Shieru no Yurei II

--------------------------

When we were young, we were idealistic. We were taught by our parents the way things were, that we could become a train engineer if we tried hard enough, that love was what drives the souls of human beings, that we could overcome any and all obstacles through sheer and purest morality. They wanted us to look around and take hold of our world, to create our own fantasy. In our easy molded youth, they wanted to give us a utopia.

And then reality finally crashes into our lives.

So nothing we believed in was true anymore.

...

“The day of departures was from some reason with strong wind

Kindness, arrogance, warmth, sorrow, and compassion

I entrusted everything”

---Globe, “Departures”

...

“You’re insane, you know that, Edge?” grumbled Double. “We’ve scoured this unit inside and out and nothing turns up that could possibly explain the emotional expression that we just saw. Now you want to dive into its mind. Fighting androids like this are raised with the corazon chip to enhance reaction, fighting style, and all-purpose tactics. Nobody questions what happens to their mind when their masters eject their chips. They know its been fried, like ripping the free the will from a human being and turning them into a slave in one fell swoop. This unit was obviously trained in that manner, too good not to be. And now you want to look inside whatever hell that infests her consciousness.”

Edge simply returned the words with his own calm stare as Yoshime continued linking wires from the back of his neck to the now powerless Xiaoyu unit that lay nearby. She spared a worried glance at Double, meant more for her green haired companion than for herself, before hastily turning back to her work.

“This could be the answer I’m looking for,” he said. “Imagine, from nothing springs the mind and ability of a human being. Here, life has been created. Somewhere in that mass of creation must be the answers I am searching for.”

“Do you even know what you’re searching for?” said the assassin. “A secret for being human, fine. But you could as easily search for the secret of life, now couldn’t you?”

Edge aimed a look of sarcasm at his friend.

“And do you know what you’re looking for, keeping her merely as a sparring partner?”

Double snickered as he turned his back.

“Fighting and mind-searching are two different things entirely. I can see my opponent in the real world, but looking into somebody’s mind requires you to dive headfirst into the unknown. I’ve heard bad stories about government scientists who have tried to examine the psyche of cybernetic soldiers for further study of the corazon chip. Supposedly, none of them ever came out sane.”

“You’re not going to change his mind by prating, Double,” said Yoshime. “I think it’s part of his corazon chip to be stubborn.” Edge sheepishly dug his head into his shoulders but she just put an arm around him. “I’m only kidding, Edge. I don’t like you doing this either. I’ve heard the rumors. But if it’ll help you.discover who you are,” She reached up with her palm to brush his cheek. “--- then it’ll be all worth it, ne? Afterwards, I guess we can settle down and try to live a normal life.”

“Oh please,” muttered the assassin. “Spare me the melodrama.”

He suddenly grunted as the hilt of sword jutted into his side. As Double doubled over, Kouryuu swiftly lowered her blade back into its sheath.

“Be a little more considerate,” she said. “She’s trying to help him out, isn’t she?” She grinned victoriously as Double grumbled out an incomprehensible answer.

Yoshime connected the last wire between the dormant android and Edge and began to type out a series of commands on her laptop.

“You’ll be in stasis in the real world while you do your soul searching,” she said. “Remember not to touch programs you don’t need to. They could be viral traps. I can only monitor your own status, not that of the things around you, so be careful in there!”

Edge smiled as he adjusted the projections jutting out of the back of his head.

“It’s fine,” he said. “If there’s nothing to be seen, then I’ll come back out. Besides, this is a data scan. It shouldn’t take more than a couple minutes at best.”

Yoshime smiled back as she hit the enter key on her keyboard, initializing the program. “Good luck!” she said.

Edge’s figure suddenly went slack as his consciousness left its shell.

...

“Don’t do this, Edge,” came the stern voice of Adam. Edge suddenly glanced up to face a gentle hail of white feathers, it’s owner glaring down at himself.

“You don’t know what you’re doing,” said the angel. “You still have time to turn back, turn back to your journey.”

“And so I should trust you?” said Edge, backing away and gripping his power. Lighting suddenly surged around him as gravitational energies solidified. “You still haven’t given me proof of your alignment. For all I know, you could be the devil’s advocate. Besides, didn’t you say before that I wouldn’t understand anyways?”

Adam winced ever so slightly as he continued his speech.

“I can’t directly tell you the danger. That is forbidden. But I can warn you. Turn back, Edge. There are many things you can do in life, but you can’t pry into the soul of another creature.”

Adam abruptly faded away, but the young boy kept hold of his power. He had to move forward, he had to find his answers. Xiaoyu could hold everything he needed to know about human beings. If could learn something, anything, it would all be worth it. Even if it meant taking a chance.

The colors around him faded gently with the leaving of the seraph. Black monoliths materialized before his eyes. Xiaoyu’s programs. Gently, he reached out to the first to listen to its content. His fingers gently touched the solid black surface...

The world exploded in color.

...

“***Xiaoyu unit program 0023: retaliation, Initialized. Programa de Sueno drivers loading. Remaining time: 464 cycles. Activating program protection field: Genesis Kaze.”

...

Yoshime’s eyes widened in horror as her computer screen suddenly burst into the screaming buzz of error. Her hands flew across the tablet but a huge notification sudden popped up in the corner.

“Program does not exist. Access denied.”

Kouryuu dashed up behind her, eyes searching wildly for the trouble. Yoshime simply stared at the dead screen.

“He’s gone...” she managed weakly. “I’ve been cut off from his program by some kind of virus. It was timed though, it didn’t activate until Edge accessed a database. This is a trap!!!”

Clef was suddenly by her side, mechanical eyes quickly analyzing the situation. Finally, he ripped open the back of his neck, exposing connection wires.

“Patch me into your computer,” he said sternly.

“What do you think that’s going to do?!” shouted Kouryuu. “We’ve already got one person trapped, we don’t need two!!!”

Clef shot her a dangerous look. “Don’t you see? If this were a professional defense system, it would have tried to kill Edge, not cut him off from us. This was all planned. We need to rescue Edge now or we may never be able to get him back.”

Kouryuu thought that her head veins would be bulging with frustration if she were human, but she nodded anyways. Clef was more learned in computer science than she was, but she still didn’t fully trust him. Not yet. But Edge’s life was on the line…

Double’s comforting hand suddenly rested on her shoulder. His face was a mixture of pain and understanding.

“People like us can’t do anything right now,” he said solemnly. “We’re fighters, not rocket scientists. Our knowledge is that of combat. It’s all up to Yoshime and Clef now.”

She smiled weakly as she glanced over to Edge’s slumped shell. Out of the corner of her eye, she suddenly spotted Iesu. With his cross propped up against his shoulder, the young boy simply stared at Edge’s empty body without feeling. She had almost forgotten he was there, everything was moving so fast as of late. But now that she got the chance to observe him, he seemed so very stolid. What did he want anyways? Why did he still continue to travel with their group? Surely he should be able to take care of himself on his own; he seemed well off enough before Yujin chased him through the rebel gates. For what was he risking his life for?

Kouryuu started as Iesu’s glance violently shifted, but he did not rest his eyes on her. Instead, his sight landed on Yoshime’s frustrated figure, eyes gleaming with a passionate sparkle.

…

Edge struggled against the sudden change in the atmosphere. Something was definitely wrong, he had felt no information upload when he accessed the program. Desperately, he clawed for escape from the way he came, but an invisible wall suddenly dropped between him and his exit. Something was blocking his information strain from Yoshime’s computer. A trap? Adam had warned him against entering Xiaoyu’s hard drive. Perhaps the angel did have some sort of truth to his words.

He whirled about as his systems screamed a warning signal.

‘A virus?’ thought Edge. No. This was all some sort of elaborate snare, wasn’t it? Conventional computer defenses didn’t initialize viral programs. It was too large of a risk to the main system. Whoever was running the show here didn’t expect anything in this unit to come out alive. The highway of information was a much different battlefield than that of real life. Physical manifestations of programs appeared real enough, but they were really only a series of numbers designed to attack and counter. There was no ‘chances’ here, for every program was designed in a perfect mechanical model so as to avoid mistakes. The first screw up always meant death. Here, Edge’s raw power was all for naught.

Trails of numeric code flew in front of the young boy’s vision, slowly taking form. The head came first, the handsome face of a program created merely to destroy, a murderous edge glinting from its iris-less eyes. A body covered with little armor, but strengths and weaknesses could not be judged by appearance on the plane of information. Its body was about the size of Double with the hard build of Terpfen, but Edge had yet to see what abilities his opponent could exhibit.

As the last of the numbers fell into place, the program’s white-gloved hand shot up in Edge’s direction. Edge instinctively sidestepped just in time to dodge a huge slash of air that wasn’t really air, but a physical manifestation of the program’s power.

“Ch!” cursed Edge as he gathered his power. He had never experienced true network battles before and he doubted that even Double, the government veteran, had either. This duel of raw data was outside his knowledge, and while he had all his powers in this world, he lacked the computer knowledge to create anything other than conventional attacks and defenses. He could only use what he knew. On the other hand, his opponent was an emotionless monster trained to kill without warning, quite possibly what he himself could have become had Yoshime never found him. The thought chilled him to the bone.

Spreading both his hands wide, Edge spun a reverse vacuum around the program, attempting to pull him apart in every direction at once. Moving quickly to put a protective field around himself, he layered a protective field around himself as well while his opponent was busy decoding the first assault. To his surprise, his defense suddenly dispersed as a torrent of wind slammed into his gut. Looking up with a grimace, he saw the program, completely unaffected by his attack. Gloved hands spun threads of information quicker than he could follow, and Edge suddenly felt his ‘body’ being pulled apart by the powerful gusts of raw power aiming to control the artificial atmosphere in the way he had just attempted. Forcing himself forward, he blankly charged his opponent, knowing that he could not merely wait. A mere second before impact, he changed his gravity vacuums, swirling a complete 180 degrees about the program, and as his hand sparkled with energy, he focused as powerful a vacuum as he could create on his target’s head in an attempt to cave in its core while at the same time using the inward pull to add momentum to a spinning roundhouse that he aimed at the same spot. It would have to be fairly powerful to defend against this two-pronged attack, butEdge’s face washed over with despair as his energy weave abruptly fell apart and his foot stopped in midair. With a sudden turn, the program grabbed Edge’s ankle, kneed him in the crotch coupling with a kick to the face, and buffeted him back with the force of a tornado. As Edge righted himself, he stole a quick glimpse of his energy levels. He was under fifty percent.

He could not win this battle by sheer strength alone. There were too many backdoors and tricks that he didn’t know how to place on this plane of existence. It was all simply too much for him to overcome. Maybe it was the huge energy consumption that the battle was taking out on him, but Edge suddenly felt very weary. He needed rest. He needed to sleep.

For the first time in his life, Edge wanted to give up.

…

“***Remaining loading time: 364 cycles. Status of Genesis Kaze program: GK efficiency=100.00 Edge Unit=32.46 Analysis: GK over-effective. Drop program efficiency levels.”

…

“This is not good,” said Clef, completely wired to Yoshime’s computer. “I can’t see Edge right now, but the virus is in plain sight. Class V, I’d say, quadruple layered defenses, at least ten type 3687 programs, no visible backdoors.”

Kouryuu tapped her foot impatiently at the child cyborg. She had always hated complicated mechanics. “Would you mind speaking in some sort of dialect understandable to us?” she muttered under her breath. She nearly jumped when Clef turned towards her, his eyes still deep in cyberspace. She didn’t think that his hearing receptacles were quite that good.

“In other words,” said Clef. “This program has no visible hacks. As far as I know, there is no way to break its destructive code without totally dissecting the Xiaoyu unit. And Edge’s brain.”

“And we can’t do that,” said Yoshime, fidgeting with the wires fitfully. “That runs the risk of causing a system wide shutdown, quite possibly losing every program that is in operation. Edge would simply disappear.”

“Most likely get lost in cyberspace,” added Clef. “Like I was. Of course, if he doesn’t have the computer expertise that I do, then his chances of recovering his shell are---”

“He doesn’t have those skills,” cut in Double. “He’s too green to know anything like that.”

“Then... I suppose we have no choice but to see if he can get himself out of this situation himself...” trailed off Yoshime. Iesu was suddenly patting her shoulder in a comforting manner and trying to smile.

“I’m sure he’ll make it,” he said. “He’s always been able to pull himself out of this kind of stuff before.” The young girlmeekly smiled and unconsciously took his hand into her own. Kouryuu couldn’t help but feel a tinge of irritation at the gestures, but it seemed to comfort Yoshime. She wasn’t used to Iesu quite yet, but perhaps it was the fact that they were both fairly compatible. And human. Humans and their relationships. Kouryuu almost snickered at the thought.

“We can do something,” said Clef, suddenly cutting off The rebel’s thoughts. “If nothing else, I can see if I can patch a minimal connection to Edge’s consciousness. That would allow us to communicate with him, albeit most likely with a connection of questionable integrity.”

Yoshime sprung up at the suggestion, determination filling her face.

“Then let’s do it!” she said with a glint in her eye. “Who cares if this stupid program is supposed to be unbeatable. I’m not giving up Edge without a fight!!!”

…

Zero trotted up behind Terpfen with a hint of mischief in her eye. The big buffoon had been staring off into space the whole time that poor Edge was trapped. Inconsiderate moron. It was time for somebody to give him a good smack in the---

Terpfen’s head suddenly swiveled about, his dead eyes catching Zero dead in their path. She cursed under her breath. For somebody so big, he sure had a sharp eye. However, the nuclear relic merely turned back to looking out into the middle of nowhere just as quickly as he had glanced back. Abandoning her trick on account of a loss of initiative, she plopped herself beside the huge android on a nearby boulder and swung her feet about playfully.

“Can you sense it?” said Terpfen out of thin air.

Zero crinkled her face in confusion.

“What are you talking about?” she asked. “Sense what? Is that brain of yours getting to your dead shell?”

Terpfen looked at her plaintively.

“Your shell is just as dead as mine,” he said. “You have no corazon chip either.”

She grinned happily.

“I don’t know why everybody thinks I do.” Pulling open her back socket, she forcefully yanked out a black chip with the uncanny resemblance to a corazon chip. “Yoshime-chan thought I did when she saw this, but that’s just spare ram that I never got hooked up! She must have thought it was that corazon chip thingy or whatever.” She shrugged and tossed the useless chip over her shoulder. “She never seemed to notice anything different. I guess they all just made presumptions from my behavior. Or maybe it’s because of my system. Yoshime said she never saw anything like it before...” She jumped up and hopped about happily. “But I don’t care! Just as long as I can be with these guys, everything will be okay. After all, this group is so much fun, even better than playing Fighting Vipers 2!”

Terpfen looked out into the distance.

“Apparently, I was not the only survivor of the nuclear cataclysm. We’ve come with range of another program, though I am most likely the only one able to sense its activity.”

Zero stopped prancing about long enough to cock her head to one side.

“Another program?”

“Correct. However, I can’t pinpoint its status at the moment due to the distance between us. Perhaps it is a benevolent unit…”

But the pigtailed girl was already wandering away. She was hardly interested in ‘new units’ and the such. Not like Yoshime, Edge, Double, or Kouryuu would care anyways, they were too wrapped up in their own problems. Instead, the she jumped off to find something large to toss at Double. Maybe that would get his attention at this so very crucial time.

…

“***Remaining loading time: 112 cycles.”

…

Power at twenty two percent. Edge tried desperately to retreat the program’s furious hurricane of invisible blows, but it was all to no avail. His defenses were ripped apart in seconds. His attacks were swatted away like mere flies. This wasn’t like real life, against a Shiken, or Yuujin, or even Kazuki Tenjiko. Raw power was nothing in this here. Intelligence was everything and Edge was playing the part of the ignorant fool.

“Edge.”

He stirred in the emptiness of his consciousness, reaching for the source of the voice. It was somebody he knew.

“Wake up, Edge. There are people who need you in the real world.”

His eyes flew open as he buffeted the slicing winds with a magnetic shield to buy himself some precious time. “Clef?!” he said anxiously.

“Yes,” said the child. “I have little time to talk. This program’s power is too much for even me to handle. I’m surprised that you’ve held out this long.”

“Damnit, Clef!” said Edge. “I don’t know anything about cyberspace. I’m used to fighting in the real world. You need to help me!!!”

“If I were in your position, I doubt even I could beat this creation. Its defenses are too complex. However, you already know what the most direct way to destroy a program is.”

Edge’s face wrinkled in confusion as his shield began to come apart. He had mere seconds before his defense would crash and he was getting nowhere.

“What are you talking about?! You delete a program, that’s how! But I can’t delete this one!”

“Think clearly,” said Clef impatiently. The young boy could already feel his information feed weakening. “What if you don’t need to turn the computer on? I said destroy and I didn’t necessarily mean cleanly. Surely, there has to be a specific chip commandeering this opponent of yours---”

“---so I need to destroy the chip!” exclaimed Edge. “But how can I do that when I’m here and the chip’s out there? Can’t you do it?”

“No telling what traps the Xiaoyu unit was rigged with,” said Clef. “Even if we could pry beneath the exterior layer, it could take hours to find and destroy a single chip without risk to your consciousness. You would surely be dead by then. You’ll need to stretch your powers far enough to---*”

The transmission suddenly fell apart into numbers at the same time that Edge’s energetic field collapsed. Far enough to what? Destroy the chip himself? Could that work? Would he be able to sense it in this chaos? Perhaps the most important question was, did he have any choice?

Edge shot a hard glare at the program before him and let the energy gather about his being. Clef was right about one thing if nothing else. People in the real world needed him. Yoshime needed him. He could not fail. He would not fail.

…

“***Remaining loading time: 52 cycles.”

…

“Die!!!” shouted Edge as he thrust his arms forward. A torrent of energy spilled out, encasing his enemy in raw power. However, his focus was somewhere else, somewhere far beyond the realm of information. Somewhere in the real world, a single black computer chip strained against the small pressure of a feeble vacuum. It was all he could manage in his current state, but it would have to be enough.

He strained himself as he focused all his power on that one spot. It was hardly going to be even a hundredth as effective as in real life, but he had to try.

In response, the program threw waves of concentrated air at him, but Edge took the blows and stood his ground. If he wanted to win, he had to ignore everything else but that chip. Just had to think about something else besides the hurt, besides the damage and destruction... like the others, Yoshime, his master. Double and Kouryuu, his friends. Such comforting thoughts soothed him as his power percentile dropped to the ten percent mark.

…

“***Remaining loading time: 12 cycles.”

…

Five percent. Edge strained harder than he had ever pushed himself before. He had to ignore the biting winds, the damage done to his physical cyberspace form, the energy drop. Ignore everything but the chip... and Yoshime.

“I won’t give up,” he whispered, gathering everything he had in his central core for one final blow of desperation. Then louder. “I WON’T!!!”

A huge wave of gravitational distortion erupted from his psyche as his energy level continued to fall.

…

“***Program loading process complete. “Genesis Kaze:” Cease offensive phase.”

…

Kouryuu spun about with wide eyes at the first acrid smell of burning silicon. A thin tendril of smoke was rising from Xiaoyu’s shell, slowly snaking upwards towards the sky.

“What the hell…” she muttered unconsciously.

Behind her, Clef was carefully unpatching the wires from his neck and Yoshime was breathing a sigh of relief.

“I can’t believe this,” said Yoshime. “Edge is back on my screen and the virus is gone. What happened?”

Clef was wearing a small grin on his face.

“Quite simple,” he began. “Edge won.”

...

Power at 1.4 percent. Edge panted wearily as he stared at the place where his opponent had once stood. His hands smoked faintly from his power usage, but that wasn’t what sent the chill down his back. At the last moment, the program had ceased to work. It hadn’t disappeared as if somebody had destroyed it and it hadn’t exhibited any sort of internal data damage. It merely stopped in its tracks, stopped controlling the cutting winds that were destroyinghis astral form. It had simply turned off.

The other monoliths of stored information began rematerializing with the virus’ defeat, but Edge dared not touch them. This had not been an ordinary defense precaution. If anything, this was a trap, an elimination program. But then why did the attack suddenly cease its offensive on the eve of its victory? Nothing was making any sense.

The sudden sensation of flying overtook him as he watched the monoliths vanish from sight. A force quit. Now that the virus was no longer blocking signals, Yoshime was probably pulling him out in a rush before any other dangerous programs were activated. And yet, there were things that he needed to find out from Xiaoyu’s shell. Who was doing this to him and why? Who wanted him to suffer but not die?

...

Edge’s eyes slowly opened to the sight of Yoshime’s worried face peering directly into his own. A relieved smile spread out on her visage and the worry in her eyes slowly dissipated.

“Are you all right, Edge?” she asked. “You really worried us there for a minute.” Edge nodded weakly and shrank back as her pleasant expression was abruptly replaced by a scowl. It still amazed him how humans could change emotional states so suddenly. Taking several different tools from her belt, Yoshime began scanning him for internal damages as she verbally scolded him. “How could you make me worry like that?! I bet the only reason you got in trouble was because you did something rash. I knew Double was a bad influence on you, and... SHADDUP DOUBLE! We’re not talking about you!!! Moron. You really shouldn’t hang around with him that often, I think he’s emitting some sort of corrosive aura that’s going to melt your cpu... damnit, it was his stupid idea to keep that damn mech in the first place. This never would have happened if...”

The young boy sighed and glanced about at the others in an attempt to escape his master’s rambling. Spotting Clef, he gave a silent grin of thanks and the shorter mech merely nodded in reply. Double let fly a bladed arm as he cleanly chopped off the Xiaoyu’s unit head. Edge couldn’t help but wince; he had still wanted to see if he could learn who was behind the trap from that empty shell. But perhaps it was for the best. After all, the Xiaoyu unit did try to kill him in a sense...

Glancing at Iesu only returned a rather cold stare that Edge could not understand. In turn, Kouryuu kept glancing at Iesu in a very cautious fashion. Did something happen that he wasn’t aware of? He sighed again as he glanced back towards Double. Some things would never change. Zero was already creeping behind the assassin in preparation for some sort of wild mischief involving a boulder at least three times her size. Terpfen was guarding the hovercraft, staring stolidly off into space.

“---and I can’t believe how conceited Double can be. I mean, I actually apologized to him the other day, APOLOGIZED!!! And you know what he did!? He just----KORA!!! Are you listening to me---”

“ACK~! Damnit, Zero!!! What the hell was that for?! Do you want me to throw a rock on your--- wait... wait, don’t throw that at me too---!!”

“WAI~!”

“See? This is what I’m talking about Edge. He’s so immature.”

“...ow, damnit... stupid rocks... and don’t act so surprised about how I took your apology, Yoshime! I deserved one after the way I had to cater to that Gainsborough bitch to make sure you stayed alive.”

"... I... I... uh...”

“AHA! That’s what I thought! Without me, you would have been dead, and you know---HEY! Cut that out!!! What are you going to do with that---* ”

“You know damn well what I’m going to do with this you obnoxious, conceited little...!”

“Ne ne, Edge. I didn’t know Yoshime could run that fast while carrying something that big...”

“...”

...

Toy grinned in the warm confines of his chamber. For once since this whole escapade had started, things were going his way. His plan was a success. Now, all he needed to do know was wait for Edge to seal his own fate in the midst of his friends. After all, Edge couldn’t die a martyr, now could he? He could afford to be patient now.

...

“***’Programa de Sueno’ loaded. Time until activation: 1209600 cycles. Commence Countdown.”

...

End “Shieru no Yurei II”