Episode #6: The Mad Matrix

The BT Robo slammed Corey to one side, and Drew to another. Upon recovering, Drew bellowed:

"Dammit, Corey, you didn't practice it at all, have you?!" Drew yelled out.

"I meant to, b-but...I forgot..." Corey said. Drew glanced to the dent in the robot's armor.

"...at least it did that much..." Drew said, rising to his feet.
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Streak was whirling through some space he couldn't even discern. He was spinning around so fast not even his hedgehog body could compensate for it. He was definitely going to be dizzy once he stopped seeing all these flashing lights and--

Streak whizzed through the air like he was launched from a catapault. His senses were disoriented, but one thing was certain: he was certainly not in the building anymore...

Zukai rose from the ground rubbing his head, "What the...?" He opened one eye, and looked at the environment around him. He could see green lines forming a isometric grid in the 'sky'.

The fill colors began to constantly shift, while the ground was solid, but looked like a flowing ocean.

"What is this place?" He quickly changed his attention to where the other members where.

"The hell is this!" Makuta covered his ears, the endless sound reminiscent to a dial tone echoing in his ears. As everyone else collected themselves it was clear they couldn't hear it. The Namekian stood up, trying to ignore it.

Streak looked around, gritting his teeth. He really wasn't sure where he was. Everything seemed so...electronic.

"Where are we?" Streak asked, ignoring Makuta's discomfort for the time being.

Nadie began to walk forward, watching as the scenery began to change. Then all of a sudden she lost her footing, and she began to fall forward, but was quickly held back by Makuta.

"Do watch your step..." Terra began, "This world is a creation of the Defense Mechanism within the firewall. It viewed us as a threat, and has imprisoned us in this digital space. It created it for that purpose. Because it was just created, the server is loading, and the world is still being generated."


"..." Silence.

"Anyway. This is in fact a completely digital world. How we were created into data is beyond my knowledge, as the first means of molecular portation was considered void during the---"

"Get on with it..."

"...right then...well it'd be best to find a way out..." Terra said, bringing his hand up to hold his chin. His eyes seemed to light up. "Actually...with all data being physical in this realm...it may make things easier!"

"Do you think you could download it from within this cyberspace?" Nadie asked.

"I'd say it's a definite possibility..."

"I'm not sure why that's easier though..." Nadie looked uneasy. Makuta grinned, and began to crack his knuckles.

"Well, all that complicated data stuff is physical now right?" the Namekian said, switching to his opposite hand. A slight smirk appeared on Zukai's expression.

"Just makes breaking through there defenses all the easier..." Makuta finished.

Streak looked around, "My element is lightning...If I'm not careful, I might irreversibly damage the space, correct?"

Zach silently prepared to fight.
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Corey rushed to the BT Robo, trying to land a hit in the already damaged dent as per Drew's plan. However, the BT Robo was not having it, and karate-chopped him in the side of the head away. As Corey recovered from this attack, Drew tried to blindside the robo with a kick, but the BT Robo didn't budge from the attack too much.

The world continued to complete itself. The gang began to travel through it, although they had no idea what it was they were looking for.

occasionally protrusions of buildings began to rise and take shape. It began to take the form of a city.

Nadie marveled at the structures.

"Each of these 'buildings' are a different running executable file. Computers have hundreds running at a time. If we can find the right one, we can find all the data we need. The only problem is, I'm not sure how we can collect this data..."

"So which buildings the right one..." Makuta said, growing bored. The noise was still annoying in his ears, a headache threatening to take root.

Zach and Streak looked around.

"I think we'd best watch out for antivirus things," said Zach. "To them, we'd probably be just some malware."

"Which is what we are to them anyway..." said Terra, looking around to find the data center.

Streak remained silent, not really knowing too much of tech other than the scouter and that his lightning tended to be bad for tech in general.

Terra began to look at the buildings. "We are looking for a building that would hold blueprints, valuable tactics, stuff like that. If you'll look, each building has an icon over the 'door' into the programs." He pointed towards a building's icon. It had a database type icon, "See that, it's Microsoft Excel. All data that is stored in this hard drive using that program is in that building. We are looking for something that'd be used to create the data we need."

"So something like...that?" Nadie pointed towards a building in front of them. It wasn't tall like the other structures, but wider, covered up more space. Above the door was a blue rhombus object with a lighter blue grid pattern over it.

"Well...." Terra looked, "It's...possible?"

Makuta looked at the somewhat large door, finnaly had something to do. He began to spin his arm with his opposite hand rubbing his shoulder. He turned his head back.

"I've got this..." he assured, but his eyes grew wide at the sound of the door opening.

"Simple enough..." Zukai said, putting the one hand he needed to push the door open back into his pocket as he walked inside. The Namekians eye twitched as the others entered as well.

Terra put his hand on the door, and began moving it back and forth. "Huh, light as a feather-"

The brainiac was cut off as Makuta's palm covered his entire face, and dragged him inside.

Streak and Zach looked around the inside of the building. Was this what the inside of a file looked like?

"Alright, Terra, you know what to do, find the info we're looking for..."

"What if we don't need the info?" asked Streak, cutting into Zach's statement.

"Pretty sure they won't either..." responded Makuta.

"We need to find the right information first..."


Zukai looked around, noticing desks with stacks of paper. He picked one up as he passed by it.

setNumber53000 He read the title of the file. He continued to read through it.

"Something like this?" He lifted the paper so everyone could see. Terra turned towards the lavender haired [ass] saiyan.

"Why this is...this is an unfinished blueprint." He turned back to forward, walking up to a wall with windows. In the room that followed, a large square buzzed to life.

"What's that?" asked Streak, walking up to the same wall. The others soon followed.

"It looks like...an arena..."

Almost as if on cue, odd acorn-shaped things appeared.

"Antiviruses...?" Terra asked. "Looks like they're searching for unwanted data...that is, us..."

The Antivirus' began to get closer and closer. Scanning the area for Malicious software.

Then one turned towards them. It quickly sped forward.

Makuta stepped forward, carrying his iconic look that stated, "I got this."

Makuta lunged upwards, throwing a sharp kick at the round...thing. As his foot impacted, the acorn split into two smaller ones. Still midair, the Namekian turned and fired a ki blast at each. After the explosion cleared, four even smaller ones appeared.

"They keep multiplying...I can't afford to keep attacking then!"

Makuta cursed his luck, as each orb fired a red beam towards him just as he landed. He tanked each attack, wincing.

"What is..." Zach's eyes widened, as he was the first to notice a bar and number appear above Makutas head. The green bar grew shorter, and the numbers changed from "100%" to "98.5%"

"What the hell it this!?" Makuta asked, as he began dodging more attack.

"Of course...our bodies are now composed off data! Meaning they no longer take damage in a conventional sense...though durability may still apply..."

"Then that's some form of 'Health Bar'?" Nadie asked.

"We no longer take conventional damage, so the bar must indicate the stability of our data. Which would mean, when it reaches zero...it's over..."

Streak and Zach gritted their teeth. This was definitely not going to be that simple.

"If we keep attacking those acorns, they just multiply. Having a million things shooting at us...won't be good for us..." said Zach out loud, taking over as team strategist. "Terra, we can't fight these things forever. Try to get what you need as fast as you can. And...if it wouldn't be too much trouble...think we can smash up the server when you're done here? Might stall them..."

"This cyberspace is still a part of a limited space, meaning an infinitely expanding program would be to risky to use! No need to hold back!!"

"...What do you--"

Terra sighed, "Basically, think of this cyberspace as a human body. The Antivirus' are cells. Cells divide. The cells divide until told to stop. If they don't, they become cancerous and continue to divide. These Antivirus' work the same way, only they terminate themselves before they start to divide to much."

"Well that seems..." Zukai thought, but he quickly stopped.

"All I heard was 'No Need To Hold Back!!" Makuta smirked once again, despite taking the menial damage. The only thing in his way was the ringing that wouldn't stop in his ears.

Zukai unsheathed his sword and began to take stance.

Makuta brought his arms back, and then sent it forward. It quickly extended into a sort of whip, lashing out on two of the antiviruses. He quickly snapped it back, taking out the other two.

Makuta prepared to attack the now eight orbs, before a blur zoomed up at them, and a flash of metal slashed through them one by one. Zukai landed next to Makuta, his hair coming down.

Streak and Zach charged the antivirus avatars, throwing punches and kicks into them. The acorns split up, and tried to launch a counterattack. Streak zipped around and managed to defeat another acorn thingy before long.

"Just let us know when we can stop it..." Zach said, "More importantly, how to get out of here when we get what we came for!"
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Corey groaned in pain as he was once again sent flying. The BT Robo hadn't taken much more damage since the last update on this fight.

"Getting out of here? Well...that wasn't part of my M.O." He began to grab a paper. He thought for a moment. Then began to mess with the paper, causing it to glow and turn into an icon.

"Is this the key to accessing the data? Converting them into portable data, and taking them withe us? Hmmm." A flash of light and Terra fell back in reaction. His "%" Bar going down from 100% to 80%.

"I thought you said you couldn't feel the pain." Nadie helped him up.

"Y..Yes...I was just...Startled...is all..."

A Short Time Later...
"And your sure these things will stop multiplying?" Zach asked, a large cloud of baseball sized avatars swarming towards him. He began to evade it, as Makuta found himself in a similar problem.

The Namekian instead fired out a ki blast, but the cloud simply reshaped itself so that the attack didn't make contact with a single unit. The Namekian was soon surrounded and lost within the swarm.

Streak faced down his own cloud, and couldn't seem to find a way.

"Terra, are you anywhere closer to being done?" Streak asked, "And are they ever going to stop multiplying?!"

He wasn't sure if using his lightning in this space would do more harm than good, but he was starting to feel like he had no choice.

"I've already got 450 Megabytes of data." Terra continued to look through the files. He picked up a file and looked at it, "Hmm? Proto-Metal Project?" He looked at the schematic. Then he shrugged and threw it aside.

"Don't know what that means, but just hurry it up okay?" Zukai impaled an antivirus, causing it to multiply once again.