Absolute Beginners
by
Deborah J. Brown

.Hack is copyrighted to Bandai Entertainment. I'm just playing in it.

Author's Note: This is an Alternate Universe fic in the sense that while I'm trying to keep as true to the original storyline as possible, I have something happen that may not be the case in the original story. I like getting reviews here, but in general all response comments will be put on my LJ. (You can find that by following my webpage link in my user information, since the Pit screws up HTML entirely.) You don't have to be a member to comment there, though I do screen all anonymous posts.

Slumming

The World's system took days to recover from whatever had happened. Sora wondered if it was his effort that had caused the trouble. It was unlikely, though. The thing he'd fought was only a small part of the monster that had attacked them. Whatever it was he'd done had simply been timed when something else had happened, elsewhere. He wasn't sure what that something else was but it must have been impressive.

In the meantime, Sora had things he had to think about, plans and decisions to make. He could, he thought, just stay safe within A20's machine. That, though, had its own disadvantages. A20's parents expected her to turn off her computer when it wasn't in use and the sensation of being shutdown for the evening was almost as terrifying as that moment when Morganna had put him inside Skeith's wand. He tried not to whine too much about it, though, because the last thing he wanted was for A20 to lose her computer privileges.

There was another problem as well. It had taken a bit to notice, due to all the other excitement, but there was something odd about the way he felt. Had he been in a human body he would have called it a tummy ache. Inside the computer, not really needing food the way a normal human would, it was simply a mysterious discomfort, a pressure inside him that he would have to relieve. It took him another day or so before he'd really understand what the cause was. Data packets. A massive load of them, now that he'd killed that last monster. Bits and pieces of player information recaptured from Her and needing to be freed. He had a feeling that trying to hold onto them would be a terrible mistake.

Lastly there was the question of his family. He'd done some research, used A20's connection to the Net to try and find them and to make sure they were okay. Without, of course, revealing his existence because he wasn't sure how they'd react and some inner fear told him that he might find out things he didn't want to know. Emails, utilizing A20's service, had bounced back with the message that that address was no longer in use. Investigation of an on-line white pages had come up equally empty, as had other, more intensive searches that - while not quite true hacking - was damned close. Nothing, absolutely nothing. It was as if his entire family had been wiped out of the Net. Even his big sister had disappeared.

If it hadn't been for the fact that he'd seen his father, or rather his father's character, running around the World's servers being very much himself, Sora would have been badly afraid for them. As it was, it was a mystery that he wasn't ready to solve. He'd face his father sooner or later but not yet. Not until he'd finished with what he had to do. Whatever that is.

At last, almost three days later, Sora's periodic checks on The World showed him that they could return to the Server.

.oOo.

"Are you sure this will do any good?" A20 asked as she took the last DVD-R from the drive and carefully put it away. Sora had spent hours backing himself up on them, twenty disks in all. She rather suspected he was being overly cautious, because she was fairly sure he didn't take up that much space on her hard drive ordinarily. She said as much, "Not that I blame you, but it's a good thing writeable DVDs are cheap."

"The first five are the program needed to restore the disks," Sora explained. "The rest... I'm not sure what part is 'me' and what part is the character design but I don't want to take risks." He hummed softly, apparently studying something, then sighed. "I think I'm as ready as I'm going to be. I'll have to tag along on your data stream, though." He sounded scared and A20 couldn't blame him. The one thing she understood entirely too clearly now was that Sora - whatever he might have been before - was very definitely not a human attached to the system anymore. Not when he'd ended up inside her computer. Not when she'd been unable to access the World for days.

Admittedly, it might be that he was accessing her computer through the Net itself but she doubted it. Sora had manifested himself at a point in time after she'd disconnected the modem. A20 didn't think of herself as especially smart but it didn't take a genius to understand that it wasn't possible to access a computer via the Net when said system was physically disconnected.

The questions Sora's condition raised were worrisome. If he was physically inside the computer, simply a mass of bits and bytes, did that make him just a program that thought it was Sora? She couldn't accept that. There was something entirely too human about the boy that made it impossible for her to believe he wasn't a person. She still wondered what had happened to his body but some instinct told her that it was a question he couldn't answer. Or, possibly, one he doesn't dare ask.

Putting the disks away in a safe spot, A20 took a deep breath and selected the program that would take her into the World.

.oOo.

Reality warped around Sora, twisting patterns swirling around him. Ones and zeroes flowed past him, binary code of the sort he'd cut his teeth on, thanks to his programmer father. It was all moving too fast, though, leaving him merely bewildered and ever so slightly nauseous. He clung tightly to A20's character data, feeling it solidify into the small Twin-blade character he'd been partnered with. He landed lightly and took stock of himself.

Now that was odd, the link between himself and A20 was still there. Usually when one logged out from a server, or lost access to it some other way, you lost whatever links you might have had and had to re-establish them. Maybe it was because their link hadn't been dissolved properly when they'd escaped the system before. He opened his mouth to say as much but realized that A20 had gone off towards the Grunty farm. Oh for... That girl and her grunties.

Following behind, Sora winced as the smell hit him, then stared at A20 as she made a startled noise. "I... smell them." He continued staring at her, even as she, ever so slowly, stretched out her character's hand to touch the baby grunty wandering in its pen. Then she looked in his direction. "I don't feel it, though. What's... happening."

"Take off your goggles," Sora ordered her, panicking. What if she'd been sucked in? It'd be his fault, because he got her into this mess. "Hurry!"

"I have." Her voice changed, became more mechanical, sure sign that she was typing instead of speaking through her microphone. "What's going on, Sora?"

He shook his head. "I don't know. Do you still smell it? Can you walk away from your computer?"

The answers came separated by several seconds delay. "No, I don't smell it... Yes, I can." As Sora sighed in relief, A20 typed. "Now what's going on?"

Noting that there were several people just standing around, doing nothing, Sora grabbed A20's character by the arm and dragged it around the corner behind the grunty farm. "I'm not sure," he told her, once they had a bit more privacy. "But I bet it had something to do with how we left."

She went quiet and he felt her examine the link between them. That, in itself, was odd because he'd never noticed her do so before this. He continued, "Try breaking the link, then put the goggles on and see if you still smell something." It was the only thing he could think of, that somehow the link was sending signals to her goggles that allowed her to pick up a bit of his sensory input.

Another long moment of silence. "That did it," A20 told him, her voice sounding more like a person again. "But..." He knew what she was going to ask. "Is this going to happen every time we're linked for a party?" She answered her own question before he could say a word. "If it is, we should find out now." A moment later he was getting a flashmail invite.

I wish those things weren't so loud in my head, Sora thought as he accepted the invitation and reestablished the link. "Well?"

"It's fine. Don't worry," A20 answered. "It must have cleared when we broke the link." She eyed him. "So, what do we do now?"

.oOo.

Sora was giving her a suspicious look, but there was one advantage to being on this side of the keyboard from him. He couldn't see her reactions in her character's face, and that meant that he wouldn't realize that she was lying through her teeth. She'd have to watch her tone, though, because she didn't want him to realize that things had not been fixed by resetting the link.

I can live with the smell, she thought. It was no worse than a hamster or a guinea pig's, both of which she dealt with on a regular basis at school. The thing was, if she told Sora that the link was still there he might decide that she was better off not helping him out. He was just a kid, caught up in something far too big to handle alone and there was no way that she was going to leave him on his own.

Red eyes gazed at her for a long moment and she fought with an urge to start babbling. At last he shrugged to himself. "We should probably go look for the next fragment. Given I can figure out where it is." He headed out onto the walkway and A20 followed closely behind, only to bump into him when he stopped short. "That's... Kite."

She followed his gaze and spotted the Twin Blade in the bright red costume talking to a small female Wavemaster. Kite's was one of the newer character designs, she noted. Small of stature, the figure's outfit was very different from Sora's. The top wasn't as tightly fitted and the red pants were fuller, almost baggy and marked with an odd hexagonal pattern that was echoed on the character's vest. The character itself had a more boyish appearance than Sora did, up to and including a very young looking face.

About to step forward and call out to the character, A20 realized that her companion had dropped downwards and was hiding behind the low wall that surrounded the walkway. His eyes were huge and scared looking, his arms wrapped around himself. He whimpered and A20 knelt beside him. "What is it?" she asked, puzzled.

"The... bracelet. No... Please no..."

She looked over the edge of the balustrade and blinked. The Twin Blade wasn't wearing a... no, wait. A faint flicker of greenish light caught her eye, just barely visible to peripheral vision. It gleamed around Kite's wrist, a band of green light with flares of light around it. Another character joined him then and all three disappeared into the portal.

Beside A20, Sora gasped and took several deep breaths. "Scary," he muttered, shuddering dramatically. "Too scary." He rose to his feet and began to pace, the tension in his movements obvious.

"I get the point," A20 told him. "What I don't get is why?" The question set him off again and A20 reminded herself that Sora was incapable of talking seriously about things without behaving like a hyper-active chipmunk. He was standing on his hands now, making those noises again and dancing around as he organized his thoughts.

Rather than lose her temper with Sora's antics, A20 leaned her character against the wall and waited. It took him longer than usual this time. Something about the question must have really disturbed him, she realized. At last, however, he answered, "His Bracelet can take me apart... I can't go near it. I don't want to go near it. It scares me..." He spun around in a dizzying series of circles. "But everything's okay. I don't have to go near to... yipe!"

The yipe was because Sora had rotated straight into one of the other characters who were still standing around as if their players had forgotten them. Both figures went down in a tangle of character graphics. "Pulsating Worst Core," the character said, almost casually. "Pulsating Worst Core. Invite. Invite. Earth saw winter eagerly nod."

Both A20 and Sora stared at the character as it went silent. Then, cautiously, Sora put a hand out and pulled the thing to its feet. Once again it repeated what A20 was fairly sure were gate codes, followed by the word invite. Sora made a small noise of comprehension. "I think we'd better split up for now," he told her.

"Why?"

"Because this is an invitation from Helba."

.oOo.

She was staring at him blankly, "The hacker? Sora, I thought you said..."

"I don't hack. That doesn't mean I don't associate with any hackers. Just not the bad ones." Helba was the absolute best hacker out there, capable of wreaking havoc on the Net and on each and every computer system attached to it. Yet despite that, she held her power in reserve, increasing the security of the system, nudging things in directions that - while not necessarily good for CC Corp - made it harder for the more criminal hackers to get their fingers into things.

"Good ones?"

Sora sighed. "Look, I don't have time to talk about it. When Helba sends an invite, she means right that minute and no later. You're better off staying out of things, so stay here and play for a while. I'll call you when I'm back."

"No."

"But..."

"You keep running into danger. Even if you break the link and go alone, I'll just follow." A20 crossed her character's arms and had it take up a stubborn pose. "If she's one of the good guys like you say, then what's the harm?"

Doing a handstand, Sora thought about it. Then he spun around on the tips of his fingers and thought about it some more. A cartwheel, followed by a somersault that landed him near the portal. He could, he thought, really quickly break their link and go through before she could react. On the other hand, that wouldn't stop her from following. Still, he knew the way into the Net Slum from there and could slip off before she could.

Noticing a large, familiar, figure headed his way from the other end of the Server, he quickly accessed the portal. On the third hand, I don't want the SysAdmins knowing about us. "C'mon then!" he shouted at A20, leaping through.

There was a moment of disorientation, then they were standing in a mountainous Field, gleaming bright and beautiful. The entrance to the dungeon was only a few yards away, and Sora was about to head that way when he felt someone gating in behind them. He spun around and found himself facing one of the NPCs that usually stood behind the counters at the Servers to sell various goods for dungeon delving.

This one, however, was somewhat bigger than the others, had more movement to it and Sora knew it had to be a SysAdmin. "Get in there!" he yelled at A20. He couldn't let them get past him, couldn't let them find the way to the gateway.

"This area is now restricted," the SysAdmin stated as Sora took up a fighting stance, examining his options as quickly as possible. The SysAdmins didn't bother with usual fighting techniques. Usually they just hit your character with 'spells' that could do anything from permanently paralyzing your character to wiping them out of the field entirely. To his surprise, the SysAdmin ignored him, yelling after A20, "Come back! You can't go in there."

¦Lock him out¦

The flashmail Sora received wasn't from A20. This voice in his head was female but its rich contralto was completely different from A20's childish tones. He knew it, though and as he raced to block the SysAdmin again, asked, ¦How?¦

¦Release your load.¦

Sora blinked, reminded of the weight of data he'd been carrying. He'd been so concerned with A20's link with him, and the presence of the bracelet, that he'd half forgotten them. He wondered, though, what effect releasing the things into the field was going to have.

The SysAdmin was pushing past him, trying to get into the doorway where Sora still blocked his way. The character muttered angrily, apparently unable to figure out what was keeping him back, and Sora realized that - for some reason - his character data wasn't visible to Them. Part of Skeith's nature, he realized. It too could walk right past the System's safeguards without drawing attention.

¦Hurry, Sora.¦

¦Yeah. Sure. Just as soon as I figure out... Ahhh.¦ The intent alone was enough to do it. He felt himself glowing, arms spread out in a pose that he didn't really want to remember. Being transformed, that horrible sound in his ear. Somehow he had to warn the SysAdmin. What he was doing could hurt the person behind the character. "GET OUT OF HERE!" he yelled, willing himself into visibility.

"What the..." At the same time ruby light and that sound started up. He could feel it swirling through him, the pressure rising. Still the man just stood and stared stupidly, apparently unable or unwilling to believe he was in any danger.

Once again, Sora yelled for the SysAdmin to get out. He couldn't control the process now that it had started. Somehow he managed to grab the character piece and shove, concentrating all his intentions into the motion and sending it flying out through a gate that he somehow forced into existence. One last thing. Just one last thing. "A20, get your goggles off now!"

Then he felt himself explode.

.oOo.

Everything was flickering around her and she could hear Sora screaming in agony. She stared at the monitor helplessly as it went black, then brightened, then darkened again. All the while that sound rose from her headphones, distant enough not to be agonizing it was still painful. As the screen began flickering she cowered back, covering eyes and ears and praying desperately that that would be enough to protect her from that terrible sound.

At last there was silence and A20 cautiously opened her eyes. She was looking at a field that had - somehow - been distorted and transformed from the beautiful mountainous landscape to a horror. Everything in the field was the same shape but the colors were all wrong. The sky above was shattered, as were pieces of the landscape. Like the field where I found him.

For a moment A20 hesitated, then she slid the goggles back on. He was in pain. She could feel that pain. It wasn't as if it were her own, thankfully, but it was very clear. Stepping out of the dungeon, she found Sora crumpled to the ground, whimpering. "Hurts. It hurts." She nudged him, wishing she could pick him up. At last, though, his red eyes opened and he looked at her. "...owiieee"

"I believe that." Kneeling beside his character, A20 waited for him to sit up. In the meantime she stared at the terribly damaged field. She was wrong. This wasn't the same as the field where she'd found Sora, it was much worse. Almost as bad as that place he'd led her to outside all the fields. It made her feel strange just looking at it. There was an odd, not entirely unpleasant odor in her nostrils, the scent of ozone. "What did you do?"

"It was all inside my character." Sora looked up at her, thought about something. "Remind me, if I end up back in your machine, to make a whole new back up set, would you? I don't want to do that again."

Shaking him wasn't an option, so A20 settled for smacking him on the shoulder. "Do what?" she demanded.

"Release all that data in one shot like that." Sora sat up, rubbed his shoulder. "Ouch. That hurts, A20." Seeming to realize that she was losing patience with him, he managed a quick smile in her direction. "It's part of everything else," he told her. "When I fought that monster in the other dungeon I ended up with a big load of... well the system would call it viral, but it isn't, really. Just the bits and pieces of data absorbed from other players."

The whole thing made no sense and she said as much. "You don't tell me things," she reminded him, making her character stand up as he did the same. "I've figured out that you're part of the system. I understand that you can do things that affect the system. What I don't understand is how all this information is being absorbed, or why."

He shrugged as he headed into the dungeon. "How? That I don't get either, though I think it has something to do with the goggles. Otherwise you wouldn't be picking up some of what I'm getting." He looked at her when she stopped just inside the doorway. "What? You thought I didn't know? C'mon, A20, you're a lousy liar." He shrugged. "It's your funeral. Just make sure you get those goggles off fast if I tell you to."

"Believe me, I plan on it." The pain she'd received from Sora had been more than enough to convince her that she didn't want to risk getting too much of what he was experiencing. She certainly didn't want to risk ending up just like him.

They stopped in the first room of the dungeon and Sora paused. A20 looked at the walls, the cool blue stone marred by the peculiar breaks that revealed a constant flow of numbers. "Okay, you don't know how. What about why?" She touched one of the breaks but felt nothing. In a lot of ways she was glad. Particularly when Sora followed suit and snatched his hand back as if it hurt. "What is this?"

"I've screwed up the field," Sora confessed, either ignoring or forgetting her first question. "When I fought that thing I absorbed a lot of the data it had gotten from other players. All of which is now filling this field and affecting its performance. This isn't how the system's supposed to work. It's still playable, I think." He eyed his fingers ruefully. "Helba asked me to, of course, but I don't like it. It feels wrong. I like the World. I don't want to mess it up."

"You said she's one of the good guys, though."

He managed a wry smile. "She's one of the good hackers. That means that she might do something to a system if she feels it'll help make things work better in the long run. That doesn't mean that she always does the right thing." With a sigh, he shook his head. "Never mind. I think we have to ask Helba. Given we can get a straight answer from her."

That was true. "She sounds a bit like you," A20 noted.

"Heh. No, she's better at this sort of thing than I am. I was just playing. Helba... I think she always knew this was serious." Sora paused, examining the doorways. "Now then, what was the code? Ahhhh, Earth saw winter eagerly nod," he murmured. "Now, what does it mean... Oh, of course." He repeated the words in English. "This way."

They moved from room to room, getting closer to the steps down that showed on A20's map. From the way they were being teleported further forwards, even when Sora took them back towards the entryway, they were obviously following a pattern intended to keep intruders out. It hit her as they found the stairs down, "East, south, west, east, north," she exclaimed, realizing what the code had meant and why Sora had translated it to English. He grinned at her. "So what happens now?"

"Fight our way through to the bottom. We don't have to fight everything, fortunately, but Helba doesn't make it easy to find her." Another quick grin. "Not that you can blame her."

Considering that Helba's profession - if one could call it that - was the illegal entry into other people computers, that was certainly true. It was especially true because these days hacking was a capital crime. No one had been executed for it yet, not even the kid who'd caused the Deadly Flash, but it was always an option. A20 said as much and couldn't help but wonder aloud, "Why do it when it's so dangerous?"

Sora shrugged "I never asked her that. Always figured she does it for fun." They stepped into a room with a portal and they paused, startled, when the doors didn't slam shut behind them. "What the..."

.oOo.

It made no sense. Entering a dungeon with a portal always meant you had to fight your way out. He moved closer to the portal, expecting it to explode into life any minute. Nothing. He touched the portal, felt the charge in the air from its presence. But nothing else. What's going on here?

"Maybe she knows we're coming and turned everything off," A20 suggested, just as puzzled as Sora was. He glanced at the smaller Twin Blade and she shrugged. "She sent you an invitation, after all. Do we have time to worry about it?"

Acknowledging the statement, Sora sighed. "Okay. Let's go then." He headed through the next door, walked past more portals without setting them off, A20 close behind him. He found it spooky and just plain wrong. Still, there wasn't any point to worrying over it and he hurried on, reaching the bottom level in what he suspected was record time.

"There's nothing," A20 said as they entered the last long hallway and she appeared to be right. The hall dead-ended, cold blue stone gleaming, marked only by the damage Sora had done to the dungeon. He winced at that, still having a hard time accepting the results of his power and wondering if, no matter what he did, he really was just part of the problem. He headed towards the end of the hall as A20 asked, "Sora? Where are you going?"

Footsteps echoed in the hallway as he walked, sounding as if they were echoing from a greater distance than they ought to be. "Everything's an illusion," he told A20. "This place most of all. There's no door, because there's no door." With that, he stepped through.

Beyond was a familiar sight, one he'd visited a number of times when he'd first found his way into Helba's realm. The first time had been an accident, the result of curiosity that had led him to follow a pattern he'd barely noticed. Helba had kicked him out as soon as she'd realized he was there but not without giving him a clue that let him find her again. And again. And again. He rather suspected that the biggest reason she'd put up with him and continued giving him clues was curiosity of her own. Maybe we are more alike than I thought. He'd never been willing to move entirely into the world of hacking, mostly because he didn't like cheating, just solving problems and being a nuisance, but he'd provided Helba with information that he was relatively certain she'd made good use of. For a price, of course.

"What a mess!" A20 exclaimed, staring around Net Slum. Her voice held both fear and distaste, not that Sora could blame her for either. The Net Slum was composed of bits and pieces of old data; graphics, programs, database information. To the viewer's eye it was a mass of papers and buildings and pipes and... things. "Why is it like this? And what's that smell?"

Sora shook his head. "Old data, probably. It's neater than it was the last time I was here, actually. Helba must have found someone to help her organize things a bit." The problem was, no matter what you did to clean up a place like this, more and more data found its way in. The best you could do was stay even and sometimes not even that. Sort of like my bedroom, he grinned, then winced at the memory. He needed to not think about his life outside the World. At least not until he figured out how to get back to it. If he could get back to it. And that was a thought I could have done without.

Gasping a little, A20 jumped back from what she'd apparently thought was a mound of garbage. It moved, sitting up to stare up at her with a face that looked like it was formed from pieces of a garbage can. That was the other thing about the Slum. Bits and pieces of character data washed up there all the time, carried there by who knew what tide existed within the Net. "It's okay," he told A20. "They won't hurt you."

"Don't be too sure of that."

He started, stared upwards at a figure that was entirely too familiar.

Himself.

To be continued...