Mega man Battle Network: Virus mutations
folder
+M through R › Mega Man
Rating:
Adult +
Chapters:
29
Views:
8,507
Reviews:
25
Recommended:
0
Currently Reading:
0
Category:
+M through R › Mega Man
Rating:
Adult +
Chapters:
29
Views:
8,507
Reviews:
25
Recommended:
0
Currently Reading:
0
Disclaimer:
I do not own MegaMan, nor any of the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.
Chapter 4: Zero the 201102 Virus
Chapter 4: Zero the 201102 Virus
A loud voice over an intercom woke Lan this time, he didn’t hear what it said, but he knew he had arrived from the sudden deceleration and stop of the train. With a stretch and a yawn, Lan opened his eyes noticing he’d managed to stay upright this time, and the first thing he did was look at the PET resting in his lap, it seemed that Zero was coming out of sleep mode also.
“Hey what time is it?” Lan slowly pushed himself from his seat, taking notice of the stiffness in his leg for sitting so long.
“9:30.” Zero told him, Lan was amazed that the PET still had enough information converted to keep time, it seemed to have lost a lot of it’s functions when infected with the virus. “Are you alright?”
‘...’ “I’m ok.” Lan felt nervous, this was it... A short, maybe 15 minute boat ride was ahead of him and that was it.
He felt even more nervous when he thought about it, but he took a chance and had to follow through with it, and no matter what happened after this was worth the small glimmer of hope. He had to take this chance, he couldn’t live with himself if he didn’t take this chance , no matter how small, to save his friend and didn’t.
Lan walked off the train, treading through the small sea of people in the foreign station, it wasn’t that hard to find the exit. When he got out side that’s when he really got lost, and all he did was look around. ’Great, it’s raining here too.’ Wherever he was going he needed to hurry before he got a cold standing in the rain.
Lan unfolded a long pamphlet in his back pocket, a map...one which he really couldn‘t read. “Oh man...”
“Where are you trying to go?”
“I‘m trying to get to the dock but I--”
“It’s a mile to the dock from here, go strait.” Zero instructed.
“Huh?” That was odd. “How did you know that?”
“There’s a lot of data floating around this place.” Zero said, “I picked threw it until I found a GPS transmission and looked up a map.” And he did it pretty quick too.
Data floating around...that sounded like a wireless network, but everything used wireless networks, there was always data floating around, people could rarely get at any of it. “But...all the data floating around on wireless networks is encrypted, how did you use it?” Most hackers couldn’t get into them, they were always so secure, and if they did it was always tedious and time consuming. How did he do it in a matter of seconds?
“I don’t know...I just saw it there and I...” Zero’s voice trailed off, he just realized what he’d done. “I...I didn’t even know I was doing it.”
Lan was confused, why was Zero getting like this? “What? What did you do?”
“I saw the data there and I couldn’t read it so...“
“You infected it?” And now he understood. Zero infected the data so that it would be converted to something he could understand, the encryption didn’t stand a chance. This could potentially be a problem if Zero did it with out realizing it. “Do you remember how you did that?”
“Well...I just looked at the data, and when I couldn’t read it I started focusing really hard on it...” Zero paused. “Maybe that’s how I did it?”
Lan leaned against the wall and started putting on his skates. ”Yeah, just...try to be more aware next time.”
Zero couldn’t see how Lan could be so calm about this, he just... “Alright.”
Lan pushed himself off the wall and skated forward across the street, following Zero‘s previous directions. It was still raining, thunder could be heard in the distance, making it that much harder to move. The streets had a reflective sheen to them, fuzzily reflecting the street and car lights, amplified by the darkness. It was almost completely empty in the streets of the unfamiliar city giving Lan a clear path, his only obstacles were his lack of vision and a slick ground making it harder to keep from slipping.
“Hey Lan….” Zero looked around uncomfortably as if he‘d had something on his mind but was reluctant to as it.
“Yes Zero?” Lan spoke between paced breathes.
“Turn right--”
Per instructions Lan quickly turned down the next street before he passed it. “Whoa!” He was moving so fast that his wheels slipped momentarily on the slippery pavement, he was forced to grab on to a pole to keep from falling. ’Phew.’ Now that he’d saved himself from a lot of embarrassment, he had time to realize he’d cut Zero off before he finished speaking. “What is it?”
“What I wanted to ask you is, what’s Megaman like?”
Lan smiled at the question, and the how awkward Zero sounded when asking. Maybe he felt he had to avoid talking about Megaman, since he was the virus that did what ever it was he did to Megaman. “Well, He’s……” Lan thought about the question for a moment, looking for the right words to use. It was tougher then he first thought. “He’s….amazing, he’s really strong, and friendly…. Megaman’s just….a great person to be around.” He was disappointed at what he came up with, there was so much more to Megaman than that.
“Go Left.” Zero said, he was distracted this time.
Lan did so, sliding a little off course to the left on the wet streets. “You know, you remind me of him a little.” Lan said cheerfully.
“Huh?”
Lan slid to an almost graceful stop, unneeding of any farther direction since he’d come directly in front of a the docks. That was a quicker trip then he’d thought it’d been.
It was really at a large building in front of the docks. A Shipping company that also was a fairy service for the islands outside Eletgo.
When he went inside he found that this place resembled the train station, but he could hear heavy machinery under him and there were no terminals. Even the woman at the front desk wore a similar uniform, which made Lan wonder if they where ran by the same company.
“Excuse me, do you have anything going to Covec island?” Lan didn’t ask what time because he was unsure if anything was going to the private island. And unfortunately he was right.
“Sorry, we don’t currently have anything to that island.”
! - ! - !
! - ! - !
Lan sat on the wooden deck extending outward from the shore, his head resting in his hands as he stared a the dark waters past the sign labeled ‘dock 17‘. He didn’t even take notice to the rain except for the sound drowsing out everything else and the thousands of splashes imprinting on the sea. “Who would have thought I’d get this far and a little water would stand in my way” Lan sighed heavily. He’d swim if he had to, he was going to get to that island.
“……” Zero just looked up at the boy, he could tell that Lan was still thinking, trying to think of an alternative to swimming. And the last thing he wanted to see was Lan jump into freezing water and try to swim 2 miles out, so he started trying figure out an alternate route.
“Lan! I think I have an idea….” Zero spoke cautiously as if still planning it.
“What?” The excitement was building in his voice.
“I’m not sure what I can do, but if I can get over to that island from the net, maybe I could find a way in.”
It seemed like a good idea that had potential for better ideas. “You may have something…..but I’m afraid the closest I can get you to that is from this from here.” Lan pointed back to the shipping company.
“I think I can do it.” Zero said determinedly.
Lan gave a quick nod and stood up on the prier, he wasted no time in running back toward the building with the perfect place in mind.
! - ! - !
“Alright! Jack-in Zero!” Lan connected the PET to a pay phone booth that turned out to be closer then the spot he was thinking of, he already like saying that, it had a definite ring to it.
! - ! - !
This phone was connected to a wireless network with the phone company, making it much harder to get anywhere from here. For a normal Navi this would have been a hard and strenuous task, maybe impossible. But for a virus it wasn‘t nearly as difficult, it was extremely easy for him, basic viruses like ’201102’ were practically built to move in any type of system since nothing seem to recognize it coming before it was much to late.
But this type of system made finding one’s direction hard since everything just was a blur of 0s and 1s going in all directions, and even worse it was raining outside. In fact the storm was only getting worse made getting a signal through harder. As soon as he left the phone’s systems to connect to the net, that’s when his first problem came.
Usually it was a strait tunnel to the next open system, sever, or hub, but this tunnel was blocked in some places, destroyed in the others, imposable in most places. ’How am I going to get though this..?’ He’d had some remote success in getting pretty far, until now. Zero tried to take a step, but found there was no way he could get across this huge gap that appeared ahead of him from a failing signal. “Damnit!” Zero cursed himself, though he only had been alive a few hours he knew he wouldn’t be attempting this if it wasn’t for Lan. He had a pretty good chance at being deleted doing this.
But there was no way across…. Or back for that matter, all coverage and possible signal was now dropped on account of the storm, he was cut off from the Phone’s system and his PET. And any way where he could stand safely was fading away with the last of the signal. It looked as if the ’201102 Virus’ had met it’s end.
But like a truly dangerous virus, when forced in to a situation that can destroy you the only way to survive was to immunize and or to mutate….
“Uhgggraaaaa!”
! - ! - !
! - ! - !
Lan waited by the phone, completely sheltered by the glass structure of the both. It had been 20 minutes since the phone lost all signal, and he lost contact with Zero. But he waited, knowing that Zero would probably be ok...
After 30 minutes Lan really started to worry, ‘Please Zero, be alright...‘ Lan looked at screen on the phone hopefully, noticing that it started displaying a blinking 201102, which made Lan remember that Zero was a virus. How could he forget something like that?
He could survive…most likely…hopefully…..could he?
Lan had no idea what happened to Zero, anything could have happened to him. Lan began to wonder what actually happened to the data over a wireless network when the signal dropped? Everything probably was de--
“Lan?”
Lan flinched with a startled outcry at the sudden voice, looking down hastily at the PET held tightly in his eyes, “Zero?” Lan smiled in relief, he was starting to think that Zero wouldn’t make it. It’d be very bad to lose his new Netnavi after only a few hours. Megaman was going to have a body (hopefully), and there was no way Megaman could go back to this PET anyway. Why not keep Zero?
“Are you alright?” Lan was a little confused at the altered appearance of Zero, now he had two pairs of long wings on his back, one over lapping the other. One pair was white, the other pair was black, and the orb on his chest was also glowing bright enough to make the faint trace of Megaman’s emblem visible.
“Yeah, it got a little hard in there, but I made it.” Zero rubbed his head with a large smile across his lips.
“Where did the wings come from?”
“Well, when I was on my way to the island, the signal started to go. I thought I was done fore. But at the last second my back started hurting a lot, and these came out. Well they didn’t look like this at first.” Zero explained.
How could anything get through a wireless network with out a signal? Zero had just completely left the net and re-entered at another point by becoming a signal himself, a frightening thought really. A virus that just hangs in the air like radio waves being transmitted and waiting to be received by anything capable of doing so. It something you could never get to, and when Zero realized all of that he immediately became very silent with down cast eyes.
“Zero…..” Lan tried to think of something to say to reassure him, but there was nothing he really could. “Don’t worry about it, you wouldn’t do something bad or used it against anyone.”
“I don’t know….I can’t go anywhere without infecting something, and if I can just leave the net and come back in at any point. I’d be a complete disaster...What if I--”
Lan knew what Zero was about to say and immediately denounced it. “Your not going to go crazy and do something like that on purpose.” he said firmly. Lan could tell that Zero really hated himself right now, he was a virus and he hated it. How could he comfort him for something like that? “There has to be some way to control it, I mean, you can’t really be a virus, it’s just something wrong in your programming. There has to be some way to fix it.”
Zero knew he wasn’t lying, if Lan realized it or not, Zero was technically a glitch in a program.
Glitches could be fixed.
“Thanks Lan.” Zero said solemnly.
“For what? You did all the work.”
“You really helped me, I don’t know what would have happened to me you weren’t here.” Zero told him, then quickly changed the subject for Lan’s sake and to avoid awkwardness. “Anyway, I managed to find a few files, document’s, schedules , memos and things like that. But what’s interesting about the schedules is that about 98 all of them are shipping schedules. There are 3 deliveries to the island coming into night.
They’re mostly things like servers and hardware, but that’s not important, what is important is that one of those shipments are coming in by boat.”
Lan had to think about it for a second to catch what Zero was implying. “So all we have to do is sneak on to the boat?” Lan asked anticipatingly.
“Yeah, and guess where the boat’s delivering from?”
“This shipping company?”
“Exactly! All I have to do is knock down security on the boat and it’ll be easy for you.”
“How are you going to……Oh, look’s like you being a virus is actually coming in handy.” If that would have came from anyone but Lan, it would have sounded worse then intended.
Zero just grinned and stretched his wings to bring them back, they seemed to have disappeared shortly after he returned to the PET, where ever they had gone they were back now.
As soon as Zero left the PET using his new ’ability’, the screen started to display ’201102’ as it did before, only this time he wasn’t worried.
Lan stepped out of the dry booth and into the pouring rain outside, looked out on to the waters channeled into the dock. He saw a roughly medium sized boat leave one of the docks housed inside a boat house of the Shipping company’s (which was almost ironically the company’s name).
“Is that the boat?” Lan wiping the water on his face that threatened to stream into his eyes, forced to lifted his arm to his forehead to block some of the rain and promote vision.
When he saw the vessel drift pass him with increasing speed and turn towards the island, he knew it was it. When Zero created this plain, Lan was sure he thought there was enough time for him to actually get on the boat before it left. From that miscalculation it looked like there would have be a change in plans to account for, Lan wouldn’t have to sneak on to the boat. It looked like if he wanted to get there he’d have to jump.
Lan looked down at his PET, hoping that Zero had taken out security by now. Thinking about it, if he really tried, Zero could take down a system in a few second, he had nothing to worry about.
With out another thought or anyone to oppose him on this, Lan took a step back, then charged head first towards the edge of the pier
With out hesitation, Lan dived off the harbor, soaring threw the air and above the stormy waters while the Boat was still in the process of turning. That had been his only saving grace, he just barely managed to grab on to the back of the ship before it accelerated again. ’Whoa...!’ Lan pulled himself up on deck, the ship was driven automatically so there were no people to worry about seeing him. Just alarms.
He was half expecting flashing red lights and large beeping noises, but nothing happened.
Zero reappeared in the PET screen, “Sorry Lan, looks like the ship was ahead of schedule. How did you make it?” Zero asked, the wings faded.
“I jumped.” Lan said casually, shaking the water from his hair as he walked in to the covered cargo area separated from the dock by a wall and a door.
“You jumped? Are you alright?”
Lan pushed open the door softly. “Yeah, I made it didn’t I.” He peeked his head and looked around the darkened room filled nearly wall to wall with steel boxes, all of them with padlocks on them, mainly to keep them closed then for security. Just see them caused Lan to start thinking of another problem, “Hey, when they come to unload this stuff? They’ll catch me!”
“Well, Hide then.” Zero said plainly. A simple idea, but one hard to do effectively,
“Where could I hide?” Lan knew that if he hid in any of the places he could think of he’d be found quickly
“Among the Cargo.”
In the corner of the room near the door lay about 5 long steel pipes resting upright against the wall, wrapped up in a bundle. “Not a bad idea...” Lan drew out one of them, placing it in to the padlock of the first box he saw large enough to hold him.
Planting a foot on the box, he started to pry open the lock, and after a few seconds of pushing down with all his strength the lock snapped off, falling to the ground with a loud clank. Done with it, Lan slid the metal pipe carefully back in to the pack.
“Now let’s see what’s inside...” Lan curiously then open the lid. It was just as Zero said most of the cargo was, indeed hardware, more specifically a large sever surrounded by Styrofoam. There was enough room for him to tightly fit in side, as long as he stayed curled up. ‘Here goes nothing
With the thought of Megaman hanging in his mind he began to force himself into the box, it was his only way in.
“Are you alright?” Zero asked.
“It’s tight, but I can make it…” Lan spoke in a strained voice, but any uncomforted he was feeling was over ruled by the thought that he had made it this far. And he was so close….
“Hey Zero, you think you can get a map or something?” After a lot of shifting Lan was now curled into a ball on the side the hardware, a narrow fit between the sever and the case it resided in. This was really uncomfortable.
“Sure.”
A loud voice over an intercom woke Lan this time, he didn’t hear what it said, but he knew he had arrived from the sudden deceleration and stop of the train. With a stretch and a yawn, Lan opened his eyes noticing he’d managed to stay upright this time, and the first thing he did was look at the PET resting in his lap, it seemed that Zero was coming out of sleep mode also.
“Hey what time is it?” Lan slowly pushed himself from his seat, taking notice of the stiffness in his leg for sitting so long.
“9:30.” Zero told him, Lan was amazed that the PET still had enough information converted to keep time, it seemed to have lost a lot of it’s functions when infected with the virus. “Are you alright?”
‘...’ “I’m ok.” Lan felt nervous, this was it... A short, maybe 15 minute boat ride was ahead of him and that was it.
He felt even more nervous when he thought about it, but he took a chance and had to follow through with it, and no matter what happened after this was worth the small glimmer of hope. He had to take this chance, he couldn’t live with himself if he didn’t take this chance , no matter how small, to save his friend and didn’t.
Lan walked off the train, treading through the small sea of people in the foreign station, it wasn’t that hard to find the exit. When he got out side that’s when he really got lost, and all he did was look around. ’Great, it’s raining here too.’ Wherever he was going he needed to hurry before he got a cold standing in the rain.
Lan unfolded a long pamphlet in his back pocket, a map...one which he really couldn‘t read. “Oh man...”
“Where are you trying to go?”
“I‘m trying to get to the dock but I--”
“It’s a mile to the dock from here, go strait.” Zero instructed.
“Huh?” That was odd. “How did you know that?”
“There’s a lot of data floating around this place.” Zero said, “I picked threw it until I found a GPS transmission and looked up a map.” And he did it pretty quick too.
Data floating around...that sounded like a wireless network, but everything used wireless networks, there was always data floating around, people could rarely get at any of it. “But...all the data floating around on wireless networks is encrypted, how did you use it?” Most hackers couldn’t get into them, they were always so secure, and if they did it was always tedious and time consuming. How did he do it in a matter of seconds?
“I don’t know...I just saw it there and I...” Zero’s voice trailed off, he just realized what he’d done. “I...I didn’t even know I was doing it.”
Lan was confused, why was Zero getting like this? “What? What did you do?”
“I saw the data there and I couldn’t read it so...“
“You infected it?” And now he understood. Zero infected the data so that it would be converted to something he could understand, the encryption didn’t stand a chance. This could potentially be a problem if Zero did it with out realizing it. “Do you remember how you did that?”
“Well...I just looked at the data, and when I couldn’t read it I started focusing really hard on it...” Zero paused. “Maybe that’s how I did it?”
Lan leaned against the wall and started putting on his skates. ”Yeah, just...try to be more aware next time.”
Zero couldn’t see how Lan could be so calm about this, he just... “Alright.”
Lan pushed himself off the wall and skated forward across the street, following Zero‘s previous directions. It was still raining, thunder could be heard in the distance, making it that much harder to move. The streets had a reflective sheen to them, fuzzily reflecting the street and car lights, amplified by the darkness. It was almost completely empty in the streets of the unfamiliar city giving Lan a clear path, his only obstacles were his lack of vision and a slick ground making it harder to keep from slipping.
“Hey Lan….” Zero looked around uncomfortably as if he‘d had something on his mind but was reluctant to as it.
“Yes Zero?” Lan spoke between paced breathes.
“Turn right--”
Per instructions Lan quickly turned down the next street before he passed it. “Whoa!” He was moving so fast that his wheels slipped momentarily on the slippery pavement, he was forced to grab on to a pole to keep from falling. ’Phew.’ Now that he’d saved himself from a lot of embarrassment, he had time to realize he’d cut Zero off before he finished speaking. “What is it?”
“What I wanted to ask you is, what’s Megaman like?”
Lan smiled at the question, and the how awkward Zero sounded when asking. Maybe he felt he had to avoid talking about Megaman, since he was the virus that did what ever it was he did to Megaman. “Well, He’s……” Lan thought about the question for a moment, looking for the right words to use. It was tougher then he first thought. “He’s….amazing, he’s really strong, and friendly…. Megaman’s just….a great person to be around.” He was disappointed at what he came up with, there was so much more to Megaman than that.
“Go Left.” Zero said, he was distracted this time.
Lan did so, sliding a little off course to the left on the wet streets. “You know, you remind me of him a little.” Lan said cheerfully.
“Huh?”
Lan slid to an almost graceful stop, unneeding of any farther direction since he’d come directly in front of a the docks. That was a quicker trip then he’d thought it’d been.
It was really at a large building in front of the docks. A Shipping company that also was a fairy service for the islands outside Eletgo.
When he went inside he found that this place resembled the train station, but he could hear heavy machinery under him and there were no terminals. Even the woman at the front desk wore a similar uniform, which made Lan wonder if they where ran by the same company.
“Excuse me, do you have anything going to Covec island?” Lan didn’t ask what time because he was unsure if anything was going to the private island. And unfortunately he was right.
“Sorry, we don’t currently have anything to that island.”
! - ! - !
! - ! - !
Lan sat on the wooden deck extending outward from the shore, his head resting in his hands as he stared a the dark waters past the sign labeled ‘dock 17‘. He didn’t even take notice to the rain except for the sound drowsing out everything else and the thousands of splashes imprinting on the sea. “Who would have thought I’d get this far and a little water would stand in my way” Lan sighed heavily. He’d swim if he had to, he was going to get to that island.
“……” Zero just looked up at the boy, he could tell that Lan was still thinking, trying to think of an alternative to swimming. And the last thing he wanted to see was Lan jump into freezing water and try to swim 2 miles out, so he started trying figure out an alternate route.
“Lan! I think I have an idea….” Zero spoke cautiously as if still planning it.
“What?” The excitement was building in his voice.
“I’m not sure what I can do, but if I can get over to that island from the net, maybe I could find a way in.”
It seemed like a good idea that had potential for better ideas. “You may have something…..but I’m afraid the closest I can get you to that is from this from here.” Lan pointed back to the shipping company.
“I think I can do it.” Zero said determinedly.
Lan gave a quick nod and stood up on the prier, he wasted no time in running back toward the building with the perfect place in mind.
! - ! - !
“Alright! Jack-in Zero!” Lan connected the PET to a pay phone booth that turned out to be closer then the spot he was thinking of, he already like saying that, it had a definite ring to it.
! - ! - !
This phone was connected to a wireless network with the phone company, making it much harder to get anywhere from here. For a normal Navi this would have been a hard and strenuous task, maybe impossible. But for a virus it wasn‘t nearly as difficult, it was extremely easy for him, basic viruses like ’201102’ were practically built to move in any type of system since nothing seem to recognize it coming before it was much to late.
But this type of system made finding one’s direction hard since everything just was a blur of 0s and 1s going in all directions, and even worse it was raining outside. In fact the storm was only getting worse made getting a signal through harder. As soon as he left the phone’s systems to connect to the net, that’s when his first problem came.
Usually it was a strait tunnel to the next open system, sever, or hub, but this tunnel was blocked in some places, destroyed in the others, imposable in most places. ’How am I going to get though this..?’ He’d had some remote success in getting pretty far, until now. Zero tried to take a step, but found there was no way he could get across this huge gap that appeared ahead of him from a failing signal. “Damnit!” Zero cursed himself, though he only had been alive a few hours he knew he wouldn’t be attempting this if it wasn’t for Lan. He had a pretty good chance at being deleted doing this.
But there was no way across…. Or back for that matter, all coverage and possible signal was now dropped on account of the storm, he was cut off from the Phone’s system and his PET. And any way where he could stand safely was fading away with the last of the signal. It looked as if the ’201102 Virus’ had met it’s end.
But like a truly dangerous virus, when forced in to a situation that can destroy you the only way to survive was to immunize and or to mutate….
“Uhgggraaaaa!”
! - ! - !
! - ! - !
Lan waited by the phone, completely sheltered by the glass structure of the both. It had been 20 minutes since the phone lost all signal, and he lost contact with Zero. But he waited, knowing that Zero would probably be ok...
After 30 minutes Lan really started to worry, ‘Please Zero, be alright...‘ Lan looked at screen on the phone hopefully, noticing that it started displaying a blinking 201102, which made Lan remember that Zero was a virus. How could he forget something like that?
He could survive…most likely…hopefully…..could he?
Lan had no idea what happened to Zero, anything could have happened to him. Lan began to wonder what actually happened to the data over a wireless network when the signal dropped? Everything probably was de--
“Lan?”
Lan flinched with a startled outcry at the sudden voice, looking down hastily at the PET held tightly in his eyes, “Zero?” Lan smiled in relief, he was starting to think that Zero wouldn’t make it. It’d be very bad to lose his new Netnavi after only a few hours. Megaman was going to have a body (hopefully), and there was no way Megaman could go back to this PET anyway. Why not keep Zero?
“Are you alright?” Lan was a little confused at the altered appearance of Zero, now he had two pairs of long wings on his back, one over lapping the other. One pair was white, the other pair was black, and the orb on his chest was also glowing bright enough to make the faint trace of Megaman’s emblem visible.
“Yeah, it got a little hard in there, but I made it.” Zero rubbed his head with a large smile across his lips.
“Where did the wings come from?”
“Well, when I was on my way to the island, the signal started to go. I thought I was done fore. But at the last second my back started hurting a lot, and these came out. Well they didn’t look like this at first.” Zero explained.
How could anything get through a wireless network with out a signal? Zero had just completely left the net and re-entered at another point by becoming a signal himself, a frightening thought really. A virus that just hangs in the air like radio waves being transmitted and waiting to be received by anything capable of doing so. It something you could never get to, and when Zero realized all of that he immediately became very silent with down cast eyes.
“Zero…..” Lan tried to think of something to say to reassure him, but there was nothing he really could. “Don’t worry about it, you wouldn’t do something bad or used it against anyone.”
“I don’t know….I can’t go anywhere without infecting something, and if I can just leave the net and come back in at any point. I’d be a complete disaster...What if I--”
Lan knew what Zero was about to say and immediately denounced it. “Your not going to go crazy and do something like that on purpose.” he said firmly. Lan could tell that Zero really hated himself right now, he was a virus and he hated it. How could he comfort him for something like that? “There has to be some way to control it, I mean, you can’t really be a virus, it’s just something wrong in your programming. There has to be some way to fix it.”
Zero knew he wasn’t lying, if Lan realized it or not, Zero was technically a glitch in a program.
Glitches could be fixed.
“Thanks Lan.” Zero said solemnly.
“For what? You did all the work.”
“You really helped me, I don’t know what would have happened to me you weren’t here.” Zero told him, then quickly changed the subject for Lan’s sake and to avoid awkwardness. “Anyway, I managed to find a few files, document’s, schedules , memos and things like that. But what’s interesting about the schedules is that about 98 all of them are shipping schedules. There are 3 deliveries to the island coming into night.
They’re mostly things like servers and hardware, but that’s not important, what is important is that one of those shipments are coming in by boat.”
Lan had to think about it for a second to catch what Zero was implying. “So all we have to do is sneak on to the boat?” Lan asked anticipatingly.
“Yeah, and guess where the boat’s delivering from?”
“This shipping company?”
“Exactly! All I have to do is knock down security on the boat and it’ll be easy for you.”
“How are you going to……Oh, look’s like you being a virus is actually coming in handy.” If that would have came from anyone but Lan, it would have sounded worse then intended.
Zero just grinned and stretched his wings to bring them back, they seemed to have disappeared shortly after he returned to the PET, where ever they had gone they were back now.
As soon as Zero left the PET using his new ’ability’, the screen started to display ’201102’ as it did before, only this time he wasn’t worried.
Lan stepped out of the dry booth and into the pouring rain outside, looked out on to the waters channeled into the dock. He saw a roughly medium sized boat leave one of the docks housed inside a boat house of the Shipping company’s (which was almost ironically the company’s name).
“Is that the boat?” Lan wiping the water on his face that threatened to stream into his eyes, forced to lifted his arm to his forehead to block some of the rain and promote vision.
When he saw the vessel drift pass him with increasing speed and turn towards the island, he knew it was it. When Zero created this plain, Lan was sure he thought there was enough time for him to actually get on the boat before it left. From that miscalculation it looked like there would have be a change in plans to account for, Lan wouldn’t have to sneak on to the boat. It looked like if he wanted to get there he’d have to jump.
Lan looked down at his PET, hoping that Zero had taken out security by now. Thinking about it, if he really tried, Zero could take down a system in a few second, he had nothing to worry about.
With out another thought or anyone to oppose him on this, Lan took a step back, then charged head first towards the edge of the pier
With out hesitation, Lan dived off the harbor, soaring threw the air and above the stormy waters while the Boat was still in the process of turning. That had been his only saving grace, he just barely managed to grab on to the back of the ship before it accelerated again. ’Whoa...!’ Lan pulled himself up on deck, the ship was driven automatically so there were no people to worry about seeing him. Just alarms.
He was half expecting flashing red lights and large beeping noises, but nothing happened.
Zero reappeared in the PET screen, “Sorry Lan, looks like the ship was ahead of schedule. How did you make it?” Zero asked, the wings faded.
“I jumped.” Lan said casually, shaking the water from his hair as he walked in to the covered cargo area separated from the dock by a wall and a door.
“You jumped? Are you alright?”
Lan pushed open the door softly. “Yeah, I made it didn’t I.” He peeked his head and looked around the darkened room filled nearly wall to wall with steel boxes, all of them with padlocks on them, mainly to keep them closed then for security. Just see them caused Lan to start thinking of another problem, “Hey, when they come to unload this stuff? They’ll catch me!”
“Well, Hide then.” Zero said plainly. A simple idea, but one hard to do effectively,
“Where could I hide?” Lan knew that if he hid in any of the places he could think of he’d be found quickly
“Among the Cargo.”
In the corner of the room near the door lay about 5 long steel pipes resting upright against the wall, wrapped up in a bundle. “Not a bad idea...” Lan drew out one of them, placing it in to the padlock of the first box he saw large enough to hold him.
Planting a foot on the box, he started to pry open the lock, and after a few seconds of pushing down with all his strength the lock snapped off, falling to the ground with a loud clank. Done with it, Lan slid the metal pipe carefully back in to the pack.
“Now let’s see what’s inside...” Lan curiously then open the lid. It was just as Zero said most of the cargo was, indeed hardware, more specifically a large sever surrounded by Styrofoam. There was enough room for him to tightly fit in side, as long as he stayed curled up. ‘Here goes nothing
With the thought of Megaman hanging in his mind he began to force himself into the box, it was his only way in.
“Are you alright?” Zero asked.
“It’s tight, but I can make it…” Lan spoke in a strained voice, but any uncomforted he was feeling was over ruled by the thought that he had made it this far. And he was so close….
“Hey Zero, you think you can get a map or something?” After a lot of shifting Lan was now curled into a ball on the side the hardware, a narrow fit between the sever and the case it resided in. This was really uncomfortable.
“Sure.”