Net Navi

Disclaimer: I do not own the anime series Rockman.EXE, Rockman.EXE Axess, or Rockman.EXE Stream (or any variation of the \"Megaman NT Warrior\" series, or \"Battle Network\" games). If I did, I would have used the money made off it all to invent the PET technology, and had Rockman all to myself. ^.^ As you might know, Rockman (or Megaman) is originally property of Capcom Inc., and the anime series (on which I\'m basing this fic) is the intellectual property of Shogakukan. Thanks for your attention, and now onto the fic:

Chapter 2 – Net Navi

Inside Hikari Netto\'s Personal Terminal

\"Whoa...hold on a minute here, Rockman.\"

Greenish currents of alphanumeric code swirling around him, fooling his vision and making his surroundings seem more unreal than they actually were, Hikari Netto had a hard time believing his own eyes as his vision fell upon the scenery of his own Personal Terminal. Of course, merely seeing it was not the shock; he had spent more hours on forming it, and practicing virus-busting in it than he liked thinking of. It had more to do with the fact that he was actually, physically, on his page

Feeling freaked out, and also a tad bit scared, Netto tried standing up, only to have his legs buckling under him once more: \"Ah, be careful, Netto-kun...there are special ways to navigate in here and on this page in particular. You mostly left the programming of the physical parameters of this page to me, as they involved mathematics, so I chose those most convenient to me.\" Rockman said, supporting him as he tried to stand up a second time, with a bit more success this time: \"Because, well, I never expected to have visitors...at least not non-navi ones.\" Rockman said with a slightly wry smile on his face.

Few of these words reached Netto, as his mind was more preoccupied with the essentials, as how in the world he could be inside his own PET, and if that was indeed what had happened to him. Another thing that also boggled his mind was the way he felt. All in all, he didn\'t feel that different from normal; at least, none of his normal feelings were missing. On the contrary, actually, he felt a whole lot more. It was almost like he had become a walking sensory array of sorts; from everywhere, he was being bombarded with information, all from the feeling of how he was breathing, all the way through the aching in his muscles, and his dizziness, up to feeling a million thoughts and an infinity of information, it seemed like, running through his mind. It felt…it felt unlike anything he had ever been close to feeling.

\"Rockman...my head. It hurts so bad...\" Netto said, provoking swift action from his navi: \"Netto-kun! A headache?\" he said, opening several windows in space, which looked like AI diagnostic tool programs to Netto\'s weary eyes: \"Oh my...this looks…well, worse than I could have imagined. Err, it looks like I\'ll have to do this myself, though I have no idea how to handle the finer points of such things...\" Rockman said, seemingly more than a bit freaked out at whatever he had discovered. Looking down at Netto, he tried his hand at a reassuring smile: \"Hold on. I\'ll do everything in my power to make you better. You are gonna go cold for a little while now, so please...just hold on, OK?\" he said, and before he had any chance to think more carefully of what his navi had just said, Netto felt himself slide into oblivion.

- - -

If waking up the first time, feeling beaten up, and...well, skinned, open to all sorts of impressions had felt weird, waking up now to feel mostly normal, was an mind-boggling contrast. One fact that had not changed in the course of whatever had transpired, was the fact that Netto was still seeing green as he woke up, still comprehending the boundaries of the Cyber World, and thus, still being inside his own PET, in some way or another.

As he tried to stand up, he felt that even though his muscles acted a bit different than usual (or was it the world itself that responded differently to his movements? He wasn\'t sure), he was more capable of moving around than before. In fact, he felt stronger and more fit than he could remember ever having felt; it was almost scary, the way his body reacted to his thoughts, almost mechanically, the instant his mind gave an order.

The construction of his mind too, felt very different...it felt, in lack of a better word, more efficient, like he was able to channel all of his thoughts into whatever he wanted. Sitting on the ground, supporting his pose with his hands on the ground behind him, he shook his head at these thoughts: \"Goddamn...\" he said, standing up for real this time, as he felt he had enough control over his limbs to do it: \"How in the world did I end up like this?\" he thought to himself, looking around for Rockman. As his eyes strafed all over the place, he suddenly caught a glimpse of something orange...something just below him.

Looking down, he came to behold himself, his appearance in this world. When he looked his body over, he could see that he also had been outfitted with one of the skin tight, exodermal suits common to Net Navis of more humanoid forms. All in all, as far as he could assess, (with his cheeks growing pinker and pinker by the moment at just how little these suits left to the imagination, when seen close up) his suit looked a lot like Rockman\'s.

In fact, he thought after a closer look, it was a spitting image, only that the blue color in the main fields of Rockman\'s attire had been replaced by a spunky hue of orange, resembling that of his vest, and the light blue stripes on Rockman\'s suit had been replaced on his with a granite grey of sorts. On his chest was the Team Rockman logo, and by the feeling of it, he had a similar device mounted onto his back as Rockman did (he made a mental note to ask his Navi once what in the world it was). He did not have a helmet, though, as might have been expected; instead (to his silent relief, as he did not think he could have lived without it) he had a bandana like headgear of some sort, though it seemed quite different from the one he was used to wearing.

\"Netto-kun.\"
In the process of taking off his headgear to inspect it further, the mentioned boy looked to the side and saw a torrent of particles appearing before his eyes, forming Rockman in a matter of seconds: \"You\'re awake...I\'m glad.\" he said, walking over to Netto, his apparent destination leading the sight of the latter to focus on some windows left open in cyberspace, looking a lot like the monitor windows where he could usually keep track of Rockman\'s current status: \"I mean, I have never done something like this before; it is usually better left to an operator outside the cyber world, that holds more sophisticated access keys than we navis do...\"

\"Look...Rockman...\" Netto interrupted, wobbling a bit from side to side, preoccupied with trying to make his body function the way he wanted it to: \"I...well, this is just...I mean, I sound strange, I think strange, I, I\'m just so confused...\" he said, feeling a bit more secure now that Rockman was here. He would have felt even more secure, however, if he had not been standing right next to him, so close and material he could reach out and touch him if he wanted to.

Rockman sent him a worried look, his brow furrowing a little, in the same way it usually did when he was confronted with a complex problem of some sort: \"Well, I guess...my estimation of the current situation is not in any way finished or reviewed, but I guess you\'ll take anything that gives you a bit more light than your stumbling in the dark. Well...\" he said, bringing up a screen in front of Netto, depicting the chip he had inserted into his PET right before this occurred: \"As you might have figured out by now, it\'s quite obvious that this chip is to blame.\" Rockman said, turning to Netto. The said boy nodded, slightly: \"Well, I’d say that’s fairly obvious, being the last thing I touched before coming here...but, Rockman? I’m fairly certain where I am, but…err, if you could enlighten me…\" Netto said, looking forlorn and more than a bit lost.

Rockman\'s face softened even a little bit more, and it seemed he felt responsible for his operator, lost and wondering as he was: \"Ok, look, let\'s take this slowly, ok. Let\'s not wonder about too many things at once. First things first, let me tell you of the current situation: you are, right now, on the homepage you yourself have programmed, and by what I can see in these monitor windows...\" he said, looking at the windows besides him, poisonous green scripts and command parameters flowing liquidly down them: \"...you, that is your physical parameters, your intellect, your behavioral patters...in short, the very essence of you, has been compiled into a program.\"

Netto blinked a couple of times, starting to get a little more hang of the situation, if any could be had: \"So...are you saying that...I have been programmed? That that chip somehow copied me...\" he stopped, thinking about the notion: \"...but, that would mean it\'s not me that\'s been programmed, but the physical me...or...\" he said, growing more and more confused, his mind not being able to follow. Wisely, he cut himself of, and started over: \"But...even if someone made a cyberspace clone of Hikari Netto, what would they hope to gain from it? Why would they do such a thing?\" he said, starting to pace around in a circle.

At the same time, Rockman\'s analysis reached a conclusion, and he spoke at Netto, hesitantly: \"Ehm...Netto. I\'m sorry to say, but I might have some more bad news.\" Netto turned around to face him: \"Even more...\" he said, and Rockman shrunk slightly: \"Well, of course, we know nothing for certain facts at the moment. All sorts of things might have happened that I have no knowledge of. This PET is very constricting when it comes to the real world, and as I have no other means of getting info from there, I hade to make do of what I...\" he said, but was cut of by an impatient and increasingly ill-tempered Netto: \"Rockman, what did you find?\" he said, and the Navi complied: \"I tied into the house\'s security systems, and...and...\" he said, taking a deep breath: \"Netto...you\'re not in the house. At all.\"

At first, Netto didn\'t take the implication, looking at Rockman like he had been a small green man from Mars, so he continued: \"Also, at the moment you inserted that chip, there was an almost instantaneous flow of data, uploading an enormous amount of data into the Personal Terminal\'s memory core. It all happened so fast that I had no chance of monitoring what was being uploaded at the time, but...\" he said, bringing up yet another greenish window, the one with the chip disappearing: \"...as I look at the logs now, there was a cycle of data encode, download, and decode, followed by a program compilation of a complexity far beyond me.\" he said,

Sitting perfectly still, the meaning of the things Rockman was saying started going into his mind: \"Rockman...you\'re not saying that...\" he said, and Rockman closed his eyes, looking away: \"I do not know. I have never heard of such a thing, ever, and according to current science it\'s not even remotely possible. But, as I have no other alternatives to offer you as an explanation, I will turn to this one. Somehow...although I haven\'t the faintest idea how, you seem now to exist solely in cyberspace.\"

- - -

Here you go, and sorry for the confusion regarding the ch01a and ch01b things. Hopefully, no one will hunt me down and roast me over an open fire because of it. ~.~;; Anyways, hope you like the story so far. Read, if you will, and review, pretty please? I love reviews. ^.^ Ch 03 is coming up soon enough...