.hack//VIRUS (RP)

[Shiori]

Toshiro smiled at Kali "Welcome, back. Did you have a nice nap there." He said jokingly. He then turned to Eria. "You are right we should get out of here before admins come." He then turned back to Aventha. " I have a place we can meet. Aventha you know that place I took you? We can all meet up there to further discuss teh situation. You might not be the only one with information on this that you are keeping to yourself." Toshiro finished and instead of looking away remained in eye contact with Aventha as a way to stress the importancy of regrouping at a different location.

[nobodyknows]

((fillers are done. Rejoining the story in 3... 2... 1...))

Odin's log in was slightly different to usual. Instead of yellow rings encircling his character, the rings were coloured cyan, and seemed to be formed of binary coding. The rings spiralled in place for about 10 seconds as the 'shell' of his character was then warped into the world, then they closed tight on the shell, still spinning rapidly, before shattering into thin air. the character data then shot into a blue light above where it's head should have been, then the standard yellow rings appeared, followed by Odin's log in. Looking around to make sure that no-one had seen his 'character reboot', he placed his hand on his arm. Where the large chunk of data had been blown out, along with the binary 'skin' that had replaced it, there was now a black coloured ribbon. It trailed off of the top half of his arm from his shoulder, dragging on the floor below him. he sighed unhapilly at it,"Well... at least it's better than nothing. And at least I fixed the problem with the speech to text program..." He looked at the chaos gate,"I wonder if the others are doing okay? I've spent a while offline fixing this character... I just hope none of them ended up like I did..."

He punched in the area code.

"Warping; Δ Bursting Conceived Masking"

What happened next was both expected and unexpected. The yellow warp rings around his character stopped moving, then hovered in place as an error message popped up on his screen,"Cannot warp to area... well damn. Looks like I should just gi-" However, as the rings started to collapse, his arm began to ache. Nothing had happened to him. Shouldn't he have been booted from the gate by now? The ribbon on his arm the turned into a string of binary code, unravelling itself from his arm and encircling his body,"Don't tell me, the virus? the AI coding? It reacted to the chaos gate, like it reacted to my scanner... it's bypassing the security lock?" The binary coding then sped up, and Odin's PC was seemingly disassembled, then flung into the area piece by piece, wherein he was reassembled. he wouldn't have minded this if it weren't for the fact that this area was apparently protected, and that he'd just been 'reformatted' right in front of everybody currently in the area. A slightly nervous expression crossed his face,"H-hi. I'm back..."

[nekoryuuha]

Eria laughed. Odin's flashy, if unintended, entrance along with his new design and nervous look was priceless. "Awesome. Good to see you're back and ...mostly... intact. And you can talk again," Eria replied to him as she looked over his new look with a reaised eyebrow. "So.... What happened to you, Odin? Did that virus cube do this to you?"

[nobodyknows]

Eria's response to his 'new look' wasn't what he was expecting, and had caught him slightly off guard. He responded with a slightly nervous tone,"Y-yeah. You could say that..." he looked at his arm,"But after I scanned through the altered character data, I discovered that wasn't all there is to it." He lifted the arm up,"I managed to patch this up using my programming skills, but I'd still call it little more than a hack job." He thought to himself as he waved the arm around, the ribbon trailing in the air behind it,'Should I tell them about the AI coding? Nah.. it'd be better to leave it for now. Besides, there's no point in trying to explain something if you don't even fully understand it yourself... and on that note' he turned to face Avantha, and his expression turned to that of calm tension,"So... as you can see from the damage that you've inadvertently caused to this PC, I feel like I have a right to know exactly what's going on here, along with pretty much everyone else who you've involved in this mess." He walked over to her, then past her, sending a quick PM as he did so;

Code: Select all

From; Odin
To; Avantha

I have no idea what connection you have to that thing we encountered earlier, but to save a lot of hassle; I'm just going to say that there wasn't just a virus that was sitting around on my character data, and if it had been just a virus, I would've been able to remove it.
There was also a fragmented piece of an AI script, which I'm positive got mutated by the virus. 
You may be wondering why I'm telling you all this, but think about it for a second; you obviously have some relation to the creature that caused that script to mutate, even if no-one knows where that script came from in the first place.
Put simply, I'm asking you if you understand the virus' mutation process enough to know how to reverse it.

As he passed by her, he turned back to face the group,"Just as a heads up; don't think for one second that because I managed to gate into this area that it's safe to be here-The area's protected, and I've already breached that gate once, even if i did it unwittingly. I recommend that you guys all log-out for the time being." He smiled in his usual nonchalant manner,"In fact, knowing the situation, it'd probably be best if I followed suit..."[/color]

[azureeagle]

For the past few minutes, Gibken had been out of commission. Once he had recovered his HP and Kali's HP. However, after a minute or so of reformatting his character and adjusting his network settings, he had seemingly been reprogrammed into the area in the same manner as Odin. He found himself standing next to Odin looking at the others.
"Um...What just happened?" Looking over to Avantha and D-Scythe, "You two care to explain?"

[GamerKale]

D-=Scythe shook her head. "Not just now Gibken. We're about to move somewhere and have a great big exposition." She looked around. "Alright, somehow I think at least some of this you might not want to have overheard by the admins. If we weren't worried about that then there would be no reason not to just stay here and discuss it, but anywhere we go in The World they can just track and follow us anyways. So, I propose we-." James stopped midsentence, Deathscythes hand froze atop Kali's head too until he started speaking again. "Actually. Avantha, when we first met, you said that we had ventured outside of The World. Was that just you trying to scare me off, or can you or Velanth take us somewhere like that? It would certainly take the admins a while to hunt us down." She looked down at Kali and smiled. "You feeling good enough to move? Oh, and you can just ignore those dozen or so missed calls you probably have." He said a bit sheepishly.

[Hybrid]

(Sorry for not logging on for a few days. I recently started learning Japanese and I got a little distracted... )

Avantha hesitated, looking from Toshiro to D-=Scythe and Kali.

"Well," said Kali, "other than feeling that my brain is being cleaved open, I'm pretty fine. But that was one of the strangest things I've ever experienced. I kept seeing some weird pictures and numbers, and it almost felt like...this probably doesn't sound right, but it felt like I was being pulled from my body. I don't really know how to explain it. But then again, if those creepy admins are still watching us then it might be best if I don't say anything...unless we could go somewhere private."

Kali looked up at Avantha with a smile, but the girl looked away after a moment. "Actually, there is a place we can go," said Avantha. "It was in the dungeon where you first saw Velanth. There's a secret room there that I made. If you're really coming then we should get going right away."

[GamerKale]

((Happens.))
"Right, I remember the place. Kali, Watson, you two are with me. Everyone else, we'll meet up there." She got up slowly, bringing Kali up with her. "Ok, everybody make sure you know how to get there, or are partied with someone who does." He sent a party invite to both of them and when they accepted he warped them on their way, but he took it slow to make sure Kali wasn't suffering from any adverse reactions.

[nobodyknows]

Odin started a conversation in his head the moment that D-=Scythe had brought up the point about the area that existed within the world, yet outside of the world. It was a concept that he found immensely interesting. The barrier that existed 'twixt the world and 'The World'... what could it possibly have in store for this rather unlikely band of players? He attempted to voice his opinion on the matter, but then realized that the conversation had already progressed down a different path. Apparently his outer-dungeon-crawling would have to wait, though the suggestion that had been put forward by Avantha was-to him-an acceptable compromise. He waved in his typical haphazard manner as D-=Scythe warped out of the area with her two chosen party members in tow, then turned to Eria, Koshiro and Seige,"Okay. So according to our dear Scythe, we should party up with whoever knows how to access that area... I'm assuming that all of us already know that code, so there shouldn't be any problem in that regard." He then lifted up his finger,"However, we should take into account the fact that a group as large as ours jumping between two questionable areas in such a short time-space would no doubt attract unwanted attention... I reckon we should split into groups of two, then enter the other area between irregular intervals of time, waiting in Mac-Anu until it seems like a good time to head off." He placed a hand on the ribbon wrapped around his upper left arm,"It may seem pointless, but considering exactly who it is we're dealing with, it will benefit us greatly if we're as crafty as we possibly can be."

[nekoryuuha]

Eria nodded in agreement. "Yeah, that sounds like a good plan. Although..." she paused as a thought came to her mind. "Those two Admins are probably going to come looking for us soon. At the very least, me and you should wait around in Mac Anu the longest in case they come calling for us. Does sound alright with you, Odin?" she asked with a bit of curiosity as she looked over his arm again.

[Hybrid]

"Well...I guess I'll meet you all there," said Avantha to those who still remained in the field. Her voice had gotten smaller and softer than it was before, almost as if part of her didn't want to be heard. Her head had a slight tilt towards the ground, her eyes focusing on grass around the group's feet as she talked--she almost gave off the impression of a scared child. "Well...uh...yea," she said, before disappearing from the field at once with Lveathn. She reappeared in the familiar dungeon a moment later, standing right in front of the wall she had walked through earlier that day. She stared at it, as if able to see something no one else could, and waited.

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

"You know, you don't have to carry me," said Kali as she, D-=Scythe, and Gibken arrived in a familiar forested field. "It's just a headache. It's not like I broke my leg or something."

She pushed away from D-=Scythe's grip, but was only able to take two steps before her hand shot to her head and she almost fell over. "Whoa," she said, grabbing onto a nearby tree. "Then again, maybe I could use the help. Feels like I got up too fast."

[nobodyknows]

Odin's responded in his typically pensive manner,"I guess that would work... but you're forgetting that I've had to modify my character quite heavily in order to get rid of it's 'bugs'. No doubt if we waited for them, they'd question me about it, and then drag you into it on the grounds of 'being involved with a hacker'." He sighed,"and of course, if we get questioned, then we'll be put into one of two situations; either a) we come up with an excuse and get a minor boxing of the ears, or b) we don't come up with anything and get severely penalized." If there were any other options, Odin had purposefully left them out due to their chances of success being rather low. Though he was the type who would gamble on something with a low success rate, he wasn't going to do it when it wasn't necessary; that would be reckless, and Odin-despite his appearances-was anything but reckless.

[nekoryuuha]

Eria thought about it. but in the end, was there any other way? "Odin, I don't think we have much choice. "I took the blame for Avantha's illegal actions in the forest, making me a top suspect here, unfortunately. On top of being a 'witness' last time, you'll be considered one here as well as you're the one with the 'House key' thing that the Admins gave us before. That would make you #2 on the list. If I'm not there at first, they'll definitely get suspicious. if both of us are gone, they're gonna start Hunting, and that'll probably be worse then confronting them," Eria finished with concern.

[nobodyknows]

"It's like we've dug ourselves a pit we can't climb out of. One way leads to the palms of the executioner, the other leads to the heart of hell..." He nodded to himself,"You're definitely right about the admins becoming suspicious of our absences... but there's also a chance that we can turn this in our favour." He sent a flash mail to Eria,"That's all of the analysis I did on the cube monster that we encountered. After backtracing it's coding, I discovered some nice information about it's manufacturer... or should I say 'manufacturers'." He smiled in a manner that gave him an incredibly disconcerting appearance,"If we bring this up, there's a slim chance we can make it through without any hassle whatsoever, maybe even get something good out of this mess!"

[GamerKale]

Deathscythe's brow furrowed as she put a supporting arm around Kali again. "Perhaps we should discuss minimizing use of the virtual box when we meet up with the others. I don't seem to have suffered the same ill physical effects as you. And you should probably get something to drink, irl, and maybe a couple aspirin. We can wait here a couple of minutes while you do that."

[nekoryuuha]

Eria took a little bit to look over the Analysis and all the data before smirking. "Impressive. We might be able to do something with this if my first plan doesn't work," she replied as she saved that mail to her computer's HDD as back-up. With the way this seemed to be going, she hoped it would be enough. She took a deep breath and sent the invite, Joining Odin's party. "Well, Let's go and hope for the best, Odin."

[Hybrid]

(Have to wait till tomorrow till I post. Haven't been feeling well and I don't want to write something halfassed as a result. Sorry.)

[nobodyknows]

Odin nodded, then gated out of the area... or at least tried to. Apparently, because of how he had entered the field he wasn't registered as being in that area; The system seemed to think that he was still in Mac Anu. He looked at the ribbon tied to his arm, bearing a rather disappointed expression on his face,"Apparently it isn't completely fixed yet. Oh well, I was expecting something like this. It will probably just take time for the modified programming to 'settle in', a bit like letting cement harden." He turned to face Eria,"I'll just re-log and meet you back in the aqua capital, and maybe change one or two parameters while I'm at it." Smiling nervously, he logged out.

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

Hilbert switched off the VB, and removed the M2D from his head, grumbling to himself as he did so,"set-back after set-back... it's a wonder I'm even bothering to keep this character instead of just discarding it..." He then opened up the data file he'd been working on before logging in, messing around with some of the coding,"Its development really is reminding me of something I encountered in the past. I'll have to look into it once I've sorted everything else out." He stopped typing for a second,"Speaking of fixes... how much will I be able to do before the system starts rejecting my PC altogether? This could pose a problem... I'd better keep it minimal."

[Hybrid]

(Gonna have to wait till tomorrow. Still not quite well enough to make a post. What the doctor thinks is that I just got overwhelmed by pollen. I'm not allergic, but there was just so much of it that it covered the inside of my nose and lungs and really irritated me.)

[nekoryuuha]

((That just... wow. I The words I'm allowed to use here don't cut it. I'm sorry to hear that.))

Eria nodded. "Alright, I'll meet you near the bridge," she said to him as he logged out. "I wonder if her caught it all...? Oh well." She turned to everyone else as waved with a smile. "If luck has it, I'll see you all again in that place," Eria said to everyone with an elaborate bow and giggle as she gated out of the area.

Code: Select all

WATER CAPITAL
MAC ANU

Eria appeared and sighed as she walked away from the gate, going over everything that had happened to that point. This was just too much! What was happening to The World that she loved? Shaking her head, she sighed as she reached the bridge and stopped halfway across to look out at the water and sky.