dothackers.net

Zambwa let out an annoyed sigh and placed his face in his palm. "Of course," he said. "I had a feeling you were talking about those two, but I had to be sure. Ever since Mr. Pluto decided to put them on his personal team they never shut up about it to anyone else. This is obviously one of Pluto's special projects, so I'm not going to ask exactly what they want you to do. Last time someone tried to get some information about the projects Pluto's special team works on got fired, and I rather like my job. But I'm sure that whatever experiment they are working on has nothing to do with tasking players to hack the game, and as far as I can see you are the only people involved in this event."

"But there was another girl," said Kali, taking a step forward. "She was a twin blade named Avantha, and she is the one who hacked by creating a barrier to trap us."

Zambwa was silent and unmoving for a moment, and Kali began to wonder if he was still even there. After a minute had passed Kali opened her mouth to speak again, but was interrupted by the administrator. "According to my records, only one player has ever been called Avantha," he said. "But that character was deleted six months ago. It has a CC Corp flag, so I suspect it was simply a test character which was removed once its use had been fulfilled. There is no way you could have encountered a character with that name. Once a character has been given a CC Flag, nobody outside of the administration is able to replicate it."

"But...it's true," said Kali, unsure of how to respond. "I...I followed her here, and she was too smart to be some sort of bugged NPC. You can't ban us over this."

Zambwa was silent for a moment, and then shook his head. "No, I won't ban you," he said. "With your connection to Pluto's special team I'd rather not risk messing with their plans. But if you break the rules again there will be consequences. I already have enough to deal with without having to watch over you as well."

With one final nod Zambwa disappeared, and after a flash of light every player in the rooms appeared beside the Chaos Gate in Carmina Gadelica.

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Avantha let out a startled yelp as Toshiro grabbed her arm and pulled her towards the Chaos Gate. When the two stopped and Toshiro turned to her, the only thing Avantha could do was stare. She hesitated, as if afraid of sending out her member address. She took a deep breath...and a second later Toshiro invited her to a party. She accepted and turned towards the Chaos Gate.

"Well..." said Avantha. "So go ahead and lead the way."

The two warped away a moment later.

"So, the CIA of CCcorp tasked you lot with investiagting something. Alright, I've decided, I'm hurt." Deathscythe glared at Kali and accused her in an annoyed tone, "And you didn't tell me?" James deactivated the recorder and saved the file as Avantha 002. And while I'm thinking about it. I need to update Xarfang, he is my client after all.
Hold the phone. What are we doing in Carmina Gadelica? Why would he bring us here? Wouldn't it be easier to just send us back to Mac Anu instead of shifting us all the way to the Lambda server?

Eria nodded as she looked around curiously. "I was... kinda thinking the same thing, actually. Why are we in the Lambda server now, when we were in a Delta field?" Eria replied thoughtfully. This wasn't good. And now they had the apparently impossible walking around and talking to them. The World seemed to be going south this season. With a sigh, she looked at Odin. "Hey, Odin. Are you still messed up?" she asked with concern.

(Normally I wouldn't reveal this, but I think it will be pretty important. I really had no hidden meaning for sending the group to Lambda server. Plain and simple, I didn't want you running into Avantha and Toshiro too soon. I have no idea what Shiori is planning, so I am very curious to see where this goes. I know she doesn't post as often as some others in here, so I was trying to put some space between the two groups so I can see where she was leading without anyone interrupting the two. Just do me a favor and don't follow them just yet. Kali is still with the rest, so I can keep things moving forward with your group.)

"Hey! Wait!" Gibken moved his hand in protest but was too late to stop the pair from warping out. "Damn! I just wanted answers!" Feeling annoyed, Gibken walked off into the town. Laying down, he decided to compose a Flash Mail to Deathscythe.
Getting up, Gibken stocked up on items and headed into the area.

"Alright!" Gibken cracked his knuckles and rushed off to the nearest portal, "Now let's wipe out some monsters!"

D-=Scythe nodded towards Odin. "Right, we should go see those two admins, Halford and Halfus was it? They might have some insight as to the next step we should take." He heard the ping of a message. James let out a sigh as he read, "On the other hand, looks like someone's calling in a debt. Delta server again? What is it with that server this morning?" He asked no one in particular as he typed up a quick reply.
She jabbed a finger at Kali. "Right, you let me know if you learn anything else about this rather fascinating mystery. I hope to see you lot later." She waved and then glared at Kali for a moment longer before Warp Rings took her to Mac Anu. She wasted no time in going to Bursting, Conceived, Masking.

Kali took a step back in surprise as she watched D-=Scythe leave. "Wha...I...uh..." she spurted. "What did I do? I just followed a strange girl until she walked through a wall. I have no idea what any of this is about."

She thought for a moment, and then turned to Odin and the others.

"Actually," she said, "now that I think of it...what exactly is going on here? Who are these admins you're talking about and what is this mission they gave you? And don't go saying it's none of my business--I almost got banned because of it so I have a right to know."

"Sorry to hear that. I hope you get it fixed soon," Eria said to him as Deathscythe was called away and left their rag-tag group. Her mind was still caught up with Avantha and Lveathn. A player that did not exist and a docile, seemingly sentient monster. What in the World was going on...? She turned to everyone else, no longer seeing a need for secrecy. "Don't worry, Kali. I'm not the kind of person to leave people completely in the dark about dangerous situations," Eria said with a smile. "As you heard, we were asked by two Admins to investigate that area for the white room you followed Avantha to. Only... things went south rather quickly after that, again, as you saw. Sorry to get you involved in this." She looked at everyone else now. "I... don't know if telling those other two Admins about Avantha will get us anywhere, but I do think that maybe we should wait to see if Odin can get himself fixed first. What do you all think?"

Tohiro smiled as they arrived to a field. It appeared to be night time at the fieled even though it was still day at Mac Anu and would be day at any normal field still. He gently guided Avantha through the field. " This field is always night for some reason and there are no monsters here either." He smiled as he continued walking in a sertain direction only looking around breilfly as if looking for landmarks. " Where almost there just a little farther." They walked a little more then came to a point where there was water. It was the ocean! It looked just like a real ocean as well. " This is my favorite place in The World to come to. No one knows about it, so you don't have to be worried about being bothered by others." he said as he stared off in the distance as if relflecting back upon something.

(Sorry, got vacation and i wass in the beach, and i had homework to do)
"Umm, guys" he looked at them "Let's take her with us, we can have her as witness, and i want fill up my friend list" he said smiling, then scratched his head "Also... i wanna know why we were teleported here... let's buy some things, i'll see what i can do to fix odin's PC, and we use the house key" he turned to Odin "Where do you live? what's your computer model?, i have some programs that could help you, or i can send them to you by Mail"

Avantha was silent as she stared out across the water. They cliff they stood upon stretched out from left to right as far as she could see, and the prairie behind her appeared to go on without end. She sat down in the grass, closing her eyes to take in everything that was around her. She could smell the cool salty air that drifted up from the current, and could hear the water as it struck against the rocks below again and again. She almost expected to hear the cry of a bird in the distance, and felt disappointed when she remembered that such a sound hadn't been added to the game yet. It all just seemed so peaceful and free, and she knew she could get lost within this one moment for hours. But she couldn't, because no matter what she did she could not shake away one nagging thought.

"Why..." she said to Toshiro, refusing to meet his gaze. "Why are you showing me this? What are you trying to do?"

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Kali opened her mouth to speak, but was interrupted as a flash of light blinded everyone. A moment later they were all standing in the hidden room back in Mac Anu, under the disappointed gazes of Halford and Halfus.

"What do you think you are doing?" said Halford. "We told you to investigate a hole in the world and nothing more. We suspected this so-called hidden room was nothing more than a break in the code that accidentally created a bridge to another field. All you needed to do was find out where that hole was so we could fix it."

"But instead we get reports of hacking from Zanbwa," said Halfus. "Why did you possibly think you had to break the system to find a simple bug? It was obvious we had already gone through all the coding ourselves. Just because we gave you a task doesn't give you the right to break the game."

((I'm gonna make this short))

Odin held back on justifying the group and their actions, not just for his own benefit, but for the benefit of everyone who'd been caught up in the mess that they'd been woven into. Looking at the rest of the group as if to say 'I'll leave this to you and Seige', he calmly sat himself on a nearby stool, taking a pensive stance, then seemingly became 'empty'. A little message then popped up, hovering over his head;


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Offline, Hilbert removed his headset, then took a swig from a nearby bottle of water. He then began to observe the unfolding events from behind his 'veil of anonymity' through watching what transpired on his monitor.[/color]

"..." Toshiro was silent for a moment. " I can't really tell you why. I suppose its probably out of guilt. Who knows maybe its my own greed. I sort of felt a similar feeling of loss when I saw you thats all. You seemed tough, but I sinced a part of you feared something, had lost something. I guess the feeling seemed so close to my own. I felt comfortable around you right away even though you did try to seem tough and non-caring. I brought you here... well because of the same reasons I suppose. I thought you might enjoy this place." Toshiro finished still staring off in the distance not seeming to quite focus on anything.

Taking out a good number of the monsters in the field, Gibken was adequately damaged enough so that he was in need of a healing. Scrolling through his skill list, he used one of his recover skills. "La Repth!" A blue light flashed underneath his character, indicating a recovery of 150 Hit Points.

Nodding and hearing a warp sound, he walked over to the center of the field, in the midst, he found his new female friend.
"Hey! D-Scythe! See that you could make it!" Running over he awkwardly waved his hand running over hastily.

She shrugged, "I pay my debts." Even if there are things I would otherwise rather be doing. She sent him a party invite and started walking towards a portal. "Was there something specific you wanted to discuss, or did you just want some help clearing this field?" Asked James as a monster appeared in front of her. Not sure why he chose a field on Delta server. Sure there are some higher level fields, but at our levels it seems like a lot of effort to find one. I wonder if there's something special about this field that I haven't noticed.

Eria sighed and rubbed the bridge of her nose as she closed her eyes. I seem to be doing this a lot. Heh, If I keep this up, it's going to damage my carefree reputation and eternal smile... The thought made her chuckle, her smile returning, as she faced down the two Admins. "I had a 'story' to tell you, but seeing how... Zambwa, was it? ...reacted to it, I don't think you'd believe it and so, I'll waste not your time," she replied as she bow apologetically. "I'm sorry, I guess I got a little over anxious in there, looking around for it. I'm truly sorry," she finished deciding to focus the blame on herself. No reason everyone should get in trouble for this.

"Well to be honest, this is just a random area I picked out, level wise it's good enough for my tastes so that we can get good items, but I've been meaning to talk to you about that strange occurrence the other day in the dungeon. But first thing's first, let's head into the dungeon shall we?!" Giving her a thumbs up and awkward smile, the pair ran into the dungeon entrance.

Graphically wise at this point, the dungeon was alright, no fissures, no cracks, nothing. It was a pure relief for Riki who was still kinda puzzled from the other day's last adventure.

"So anyways, I thought that we could use this time to talk and level up you know? Kind of like multi-tasking."

(Sorry, took a break from the computer for a day. )

Halford and Halfus were silent for a few minutes as they considered, and it was not hard to see that they were talking behind their computers. After a moment Halford sighed and shook his head. "I suppose we will let it slide this time," he said. "But don't perform such an act again, or there will be more consequences than just being kicked off of these assignments."

"We'll handle this so-called hidden room on our own from now on," said Halfus. "We have a new place we want you to go. We have had some reports of a few graphical errors in Δ Bursting Conceived Masking, but they only appear at certain angles. Just go there, tell us where these errors are and by what angle they can be seen, and we will fix it up. There is nothing special about this task other than what I told you, so please don't overreact again."

"And take the girl with you," said Halford, nodding to Kali. "Since you've already told her what is going on. That is all."

After a flash of light the group had disappeared again back into Mac Anu.

"Did the recordings given by the key match their story?" Halford asked Halfus when the others were gone.

Halfus nodded. "Everything was there--the girl, the monster, the room," said Halfus. "But the monster didn't corrupt them as we thought it would. We're going to have to run another test...maybe provoke it a little."

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Avantha let out a little chuckle and shook her head. "I see what you're doing here," she said, and chuckled again at Toshiro's puzzled look. "You think that by by showing me something that I somewhat connect with I will spill all my problems and tell you about my life. Sorry, but people don't work that way in real life. I have no reason to trust you, and experience tells me that I shouldn't. I'd rather not stick around to find out that I'm right."

Without another glance Avantha got up and began walking along the cliff beside the sea.