilts his head. //And I'm the Early Bird.// He grins.

"Worm. Her specialty is viruses, so they call her after the type she's best at."

He nods.

She can't help but grin. "And the Uppers love being a bit.. ironic. You'll see."

"Uppers?"

"Nickname for those who outrank everyone else. Those closest to Enigma themself. Rumor has it the Uppers have even seem them." She shakes her head slowly. "They're also the ones that regulate code names."

"Code names?" Typo frowns a bit, and lifts an eyebrow.

"Like Typo, Alabaster.. names that aren't really our names, but are now." She grins. "Most may choose their own names without ever their knowing it, but others who aren't sure are named and stuck with it."

"Ah," he says, and laughs silently.

She sets off, leading the way at a steady and quite easy pace, not as slow as one might expect. It is as though her feet wish to move but are sluggish to, and the braces are merely supports for a body too frail.

Typo follows respectfully to the side and just behind her.

She pauses briefly, looking back at him. "I may outrank you, but you don't have to act as such. I would be your friend before your Master."

//They really *can't* be all like this...// he smiles. "Ok," he says quietly, and catches up to her.

Alabaster works her way quietly along. "And you're probably right in your thinking. Not all who Outrank you will want you to treat them as a friend." She glances at him. "No, I'm not telepathic. I'm just awfully good at following others' train of thought."

"Yeah," Typo says, a bit suprised.

Repositioning herself on her supports, Alabaster struggles to inhale deeply and set off again. "I can answer any questions you may have..."

"Yeah...there were a lot - more - of us at the beginning of this training than at the end..." he trails off, a question mark in his voice.

The silver eyes avert from his gaze. "You won't see them again. Forget you ever knew them."

"Well, I didn't really know many of them to begin with..."

"Then you won't miss them." Alabaster shoots him a swift look. "You will find out many things during your training. That will be one of them."

Again, she glances at him as the halls begin to widen, but still twist and turn, with many branches - like a maze. "You don't stare or gawk like many of the other trainees. Most find my appearance at first, disturbing and grotesque. Yet you don't. Why?"

Typo glances at Alabaster and thinks for a moment before replying - and then he does not reply with words.

He holds out one hand, exhales, and sends a puff of air across the well-tanned skin - and it lifts, flutters, then settles back into a ruffled pattern that he almost apologetically smooths down with his fingers.

"Well," he says after a moment of silence, "I'm a GC. Where I was made, we weren't exactly welcomed by the Normals...appearance could make or *break* you." He almost growls out the word. "Literally." Typo pauses.

"Normals hated us because of the way we looked...but they didn't take the time to go past that. I guess that's what I try to do, 'cause I know what it's like here on the other side." He looks up at her for the first time since he began to speak, and smiles with sad eyes.

Her smile is soft, gentle, and understanding. One support taps the floor. "It's not easy being different. but that's what Enigma is all about. We are your family and friends now, Typo. If you are curious as to why I look like this, I'm not shy about it."

He shrugs. "It doesn't really matter to me," Typo responds. She can tell from his tone of voice that it really *doesn't.* "But you can tell me, if you'd like." He looks at her.

The pale woman smiles. "I wasn't born this way. I was paralyzed in an accident, made a quadriplegic. People tend to forget what they don't wish to remember, so I faded from most people's memories... though I would say their pity was worse. I came to Enigma as such, and they did everything they could to try to make me walk again, but even Enigma can't work miracles." Alabaster sighs. "They inserted fiber optic cables in place of my nerves, which is what you can see beneath my skin. From the waist up, I now have complete control, but it didn't take as well on my lower extremities, so it's still mostly like I'm paraplegic. But that's ok, " she grins at him, "i'm stronger than I look."

He smiles at her. //She certainly must be,// he thinks. //To have taken something like that this well and come out of it as she has...// "What kind of accident?"

"I was hit by a car, " she replies lightly, but explains none of the circumstances.

"Ah."

The halls burst into a huge, open room buzzing with activity. There are at least five levels, all in a circular, stacked pattern. A few Enigmites chat briefly while leaning on the railings on the third level, while the backs of others are turned from the room, working on various stations of computer and other electronics. Still others slip in an out of virtually hidden doorways like worker ants.

//Nice!// The room's size is astonishing, even though he'd been prepped earlier.

Off to one side, twin sliding doors yawn open as a large man caries a limp body towards them.

"That's the hospittal, " Alabaster explains. "It looks like Gargoyle is bringing Acid in for treatment." She glances at Typo. "He'll be fine. Acid bounces."

"Oh." //That's reassuring. I thought it ate into the floor.//

"Acid being the young man he's carrying." Alabaster arches a slender brow at Typo. "Not altogether mentally stable, but you'll get to know everyone soon enough. Worm's using the computer in the library.. through here."

He nods and follows her in.

She leads the way through another sliding door, this one revealing a five story library filled with books, more than 50 computer terminal accesses and many other multimedia devices, including VR and direct link hook ups. "The major computer interface is elsewhere in the building, but Worm's just doing clean up."

//The *major* computer interface?// He grins.

She chuckles at his enthusiasm.

Alabaster presses one of the multitude of buttons on a panel on the wall by the main desk. It flashes. "If you're wondering, those aren't actually books, they hold disks. there are a few actual books, but we keep most files on disks."

"No one's ever tried to take the infrastructure out?" He smiles. "Anyone outside of Enigma, I mean?"

"Ah. I thought you might ask. No one has ever _found_ the main infrastructure, Typo.”

"Really." //Hm.//

"Yes. That's why we recruit the best hackers. Well, technically, they come to us." She grins cheerfully.

He grins.

“That'll be part of your job, as well. Keeping it hidden. Worm knows the most about it all, you should ask her when she chooses to show up."

"Umm, is she always like this, so - late?"

Alabaster laughs. "Not really, she just wants to make certain the patch she's inserting in the mainframe is sturdy. She knows I'll be taking you on the tour. She may not be the most personable of all hackers, but she is one of the best. If not the best."

He nods. //Thorough, too.//

"I think you'll like her." The librarian grins, a hint of mischief playing at the corner of her eyes.

"Uh-huh," Typo mutters, looking at the computer.

She glances at the blinking button. it beeps. "Busy? Grief, Worm." using one support, she reaches behind the desk and a wheelchair rolls out. Exhausted to a point, she sinks into it and places her supports where the chair had been.

He tilts his head. "Why don't you use that all the time?"

"More exercise for my upper body. There's still a little hope that if I use them, my legs will start to work a little better. It's better than having them be stiff all the time." She muses aloud, "It's odd when you can feel your legs, but can't use them."

"Until she's done, is there anything you'd like to see?"

"Yes...where I'm going to sleep - that is, *when* I sleep." He chuckles softly. "And the main computer center." He thinks for a second, then says, "Also, anywhere else you think I should go." As Alabaster wheels herself out of the library, he comes up with one last request. "Err, is there any kind of exercise facility where I can stretch my wings from time to time?"

Typo's form wavers for just an eyeblink, and Alabaster can see a pair of wings emerge from his shoulderblades, where an instant before there had been nothing but long, feathery hair.

His smile is charmingly lopsided. "I shapeshift," he explains unnecessarily, "and they just get so cramped sometimes..."

"Of course." Alabaster grins. "The facility, well, one of them, should be just down the hall from your room. We'll end up in the computer complex."

"Good!"

Much more swift in her chair, Alabaster maneuvers herself back out of the library. "All rooms are on the third through fourth floors. You'll find them in clusters of five to ten, and you'll notice that the rooms next to you are inhabited by a few of the trainees from your class. Yes, you get a room to yourself." By now, they stand by a sort of pod, an elevator, and she wheels herself in backwards, gesturing him in. "Third level, " she instructs the elevator, and it whirrs.

"Voice activated...and how else?"

"It can be operated manually, but you'll notice most computers here are voice activated or require encrypted input. e program all the computers with voice recognition; they won't take orders from unrecognized voices."

“Are all the hacker trainees overseen by this Worm, or do we each have our own instructor?"

"Oh no, we assign each trainee their own mentor, so they get a one on one experience." She smiles.

He grins. //I'm personally assigned to 'one of the best'?// he thinks. It is a rather intimidating honor.

Once at the correct level, she heads down the hall to the direct right. Perhaps 100 feet down the tunnel, it forks, the much smaller being on the right which is where she heads. "Down here," she breathes, "is where you'll room. Once your training is complete, they may move you to a room on a higher floor. Most trainees room on three. Here." Reaching up, she slides a card through a panel on the outside of one door and it clicks, unlocking. The room inside is somewhat bare, but ovular and cozy, like being inside an egg. The bed in one corner is plush, and a computer is already provided on a desk nearby.

Typo looks around the room. "Thanks," he says, and pokes at the bed. He looks at the computer, but does not turn it on yet. "What kind is it?"

"Custom built for you by Worm, often referred to as the Tyrne30.”

He grins broadly.

“Once you boot it up, you'll be asked to run through a few vocal commands and such, then name the computer. That way you can just ask her to boot up, and she's almost an AI. Not quite as much so as the mainframe back up, but these computers are very helpful."

"It looks fast," he says.

"They are. I can guarantee this is faster than anything you've ever run before. And it doesn't hold a candle to the mainframe." She grins cheerfully.

He smiles.

"I know it's rather bare, but you can work on furnishing it whenever you please.”

He grins. "Yeah, I noticed...."

“Now, the training facilities, gym, whatever you want to call it, is back down that way and take the left fork until it breaks apart again. The smaller fork on the left will be the gym entrance. I'll show you." Tireless, she sets off again, handing Typo the card she used to open the door. "Room key. Try not to lose it." A wink. "Though if you do, I *suppose* I could get you another."

He grins. "Don't worry, I won't. But that's what they probably all say, right?"

"Right." Alabaster grins, heading back towards the door. "Gym now or the computer area?"

"Computers.”

"I thought so. The mainframe area is on level two. If you would follow me?"

Swiftly, she wheels herself down the hall and to the elevator. "Level two." After the doors open, she takes a swift left. Unlike the third level, the second level isn't nearly as similar to a catacomb, with simple halls and most of the main areas facing out towards the center area. One obsidian door blinks softly with a sequence of lights, and almost blends in with the wall. Alabaster positions herself in front of it, and a small pad whizzes out. Placing her hand on it, the door begins to open.

"Do the same, Typo, " she instructs, and moves inside with the trainee in tow.

Typo places his hand on the pad. It is neither cold nor warm to the touch, and gives slightly at his touch. "What does it register?"

"DNA fragments." She smiles. "For those without fingerprints. And, considering, no agent who goes into the field is able to keep their fingerprints, it's just as well. They'll burn yours off as well if you ever leave HQ."

He grins. "Glad only *one* of my forms has fingerprints."

She chuckles. "It doesn't hurt."

Typo shrugs in a cascade of yellow feathers. They rustle and catch the blue light from the mainframe, reflecting it back with a lime-green tint.

The room is circular, similar to the main area, but is darkened. It is three stories high, connected by stairs with access via ports lining all the walls. Giant screens line each level, projecting various images, mock ups, and 3D images. The center of the room is a cylinder illuminated by an odd glowing energy which casts a blue hue onto all the platforms. Figures in black move idly around the room, some working intensely on keyboards which materialize out of the wall, others opening wall panels and adjusting a few wires.

"This entire room _is_ the computer, " she whispers.

Typo laughs softly in wonder. //Wow!//

She grins again.

"Repairs, thankfully, are rarely needed, as all the techs are working on it constantly, polishing various systems or cleaning out caches. All of Enigma's knowledge is stored in this one room. In fact," Alabaster smiles, "there's an Enigmite uploading their most recent mission."

Off in one corner, two techs strap in another figure in black, attaching wires to the outside of their temples. The computer screen to one side flickers. "Direct uploading offers an advantage, " offers one of the tech towards Typo. "Just the facts. The computer will be impartial and harvest only the information that will be prudent in the future. No mistakes." The tech nods to Typo, blue light catching on hideous scarring over the left side of her face before she slips back to the computer console.

He nods to the tech. "How do you know what will be needed in the future?" Typo asks Alabaster.

"That's Virii, " Alabaster whispers to Typo, directing him away.

"Oh...that's why...?" he looks at the librarian.

//That's the first question of mine she hasn't answered...I wonder why.//

"She is the head of all of the techs and due an enormous amount of respect."

He nods. The blue light from the central cylinder reflects in his eyes.

Alabaster chuckles. "It doesn't take up emotions or personal thoughts. It logs history of events, descriptions of any mundanes involved, details about locations and so forth. It's taught to ignore emotions, supposition, guesses, and other such intuitions. It's merely a database. We store emotional responses in the debriefing databank."

"That is here, too?"

“No, that's located in the library. It's not considered to be as important, in some respects. It's more of a reference for agents about to go out into the field. The computer can't use emotions."

He grins. "The *computer* can't."

She returns the grin. "And that's why we keep it on file anyway."

He nods.

A footstep sounds once behind them, a boot heel impacting with the floor in a draw of attention. Alabaster turns halfway and smiles. "Ah, Worm, glad you could make it..."

Typo turns, after quickly fighting back an almost inbred tendency to shapeshift to his human form. //Damn.// He tries to shake off memories of the Jumpers. //I wish she hadn't snuck up like that!//

Alabaster calmly lays one hand on his forearm, almost a motherly gesture.

"No!" he yells, yanking his hand away.

Techs all around the room look up. Their heads emerge, groundhog-like, from their workstations.

Typo blinks.

He realizes where he is, finally, and stammers a profoundly embarassed apology.

"Sorry...I just...umm...sorry."

"It's alright, " Alabaster soothes, a look passing from Worm to her and back.

Typo notices the look. //Damn,// he swears silently. //Damn, damn, damn!//

He looks vaguely annoyed, more at himself than anyone else.

//Perhaps this is one of those times when it's best just to shut up. *Why* do I keep reacting like that, when I *know* there aren't any Jumpers here?// he thinks, knowing why. //Crap, that's gonna take more than a few months to grow out of.//

The thin librarian reaches and urges Typo down to whisper in his ear. "We have good psychs here, should you want anything dealt with in your memory. It seems a lot of those who come to us need therapy or comfort of some sort. Don't worry about it. Come see me if you wish."

"Yeah..." he says back, and shrugs. "I think it'll just take a while..."

"Don't let it get in the way of any missions, " she warns, "or you'll be in trouble."

//Damn!// "Thanks."

"Sure."

"Just in case," he whispers to Alabaster, one fear giving way to another, "what time would you be around to talk?"

"Anytime, " she smiles. "I don't get out of the library much."

"Ok...see you around, then." He smiles.

In the blue tinted light, the newcomer's skin reflects oddly, but can be seen as a golden olive tone, rich. She smiles and arches one eyebrow, the dark green feathers which compose it glittering with flecks of gold. Worm is, by all appearances, part avian, for from her wrists sprout an extra digit, enabling her to fully spread the almost peacock-colored feathers which cascade form her arms and make them wings. The feathers are swirled with many colors to form an eye, enhancing the peacock appearance. On either side, the extra digits are pressed back to her forearms, thereby folding her wings. Her 'hair' is also composed of the feathers, cresting magnificently in the front and smoothing flat to just past her shoulders. Clothed in a loose shirt which clasps over each shoulder, around the wings and a pair of jeans (her boots with small heels being what made the noise), Worm appraises Typo with critical but exotic, large and almond shaped light purple eyes.

"So you're Typo, " she purrs and extends one limber hand tipped in nails that are clipped to half moons for ease of typing.

"Err, yes." After a moment's pause, he regains his composure. "Hello," he says, and grins.

He shakes her hand. //Well, Alabaster was right. 'I think you'll like her,' indeed!//

"You may call me Worm, since we'll be working together quite a bit." A sudden grin breaks her features, and one sleek brow arches in amusement.

"Ok, Worm." He grins. It is a rather shaky grin, but a grin nonetheless.

"However, most of the other Enigmites who aren't trainees usually prefer to be called Sir or Ma'am. Or m'Lady, depending on your preferences. Some aren't picky, but it's best to cover your tracks - they'll also be more lenient on a confirmed trainee."

"Confirmed?" //I'm not altogether sure I like the sound of that.//

Alabaster nods a confirmation, smiling gently.

"I have to admit, I was starting to wonder what kind of a person would name a computer the 'Teyrn'," he laughs.

Worm gives a little shrug and a smirk. "It was mostly for the amusement of the others. I have all the irony of an Upper." She bows deeply to Alabaster, smiling a grin of irony.

"Now, now, Worm, " the latter giggles. "Your name was entirely your fault. You couldn't think of anything else."

"But Worm? Ala, you're just twisted."

Typo grins a bit.

"Perhaps." The librarian grins and nods to Typo. "I must be going - I have several other newbies to check up on. Come visit me when you have the chance, Typo. I like to keep track of your progress." Without further adieu, Alabaster wheels herself out of the computer room, leaving Typo and Worm together.

"Ok. Goodbye, and thanks," Typo calls softly to Alabaster as she goes out.

"Exercise room?" Worm suggests.

He nods. After a moment, he asks, "How many exercise rooms are there here?"

"Sixteen. Four per level. Come, you look like you need to stretch your wings."

//Aah, the art of tactful understatement.// Typo smiles. "You could say that."

Turning, she gestures with a ripple of feathers for him to follow and moves quickly out of the computer room. "Preferences on which level, such as the one near your room so you may bathe afterwards?"

"Well," he says, considering. "Yes, I'd like the one nearest my room. That way I'll know how to get there."

"As you wish. Level three, " she instructs the lift and leads him down the opposite form from his room, staying towards the inside when it forks again. "Keep to the inside of the curve for gyms, they need the more direct power supply that runs through the core of HQ. Here."

She opens an almost invisible door, revealing a large room filled with various equipment, everything from a bench press to a gymnastic horse and rings set. If there is something missing, it can surely be rigged using the pads and equipment around the area.

He steps inside and looks around. //Not quite as much flying room as I'd like,// he thinks, //but good...better than a lot of other places I've been.//

Worm gives an indulgent stretch, fanning her wings wide. "Take as much time as you like. I could use some movement, too. Let me know when you're ready to go..."

With that, she gives a flick of her wings and takes off, landing gently on one of the gymnastic bars, one feather fluttering down as she rotates and flutters her wings.

He nods and tilts his head a moment, considering. The shape-changing shimmer envelopes him for a split second. When it fades, Typo is in his gryphon form. He lifts off from the ground and flaps past Worm's perch, grinning. He gives a small sigh of satisfaction as his cramped wing muscles begin to unknot. //There, that's much better.//

"It's easier for me to fly in this form," he calls to Worm on his third circuit of the gym. "Much less air resistance. I hope you don't mind."

She chuckles. "I understand. Others of us aren't so lucky." With a yawn, she stands, perfectly balanced, and stretches to her full wingspan. Feathers spread to their full extent and lift upwards, so much in fact that her olive-toned midsection is revealed.

//Did she do that on purpose?// he wonders, and smiles to himself.

Worm yawns again and flips down, landing on her feet with a soft grunt. Her crest ruffles, and again she shakes herself, the last few feathers falling loose. "You'd think I was molting."

He grins, circles around the room once again, and lands, shapechanging back into his 'hybrid' form as he does so. "I'm ready to go now, Worm."

"Mmm. Six hours online straight with a new patch dealing with firewalls with tracers linked on them constantly, complete with viral backlash is a real pain in the neck."

"Sounds like fun." There is only a slight hint of joking sarcasam in his tone. //I can't wait to get my claws on a keyboard around here.//

"You have _no_ idea. Wait 'til you get to pull maintenance like this." She smiles sweetly, then reaches down to unfasten her boots.

He laughs softly.

To demonstrate, she rolls her head with another flurry of feathers, these again much sleeker, and her neck cracks once loudly. "Next time I'll have to drag you along. Know much about firewalls?" Her grin teases him; he should, of course.

"Firewalls? Nah. What do you think I am, a hacker?" He grins, and laughs, but his next question is serious.

"What do you do more of around here, though: breaking them down, or setting them up?"

"A good percentage of both, though I would have to say the majority is in slipping past others unnoticed to gather data.”

He nods.

“Hackers are sometimes more like gophers around here. Go for this, go for that. Unless we're causing a major system crash. Those are always a party."

He looks suprised for a moment, then grins delighedly, like a small child.

She grins as her boots slip off. "Imagine a team of five highly skilled hackers simultaneously shattering the entire mainframe of a computer and causing the entire linked network to blow. Or setting up firewalls so the system's own operators can't access the system!"

"So, how soon can I start?" he asks, and laughs.

"Ever so patient, aren't we?" His Tutor winks.

Typo laughs.

With a chuckle she taps a code on a nearby panel and straps on the elegant sandals that are produced. "hacking may be exciting as a solo job, but get a half dozen or so minds together and it's quite an experience. In fact, if you do well enough, there's one planned for three days from now."

"Three days..." He glances at the keypad, but doesn't really see it. //So soon? But it sounds like so much *fun!*// "Well, it sounds like a lot of work to cram into such a short time - but a little work never hurt anyone."

"Not if those talons weave gold from straw when using a computer.”

He thinks for a moment, looks at her, then blinks. "You know," he says, in a slightly confused tone, "someone said something like that to me not so long ago..."

Worm shrugs it off. "Weird stuff happens -- especially around here.”

He smiles. "I should hope so."

She grins. "You'll see more than your fair share in the next couple of days. Nobody around here is 'normal'. But normalcy is boring!"

He laughs, then sobers. //And, sometimes, saves your life.//

“I've heard you're good... but are you *good*? That's the difference between a newbie and an Upper. Mmm?" Arching her brows, she leans towards him so her face is barely an inch from his, bright eyes intense.

Typo pulls his face back - but just a bit.

After a moment, her lips twitch into a grin and she leans back. "I can see you have *something* in you, _kid_, " she whirrs, the derogative more teasing than mean, "But exactly what is yet to be seen."

He grins. //Well, they'll see soon enough.//

Out of sheer mischief, she bops his nose lightly with one finger.

He tilts his head and looks at Worm, then laughs.

As an afterthought: "Though you've made it here. That's a damn good step in the right direction."

Enjoying her own little train of thought, she winks mischievously at Typo. "I may just have to drag you in there for a ... "lesson".."

He grins. "So, are you ready to go? I'm watiting for the rest of the ten-credit tour."

"Oh, you'd think the hawks were hunting and right on your tail!" the hacker grins. "Patience, patience. Sometimes the best files are the ones you have to search for."

"Now, what else would you like to see?"

"What else is there?" he says, laughing. "Where else do you think I should see?"

"It depends on what you want to see. There are the gardens, the bestiary, the medical care center, a better tour of the library, places to get food - though they work the same as they did in your training - and other things. I need to show you where you'll have to meet me every morning and where.”

"Bestiary?" //You'd think they'd have enough strange lifeforms around here already without having to set up a special collection.//

"Yes. Tooth and Claw take care of special use animals we keep in the facility. You won't ever need to use one, but it's fairly interesting to see them and you just _might_ go on a call where one of the thieves or assassins use them. They're the non sentient department, you might say."

"How do they know they aren't?" Typo is intrigued.

"Well, I suppose every animal is, in its own way, sentient. Most of these animals are similar to the people found in the Guild - they're misunderstood, hunted down to the brink of extinction. Or they're just so nasty we're the only ones who're dumb enough to mess with them."

"Ah, I see."

"I'm sure Tooth and Claw would give you a short tour if you ever wanted to see them. A few of the critters are quite sweet on their good days."

Typo grins. "I don't want to ask about their bad ones, I take it?"

"Eh. Everything deserves a day to go psycho." She giggles to herself. "But you're right, you don't want to know."

He grins. “Oh, and the, uh... recreation facilities."

Worm starts to laugh.

"I really don't want to ask, do I?" he says, shaking his head and laughing.

"Even Enigmites get bored, " the hacker giggles. "And then they throw one hell of a party." Nudging him, Worm's grin softens. "It's quite a place to call home. Everybody looks out for everyone else."

"Different from out there, huh?" he asks, gesturing to the general direction of the "outside world."

"Certainly so. Here, you'll always have someone if you want to talk. If not, you can be as alone as you please."

With a final stretch, Worm slinks towards the door. "We have a few minutes before your scheduled run through the system. What would you like to do?"

Typo makes a small noise of indecision. "Well," he says, rather apologetically, "I'm rather hungry."

Worm giggles softly. "Here, I'll show you to the cafeteria. Hopefully you're decisive about what you want, or you'll have to put up with whatever they're fixing. Most opt for the voice-recognition nutrition center, or VRNC. Basically, you tell it what you want, it makes it to your specification. Pizza, the food of hackers." A soft snicker escapes her.

"I thought it was egg rolls...easier to clean up when it gets on the keypads." He smiles.

Worm lifts an eyebrow at him, teasing. "Every _skilled_ hacker knows how ot eat pizza *without* getting it on the keypad."

"Well, it depends on what kind of pizza - I order mine from the place were they put the sauce on top and cheese underneath. Gets sloppy."

"Shame on you, " she giggles. "One Helena way to blow your keypad."

He grins. "My keypads are blown usually within the first week I get one. Lots of holes..." he sighs and looks at his talons. "Damn things."

"Tap lighter. Better yet, I'll give you a manicure." Worm smirks, holding her her fingers so he may see how she has filed hers down.

Typo glances at Worm's talons and grins ruefully. "I wish they'd do that," he says. "I can clip them every day, and they'll grow back to their original length within twenty-four hours. It's something in the genetic coding. The scientist probably thought it'd be 'convienient.' "

"Then might I suggest getting in the habit of clipping them now? You can talk the talk.. but you need the touch or a surgeon on some of these jobs. Nothing like disarming an automated triggered nuke for a loot job."

"I suppose I'll have to."

"You ought to, as it'll be my responsibility to clip them if you don't." Giggling softly, Worm eyes the newbie evilly.

Typo just looks at Worm.

"And be careful not to let someone else order for you - it's a common joke around here to order a hamburger that tastes like chili pepper mixed with garlic."

"Sounds...appetizing," he says dubiously.

"You have no idea."

He raises an eyebrow. "You're speaking from personal experience on that one, huh?"

"You're implying I fell for it? Oh no. I've seen it happen."

"Ah."

She winks, then leads the way to the food pavillion, a large, typical room off the main corridor on the first floor. Striding gracefully up to a machine which has a series of more buttons and a speaker panel, she taps a button.

~Whirrclick~ 'Identify User'

"Worm."

~Beepwhirrrrrrrr~ 'Meal selection?'

"Epsilon Zeta."

~Ker-Clunk~ 'Bon appetite.'

Worm grins as she removes a plate of fresh, steaming food that vaguely resembles spaghetti. "Once you're comfortable with your computer in your room, you can use it to program shorthand selections. Let me know what you want, and I'll help you order, if you like.. or just go up and tell the VRNC what you'd like."

Typo thinks a moment, then asks, "what about fish? Do they have it raw - not really made into sushi, just raw?" //I wonder what she's thinking. It's definitely not on your typical meal plan,// he thinks, the corners of his mouth turning upward.

Behind her, the VRNC beeps as if insulted. Worm just chuckles, and if Typo were to notice her plate more carefully, he'd see the tiny, hair-like strands of noodles are moving - or appear to be - slightly. A whiff of spice tickles his nose like the steam curling upward from her plate.

//Aah,// Typo thinks. //Well, it's at least an appropriate nickname.//

"The VRNC has anything you want. Just specify the type of fish you require, how much, side dishes, etc. Use raw before the fish and it won't cook it."

"Ok...thanks."

Worm eyes her plate. "Mmm. I haven't eaten all day. Hope you don't mind me using fingers..." As she dips one finger against the mass, two or three noodles spin up and wrap themselves around her finger, moving as if to strangle it. Without flinching, she pops her finger in her mouth and uses her teeth to scrape it off as she removes her finger. She chews thoughtfully, swallowing with a satisfied sigh.

"Order away, Typo."

"Umm," he mumbles, and turns to the VRNC. "Raw fish..." //Should I say 'please?'//

~Beepclick~ "Please specify fish type."

"Er..." //There's different kinds?// He is pleasantly suprised. "Trout."

~Beepwhirr~ "Bon appetite."

Typo takes the plate and looks approvingly at the largish fish. Its scales are shiny and its eyes are still glossy. In fact, it still smells faintly of water.

When he's done, Worm leads him to a free table and pulls out a fork, eating the squirming mass before her with accustomed ease. "Mmmm, " she sighs again, "being vegetarian is a pain sometimes... but this is hands down my favorite dish."

"What," Typo finally asks, "is it?"

"Ever heard of the common Venus flytrap? It's a plant which evolved in a similar fashion. It attacks small animals, insects, birds. I believe, the native name for the dish is Vash. Care to try some?" her grin is a little challenging.

"Err, what's it taste like?" he asks as he takes the chair next to Worm and begins to slice open the skin with an expert talon.

"Sort of spicy, like Indian food, with a pleasant aftertaste as it melts in your mouth. It's a bit more tangy than fish, but not as much zap as, say, extra hot picante." With a mischievous grin, Worm holds up a wriggling forkful of her meal, offering.

"India?" Typo looks confused. "Where's that?"

"To hard to explain. Here, chew." She stuffs the fork into his open mouth. "And I mean chew, before it starts wrapping around your tongue."

"MMmph." He looks reproachfully at her over a mouthful of wriggling plants. He finally swallows and says, "It's hard to chew when you don't have any *teeth!*" He grins eventually, though, and says, "If all Indian food is like this, I should go there."

His instructor grins, eyes twinkling. "Mmm. You can experiment with lots of foods around here. Just peruse the options on your computer..."

"I'd be afraid of getting one of those chili-pepper burgers by mistake."

"Nah. With your computer in your room you can interface your likes and it'll put them into files the VRNC can recognise."

Typo eats the fish methodically: after slicing the skin, he grasps the fish by the head and begins to peel it off as one would a bananna, setting it aside on the edge of his plate. Then, he flakes off small portions of meat and thoroughly debones them before eating them. The eyes he saves for last, wrapping them up in the skin and then popping the entire package into his mouth.

He settles back with a satisfied look on his face, nothing but picked-clean fish bones and the occasional scale littering the plate. "That was wonderful. I don't even remember the last time I had a better fish."

She chuckles. "Good. Now, off to do some mundane rundowns of the system. Up, up."

Typo grins. "Lead the way." //Finally...now I'll see what they're really up against here.//

Moving with an easy, darting manner around the others who mill about the Center, Worm heads for the Library. "easy interface here - I'll get us a room where we can be networked and I can give you a tour of the system from A to Z. It's all a logic game in this thing, so you'll have to learn to think like the computer in order to work with it. I promise you'll get used to it, the more you work with it..."

Worm waves offhandedly to Alabaster, who is moving her hands swiftly over a touchscreen on which an image of Link is rotating in 360 degrees. The latter doesn't even glance up as her fingers fly. Picking up a key from behind the desk, Worm continues.

"Most often, we work in a VR sort of interface, where we actually link into the computer and move around as a data byte.”

Typo blinks. "Mmm," he says appreciatvely.

“That way, we can't easily be traced, and we only look like a glitch in another system. However, since it's not always convenient to completely block out your surroundings as one tends to do in VR, there are also stations where logging on is the same as a norm computer."

"However, " Worm grins, closing the door to the room they just entered, a room whose walls flicker with cabling which actually makes up the wall itself with chairs that looks more like dentists' chairs, and norm interfaces with monitors and keypads as well, "I believe one invention may come in handy."

Without a hint of warning, Worm whips out a pair of clippers and trims just the very tip of Typo's talons off. Without explanation, she strides over to a table positively lined with equipment and pulls something free, dragging Typo over to the monitor.

"What are you...?"

Unplugging the keypad, she plugs this new device into its socket, then takes Typo's hand again. Each tip of his finger is slid delicately into a thimble-like structure connected to wires which lead into the main port.

"Hey!"

"It has the same range as a keypad, so simply type out what you want to say with your fingers without striking anything, and it'll come up on the screen. Try booting up the computer – same base code as you learned at the training area."

Typo grins. "Hey," he says again, with more wonder in his voice. "Who thinks up things like this?"

"This is my little baby, " she chuckles. "After you're full fledged and don't have your wings clipped anymore, " she grins at the metaphor, "then you'll have your own free time in which to think up gadgets. By then, you'll have enough knowledge of our capabilities to design them realistically. That's only a prototype."

"Oh." He is impressed despite himself.

He begins typing, marveling at its ease and silence.

"Isn't it -" he begins, then pauses for a particulary hard section of base code. "Isn't it dangerous that the base codes for the training area and here are the same? I mean, anyone who'd ever been working with the computers in there - or who somehow knew the codes - could get in here too."

He finishes the sequence of base code, hits 'enter,' and glances up at Worm as he ends speaking.

She shakes her head slowly, smirking.

Typo blinks.

"You're thinking too simply, Typo. You're thinking one dimensionally while the system itself is completely third dimension stuff. You were never _in_ the system during training - you were in a pseudo page we made to look official. I had you boot up the fake page, " here she gestures at the loaded screen, "to try out the fingerpads. If you like them, you can have them."

He begins to laugh. "Wow..." hes says softly.

"Codes to enter various area of the computer are available on your computer - memorize them. But for now, let's enter the main area of the mainframe." She places a pair of wired shades in his hands, and places another over her own eyes, booting up the computer next to the other.

Typo puts the shades on, noting how the gel-material on the edges conforms neatly to his face.

"Fun to know the entire database you came to know in training is a complete lie, eh?" Worm chuckles. "The key to the mainframe is code cracking, most of the time. To get into it, think. What is an Enigma? it's a mystery? Enigmite? A person who is one, assumably, and a walking mystery, but the person themself only started out as an individual, plain and simple, like binary code. So, " She grins, "type walking mystery in binary code. Backwards."

Typo thinks a moment, then begins typing away.

"Why backwards? What person do you know here so far does things normally?"

"I don't think," he says, grinning, "that I've even met any *person* here yet. That is, not any fully human people."

"Well, Alabaster _was_. Mouse is, Chip.. well, you'll meet her. There're around. But humans aren't always the majority." Worm makes a small dismissive noise.

Typo mutters something, of which Worm can only just catch the end: "...good thing too..."

Worm snickers as the screen blinks a few times and appeared to go blank, only through the shades the words visible.

-Welcome to the MainFrame. Please enter your access and destination

Knowing he'll glance up at her, not knowing his access, Worm speaks before he can.

"Like a math equation, omega delta quad power derived to the fifth term."

"Hm. Right." He types in the required access code and waits.

Upon input, the screen blinks.

-Welcome, Typo. Please enter destination.

The other just grins, eyes shining behind her shades. "Explore to your heart's content. The destination codes are just the names. Get to know the layout while I ready the VR.."

Typo pokes curiously around the mainframe, occasionally making small noises of astonishment.

She stands and walks over to something which vaguely resembles an upright tanning bed, but is larger, opening two side by side. Optic cables twinkle like veins, feeding into the entire capsule, and Worm gestures him over when he's ready. "Just step inside and prepare yourself when the door shuts. It's a little confusing the first time."

Typo, with just a hint of reluctantce, steps inside the pod. //Hmm - wonder what this'll be like. Should be fun.//

The door closes.

~ZIT~ Waves of color and sounds wash over him, in one instant grabbing his breath and slamming it back into him so he staggers.. but doesn't hit the wall of the odd little capsule.

Almost unthinkingly, he immediately shifts into his fully human form. //What the..?// Near-instinctive reactions scream inside his brain. He half-crouches, and waits.

All around him are shadowy figures with minimal facial features, moving like ghosts. One approaches him, and he can hear the vague rustle of feathers.

//What's a gen doing out at a time like this? She'll be killed!//

"Easy, Typo. just relax and let the color adjust itself to you. This is the mainframe.."

Typo blinks at the sound of Worm's voice, and slowly straightens. //Well,// he realizes, //whatever I was expecting, it wasn't this. Fun...yeah.// "This is the mainframe?" he finally manages to ask. He hopes his voice is loud enough to drown out the sound of his still-pounding heart. "Oh."

After a moment or two, the color adjusts to his neural impulses and the area appears very similar to the central computer he'd seen earlier. Worm is looking on with some concern, but waves it away in a flutter of multicolor feathers.

He grins slightly.

"Anything you interface with here can be affected in the central programming grid.. who you see around here are actual people logged into the frame working on things. Most upgrades or patches are done this way, or general conferences. Nontechs can't gain entrance into the mainframe like this. Some hacking jobs are also on this interface, though, admittedly, it is easier the old fashioned way."

"Huh." He grins again, but this time it is a genuine smile.

"Brain hurting yet?" She laughs.

He grins, but is too busy thinking to reply.

And so the hours pass as Worm shows Typo how to manuever the coputer through the 3d until he can get about without a problem, then the basical mainframe commands on editing data and so forth. When he finally is allowed to remove the helmet, it wouldn't be surprising if he's exhausted, as Worm has drilled him hard and 3d is physically and mentally tiring.

Typo indeed feels very tired...but it's the kind of tired that comes from having so much fun you hardly notice you're learning.

Worm bobs her head at him as she aids him from the pod with a steady hand. "Not bad. Anything else you want to see before I head off to bed?" She yawns hugely. "It's past midnight now, and I expect you to be fed and ready to go by eight so I can show you how we slip into organizations and such."

"Past midnight?" //I hardly even realized it.// He blinks sleepily a few times, then shakes his head slowly. "Nope...thanks for the offer, though." He puts away the VR headset, then heads to the door. "You know what they say about the early bird," he says over his shoulder, chuckling.

Worm groans and shoots him a daggered look. "If I had a nickel for everytime I heard that.. think of something original! See you in the morning, Typo."

"Your fault for picking that name," he grins, the last word turning into another yawn.

He reaches his room and sets his alarmer for the correct time. //I must be tired - I'm making bad jokes,// he thinks, before sinking into his soft bed and sleep at nearly the same instant.

----

Early the next morning, Worm awaits her pupil inside the same library room, looking refreshed and not quite so dingy as yesterday, feathers sleek and perked. As Typo enters, she's on her hands and knees adjusting some cords. She stands and faces Typo with a peculiar gleam in her eye. Mischief? Malice? Without a word, she points to the seat.

"Morning," he says, and sits. Typo doesn't look quite as alert as the night before, but appearences can be deceptive.

"Hack into the First Nexus Bank and transfer five hundred dollars from the account of R.J. Stein to the account of Mrs. Joseph Pierson. Undetected. You have, " she glances at the wall clock, "two minutes."

She smiles enigmatically, having named an impossible task.

He blinks, then sets rapidly to work. For the next few minutes, there is no sound in the room as he uses the fingertip keyboard attachments to hack into the system.

--
#*First Nexus Bank Autoaccess System*

(HacK)

#FNBAS PIN:

//Where is it, where...Aha!//

Typo finds the correct password-lookup program, one of the many which Worm had gone over with him the night before, and sets to work again.

--
#Name:
R.J. Stein
#System PIN needed:
FNBAS
*enter*

#FNBAS PIN for R.J. Stein: 345219
--
#*First Nexus Bank Autoaccess System*
#FNBAS PIN: 345219
*enter*

#Welcome, 'R.J. Stein.'
#Please choose an account option:
# 1.) Withdraw money
# 2.) Deposit money
# 3.) Transfer money
# 4.) Contact a customer service representative

*3*

#Please wait...
--
Typo's toenails click against the floor.
--
#Money Transfer instructions-
#Account name or number: Mrs. Joseph Pierson
#Amount: 500 dollars
*enter*

#Please wait...

*beep*
--
Typo starts, and curses mentally as he reads the text box.
--
#Error 314: Account name or number unknown
--
He turns to Worm, speaking tersely. "You're sure you've got the right person?" As he speaks his fingers almost fly over the keys, testing, probing...he tries again, using a different tactic.

"It is not your place to ask questions during drills, " she retorts, arms folded.

He sighs.
--
*beep*
#Error 314: Account name or number unknown
--
//Yeah, yeah, I know that already. Damn!// "Hmm?" He glances in Worm's direction, waiting for an answer.

"Time's up... No one's infallible, Typo." Her smile is gentle.

He smiles lopsidedly, but she can see the frustration in his eyes. //That doesn't make failing any better.//

The other chuckles, knowingly.

"I bombed this test four times before my instructor showed me what I was doing wrong. Oftentimes, " she begins, siting at the seat next to him, " the information we get is only a snippet. I told you where the first account was, but the second was obviously not in the same bank. Try this - pull up the bank's connection link to the other banks n Nexus and cross reference for the second account..."

//Obvious to who?// he raises an eyebrow and types in the necessary commands.

She waits patiently for the little box to appear from the International Nexan Bank with the missing account. "That's Lesson Number one.. when at first you don't succeed, try again, then if at second you don't succeed, cuss out the informant and cross reference." Worm winks.

Typo grins despite himself.

He laughs. "Should I be taking notes?"

"I think you can remember, " the other giggles. "Most of the time, the information will be good. But be prepared if it isn't. Now see if you can transfer funds from the same person to Johnson Doe." Worm hides a grin. "He'll be in there; it's one of Enigma's cover names."

"Mmm." Typo takes this lesson to heart, and applies it to this new challenge. He types fast and furiously.

#Bank Database Search > All Nexus
#Input name:

Johnson Doe

*enter*

The computer whirrs, processing the transaction without a glitch. Worm smiles and beings the long winded instruction on Enigmite cover names, where to locate them and how. The entire lesson takes up the day, with a mutual struggle between the two participants. Cracking her neck, Worm sighs as she finally offlines the computer.

"After that, you have a few hours of downtime, as it's about 8 pm. You're probably hungry, " she chuckles, "but I'll leave the rest of your evening's activities up to you. I don't have anything planned, if you want to chat or something. If not, you're on your own, and I'll see you around 7 in the morning so you can help me run through the system and check various appz." With a quick stretch, Worm slips out of the room.

"Thanks...see you later," Typo mumbles, brain still reeling from all the information which had been crammed into it in the past day. "Oh," he calls after her. "You'd mentioned some bestiary? Where's that? I'd like to look at it later."

"Down the hall from the Main Computer room - take your first right and you'll run right into the arboretum where Tooth and Claw work. I'll let them know you're interested so they won't be workin' with the hounds or anything that might find you tasty."

Typo grins, unsettlingly.

A soft chuckle follows as Alabaster wheels herself into the doorway. "I was beginning to think the computer had eaten you two, " she whispers in her breathy voice.

"I think it did."

The librarian, in all her high authority, giggles. "It'll get easier. Try to relax when you can - the rec room has a few massage chairs and games you can play. The others in there would probably love another gel-ball player."

"Gel-ball?" Typo blinks and shakes himself out of whatever thoughts he'd been thinking. "Sounds messy. Is it hard to play?"

"It's neither. Sort of like racquetball, tennis, and baseball combined with zero-grav hockey. Maybe a bit of dodge ball, too, using a gelatinous ball.. sort of a super, super ball." She laughs.

Her eyes shine beatifically as she angles herself and rolls back to her position in the library, her voice trailing back. "How may I help you, Acid? No, I haven't seen Skitz, check the rec room."

One moment later, a green-haired human bounces by the door, sporting bright colored clothing that's merely a blur. Typo may remember him as the one being carried into the Med Center earlier in his introduction. Apparently, Acid does bounce.

"They must really know their stuff," he mutters. //If we'd only had meds like that...//

"Hmm, well, maybe later...thanks, 'baster, but I think I'll go check out the little warm fuzzies at the bestiary. See you later, ok?" He waves and grins as he exits the computer center.

She laughs.

After getting lost for the third time in what seems to be the same corridor, Typo gives up. He knocks on a random door, and, hearing signs of life within, opens it. "Hello? Can anyone tell me where..."

The next sound is an incoherent scream as something wet, scaly, and pointy-toothed leaps up and wraps itself around his throat.

The automatic shapechange into human form annoys the beast. He tries to pry it off, but fingernails just aren't the talons his instinct tells him to use. The thing only wraps around his throat harder.

//The norms won't get you if you don't change,// he thinks. //They won't get you if you don't...//

"Hey, what the hell?"

//Shit,// Typo thinks. //They Know.// He starts to tremble. //Make it quick, damn you, norm!// He tries to block the screams - just his own, he hopes, and not everyone else's, too - out of his mind.

There is a shocking sting, and a whiff of something unpleasant. The strangling hands unclench. //Quick,// he thinks, repeating the word in his mind as a sick mantra.

"Who are you?"

Typo closes his eyes. "Just kill me."

"What?" There is a genuine note of disbelief in the normal's voice.

//He's playing...// Typo shakes his head.

"Why would I kill you?" A pause. "Especially after the damage you did to the iriconda. I should sue instead."

Slowly, Typo opens his eyes. "What's an iriconda?"

"What're *you?*"

"Hey, hey! Tooth, some help over here!" The human calls over his shoulder. "You ok?" he says, turning back to Typo. //What's *wrong* with this guy? It's a common enough question around here...and that iri's going to take days to heal!//

"Ok?" the human-gryphon cross repeats, stupidly. "What just happened?" he manages to ask.

A female appears with large cat-slit eyes and a buzz cut, a thick pale bronze ponytail tied at the nape of her neck. "Claw? What's going on?" Her eyes flick to the iri. "Keeee-RIST! What the hell happened?"

"Yeah..." Claw looks down at Typo. "What DID happen?" His eyes narrow just enough to be vaguely threatening.

"I dunno," Typo mumbles. "I was hoping you could answer that question."

"The iricobra was startled, and reacted as its instincts told it to."

Typo looks up at this, and nods. "So did I."

"Yeahhhh. You're in deep shit."

Typo grimaces. "Yeah, I know." //Great. The only enigmite trainee with a one-day turnaround.//

"You fell in the dung recycler holding tank."

"Ahh. I wondered what I could smell back there. Well, it's not the first time. Maybe the first time we haven't done it on purpose." She snorts a little.

Claw snickers.

She shifts a furry but amorphous blob to her shoulder, where it sprouts eyestalks like a slug and whirrs, pulsing. Without batting an eye, she picks up the iri and hauls him over to a table top, running scanners over the now whimpering animal.

Claw glances at the scanners and swears. "Damn, that's not good." He pets the iri on the head and it hisses softly. //Shit,// he thinks sadly.

"No, it's not. I hope we can save it." Tooth hunkers down next to the iri and whirrs at it softly, soothing, "Go to sleep little one..." as she flips a switch which hisses a gas over the animal. The iri screams a protest, then goes limp, allowing Tooth to delicately place it in a tube-like container, then into a larger type hole in the wall. To the untrained eye, it may appear she put the animal down and disposed of it, when in actuality she's placed it into a regeneration tank.

"Did I kill it?" Typo asks, with a sad but matter-of-fact note in his voice.

"Won't know until tomorrow morning," Claw responds automatically, then blinks. He looks at Typo for a long moment. Then: "You've seen death before, haven't you?"

Tooth says nothing, tapping a few dials.

Typo shrugs.

"Oh hell - Claw, this must be the newbie Worm warned us about. He must've scared the iri and it responded unkindly. Poor thing." her etched hands run over the little lizard, soothing it into a medicated sleep. "Damn, damn, _damn_. Come HERE Kyrshk." She scoops up the amorphous furball again, squishing it like a stress relief ball until it begins to hum in a soothing tone, eyeing Typo.

"You. Come here. We'd best treat your scratches. Worm won't like it if the iri poisons you."

"And give him a shower."

"Clean up's YOUR job, " she smirks. "Break out the hose."

Claw sighs and rolls his eyes, and hands Typo a length of clear hose that extends down from a hole in the ceiling. "Squirt *yourself* off."

"Lazy!"

"Not lazy. I'm _efficient_." Claw corrects his sister with a wink.

//Poison?// Typo thinks. "What kind of poison?" he asks. "Neruotoxic? We might not need the ointment."

"Oh, we keep the iri to poison darts, sometimes other things. Depends what he bit or scratched you with. Tail holds Neuro, the claws an acid, and its teeth are coated nice with a fluid that causes breathing impairment." She shrugs. "Claw, treat him anyway. No telling how he'll react to it." Without a word, she vanishes around a corner.

Typo submits to the treatment without another word.

Tooth shoots Claw the look that reads "He Must Be New Here and Still Jumpy.". "Claw, put some ointment on those scratches - I'll get the Epsyth to calm him down."

"Who's Epsyth?" Typo responds warily.

"The furball," Claw responds, while dabbing ointment on Typo's scratches anyway. "Tooth's the epsyth specialist, though..." He looks to his sister. Brushing hair the color of tarnished silver out of his eyes, he turns back to Typo. "And you still haven't told us who you are."

"Typo," the genetic cross responds wearily.

"Computer hackers NEVER have much know how on animals, " Tooth volunteers, returning with a small animal on a leash.

Typo snorts.

"You certainly haven't proven otherwise, " she shoots at him with a particularly intensive glare.

Typo shapeshifts almost instantly into his gryphon form, and glances at Tooth.

Claw jumps.

"More know-how than I care to admit," Typo says, smiling ruefully. The chair creaks under him as he twitches his tail, and then the genetic cross shifts to his 'half-and-half' form.

"Just because you can LOOK like an animal does not mean you know about it, " Tooth snorts. "Appearances do not make experiences. And you have obviously had some bad experiences else you wouldn't have run the iri through the paper shredder claws you have."

Claw raises one eyebrow, brushes hair back out of his face, and then starts to apply the ointment again.

"Look, I'm sorry about the iri. If I can do anything to help you, wake me up in the middle of the night, whatever - I'll do it. But I *do* know what it feels like. And I don't think you have to keep reminding me."

"Oh, take it easy. We've all got problems - for a newly, you're doing a Helena lot better than some, or so Worm thinks. She sounds impressed with you - and Worm is hard to amaze." Tooth cracks her knuckles. "Get over yourself." Her grin is teasing, her tone light.

Typo flashes a quick, radiant smile, then sobers a bit. He goes back to petting the Epsyth.

The animal itself appears to have the body of a rabbit, rounded with longer back legs, while the head is comparable to a feline's. _Enormous_ ears waver on either side of its head, sticking straight out like an elephant's, but triangular, like big conical satellite dishes. It blinks eyes almost unnaturally large (and certainly taking up the greater part of its 'face') at Typo, blue as the sky on a summer day, with fur a soft gold in hue. Overall, it's pretty damn cute.

Tooth scoops it up and deposits it on the table, where the Epsyth begins to make an odd, musical and crystalline purring noise. The air around it almost wavers with empathic waves which soothe like a drug or a warm hot bath, as Epsyths are proven to work on even those most resilient to empathic influence. Tooth smiles and scritches the little thing behinds its ears while the gelatinous furball squishes on in envy.

"What are you doing?" Typo asks as the mental equivalent of elevator music flows through his brain. "I like being in complete control of my mental state myself, thank you very much - " He cuts off, thinking for a moment, then shakes his head slowly in disbelief. "Never mind," he says, slowly extending his hand for the Epsyth to sniff. "Keep it going for as long as you think I need."

"Sure." The Epsyth shuffles over to him and nibbles on his hand with very dull, very tickling teeth, so it feels more like being gently gummed with fur. "It's a nectar eater, " Tooth explains, chuckling. "Very harmless."

Typo gently pats the epsyth on the head.

It whirrs and wiggles its enormous ears. Tooth laughs. "She likes you."

He grins and scratches it between the eyes. //Glad *someone* here does,// he thinks, uncharitably.

Rubbing its chin against Typo's hand, the Epsyth nibbles along his arm, a soft, chime like voice whispering in his ear. ~Don't be upset.~

"They mindspeak too?" Typo looks up, intrigued.

"They can, but they're only slightly telepathic. It's how we communicate to them in the field. She only talks to those she really likes, or feels needs comfort. They're really caring little creatures."

Typo nods, and smiles.

With a yawn that implies she's not looking forward to the night's work, Tooth glances at Typo while picking up the gelatinous furball she called Kyrshkk. "Did you want a tour??

"Err...that was my original plan."

"That's fine, just wondering if you were still interested since your adventure."

Typo has the good grace to grin. "Lead on."

"There, feel better?"

Typo nods. "Thanks," he says, and then looks embarrassed once again. "How can I help you? I've made a mess and sliced up that little watchamacalit - and you take the time to help me."

"Deluxe package guilt trips are what we do best," Claw says, smiling a little. He hands Typo a mop. "But while you're enjoying the vacation you might as well pay for it. Clean up over by the dung recycler."

He looks at Tooth and smiles tiredly. "Your turn tomorrow," he mouths to her, "unless another clueless and appropriatable newbie comes in."

"Yeah, yeah." Tooth dismisses him with a wave. "Not if I'm still caring for the iri."

Claw nods. "Yeah...crap, that's gonna put us even further behind on training those Vervians."

"Nah. We'll just lose a night's sleep - remember that the assassins want to employ the use of the ShadowRunners tomorrow night. And we need to take some time out with the 'lizards, " she grins. "They've been wanting a holoride."

"Oh, yeah, that's right...I forgot. Which assignment do you want?"

"Not much of a choice. I guess I'll take the runners. I don't enjoy antagonizing them, but there's not a lot of thinking to blood-exposure."

Claw nods. "Fine with me."

"Care to help, Claw?" Tooth yawns, and pads towards the catacombs in the back. "Most of the animals are in pseudo-environments similar to what they'd be used to in the wild, though most of them have actually been destroyed in the wild."

The genetic cross nods. "Do you have some kind of breeding program going on, then?" //If they do, I hope they've thought about it long and hard, especially with the sentients.//

"It depends on if we have a stable environment in which we can transplant them to." Tooth gives a supple shrug. "Most of the time we keep a herd of them if they're social or single individuals bred by hand. On average we have about five of each species..."

Typo nods.

She pauses by what looks like a stall in a barn, leading to a larger pen and whistles. a dinosaur-like creature pads up on two legs, flippers where its arms should be and crested with a plume of vibrant colors. "These are riding lizards from mine and Claw's home dimension. They're the only two left." A second peeks around the corner, but shies away from Tooth. "They're not very trusting."

"If there's only two left...I could see why not. What are they called?"

"They don't really have a name, but where we came from, they were called Skeeters. Land and water travel." She pats the reachable one on its nose, listening to the soft noises coming from it.

"What's it doing?"

"Singing. It does that to acknowledge a friend. They're actually quite graceful creatures and I find that name to be cumbersome for their agility."

He tries to hum along with the Skeeter's tune, but goes out of key immediately and stops.

The Skeeter peers at his quizzically, then whuffles on Typo's forehead, nibbling on his hair peacably. Tooth hides a grin. "I think he appreciates the effort."

Typo grins a bit and scratches the Epsyth harder.

It whirrs appreciatively.

Typo chuckles.

Moving on, Tooth gestures to a pen enclosed by clear material, with a real biosphere in the middle, grass and odd flowers. "You've met the Epsyth." Other Epsyth bounce around and sniff each other, all of them softly colored, like a pen full of pastel Easter eggs.

Typo grins and bends down next to the glass. He observes the little creatures for a moment before straightening up and remarking, "Why do you keep them enclosed?"

"Their own protection, as well as ours," Claw says.

"Why?"

He gives a sidelong glance to the new recruit.

"Epsyth are not the ones we worry about the most. They crave contact with sentient beings and they know us well enough. The ones we have to _really_ fret about are the assassination tools, like these shadow hounds, " spoken as she leads the way to a back corner pen filled with swirling shadows and sickly green eyes. "Without proper handling these things would as soon kill you as look at you. They run through shadows and can use them like we use portals; they can't produce sounds via vocal chords and they're so nimble they rarely make noise when running."

"How *do* you handle them?"

"Very carefully."

"They're referred to as ShadowRunners - a quiet, deadly way to die...”

Typo doesn't hear most of the rest of what she's saying after that.

//Shadowrunner...I'd almost forgotten.//

She had been introduced to him as a friend of a friend with the words, "Shadow - meet the best hack around, Typo. Typo, Shadowrunner. Quite possibly the only one of us to be able to go out in form three on night raids and get away with it." "Really." She smiled, and brushed black hair out of her eyes. "You do not believe? I will show you, then. It is true." He only had a glimpse of her perfect coffee-colored skin flowing and changing into black fur, then a panther with perfect dark green eyes sat in front of him, twitching its ears and somehow looking smug. "I see." He grinned. Fur into skin, hair, and then: "I thought you would."

Despite his friends' joking: "Hey, Typo, the cat didn't eat you yet?" he found himself spending more and more time with her, and she with him.

"Hello?"

"It is me." "Shadow? Is there something wrong? You said you'd be here at nine." "Yes, mi pequeńo pájaro, I know... but this raid...it is taking a very long time." "Be safe. You know I worry about you." She was purring as she hung up.

"Why don't we just postpone this, Shadow? How about tomorrow, same time?" "Typo." "Yamin? Sorry, I thought you were - " "I know." A long pause. "Shadow's dead."

"…They sneak up on prey or run it down and rip out its vocal chords first so it can't make any noise, then rip it to shreds. Not very pleasant creatures."

Tooth reaches into a locker to one side and pulls out a large leg of meat, placing it in a compartment which robotically lifts it into the shadow filled cage. Nothing happens for a moment, allowing room for plenty of doubt to her words, then a swirl of shadows swarm the raw meat, and Typo catches a glimpse of a body like a long, lean greyhound with enormous fangs and claws like a bear's. The shadows withdraw, leaving only a small smear of blood.

//They weren't that kind to her...//

"Hello?" Claw waves a hand in front of his face. "Nexus to Typo."

"Huh? Oh." Typo snaps back to himself with a mental aftertaste of desolation.

"You've really got to get that fixed...whatever it is. If it affects your work sometime, you're toast."

"Yeah..." //Damn.// "Fixed?" He looks warily at Claw. "Fixed how? I don't want it - zapped *out* or something..." For the first time in a long time, he lets his guard down and looks truly miserable.

The Epsyth begin to whirr from behind him, a good ten in the pen behind all purring their odd little song to Typo.

"Sometimes it's all you can do, " Tooth offers, scooping up the trailing Epsyth and handing it over to Typo. "No one's previous life is ever that easy, but you have to be able to concentrate. Even Worm's had some blockings done. Her life was less than perfect, and powers only know how many the insane members like Skitz and Acid have had done." She moves closer to scratch the Epsyth. "Claw and myself use what we went through as a platform for our work. You're not alone."

He frowns, but doesn't say anything. //I don't want them *gone*...just pushed back somehow.// He scritches the Epsyth idly on its ear-tip.

The Epsyth gums his fingers while giving him the impression of a mental hug, peering up at him with impossibly large eyes.

"Is it me, or are we due some serious vacation time?"

Claw smiles. "I think sometimes the higher-ups go under the assumption that since the animals don't take breaks, we don't need one either...but it has been a long time. I'll talk to 'em tomorrow."

"I doubt they'll give us any, " she yawns again and rubs her eyes.

"Never hurt anyone to ask...well, except that one time when - " Claw glances at Typo and falls silent, but there is a silent spark of mirth in his eyes.

"Oh hell, I had welts on my back for a week, " she winks at Claw behind Typo's back.

Claw sucessfully stifles a chuckle. "Just on your back? They went easy on you." He sniffs. "*I* couldn't sit down."

"You're the one that dropped your pants!" Now unable to stand it any longer, she bursts out laughing, causing the Epsyth trailing in their wake to trill out an enormously happy series of notes. Leaning on the locker she pulled the meat from, she gestures to the next cage, trying to stop laughing.

Claw chuckles, but stifles it when he glances at Typo's face.

"That's a D'kat, or demonkat."

Yellow eyes blink up at Typo, the distinct lack of pupils unnerving. Blood red, thick patches of furless hide link down its back like the connections of an insect's back, ending up in a scorpion-like tail arched high over its back. Talonous claws extend and withdraw, and though it gazes steadily at Typo, it makes no otherwise threatening move.

Typo shudders, and looks away. "What's it eat?"

"Anything it catches."

~

A tap at the door, and Worm enters afterwards. Her deeply bronzed skin gleams, her usual loose attire gone, replaced by a revealing midriff which is slightly more revealing than a sports bra. Her lower half is hugged tightly by a pair of vaguely shimmering black pants which outline and highlight in silver gleams her muscles, supple and lean like a tigress. Her shoulders and similarly muscled arms, well defined for flight shimmer with sweat, indicating she's fresh from the exercise room. Shaking out her feathers and raising an eyebrow, she calls into the hallway, breast heaving with exertion of breath.

"Typo?"

Typo turns, and hands the Epsyth gently back to Tooth. //It's been three hours already? Great...// "Yeah, I'm here. Hi." He smiles and takes a few steps towards Worm.

A disharmonic chime indicates the Epsyth's unhappiness at being handed away. Worm reaches over and runs her fingers through the animal's fur, causing it to whirr in a multitude of chords.

"I see you got your check up, little cutie, " the hacker smiles.

"Actually, no, " Tooth answers, one hand beginning to feel along the Epsyth's stomach. "We never got to do the prenatal exam on her. Your pupil had us hosing him down," she giggles.

Typo mumbles something that could be "sorry," and looks embarrassed.

Tooth winks at him, then tickles the Epsyth. "She enjoyed the attention. Pregnant females often do."

Typo pauses for a moment to think this over. "Uh-huh," he says, sounding faintly puzzled.

Worm arches a brow. "I'll ask about it later - I'm on a tight time space here." She turns to Typo. "I don't mean to break up your down time, but they've caught a hacker near the mainframe. We're toying with him while they hunt him down." She laughs. "Come on, you'll enjoy this.. it's really fun."

The hacker-in-training needs no second invitation. He waves goodbye to Claw and Tooth, then sprints out the door behind Worm. "How far in did he get?"

"You'll see, " his mentor laughs. "Not very. But they're fun to play with when they get close."

"Do all the hackers get to do the honors?"

Claw sighs and turns to Tooth. "Well...I can't figure out if I'm sorry to see him gone or not. What the hell're we gonna do with that iri?"

"What happens, happens, " she shrugs. "We'll do what we can."

Claw sighs and flips the Epsyth expertly upside-down on its back, stroking its chin to lull it to sleep. "Ok, critter," he mutters. "Let's see how far along you've gotten..."

Tooth peeks over his shoulder, smiling. "I can't wait. Baby Epsyth are so cute."

"But you've never had to clean up after the delivery...you're always off cuddling them!" Claw is mock-serious.

"No, I'm the one always patching up the critters you let loose to jump on visitors." She sticks her tongue out at her brother.

Claw sighs. //She should know I don't feel like laughing about that now...// "Mmrumph," he mutters as he hands the Epsyth back to Tooth to put away and types something up in her record. "About 3 weeks more, I'd say."

"Oh, don't be sore. I think the iri'll be fine. Don't you?" she croons to the expectant mother, rubbing noses with her.

"Maybe." He sighs. "But, jeez, did you see that guy's -" he pauses, nods to himself and begins again " - those *talons*? Inch and a half long. And I should know."

He bites the corner of his mouth. "He should get blocked soon. But I don't know...should I recommend him for it when I ask for time off?"

The Epsyth chimes a beautiful tune in happiness, even as Tooth tucks her back in her isolation cage to keep her safe.

"Come on, Claw, " she nudges her brother. "Let's take the Skeeters out for a ride."

He grins wearily, and nods. "Ok. Just a short one, though..." //She always knows just how to cheer me up.//

*****

"We all take sides and circle them in, then take turns prodding them. It's sort of like a catch the ball game, tossing him back and forth. Keeps them interested while we do a background on them."

Typo grins. "Hm."

Worm leads the way to a special lab, where other hackers sit at computer stations in a circle, fingers twitching. They don't talk, but smile to Worm and Typo as they enter, the former leading the latter to two empty spots side by side.

"The key is to keep him moving, keep editing up new false folders and file names. Everything we create here in playing with him is an illusion, sort of a virtual maze. Just keep up when he comes near your sector." Worm giggles, settling into her chair.

//This,// Typo thinks as he takes a seat, //is gonna be fun.// Then, there's nothing but the computer and the VR.

Over the next hour to two, Typo comes to know a few of the hackers in Worm's department. To Typo's right (as Worm is on his left) sits what appears to be a fairly young woman. The sides of her head are barren of hair, though the thick black strands are caught up in a ponytail from what grows on the top of her scalp. Her attire is purely camo, which matches her odd green eyes. Perhaps the most notable thing, however, is the computerchip implanted an dattatched in the middle of her forehead. It occassionally blinks.

Virii, the scarred one from the main computer room is nowhere to be seen, though her name does arise on several bantering occasions, when Worm and the others start picking on each other. Typo is not exactly excluded, but the work he's doing would be much more complicated for him than for the others, who are used to it, and he may find he needs to concentrate more on his anti-hacking hacking than the conversation around him.

"This one's not too bad, " chuckles the guy directly across from Typo.

"Not our type, " the one next to him answers, boredly.

"True, " agrees Worm. "Too uncreative in his application skills."

"I still remember when we tracked your new apprentice, " laughs the shadowy male on the other side of Worm. "He was the most stimulating we had all year."

Typo lets the coversation trickle through the periphery of his brain. //Hm.//

Worm nods, grinning. "He's sharp, like I told you, Oblivion."

"Yeah, yeah, we all knew the Sparrow would pick her a good egg to hatch."

Typo grins, suddenely. //Sparrow. Well, well. And - it'd be completely true to say a little bird told me.//

"Oh hush up BlackOut. Virii obviously didn't train you in manners, " Worm jibes him.

"Nope, she didn't, birdy woman."

Typo is about to say something when he notices the hacker getting close to his sector. He stretches his fingers, and goes to work.

#create file
#name?_

040prime

#created

runscript: fakedoccreate

#running

create fakeoutdocs=bankcredits3, historyfiles1/compositepic 403

#created
#bankcredits3 accessed
#beginning 'download'

Typo chuckles. //Download. Yeah. Sure. Really looks like it, doesn't it, though?// He looks on the left half of his screen, where there is a picture of what the hacker is seeing on his own screen. //Amazing.//

"This is great," he says to no one and everyone.

The group chuckles. "Aye, it can be, " grins Oblivion, "as long as you're not dealing with an alpha prime hacker who's lightning fast. I think this one just struck it lucky."

"Won't be lucky for long, " snorts the leathery-skinned, hulking one.

The others again nod their agreement, eyes on their screens.

**

"Yeah, baby. I thought there was something here," he [the hacker] says with a grin as the download indicator continues to count the bytes transferred.

"Man, this company sure has some hard-core security features. Freaking me out the way it adapts so fast. Almost like it's... it's alive." He shakes his head, his slender hairless tail lashing about behind him. "This'd better be worth the money they offered me to do it. I want so bad out of this dump I can taste it." *urp* "Nope, that was just the pizza from earlier. Tasted better the first time."

**

Typo chuckles. //The biggest surprises come in the littlest downloads. This one hit me hard years ago - and time doesn't damage computer viruses' potency any.//

**

"Oh-ho, what have we here? Really, Mr. Deep Thought, trying to zot me with an ancient virus? You've been so much more challenging than that to this point."

**

Typo swears as he realizes his mistake. //You idiot!//

**

Fingers flying over the keyboard, the tips of his trimmed claws tap-tapping on the keys, he backs out of the fake directory, and tries a different approach vector, going via a route not seen since the heyday of UNIX and 'Berzerkley' in the 1960's. "Let's see if you know this little number, while we're on the subject of ancient history."

Waiting for his slow analog connection -- made slower by a couple of hijacked proxies to minimize detection -- he runs his fingers through his mangled, grimy fur in a futile attempt to straighten out the grungy pelt. "God, when was the last time I washed? The last time you could afford the water bill, dummy," he chides himself a moment later, sparing a brief glance for his cluttered apartment, pretty much any horizontal surface littered with assorted debris, from empty pizza boxes, to old computer components to various manuals, to numerous CD-R discs with various programs and files, to manuals, and more.

"Goddamn I've gotta get out of this rathole!" he yells to no one in particular.

**

"What is he..." Typo stops, and thinks a moment, his hands hovering over the keyboard. "Using a phone line?!?"

He grins a moment, then creates a fake directory which appears to be full of old - yet vitally important - text files that weren't converted to the new fiber-optic standard during the Big Change and hence are still accessible through a modem.

**

The rat pauses, looking over the directory and it's files. "Nice try, silicon brain, but if they were that important they'd have been fixed. Another approach vector is in order, I think." He slowly works his way out of the system, back to the lowest level of access into the Enigmite computers, and switches to a different proxy left wide open by an inexperienced SDSL customer. "Can't believe this bozo is running a Windows box unpatched and unshielded like that," he mutters as he works back into the system through the hijacked proxy, bypassing previously unsuccessful directories and approaches.

**

A few of the hackers yawn. "Don't you love it when they think they know what they're doing?"

Worm chuckles and nods to the severely scarred Virii. "How's the trace coming?"

"The operatives will be severing his connection in a few moments," the Elder answers with bland interest.

"And perhaps moreso, " cackles the one to her left with the thick, leather-like skin. "Hey, hey Typo, " the other giggles, finding something amusing, "try overloading his system with an information overload. If his equipment is too out of date, it should seriously damage it.. and you could sneak in a virus in the overloading.."

"Or he could do as he sees fit, since he's not stupid.." Worm shoots a wink at Typo to assure him the hacker is all his, and that the other is only offering suggestions.

"Hmm." Typo thinks for a moment, his head canted to the side, then grins broadly at Virii and Worm. "Let's see how they like this." Talons begin clicking rapidly away as the half-gryphon-half-human executes a routine to 'co-op' the Message Messenger screen name of someone he sees the hacker's been talking with for a while, 'Proxy.' "This should be fun," he says.

# hey rizzo0: you said you needed a backdoor program?

The rodent blinks at the unexpected message. Wait a second, he thinks to himself. Proxy got zotted a few days ago by that megacorp. Let's see how stupid this computer really is.

rizz0: Last week, yeah. Got what I was looking for, tho. rizz0: Yeah. Found what I needed in one of my bins of crap, tho. Why, whatcha got?

*****

[WARNING: graphic violence; strong language]

"She's in here. Watch it, this bitch bites. On three; three, two, one, GO!" The black-clad figure kicks down the door, and bursts into the apartment, rolling to a defensive crouch off to the side of the door to allow the other two figures, dressed the same way, to bolt into the room and assume similar positions.

"Clear!"

"Clear!"

"Groovy," the first figure says as he stands, scanning the room. "At least this one knows what a vacuum cleaner is for," he mutters, using hand gestures to indicate other rooms to investigate. His other hand holds the compact, customized automatic pistol familiar to others as the signature of Group Nine, a small band of professional 'trouble investigators' available for hire by any trans-nat that has situations too 'dirty' to handle in-house.

The men quickly sweep through the small, sparsely furnished apartment, coming onto the bedroom, the door closed.

With another kick, this door, too, falls, and the three men burst in, gun hands sweeping their pistols around in search of targets.

"Where'd she go? I thought you said she was in."

"Yeah, I did, because she was, visually confirmed."

"Well I don't see her!"

"Becausssse I am behind you," a soft whispering voice hisses.

"Oh fu..."

The leader's exclamation remains unfinished, though, as his head rolls along the floor, bloodily ripped from his neck. The heads of the other people join their leader's, stopping by a plain desk with a high-end server system sitting atop it.

"Sssstupid foolssss..." the whispering voice says, a humanoid with reptilian features bending down to search the bodies for anything of value.

Several minutes later, a tall, hunchbacked being walks out of the apartment complex, wearing a hooded robe that conceals all but the tip of a decidedly reptilian snout, and the last few centimeters of a scaled tail peeking out beneath the robe's hem. "I musssst reach Riz. Ssssee if hissss forgeriessss are better than hissss cracks..." \\That I need rely on a rodent for my life as something other than food,\\ she thinks crossly, walking swiftly down the street. \\Particularly one as much an asshole as rizzo. How black are my days...\\

"I think she went down this way," a gravelly voice says in a harsh whisper as a set of black-clad arms sweeps a Group Nine pistol in a tight arc, the featureless head swiveling to and fro, scanning the alley by the dim light of the setting sun.

The owner of that gravelly voice pauses as his foot kicks something. Bending at the knees, he picks up the item, a robe in the color of that worn by his prey. "Hellfire," he whispers to himself. Slightly louder, "She's airborne, Five," he says into a small communicator strapped to his wrist after one more visual sweep of the alley. "This mission's a scrub." \\Damn that broken transmission. But for one stupid mistake of a nugget, we'd have aerial coverage.\\

A few minutes later, an all black sedan drives up, the engine entirely quiet thanks to a low-level silencing spell. The muffled sound of a car door opening and closing echoes through the trash-strewn alley, then silence once again as the car drives off.

"Finally." Slowly backing away from the edge, the drakka curls up next to the heat exchanger assembly for the building's climate control equipment, warming herself as she recovers energy from the short flight to the building's roof.

A crimson scaled bat-like ear swivels to track a nearby noise. In a blurred motion, her hand darts out and grabs a passing mouse. With a deft swipe of a claw, the rodent's head falls onto the gravel covering the roof. The rest of the mouse is casually tossed into the dragon's mouth, swallowed whole.

After the snack is sufficiently digested, she rises to all fours, and pads over to the building's edge to gaze at the alley below. "I may freeze to death without it, but it takessss too much energy to fly down there and then back up again," she mutters, rising to her feet. "Sssstill too much light, but I musssst reach Rizzo'ssss dump ssssoon." Stepping back, she leaps from the roof, her wings opening with a quiet 'snap' as she sails over the alley to the next rooftop, progressing towards the older part of the city, leaping between buildings.

*****

Proxy: newest version of Lokpikr. great completely undetectable and you can change the source yourself, when you need a 'custom' search and you're searching more than one box at a time. better than whatever you got now I can tell you that.

rizz0: D00d, that's what I'm running now on my 'casual victimizer' machine across the room. Ain't that great, and ain't better than my hand-rolled shit. Even for free, you got jipped.

Proxy: Ah...you want something more specialized then? for expert crackers only...this is dangerous crap. you might not be able to shake 'n bake it.

rizz0: This from someone running a positively ancient 486 machine that has trouble with solitaire. :P What's it called?

Proxy: X. that's all, just X.

\\I'm guessing he doesn't mean X-Windows. Even he's not that stupid.\\

rizz0> Ooh, sounds spooky. Lay it on me.

Flickering, the wired computer screen blinks twice to illuminate Rizzo's pointy face, then cuts out with an electric death hiss.

*****

Unimpeded by the need for sticking to the shadows, high above most peoples' heads, the crimson dragonness makes it to the apartment complex where Rizzo stays -- "Paradise Apartments," though the appearance is more reminiscent of the opposite place -- in short order.

She almost literally falls against the heat exchanger for the building's wheezing, decrepid climate control system, her ragged panting mostly drowned out by the clattering of the ancient quipment. Once she regains her breath, she slowly pads over to a roof access door, the thin layer of gravel topping the roof shuffling under her feet with each step.

Her four-fingered hand closes around the doorknob, and tries to turn it, finding the door locked. "Damnation," she hisses. "I have no toolssss to pick thissss lock, nor have I excessss time." She releases the doorknob, and takes a step back. With a kick of her powerful legs -- necessary for launching into flight -- the door almost literally shatters, the metal being nearly rusted entirely through.

She chuckles to herself as she steps through the shattered remains of the door. "Thank goddessss for ssssuch quality work," she whispers with a smirk, disappearing into the stairwell behind the door.

A hand descends upon the rat's shoulder, black gloved with a wide finger spread and the grip of a cat on its dinner. If he should look up, he would be greeted with a pair of oblique white eyes shining from the shadow. The tip of a hypodermic needle measuring several inches in length shimmers briefly, a drip of a milky substance tumbling to the floor as a second hand clamps the rat's mouth shut, tilting his head back as the needle point moves towards his tear duct...

The thread-thin point sinks completely into the small duct opening, and the rat convulses a few times before sinking ot the floor unconscious. Puck nods to his sister, and the black clothed twins slip the needle back into a nearly invisible case as they head towards the door.

***

Suddenly, the right half of Typo's screen goes black. The hacker, it seemed, had more coming to him then a fake backdoor program. He turns to Worm. "What now?"

Worm stretches and logs off her computer with a few swift keystrokes. "Now we either eat, rest, or exercise, depending on assigned schedule. I'll release you for whatever you want to do - personally, I'm grabbing a snack and a nap... you probably ought to go check on the animal you mauled."

Her eyes twinkle in good humor, though her face is serious.

Typo frowns. "Yeah. I should." //At least I know to give them a warning.// He logs off, stretches, and gets a raw hamburger at the cafeteria before loping off down the hall.

Worm accompanies him to the food, nabbing a brown bag of food and heading off to her room, jovially winking at him as she trots off to the elevator and her room. "Work out at 6AM, fledgling!"

Typo waves and heads down into the bowels of the building towards the bestiary. //I could get used to those 6 AM workouts.//

*****

The dragonness steps out of the fire escape door cautiously, having to be more cautious now that there is the possibility of being seen, in spite of the weak magic with which she makes herself appear human.

***

"Hello, police? Yes, I'd to..."

***

"Team Delta. G.E.T. objective spotted. Proceed to Paradise Apartments. Last spotted on level one-seven, possibly with others. Proceed with caution."

"Roger, Prime. ETA two minutes."

***

Turning the corner, she stops abruptly as she sees two black-clad figures leaving Rizzo's apartment, only a few meters from her location. The last 'click' of her claws on the bare tile of the floor echo through the hallway, dropping to a defensive crouch. \\Two unknowns, one of which is carrying some unknown chemical,\\ she notes to herself after the dragon's tongue flicks out of her mouth for a brief moment, scenting the air.

***

"Three, you sense anything from the target?"

"Currently unaware of us. Sense possibly another two, but can't really tell with all the background noise. Seem to be just small nonsapients, though."

"Very well. Two and Three, you take the north stairwell. Four, you're with me on the south."

***

Puck jerks and half turns his head. The white ovals that make his eyes narrow into slits as his tension diffuses as food coloring through water to his sister. With their eyes focused on the hunkered shadow in front of them, their presence is less than warm.

"That illusion wouldn't fool a stupid beast of burden, " a voice slips out of the shadowed faces, seeming to come from neither and both at once. Out of sight, one flicks a small switch on a wristband.

A slight motion.. and the door to the rat's apartment clicks closed.

"Which makessss it ssssuficient to fool mosssst of the people," she snorts as the illusion fades to reveal her true form, her alertness heightened even more as her sensitive tympanic membranes -- not having external ears -- pick up the flick of the switch. "What were you doing in that apartment?"

"Perhaps sufficient for those who wish you no harm, " the melodious voice answers. "You're in no position to ask questions." One set of eyes vanishes, though the other's supersensitive hearing would pick up the sound of a breath behind her now, instead of two in front. "You don't know what you're dealing with."

"That issss one overssssight I intend to correct," she says softly, rising on her feet to a position as equally suited to defense or attack. "I assssk again. What were you doing in that apartment?" Her vertical pupils narrow, focusing on the vague shapes within the shadow, sizing up those before her.

"Business." The flash of white hair in front of her vanishes.. and the sway of the blazing white ponytail emerges from behind her even after another pair of eyes opens in place of the hair. "You can't hope to understand."

\\Business? With... poison?\\ she thinks to herself, the faint scent she detected earlier triggering memories of some of the less kind chemicals used in the laboratory from which she escaped. "'Bussssinessssss'? Issss that what you call poissssssoning ssssomeone?" Another flick of her tongue, and she shakes her head a little. "No, not poisssssson. Oblivion, I believe. Sssstronger than issss recommended, by a healthy degree."

Before the twins, their faces unchanging, have a chance to react-

***

"One, this is Two. Am in position on level one-seven south."

***

A soft beep, coming from the cybernetic implant replacing the drakka's left hand and forearm, interrupts the conversation. She spares the small screen on the back of her artificial hand a brief moment's glance. "Damn thosssse Group Nine clownssss." She turns her head partly towards the door behind her, though keeping the twins in view out of the corner of her eye, scenting the air with her tongue. "It sssseemssss that we both have bigger concernssss than this charming chat we're having," she says sarcastically in a low whisper.

"She comes with her own trouble, " the one behind her snickers in a higher - definately feminine - voice.

\\The Goddess apparently has deemed me a trouble magnet,\\ she thinks wryly to herself. \\Her will be done.\\

"Apparantly. So, lizard chick, care to fill us in on the trouble before it gets here? I'd prefer to know if I need back up before I start breakin necks." A soft whirr, and a pistol outlined by small tanks of green liquid appears in his hand.

"Private mercssss," she says in a hissing whisper, "equivalent of Sssspecial Forcessss troopssss. Many were, primarily SssssEALssss. Well trained in hand to hand combat, carry automatic machine pisssstols. Deadly accurate aim, ssssome ccccybernetically enhancccced. Generally poor in magickssss. Enough for now, though. THey don't wasssste time."

"How utterly droll - cybernetics. We'll have to hunt down their mech-nest and plant a few roach traps. SO unoriginal."

"No style, " agrees the female.

"Pardon me if I don't ssssee what'ssss better about a sssstylish death asss oppossssed to an unsssstilish death..." she hisses dryly.

"They won't kill us, " the twins snort in disgust. "Or, rather, can't."

"Besides, " Paradox smirks, "we're the demons you can't exorcise."

"The skeletons you can't clean out of your closet, " giggles Puck.

"The boogieman who lurks in the darkness of a child's room!" his sister creels, laughing in a quiet, highly disturbing tone.

"Right" is her only reply, most of her attention being paid to her surroundings; especially those from which trouble is likely to come.

Neither of the twins seems to disregard her warning, and both appear to brush off any threat she might've been. Puck leaps lightly, flipping upside down, suspended from the ceiling like a spider. Paradox, behind the dragoness, drops to a low squatting position, her own weapon held up near her face, virtually indecipherable from the darkness.

Paradox's eyes slit as she telepathically nudges an implant in her brain to send a wave back to HQ of a slight problem.

The drakka whirls around as she realizes the one she didn't see hop onto the ceiling -- mostly because she was distracted by the one on the ceiling -- startled by the sudden appearance, but not enough to forget to hold back the instinctual reaction to strike.

Paradox puts her ear to the ceiling as her brother crouches close to the floor.

She starts to berate Paradox for her lack of concern, but is quickly cut off when she hears both of the fire escape doors being kicked off of their hinges, the work of the Group Nine operatives made easier by the general state of disrepair of the complex. Tensing instantly, her head whips between both doors to try to determine how many people were making the strike.

Glancing at both doors, though, she notices that while lacking as maintenance as they were, neither were kicked down, nor were any of the black-clad assassins coming through them. "Foolssss!" she hisses, chuckling a brief moment. "They took one floor too far up. That won't lasssst long. Letssss depart. We can continue our lovely chat later," she concludes sarcastically.

"Oh, let's just shadow-port out, Puck. This is drab."

"I suppose we can wipe her later if the others deem it needed."

"Gee, thankssss," she mumbles.

"You wouldn't be the first, " mutters Paradox.

Paradox leans down towards the dragoness. "Watch this." Pointing her finger right at the dragoness's nose, she then lifts it up and touches the ceiling. A light blue glow forms behind the line she traces though the middle of the ceiling. Without saying a word, the black gloved hand moves back, then sinks into the blue line. Nothing but a shadowy contortionist moves as her figure vanishes completely into the thing portal.

"It only lasts thirty seconds, " Puck hisses. "I'll go in after you."

Startled by Paradox's creation of the portal, she doesn't react immediately, but quickly recovers, almost literally leaping into the portal, keeping her wings folded tightly to her back as she squeezes quickly through the opening.

***

He [Typo] reaches the bestiary a while later, having finished his hamburger on the way there, and knocks. This time, he waits for *them* to open the door.

"Hey. Thanks for waiting this time." Claw opens the door and waves Typo in. He calls over his shoulder. "Tooth! Typo's here."

"Which animal did he get this time?"

Tooth appears from the back with a furry draped over her arm. It appears to have no actual body, but rather a large, definitely purple, boa like form as some movie star would wear. A head perks up from behind her shoulder, flicking forward two giant sized deer ears forward to typo. Black beady eyes blink, then the head resumes its sleepy perch. "Hey, kid. How'd the hacking go?"

The genetic cross tries to chuckle, and ends up frowning. "None. Er. How's the iriconda? The hacking went pretty well. Freaked him out." He grins slightly.

"Good for you, " she chuckles, proceeding to dump the long furry critter on Typo. Tapping a few codes into the computer, the door she poured the iri into opens. Her hands are gentle as she eases it back out and onto the table. Other than the rather obvious red and purple welts forming scars all over its body.

"Well, " she muses as she examines it, lightly spreading salve over the wounds, " that's about all the regenerator can do. It looks like it'll live. Might limp a bit, but here's no damage to the internal organs or membranes.. and it appears that the reproductive tracts are working. We may have iri eggs yet, Claw."

A look of relief comes into Typo's eyes, and he smiles. Genuinely. "Good!"

"Oh, really?" Claw chuckles. "You like all the liddle bitty iri-wiri babies, hm? We're going to have the Epsyth giving birth soon - and that's usually an all nighter. Unless..." he says, and looks at Typo, grinning wickedly. "Didn't he *volunteer* some time after he stuck the iri with those cuisinart claws, sis?"

Tooth's eyebrow arches. "After the 35 the last one managed to drop, I think a third set of hands might be useful. They like something to climb right after birth- how's your tree impression, Typo? Ticklish? They like to nibble - wear old clothes."

About this time, the odd purple furry thing starts to wiggle, emitting a pleasant, hypnotic odor. The head pops up, peering at Typo as the scent grows stronger.

"35?" Then: "What's that? And why's it - smelling at me?" he looks curiously at the thing. "I think my tree-impression is pretty good. When'll you need me here?"

Claw shrugs. "Dunno. We'll be sure to call, though." He chuckles.

"Probably in the middle of the night." Tooth's grin turns wicked. "Maybe we should put him on clean up duty." She stretches lazily. "The critter you're holding emits a smell when it's comfortable that's like a drug. Their "essence" is a popular black market drug."

"Oh." Typo looks over at the animal and shrugs. "So - do you keep it for that? Milk it or something?"

Claw looks at him. "The Auclar? No. It's a friend's."

"It's time for it's annual physical to make certain it's in working order. She's a local assassin, the owner. Just don't let it bite you." She hides a smile.

Typo nods. He *gently* takes the auclar off his shoulder and hands it to Claw. "I'd better get going," he says, stifling a yawn. "Call if you need me." He waves and heads out the door. A few moments later, he reaches his room and, with a wistful glance at the as-yet-unused computer, falls asleep.

And wakes up far, far too soon for his liking.

He grumbles at the far too cheerful Worm and goes to the cafeteria, painted a far too cheerful shade of yellow. He grunts as graciously as possible at the friendly-looking Enigmite who offers to get him some breakfast.

The hamburger she delivers is far, far too spicy. But has the intended effect of waking him up.

"What the 'eck?" he yelps, his consonants cut short by the tabasco-induced fire threatening to render him speechless for the entire week. He gulps down a glass of water and turns to the person who gave him the meal, who has long since fallen off her chair laughing.

"It's the meatball alarm clock," she chortles to him and a few of her select companions, who also grin.

He looks up at her with firey eyes, and she manages to get out, "Don't worry. It's a rite of passage here. They did it to me my first week and I bet I looked like that too," before doubling over laughing again.

"What's your name?" he asks, finally, after having to admit to himself that it was rather funny.

"BS. At least that's what my friends call me."

"Hey. Well, I can't say I'm really glad to have met you, BS, but my friends call me Typo."

He grins as he finishes a - thankfully - uneventful meal of bran flakes and umber-colored berries before following Worm off to what promises to be another interesting day.

Worm laughs. "Welcome to being an Enigma." She extends her hand across the table. "I thought we'd try an onsite hack job next, but to do that, we need to train up some more in the gym. You up for a couple days of ontensive training? Mostly endurance stuff."

Typo nods. "I think so," he says. "Is it going to be a 'how long can you go without sleep before you collapse on the keypad' kind of training?" He looks intrigued and worried at the same time.

Worm grins in a disconcerting manner. "In a manner of speaking."

"Looks like a harpy, speaks like a Sphinx," he chuckes to himself.

She finishes her light meal and tosses Typo a disc. "That's a log of the hacker chase. Read over it adn see what you think could have been improved upon. I'll be quizzing you while we work out. Meet me at the gym in an hour."

Typo picks up the small disk and looks at it carefully, being careful not to damage it with his talons. /Well!/ he thinks with satisfaction. /I finally get to try out the computer!/

Running her hands through her feathered hair, Worm pads out of the cafeteria.

Typo's glance follows after her a moment, but then his eyes stray to the disk. He hold it up to the light and notes it is slightly transparent. It is made of thin, floppy, flexible-gel plastic and appears to take on the color of whatever it is held against. He grins, impressed.

He takes his empty plate over to the disposal unit, waves to Link as she - /he? it?/ - comes into the cafe, and heads to his room.

He is blinded by the speed with which the Teryn starts up, and even more amazed at how fast it accesses the more than an hour's worth of images, files, and live video feeds stored on the disk. He chuckles to himself in the empty room, to which he's left the door open. He gets so involved reading the log and 'playing' with the machine he hardly notices the time and has to sprint down to the gym.

He arrives, feathers bedraggled, just in time. /This was not the impression I was hoping to give,/ he thinks as he hands the disk back to Worm.

"Quiz away," he says.

A weight hoisted in one hand, half bent over the lifting support, Worm turns to grasp the disk with her free hand. She straightens, arching her back and a brow at Typo.

"You certain you're going to work out in everyday clothing?"

Typo grins. "No," he says, smiling to himself.

Feathers pulled back in a rather odd shaped ponytail, his instructor is dressed in clothing remotely similar to wind pants and a sports bra, though her top is more fitted to be laced around where her wings attach to her body, the material all black and almost fluid like a shadow. Worm's face shines with the hint of sweat as she cocks her head towards the lockers.

Typo glances at her for a moment. //Glad she doesn't work out in "regular clothes."//

"There are workout clothes in your locker, if you want to change."

"Ok, I think I will," he says, and turns towards the lockers. It is the work of a moment to think the change. There is a heat-mirage like visual shift, and Typo stands there, twitching his tail and smiling as much as his beak allows.

"Smartass."

Typo grins. "Hey," he says. "I was going to do that anyway. You just gave me a good excuse."

She chuckles from her perch, reaching down to pick up a 10 lb weight in each hand to make her work a little harder. Her stomach muscles ripple fiercely in order to make up for the added weight, but she doesn't seem too fussed about it.

She turns back to her lifting, then sets the weight down, waiting on Typo. Meanwhile, Worm pads over to a securely fastened wall bar about 7 feet off the ground, jumps, catches it with her hands, then swings her legs up over it, hanging upside down as she watches her pupil. With an abdominal flex, she begins a tight curl set.

Typo looks around the room for a moment, then decides on the large programmable climbing wall. He sets the speed on "medium, getting gradually faster" and proceeds to makes his way up a virtual rock wall, complete with boulders and crumbling handholds.

Worm hides an evil smile, then murmurs softly to the computer panel next to her. "Override user, Typo, upgrade mechanics to real difficulty, challenge, compensate for his typical motions, and force adaptation through combination problems." Her eyes glow as she waits for Typo to realize the wall isn't under his control anymore.

//Hm,// he thinks. /This wall is getting "gradually faster" faster than I'd like it to./ "Slow down," he says to the wall. Nothing happens. If anything, it only speeds up. He frowns and just barely manages to pull himself up off of the next available handhold, a small half-dead sapling, before it disappears into a virtual abyss. "Stop," he says. Nothing, again.

He glances around the gym. The only other Enigmite he sees is a small blue transluscent Tarang swimming against the current in the tank in the far side of the room.

He looks over at Worm and sees her smiling. "What'd you do to the wall?" he sputters, narrowly dodging a rock the size of his head, and half-leaping, half-flying, over a ten-foot gap in the wall. "I didn't do anything to your monkey bars."

"Training involves challenge!" she laughs. "You keep complaining, I'll set it faster." Grinning, WOrm wiggles her tapered fingers over the keypad.

Typo sighs to himself, then grins and concentrates on climbing. /Hell,/ he decides, as the wall finally comes to a stop, /that was kind of fun. I've had to take on worse. And in worse conditions. And in worse condition.../ but he shifts that thought to the back of his mind and instead turns to Worm.

He leaps off the wall just before it becomes a normal climbing wall again and tilts his head. "So?"

"Buttons, " comes her automatic reply, still entering a little bit of data to her wrist pad. She blinks, glances up with the faintest hint of a blush and stifles a laugh. "Sorry. Old habit." The mirth fades from her as quickly as it came, and she shudders as if shaking off a wet blanket.

/What was that all about?/ he wonders, but says nothing.

For the next few minutes, he concentrates on the wall. //Dodge. Jump. Balance. Climb. Climb. Cl - no, that foothold won't work. What about - ok. Ooh, that one didn't hold like I thought it would.// Despite himself, knowing that Worm is loving every minute of whatever mind game she's playing with him, he finds it fun. //It's been far too long I've done something like this,// he thinks.

After a few minutes - "Sector G, reference epsilon programming as the hacker maneuvered - what could be improved upon in the system to prevent this action from being successful next time?"

Typo thinks and dodges a hail of pebbles before replying. "Put more profile blocking routines in. Preferably the omega-7 type if we can spare them, the Kab 1.77 ones if we can't. Also we need to make it easier for us to track the hackers through there. There isn't much they can damage to give us a trail and the file directory just keeps leading up. How about a double Gambit subroutine with a fractalic call-up trigger?"

"Interesting proposal. How about a G-force negator with tri-flux capacity with firm Mechanization, delta Y stimulators differ or be better? Or a veda-psi traceroute with entero field?"

"The delta y's sound like a good idea. Moblier's mirror principle, huh?" He narrowly misses impaling himself on a prickly spineplant which was occupying the ledge he thought he could rest on, then says, "The entero field might not work. It can be disrupted by the right static frequency, and you know those two-bit hackers running on cobbled machines. The static's all over those, all frequencies. They might mess it up without even trying. What about a lincoln-log type tracer grid with kaliph's riddle files inbetween the layers to act as a diverson? Track n' trace the data packets, corner the hacker."

"Possible, possible, but what if the hacker found the data loops between the layers? And there are known answer files for the kaliph riddles."

"We can always program new ones." He grins.

"I suppose we could always get one of the psychotics to babble some coding we could use instead of the riddles." Worm laughs. "Did you notice any difficulties with the beta encypher section where the new firewall patch went in?"

"Yes," he says, and pauses for a moment before saying, "I got around them - but they seemed vaguely repetitive. Almost like - " here he shoots a sideways glance at Worm - "like they were put there for a reason."

"Of course they were - but not everything is centered around you, " Worm grins. "We'll have to go in and fix them.. Since you noticed the problem, I'll take a Psylink, I'll see who's available, and go into the mainframe to fix the problem. Total immersion with tool interface should take care of the problem. Let's head to the library, then."

Typo nods. "Good..." He shifts back into his half-and-half form as he follows Worm out into the hall.

Without a delay, Worm leaps lightly to her feet and heads out with her pupil in tow. Alabaster greets them with a pale, shimmering smile from behind her desk.

"Hey, Ala, page.. hmm.. Comm and Chip. Tell Chipper to have Virii on back up - I'm going in to manually fix the new patch."

"Not a problem, " the other replies smoothly, hands already fluttering over the pads in front of her. "You really think Comm's ready for total immersion?"

"He doesn't have to do anything but sit there and keep the lines of communication open. Comm's used to computer interface, anyway. He's a minor hack, just more developed for his linking skills."

"True enough. Room three's open and ready to be prepped for immersion. The other two have responded and will be here in a few minutes."

"Thanks Ala." Worm pushes the feathers out of her face and leads a quick pace to Room Three.

*****

Several miles away, the dragoness falls onto the damp cobblestone of a deserted alley, bathed in shaddows. As if by instinct, she rolls out of the way, just before Puck drops in where she landed, albeit with far more grace than the drakka's clumsy flop.

"Can't fly?" Paradox queries, stretching.

"That'ssss not flying asss I am ussssed to it," she protests, instantly regretting the petulant tone of her comment, as if a child trying to excuse away a mistake of judgement.

"Fancy being used to flying, " the other muses, not noticing her tone.

"It growssss on you," she replies dryly.

After looking both ways down the long alleyway and satisfying herself there wasn't any witnesses, she turns to the twins. "If you have any ssssuggesssstionssss, I'm all earssss," she notes, not noting -- whether by intent or accident -- the irony of that comment coming from one without visible, external ears.

"Well, in the event they can trace shadow ports, I'd suggest.. oh.. moving?"

"Not a problem, bro. This is the portal alley - pick a direction, we'll world hop home."

"And the iguana?"

The twin pairs of milky eyes focus on the dragoness.

Her only indication of noticing the iguana comment is a pair of narrowed irises, otherwise suppressing any physical hints regarding the rising desire to strangle the pair. \\Control. Rash decisions formed of anger will kill as fast as a bullet.\\

"That," Paradox replies, "is her choice. We go.. left." Both shadows dart into the wall, the slight energy ripple the only indication of the gate.

She pauses a moment in thought, only to have her contemplation interrupted by the soft sound of careful footsteps gradually approaching the alley. Deciding her chances with the twins were better than with Group Nine, she leaps through the gateway, determined to make a more controlled landing this time.

"I give it a 7.4, " one of the familiar voices echoes from the murky red area she lands in.

"And a 3.0 from the Russian judge, " the other chimes, virtually indistinuishable from the other, both just a pair of eyes in the unfamiliar light tone. A click, and the area explodes with illumination.

After standing up once again, she opens her mouth to reply when the sun seemingly bursts into being on the lonely back street to which the twins' second portal led. The illumination temporarily blinds the dragoness, her pupils dilated to take in the previously dim light.

"There you two are. HQ was wondering."

Across the room as eyes once again are forced to adjust, a small figure sits perched on a weary piece of furniture, having been invisiable in the red light due to a dusky, dark red coloring. New light reflects dully off the reptillian figure, from the slightly raised ridge outlining the spine from between the flared nostrils to the tip of the tail, delicately flattened, to the four-pronged soft flesh spikes webbed together located just under the creature's leathery, deer-like ears. The spikes lay flat against the long neck, perhaps four inches each in length with darkened tips. Small, clawed hands grip the edge of the table as the scaly skin darkens from a reddish tone to a near black.

"Puck, Paradox, " the small creature, only about 5 feet in length, 2 of that its tail, addresses the twins with an air of authority, "your presence is requested at HQ."

"By whom?" they snort.

The elliptical eyes narrow, the slit pupils focusing with acute sharpness on the twins. "Exodus."

The twin start and, without further adieu (though with several audible curses), take off into the darkness, leaving the dragoness with the small reptillian, whose tongue flickers out momentarily as it examines her.

For her part, the drakka quietly observes the exchange, her eyes having only recovered enough to see general shapes.

"Hello," it finally offers, with a friendly enough head-bob. "I'm surprised you had enough self control not to slit the throats of the twins." A blink. "They are more than a bit on the irritating side."

"You can ssssay that," she allows, somewhat suspicious of the stranger -- more so than the twins, anyhow, whose names she only just now found out -- who she couldn't fully identify through her temporarily impaired vision; that its voice gave no obvious indications of malicious thoughts, however, eased her inner tensions, if only a little. "Who are you?"

The small figure hops down, nearly transparent wings floating open to break its fall, then they once again settle to its back, barely noticeable. It approaches somewhat cautiously but remains unpreturbed, taking its time so her eyes have time to adjust. "I'm a.. well.. not really a friend, but an associate, of those two. I am called, " here a pause and a grin, "Thumbs. For rather obvious reasons..."

It offers up its clawed hand, palm upwards. Where a thumb should be, a rather violent patch of scarring mars the scales, but is weathered enough (though oddly white against the color shifting skin) to imply lengthy healing.

As her sight re-adjusts to the dim light, further details of the little reptilian creature come into view, complemented by what her ears and the scent receptors on her tongue tells her. "I do not have a formal name," she says quietly, not sure of his hand is held out for any reason other than to display its lack of a thumb. She had never understood the idea of handshakes, as her creators/captors had never gone into detail about human social graces. "I go by the handle of Tin Lizzie, for obvioussss reassssons," she continues with her own slight grin, though hampered by her facial muscles not being as developed as much as those of a human, holding up the cybernetic replacement for her left forearm.

It nods, agreeable enough. "Thumbs isn't my real name, " it says enigmatically. "But it is now, for all purposes."

Lizzie simply nods, her familiarity with internet communications making her no stranger to internet handles serving as the only identifier available.

"Whereas the twins, you may have noticed, are more into the permanent silencing of targets, I'm under the 'five - or four, as the case may be - fingered discount'. We work for the same... "employer", I suppose, but luckily, I don't see much of them."

"My meeting with them wassss not exactly one of free choicccce. When on the run from hit men, one takessss what one can get."

"Indeed. I can't say you saw our best face in meeting them, but we are many faceted. But, as you said, one cannot be picky."

Though curious as to who the 'we' in question is, she remains silent for now, figuring the issue, if important, will come up again later. \\If not important, knowing the information has the possibility of being detrimental to my health,\\ she reasons further.

It smiles and settles a few feet from her, the wider scales of its chest and throat ragged around the edges. "But I know the lion's share of the Nexus and how it works. The twins radioed in that you had encountered a bit of trouble, that just patched through, so I'm obliged to offer my assistance, if you require any?"

"Whether you can offer asssssisssstance dependssss on how well you or your 'employer,' whoever they are, can help make one dissssapear. Alive, that issss."

Thumbs pauses and stares hard at the drakka before him. "And that depends on how trustworthy YOU are. If you turn around and plant a knife in our backs, I'm going to be skinned as soon as your head hangs trophy, and neither of us is up for becoming a Nexian's wallet or new boots." It pauses, tail tapping the ground lightly. "Though you have the look of one who can keep a secret when her life depends on it."

"It usually doessss," she notes quietly, the half-grin once again upon her lips.

"Too true, " Thumbs agrees ruefully.

"As for disappearing, my employer can wipe out that you ever existed. No one will find you - you'll find them. You are as the shadows - transparent and vanishing with the sun." It spreads its hands. "I cannot really tell you more, for our safety's sake." Thumbs' tongue snakes out briefly.

"Fair enough."

"It must seem you are making a deal with the devil, or at least a demon, so the decision is ultimately yours. You don't have to stay on with us, though you will be more than welcome if you wish to."

"The human bible ssssayssss that dragonssss are Ssssatan'ssss minionssss, if I remember right. Funnily enough, I don't recall sssseeing Him ssssigning my paycheckssss assss my bossssss," she adds with another of her grins.

It grins back. "No Lucifer as an employer? Usually at least ONE will act like him, " Thumbs offers with a motion of the tail, a flip like a cat might do at a non threatening predator, mocking.

"Bessssidessss one ussssing the handle 'lord hades,'" or more accurately l0rd_had3s, "no. And he wassss a powerlessssss twit," she adds with a mild snort of disgust, though not directed at the smaller reptile.

It makes an odd sort of "mrrt" noise, a third eyelid sliding up over its eyes in agreement.

A sudden reptilian smile appears. "It also won't be an ultimately free service - we may cll on you at a later date for assistance or information. It's rare - we usually have more than enough resources - but I imagine they'll put me through working hell hours for bringing home a "stray". Won't be the first time someone has, though." It stretches and stands.

"TANSsssTAAFL," she says in a low whisper, repeating the acronym -- 'There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch' -- made famous by Heinlein's Lazarus Long.

Shaggy ears prick forward. "Actually, food is free at HQ, " the little lizard notes with a most serious expression, but a comically twitching tail.

Before noticing the twitching of Thumbs' tail, she starts to speak up to correct the lizard. Noticing the humor indicated by its tail, though, she remains silent.

Thumbs smiles.

"I digress, though. I leave your decision to you." Thumbs pads on all fours back to the table, shimmying up the leg to resume its perch.

The dragoness pauses in thought for a minute. "I accccccept. What little I had tying me to the day world issss now probably ssssitting in ssssome policccce sssstorage facility assss evidence in a triple murder casssse."

"Sounds like my kind of job. Police are known to be sloppy, anyway. A little hack here, a minor theft there, add a memory wipe, and you have a complete police breakdown. Easy enough, in a lot of respects." Thumbs gives the equivalent of a shrug. "Anyway, I brought my portaportal, " it grins rather cheerfully and waves its tail back against the wall, where it vanishes into it. "So if you'll just follow me, I'll pull it through behind."

"Doesss 'portaportal' have any relation to 'portapotty?'" she asks aloud, though not necessarily to the lizard whose tail is pointing out the portal's current location.

It giggles. "I don't know where the names come from. I guess the inventors were out of ideas."

"Assss long assss it workssss, the name issss irrelevant," she reasons with a shrug.

And it turns and heads into the wall, where a metallic room awaits on the other side.

Lizzie steps through the portal, looking about curiously at the room in which she appeared, taking in the sights, sounds, and smells of the strange room.

Claws clicking on the metallic floor, Thumbs pads over on all fours to a thin line in the wall of the egg-shaped room. A few taps and the door slides open, revealing the bustling terminal behind, where other egg shaped extensions traffic a multitude of various life forms.

"Now, are you hungry? We can get food, if you like, or I can take you somewhere you can rest if you're tired. Or you can tag along behind me."

"Sssso many optionssss, all of which ssssound appealing. Baring any further running, though, food and bed can wait. I believe I shall 'tag along,' and enjoy the tour. Esssspecially if that tour goessss near ssssome placccce I can get some kind of clothing from. Computer roomssss are too cold for an ectotherm."

*****

Typo asks her, "Who are all these people?" Then, after a moment, "how many Enigmites do you think there are, anyway?" He sinks gratefully into a chair once they enter room Three.

"Chip you met in the hacker ring you were with. Human, with her hair shaved up the sides and a ponytail of the half from her forehead back? Camo dressed, chip implanted in her forehead. Nice enough - you need to have someone watching over you while I fix the patch."

"Oh, yeah." Typo nods. "Why do I need someone 'watching over me?' Is it really that dangerous?" He pauses and looks at her with a twinkle in his eyes. "Hm?"

Worm's expression is dead serious as she arches a brow at him. "It's not you I'm worried about." Her gaze looks back to the computer, where agile fingers format the screen and entry pathways as if second nature. "We've lost more than one Enigmite to System Shock neurosis. It's not yet a flawless interface."

"System...shock?" Typo's tone changes dramatically. "Um, how long have they been using the interface? What exactly is it?"

"The system's been in use for about the last five years. They've done the best they can to stabilize it, but it's not the interface, it's the mainframe. Mental energies weren't meant to be cyberized and coupled into a data world. It's like you and me trying to survive in a 2-dimensional world. Existence is just this side of possible on good conditions."

"Oh." Typo again re-evaluates the expertise of the Enigmites' computer staff.

"It's something that's being revamped constantly. They don't call the Enigmites guinea pigs for no reason."

"Hm."

"I need someone here to make certain that if I do go into Shock, they have the experience to pull me out and hopefully save most of my brain intact. It's not that I don't trust you, but time is a major factor."

"Yeah," Typo says. "I get it, now." He smiles a little at Worm.

She offers a genuine smile back and gives him a soft clap on the shoulder. "This is why you're not going in with me. You're too good to lose to a fluke."

He grins. "Thanks."

"And Comm? He's what we call a Psylink. Basically, they're individuals with huge telepathic powers that Enigma uses to connect nontelepths with other nontelepaths as a sort of mental walkie talkie. It's the only way to communicate in some areas, like the total sub we have here. He's a new release from the Mentor area, supposed to be good with tech. We'll see."

"Mentor?"

"You know, the Mentor program." She chuckles. "Like you and me. I'm Mentoring you."

The Enigmite laughs out loud at this, startling several techs in the process. "I've gotten so used to being out of my depth here that when I get plunged back into something I actually know about I'm suprised. I guess *everything* isn't mysterious, hm?"

"Certainly not, " she laughs. "And after awhile, you'll find this second nature."

Worm chuckles and eyes Typo. "As for the Enigmites, there're about 300, I'd say. Maybe a few more. They're never all in one place at one time or another." She taps a few keys on the board.

"Sorta like cockroaches."

Typo raises an eyebrow at this, then chuckles. "Well, I've been compared to much worse. And they never die." He sobers after saying this, and falls deeply into his own thoughts.

After a moment, he shakes himself out and looks at Worm. "Lead on, Macduff."

"I go, and it is done; the bell invites me. Hear it not, Duncan, for it is a knell that summons thee to heaven or to hell."

Worm arches a brow at Typo with a highly enigmatic look. "Though I doubt you were referencing Shakespeare."

Typo looks back at her evenly. "Highly approprpriate, though, isn't it?"

*****

"I understand. We'll go to the Synthesizer room first." Thumbs picks itself up and pads along in a rather human fashion, tail sweeping behind it to keep its balance.

Lizzie's walk, though still bipedal, is far less humanoid than that of her guide, though she shares its trait of balancing with one's tail. "Thissss 'Ssssynthessssizer room' ssssounds unusual," she casually comments, holding back her query as to its purpose. \\I shall know its purpose soon enough,\\ she reasons.

The small figure in front of her appears oblivious to everything, padding along with stop scaled foot impacts.

The path it leads her on is far from uninteresting. Handfuls of beings of every make and hue pass them by with various looks of distraction via palm tops or stressed "white rabbit" looks of being late. The metal snake corridor winds in a conical sensation for a good five minutes before Thumbs picks a seemingly random door on the right. The door yawns open into a black room lit with flickers of green lights.

As she follows behind Thumbs, she notes the generally stressed appearances of some of those she passes becomes slightly more so upon seeing her. \\Foolish mammals. If I was looking for a fight, it wouldn't be somewhere entirely surrounded by potential enemies.\\

Occassionally, Thumbs bobs its head to a passerby, and once or twice a datpad is exchanged.

The little reptillian leads the way through the surprisingly light dark metal room. A tap on a wall, and the screen lights up with options.

"Stand on the green square over there and it'll scan your body shape, " Thumbs explains.

After a brief look around the room, she nods to Thumbs, the claws of her feet seemingly even louder on the surface of this room than the quiet 'clicking' of her passage through the hallway as she pads over to the indicated space, standing upright for a brief moment as her form is scanned.

Thumbs hits a few keys.

The screen lights up with Lizzie's Body outline and even more options such as color, material, style, etc.

"Now just design your own outfit, " Thumbs smiles, settling in a seated position.

After studying the control panel, she makes her selections, hoping that the controls weren't fragile enough to shatter under her talons. Keyboards reinforced to withstand the abuse of claws typing on them in her rapid-fire typing style were hard to come by. For all the wonders she saw about her on her journey into the heart of the complex, she still had doubts as to what was possible, and what was not.

Her companion seems unpreturbed, mumbling to itself and examining its tail, on which a large patch of scales flakes white and dry.

After a few minutes, she has her outfit designed, a simple pair of dark coveralls, though with a scoop out of the back for her wings, and a hole for her tail, special straps set up so as to be secured from the front while closing off a cut from the top of the tail hole to the bottom edge of the opening, put there to facilitate donning of the unique garment. She turns to Thumbs, and says "Okay, I am done."

It bounces up onto the console and presses a few more buttons. Across the room, a slit in the wall lights up and buzzes loudly. Without another thought, Thumbs walks over and opens a door in the wall, removing the new clothes created to Lizzy's specs. Voice muffled by the neatly folded clothes it carries, the stack of material staggers over towards Lizzy.

"Here you go, just like you specified. Is there anything else you require? Food? Somewhere to sleep?"

"Food, not yet. Ssssleep, on the other claw, ssssoundssss like a good idea," she replies as she slips on the outfit. Curiossssity cannot overrule fatigue."

*****

"Shakespeare always is." Wyrm glances up as an Enigmite Typo would recognize from the hacking session and his first trip into the super computer.

The dark eyes gaze at him, hair shaved short up the sides of the head, accenting the angular face, but the raven hair on top the head cascades over the left side of the features. The computer screen flickers in the silence, catching on the deformity of the scars riddling the flesh under the thin sheet of hair, the eye beneath yellowed over.

"Hello," Typo says to her.

She merely inclines her head to him. "Youngling."

/Woah,/ he thinks. /This one's tough. No wonder Worm got on the defensive so quickly. And Virii was her Mentor!/

"Viri, I thought you'd be on backup."

"I came to check on what your plan was, Youngling."

"Yes'm, " Worm manages, biting back a sigh at her old Mentor, then immediately digresses into a detailed, complex plan of attack that most of the other techs in the room cringe at, trying not to listen. The nearest one pulls out a bottle marked 'Excedrin" and pops 3 pills after the first five minutes of the discussion, looking rather green at the complexity.

/Woah,/ he thinks, /I think I just stopped understanding that./ "Can you put that any - simpler?" he asks when Worm has completed the description.

"Later, Typo, " she says hurridly, beginning to mess with wires, facing a barrage of question and critiques from Virii, who aids with a few of the wires, watching carefully.

Meanwhile, two others slip in quietly, on a familiar face from the hack with a long ponytail and partially shaved head, the chip, pulsing with light, implanted obviously in her forehead most assuredly marking her as the one Worm called Chip, dragging a youth with her who barely looks 15.

"Hi, Chip." He nods, and looks curiously at the teenager. "Hey. I'm Typo. You are?"

"Hey kid, " Chip chirps, yawning a little and glancing at Worm's heated debate with Virii. One eyebrow raised, she cocks her head at the youth with her. "This is Comm. He doesn't talk much. Some genetic agency got ahold of him and mutated him to a psypath, at the cost of most of his periphery functions. He can't hear, see, smell, or talk. Well, not in the typical sense." She puzzles over how to explain it for a moment. "His psywaves are strong enough to by pass those, so he can see, hear, and talk .. but in a weird way. Kinda like how bats see in the dark..."

The youth behind her remains mute as she attempts to explain his disability. Vibrant colors run over his thick, almost scaled skin, swirling brightly over his facial features, the nose dulled to a nub, the lipless mouth and naturally pupiless eyes - recognizably a Dinnb, known for their love of the arts. Singers, dancers, the Dinnb were wonderful in almost every way, and a very well know people for their kindness and grace. This Comm, however, has a haunted look, and scars over his head crest and back. The thin being says nothing, the notable Dinnb eyes, supposedly a vibrant blue or green, long since bleached white by whatever he's been through.

Still, the descendant of the merrly, carefree race, says nothing, half hidden in the shadow and remaining there.

Typo grimaces. "Damn scientists. People aren't born to be their private genetic playground. Carry out the stinking experiments on themselves if they want to see what happens." He snorts. " 'No better research than firsthand.'"

After a moment, he shakes his head and looks, half-guiltily, up at Chip again. "Sorry. I get kinda carried away."

Chip shrugs. "It's how we get a lot of our recruits." With a raised brow, she taps the chip implanted on her forehead. "You think I was born with this?"

"Err," Typo mutters, than subsides into a thoroughly embarassed look. "I didn't think."

"ANYway, " Chip continues, "You can help me get Comm strapped into his seat while WOrm and Virii finalize he plans. That way I can run you over what all we're going to be doing." She fastens her fingers around Comm's wrists and the youth, who hardly has blinked, simply follows as a dumb animal would.

"Okay," Typo agrees hesitantly. He picks up a strap and looks at it distastefully for a moment, then fastens it around Comm's foot and secures it to the chair. He does this with several other straps, then stands back and looks at Comm.

He turns back to the tableau between Worm and Virii. He waits, watches, and smooths his feathers with boredom.

Chip presses Comm into the plush leather chair, beginning to fasten strong leather binds at his wrists, ankles, and waist. The implant in her forehead winks at an odd rate, sending out vibrations.

Comm doesn't make any motion to object to the restraints, his emotionless eyes gazing blankly out at the world before him, interrupted rarely by a rapid, seemingly random blink, eyelids barely visible for the brief sliver of time they are closed.

/Doesn't he notice any of this?/ Typo wonders.

*****

"Ah, as you like it." Thumbs heads to the door and has to stand on its tail to open it before leading the way back down the hall.

"Anything else you require in the room? Specific type of blankets or washing items? I know not what you're used to, but I am at your service if we have it at our disposal."

"No, all I need is a flat surface. Preferably heated, and soft, but I'm not picky," she sleepily hisses.

"Easily done." Making its way down a darkened hall, the little draconian picks a random door and taps on its keypad. After a moment, it hisses open, revealing a large, oval room, sleepily lighted, with a large bed tucked in one corner. Other than a small table and chair, the room is otherwise bare.

Tin Lizzie nods. "Perfect. If you will excusssse me..."

"Of course. Would you like to wake up naturally or have me wake you at a specified time?"

"Naturally," she replies. "That, however, will only be in a few hourssss. I can live on very little ssssleep. I will need a guide here, of coursssse, and I do not wish to be killed or mindwiped assss an intruder."

"Oh! I forgot, silly me." Thumbs pats itself down, as if it were searching pockets, and produces a small watch. "Here, press the button on the side when you wake up. It'll alert me and I'll come get you." It offers a smile.

Lizzie nods as she leans down, her tail extending behind her for balance as she takes the watch from the diminutive reptile. "I shall keep that in mind," she whispers, visibly losing the battle with slumber. "Not to be rude or ungrateful, but I am losssing what little conssssiousness remains. I shall ssssee you in a few hourssss," she hisses, not even looking to see Thumbs' reaction as she sprawls on bed, visibly relaxing.

The little lizard just smiles and heads out the door, which closes with a soft, reassuring hiss.

Within minutes, the drakka falls asleep. Other than an occasional twitch at a dream, there's no sign of activity -- or even life -- from Lizzie.

She awakens several hours later, smoothly rising from the bed, and slipping onto the floor, her claws clicking on the bare floor. "Where isss..." she mutters, looking around. "Ah, there it isss." After picking up the watch, she presses the button the reptile had pointed out earlier. She stretches out while waiting for her guide, her motions not unlike that of a cat, seemingly working every major muscle in her body.

After barely two minutes, the door whispers open and Thumbs peers in, expectantly. "Sleep well?"

Tin Lizzie looks up from her stretching, rising from the crouched position Thumbs found her in. "Very. Pardon my impatiencccce, but can we get sssstarted on the tour I mentioned earlier? Felinessss aren't the only onessss who ssssuffer from curiossssity," she hisses, a slight hint of a grin on her lips, though her musculature isn't designed for human facial expressions.

Thumbs chuckles and gives a bob of its head. "Let me know when you grow hungry -- the building is much larger than it seems." With a flick of the red-speckled black tail, it turns and exits the room.

The drakka nods, and follows behind Thumbs.

Thin wings give a frail stretch as the little lizard motions the way along the dimmed hall and out into a wider, brighter passage. "This structure is built like a spider's web. it has a central core and hundred of small corridors leading off."

"Welcome to my parlor," Liz mutters under her breath, her head swiveling about to take in the sights. The few Enigmites they pass nod to Thumbs, but essentially ignore the drakka. \\No big surprise there,\\ she thinks. \\I'm only a tolerated stranger because of my guide.

It waves its tail to and fro as a cat might, keeping it off the ground. "I'll take you to the central structure, it's where the main areas of import are. Med center, computer, library.. elevator.." A rueful grin spreads across the smaller reptile's face.

A grin that goes unnoticed by the dragon, not being able to see Thumbs' face. "Would I be incorrect in assssuming that ssssomewhere in the ccccentral sssstructure I will eventually be given ssssomething ressssembling a method of earning my keep?"

It glances over its shoulder, in a manner of speaking, for the tiny wings hide part of its face like a veil. "Well, at some point, I assume. We'll need to assess your area of expertise and you'll go see the Lead for that department. Assassination, theft, computer hacking, etc. We could do that now, I guess, but I thought you wanted a tour."

"No, there issss no need to hurry. I tend to think longer-term than many endothermssss. I have to. That issss how I sssstay alive."

"You're well suited to your work, then, I suppose. Though it sometimes help to be able to think on the fly."

A soft, nearly silent rumbling chuckle bubbles up from deep in Lizzie's throat. "When I fly, that issss exactly what I do."

Thumbs takes a moment to peer at her, then hides a grin behind a hand of chipped talons. "I imagine you do. Myself, I can only glide. They're not strong enough to carry me long distances."

"My own flying is ssssomewhat limited in nature assss well, being an ectotherm. Whichever idiot decided that a flier sssshould be cold-blooded sssshould be sssstrung up by hissss sssscrotum with razor wire." She looks around a moment. "Where are we going firsssst?"

A pause as the smaller being considers. "Well, perhaps it would be best to organize this in what you are interested in. Most techs wouldn't give a two-headed marsupial's furry ass to see the med center as with the thieves and the super computer."

Tin Lizzie considers. "Issss the main computer room accesssssable by sssstrangerssss? I musssst admit to having ssssomewhat of a hardware obssssessssion."

"As long as I've got you under supervision, I think it should be alright. I'll page Virii and she'll come too. Then no one can complain about a thief being an escorting around the computer area." Thumbs produces a second watch from apparently thin air and taps a few buttons on it.

The drakka nods, quietly awaiting Virii's arrival.

A woman arrives a few moments later, short, dark hair with one white streak, parted to hide half of her face. She glances at Thumb's "tourist", and nods to the tiny thief. Without a spoken word, the two start off.

Tin Lizzie follows close behind, a subtle shrug her only reply to what appears, to the dragonness, to appear to be some kind of silent communication.

A few stoic moments pass before the tunnel, which has gradually been growing lighter, almost bursts open into a shaft of activity. The room, itself the size of a nearly 10 story building, teems like an antnest filled with flickering cables, tubes of platform elevators, and dark portals to other passageways.

"Interesssssting," Lizzie mutters, her head swiveling to take in the facility after her eyes adjust to the dimmer lighting of the room. Although many questions race through her head as she looks around, she doesn't put them to voice, her rationalization being that either she will know the answers as required, or she will not know them under at all.

The two lead the way to a flat elevator. "Level one, " Virii instructs and the small pad under their feet whisks them down to the first floor from what is possibly eight stories up. The "ground" barely visible from their original locale focuses, and unlike the other levels, the doors leading out of this area are well defined and brightly lit. One transparent door reveals the inner workings of a medical center, the glass-panel windows allowing clear view of the operations and procedures underway in the foremost rooms. Other doors lead into various establishments - a dining hall, a rec center, and the computer portal, the latter two being non glassed and the final having a somewhat obscure, clandestine entryway darker than the others and lit only by an outline of small blue lights.

Ignoring a quiet rumbling from her stomach, she examines the surroundings once the elevator arrives at its destination. "I shan't," she says after a minute, "bother you for the detailssss of thissss faccccility jusssst now, assss I do not wish to take any more of yourssss or Viriissss time with trivialitiessss. If you don't mind, I would appreciate being given the chanccccce to earn my keep, assss it were."

"Patience, " the elder Hacker directs, arching a brow sharply. "we haven't found your speciality yet, " Thumbs explains in an attempt to dull Virii's response. "Your keep will come later, I am certain."

"Yessss, of courssssse," she replies, duly chastised.

"We could get around to it sooner if you just told us what you're good at, " the smaller one breaks in again as Virii strides towards this darkened entrance, pressing her hand into a globe along side it, which molds and melds to form fit her hand.

"Ssssecurity penetration, both physsssical and electronic, though primarily the latter, for obvioussss reassssonssss. Network engineering. Combat, both hand-to-hand and ranged weaponry. Bassssic firsssst aid knowledge. The resssst I have a lessss thorough knowledge of, but can correct that lack of information eassssily enough when a ssssituation requiressss it. What elsssse?" Lizzie pauses. "Magick, however, isss my weak point," she adds a moment later. "Nearly nonexisssstent."

"I suppose the easiest way is for you to pick which area you'd like to be under the most so we can assign you to a particular area. Most here are trained in single area expertise and honed at it. There is a combat specialty, mostly used in assassination, and a computer area, for hacking and maintenance, also some cyborg control. And there is a medical studies here, but I don't think you'd fit into that. They're mostly genetic manipulators. You seem more field-based than laboratory."

The dragon nods. "I wassss multi-sssskilled becausssse it wassss a ssssurvival trait. I don't have any problem with ssssspecialization in one tassssk."

"Here, it's team based. We hone one skill, then use a combination of others to round it out. Hackers to get in, combats to take over the building, hackers again to network, thieves to get the documents. That sort of thing. There are a few cross overs, I suppose, like thief hackers."

"But it's up to you to pick what area to specialize in. If you'd _like_ to do both combat and hacking, it can be arranged, though you'd be one of a kind and probably half worked to death.

"I am primarily a hacker, to be honesssst. The resssst wassss to allow me the chancccce to do that primary interesssst. One doessss not hack very much when dead."

"Very true. Virii, then, will be your Head Command. If she finds you adept enough, she'll teach you herself." The Elder glances over her shoulder, the sway of her hair revealing one, sickly glowing yellow eye hidden beneath it. "Maybe.." Thumbs humidly amends.

*****

Typo looks at the boy. /This looks wrong,/ he thinks, with a vague misgiving that he should speak up....surely there was a better way? But he says nothing except, "um, is all this stuff going to hurt him?"

"Not a bit. It's to make certain that if his brain sends a wrong nerve twitch message while he's in there, he won't hurt himself," Chip explains.

Comm nods briefly to Typo, as if in confirmation of Chip's explanation. Beyond that, though, he remains silent, quietly accepting Chip's guidance.

Chip pats his shoulder gently. "Are they comfortable? I don't want them too tight."

~~Yes,~~ Comm replies, his voice not physical, but a haunting mental tone, devoid of emotion.

"Good. Anything else you need?"

~~No, thank you. I am prepared to begin.~~

Typo starts as Comm's mind-voice drops like a stone into his own head. /Crap and Merde. I thought they fucked around with me./ He shivers.

Virii blinks suddenly and checks something in her pocket that looks like a pager. "I must go, " she mutters distantly, then focuses again on Worm. "You be careful." The Elder fades out of the room like a shadow in the sun.

Typo looks impressed for a moment, then turns to Worm. "What should I do?"

"Listen to Chip, " Worm chuckles, heading over to the chair beside Comm and settling in. "For all intents and purposes, she's now your babysitter."

"Okayyy..." he turns to Chip and raises an eyebrow. "I don't think you want me to repeat the question."

Chip follows after Worm and buckles her down in the same manner as Comm, then sets about placing electromonitors on their temples and chest. A few taps on the keyboard later, two of the screens light up with a multitude of images - a live feed of each, plus thermo body scans, heart rate, temperature, respiration, etc.

Comm calmly sits in his chair, the lifesigns on Chip's display normal for his kind, but would be critical condition for most humanoids.

"Stand over there while I prep them, " Chip responds, adjusting a few of the sensors, then setting a metal ring around Worm's head with a ring of red lights flicking on the inside.

"Comm, you ready to download the data voice transmission?"

~~I am ready. Please begin.~~

"Ok," Typo responds, and goes to the corner indicated. "Can I help with something?" /I feel like excess baggage/, he thinks.

Chip continues to adjust this odd headband around Worm's head, tightening bolts on either side. "Alright, I'm going to get Comm in, then I'll inject you, alright, Worm?"

Worm gives a faint nod, eyes closed. Chip continues, plugging a jack into the side of Comm's neck. "Begin uploading, Comm."

~~Roger.~~

As he uploads and enters th main computer terminal, Chip moves to Worm, and activates the headband. From approximately twelve ports, needles shoot out into the flesh of her head, through till they hit the skull, then edging forward through the bone. The hiss of their release causes a flinch in Worm, then a violent spasm as the needles enter and inject a dark dye into her brain, which shows up as a catscan on the overhead model.

Almost instantly, Worm goes utterly limp. Chip taps a few keys, then pulls a microphone on the console to her mouth. "Let us know when she's in there with you, Comm."

Typo flinches, and backs further into the corner. /I don't think I like this I don't think so, no, no no I don't./

Comm's eyelids close, showing skin only slightly thinner than that covering the rest of his body. In the virtual world, a healthy, vibrant version of himself turns to see the virtual Worm appear. ~~She is in.~~

Worm shudders and mumbles in her virtual area, inaudible to the outside. "Go ahead and network with her, then, Comm, so we can hear her. You'll have to go through the manual jacks since she's not a plugger, and I know it restrains data flow, but I know you can do it."

Comm nods in the physical world, and in the virtual one offers up an end of a datacable to Worm, the other already affixed to ports on the right side of his neck. ~They cannot hear you without networking,~ he explains to the virtual avian. ~That routine has never been entirely debugged, as far as I am aware.~

Worm nods amicably. "I know. And I really hate this part, " she grimaces, and reaches for the end of the datacable.

/No I don't like this/ He thinks, and turns to Chip. "This looks really...really." He says, petering off into silence and memories.

Worm wraps her hand around the plug of the datacable in the virtual reality, rears her hand back and slams the plug into her forehead, staggering as blood pours down her face. An instant, and the cable fades.

On the table, a small trickle of blood runs from her forehead, under the band, along one side of her nose like a teardrop.

Chip hands a towel to Typo. "Go and clean her face for her, if you would. The blood taste is horrible when one wakes up."

Typo melts into the corner. /What the fuck they shouldn't do this! Why are they doing this it's like Repoz...no no. No. I don't think I like this anymore./

~If it is any consolation, Worm,~ the virtual Comm says, ~I am not a great fan of the procedure myself.~

He flinches as Chip hands him the towel, then slowly gets up, walks over, and wipes Worm's face off. The blood is startlingly red on the white cloth.

Chip clicks the mic to permanent on. "You doin ok in there, Worm?"

Worm offers a weak smile to Comm, then looks around the area, just filled with white, endless space. "Oh, I'm peachy keen, Chipper."

"Um, yeah." Typo adds, his voice not quite steady.

"Chill, Typo, " Worm soothes through the speaker. "It's ok. I'm not jacked like Comm and Chip, so I can't directly access the computer. I have to be manually jacked and uploaded. It's not as bad as it looks."

"Okay. Yeah. I guess."

Comm raises his hand in the physical world to Typo. ~~Do not be alarmed. This is common procedure, only required for those who cannot jack, for whatever reason.~~

Chip smiles weakly at the mic. "First time I've seen a student look like he's going to vomit, piss his pants, or manage both at once, Worm."

Typo swallows. ~Thanks,~ he sends back to Comm.

/Damn, I hope I never have to do this, or that I can be jacked./

"Be nice to him Chip, " Worm scolds. "You turned about five shades of green before you fainted the first time I did this to you, kid."

"Yeah, well, " Chip laughs softly, "your students get attached to you, Worm."

Typo grins slightly.

~~As did I. Green skin just hid it well,~~ Comm says in his monotone voice in the physical world.

"Not my fault, " Worm laughs. "My body can't handle being jacked. It's just my stomach that can't handle this."

"Alright Comm, Worm, I'm going to upload you to the mainframe."

~~Affirmative.~~

"*Your* stomach?" Typo asks.

"Hey now, you don't have to shove a jack into your forehead to be networked. I'll make sure you're jacked. It's painless."

"Now, Typo, sit and learn something. Quit worrying about me. One day you'll probably have to mediate like Chip is for Comm."

/Painless?/ Typo hrumphs. "Ok." He sits still on a chair next to Chip.

"Just don't vomit on the keyboard, kid, " Chip grunts, fingers flying to moderate bit rates and checking lifesigns.

~~That is why we had them weatherproofed, Chip.~~

"Not funny Comm. Last time someone tossed their cookies it nearly shorted out the monitoring system. Had to abort the whole mission."

~~I am aware of that. I was in that mission. Afterwards was when the equipment was upgraded.~~

"Cute. There, you're both uploaded."

Comm points in a direction, only a small black spot differentiating it from the surrounding white area. The two walk in that direction, and come upon what appears, at first, to be nothing more than an Atari 2600 with two one-button joysticks, feeding an old black and white 13" television standing on a worn down TV cart. ~The VR generation subroutine apparently has had a sense of humor uploaded since last time.~

"Ssssh. Sssh. Quiet now, m'dear, everything will be ok. Sssh." The medic gestures for another wet cloth, and tosses the used one, blood-soaked, into the bin underneath the bed. One of the orderlies places one into her hand and moves onto the next patient.

The medic presses the white towel to the forehead of the gencon, who is whimpering softly, but not moving. Blood runs down his spot-furred face and into his open mouth, too much to be staunched by a simple towel. The medic reaches down for the wrist of the gencon, takes the pulse, and frowns. She makes a second motion, different from the first.

The orderly stops for a moment in her rounds, looks up at the medic, and rummages in a cabinet for a moment before coming back. There is a syringe, held gingerly like a flower, in her clawed hand.

There is a soft 'pop' as the plastic covering the needle is detached, and a softer answering whine from the patient as the needle is inserted into the wrist vein.

The sheet is pulled over the body with a hiss of fabric, and the smell of disinfectant mingles with that of blood, and that of death.

The medic moves on.

"...and this is our clinic. It's as state of the art as we can make it. Whatever medical supplies we get from the raids are funneled here."

"Yah. When " - he swallows, trying to concentrate on anything else - "when was the last raid?"

"The last successful one was on the 27th."

A yipe, terrified, echoes down the length of the room. "Frigging dammit, they need this shit back there. Go!" A pause. "I don't care if you leave me here, I'll fight them off with these scalpels if I have to! Go, go, just go!"

A yip, a growl. Silence.

The medics and an orderly rush over to a bed on the far end of the room.

One mutters something about head trauma. They brush past the two gencons standing quietly near the entrance, unconcerned with the living and whole.

The two slip out the door. It closes quietly behind them, in a whiff of warm lemon-scented air.

"I take it there was another."

"Yes."

"How many died?"

"Four." The half-skinned bear glances back, quickly, to the bed, the sheet, the body beneath. Frowns. "No. Wait. Five now."

"Damn. Maybe they were the lucky ones." He pulls an errant feather away from his eye.

The other gencon shrugs, takes a step down the hall. Inch-long talons click on hard concrete. "Ready to move on with our little orientation?"

"I guess." /If I die here, at least they'll know my name. And care./

"Ah, hell. What happened? I can't feel my arms, much less see them." Typo griped.

"A glitch." Worm sounded nonplussed.

"Can we get ourselves out of here?" /What the hell am I doing, asking that? I'm supposed to be the one doing that kind of stuff. Great./ He sighed. /The last shreds of any good reputation I may have had are going down the digital toilet./ He tried to mess around with different aspects of the coding to see if they could be manually adjusted as his eyes and body adjusted to their current digital form. "Well, this is a lot faster than typing everything in, at least."

"It would be more advisable to see if Comm can re-establish his uplink to download our consciousness out, rather than manual removal," Worm chided as she continued to alter the code they were sent in to tweak.

"Yeah. That's a good idea...." If he had had anything approximating skin in his current form, he would have blushed with embarrassment.

"And if Comm has lost his uplink, it is entirely likely that until the connection is re-established, no one else will be able to upload themselves in, so we're the only defense against intruders." She tossed out the information casually, seeming completely unworried.

After a few more moments of mentally tweaking the code to try and find the physical location of the break with Comm's link that would correspond to the breaking of the mental linkage back in non-digital space, Typo emerges with what appears to be a virtual representation a broken ethernet cable. "Oh. Well. I don't think he lost it entirely. There seem to be traces of his memory still in here. I don't know what to do with this, though....any suggestions?"

"Leave it be. He's likely having a seizure. Chip will care for him."

"Ah." Typo carefully puts the end of the cable down and backs away from it. He looks around what appears to be a small apartment room for the first time. "This looks really...normal."

"Hardly. You're just a projection into a vast sense of data. It's not really real. But it seems like it is. The data can be seen however one's own mind chooses to see it." Worm hums to herself and floats upside down, rearranging a few memory stacks to alter a program.

"Oh." Typo walks over to the window and looks out. A huge structure of boxlike structures, organized and almost city-like, stretches out below them. /The Enigmite mainframe. Wow./ Eventually, he tires of looking at the virtual representation, and goes over towards what appears to be a speakerphone. He mentally changes its connection so it goes back to main Enigma headquarters room. /Maybe we can get a communications link working, at least.../

"If Comm's down, he likely took everything with him. They're still working on getting him to control his abilities. Quite a prodigy. We have to go back a few years." She chuckles, tapping a few things into a pad. The pad blinks, and a text message appears. "Hm. Yeah. Comm's gone grand mal again."

"Ah. So, if he took the whole communications network down with him when he went, how exactly are you getting those messages through?"

"These aren't telepathic uplinks. Remember Email? Much easier to alter data to make words than alter it to make a voicestream."

"So." /God, I feel like an idiot. Without even the consolation of being inexperienced at it./ "Comm's out of commission for a while - it's useless trying to get the link re-established for a while yet. What else can I do?"

"Continue debugging." She whistles as she moves data chunks around the room. "It'll save, no matter if the main uplink is established or not."

"That's a nice fail-safe."

Worm glances to the pad she'd been typing on earlier. "Or, we could take on the hacker in sector 19. It's not just a fail-safe...we do have ghosts in the Network. People who've become trapped in here, or chosen to live in here."

/Oh, that's so comforting. So if we don't get out, at least the fail-safe will keep my ghost around.../ Typo starts to de-bug a different section of code. "Wait. The *what*?"

"There's a novice hacker poking at cluster 19. Nothing major, but it's fun to tease them at this level."

"Well, if there are Enigmites that live in the network, why don't they help us get rid of this hacker?"

"Most of them have ceased to care. Your mind is eventually absorbed into the network protocols. It's a nasty side effect. But we all know the risks. And it takes a few years, anyway. They could've come out. Most chose not to."

"Well, that makes it all better, then."

Worm shrugs and moves to the 'door' of the room. "Do you want to help me take out this hacker, or what?"

"Hey, whatever works for them. I just wouldn't want to be an IP in whatever passes for AOL in most realities."

Worm looks disapprovingly at her pupil. "No need to get snippy." She floats out the door. "You still have a one dimensional grasp of this. We can move instantaneously in this ether, if we wanted to." She pauses. "And mm, they're more than that. Those ghosts are what makes the Network a conscious entity. Most of the hackers, when they get too old to do fieldwork, choose to submerge themselves into the Network, add their knowledge. It's a befitting sort of burial, I suppose."

"Interesting, to be sure." Typo doesn't sound convinced. He swims out the door, doing a neat backflip.

Worm rolls her eyes as typo flips past her and floats further into the hall. She begins to lead the way, moving at what seems to be an odd gait - she winks in and out of existence, traveling several hundred yards each time.

Typo tries skipping a few times and only looks dumb, then floats through a wall and gets it, appearing about 50 yards in front of Worm.

Worm waggles her finger. "There is no spoon." She laughs to herself and zips on ahead.

Typo grins and winks into existence next to Worm holding an ethereal fork.

"Or fork." She points away the utensil. "Smart ass." The senior Enigmite gestures to a gray blobby thing up ahead. "That would be the hacker."

The gray blob appears to be munching on data, as it reads and tries to look at things.

"The firewall is visible as...well...a fire...wall."

Typo grins. "It looks like something that grew on the inside of the shower curtain."

"Well, hackers have no identity in the Network. So it is, basically."

"So, materializing a fire extinguisher wouldn't take that firewall down, would it?" Typo looks speculatively at the screen of flames surrounding the hacker.

"They can't see it the way we can. If we did it, it very well might. But they're looking at this through a computer screen. If they weren't, we'd see a figure much like how you view me. This hacker is a fluke. Probably just stumbled on the edge stupidly. It can't do much harm - not intelligent enough to get anywhere. But it's fun to play with." She pokes it with her foot and it squeaks like a doggie chew toy.

"And that did - what?"

"Made it squeak." Worm grins irreverently.

Typo goes around putting out bits of the firewall with a fire extinguisher here and there, and lights a sparkler with it just for fun.

Do not copy or quote the above material without the expressed consent of the owner of this page.

back