Reunion

[kefka]

[glow=gray,2,300]Zolapaz fought wave after wave of Heartless pouring in from seemingly nowhere. He waited for new instructions as he did so, depleting his magic supply in the process. Soon the Nobody would have to retreat, since he had no items of particular help. All he had on him for potions was a Hyper syringe.

"Useless..."[/glow]

[Secondary Characters]

Leon grunted as his blade stuck in the head of a Strafer, severing two of the points on its head. Wrenching the blade free, he spun and parried the attack of another, slicing it neatly in half.

"Ugh!" A blast from a Devastator went off near him, and he rolled to avoid damage, although several small rocks did scratch across his face, causing him to grit his teeth.

"Hey! Hurry up over there! I can't hold them off forever!" Leon parried attack and blow after blow, slicing, dicing, dodging, cleaving, and decapitating his way through Heartless after Heartless. His eyes were hard and narrowed, and his mouth echoed with a loud roar as he barreled his blade through a Magnum Loader, clicking the trigger to blast it into oblivion.

Roaring again, he sliced off the barrel of a Devastator, kicking away a Strafer who got too close. His energy was still peaking, and adrenaline was flowing through his body at an alarming rate. But even a warrior as experienced as he couldn't keep this up forever. As another wave of heartless closed in, he gulped, clenching his blade with both fists as he charged into the fray again...

For both our sake, you'd better hurry the hell up!

[Secondary Characters]

As Leon went to work on the waves of Heartless, Tron would be busily typing functions into the command panel. Apparently, the solar sailers were all being held at docking bays to prevent access to the mainframe, which under normal circumstances was not a problem. All he had to do was put in a request line, maybe adjust a command or two, fix the javascript and bodda-bing, they're fit to fly. However, it usually takes about five minutes from initial request to completion, and... well... he sure as hexadecimal didn't have that kind of time.

"Gotta shortcut this..." he muttered, working fast and every once in a while pausing to throw his datadisk and decapitate an oncoming strafer, or jam up the wheels of an m. loader. "C'mon, work with me!" he said, hacking the system expertly.

In short time, the commands would be accepted. He pumped a fist in victory before rejoining Leon. "Ten nanos, tops!" he said, using his disk as a shield to bash an oncoming Devastator blast away from Leon. He pointed to the light track the sailer would be coming on, and sure enough in the distance, it was there.

"I've got a function that can buy us some time! Make for the sailer and get it moving the second it arrives! I'll catch up!" he said, then slammed the datadisk down hard, using the electromagnetic shockwave to push the heartless back as a group. "Move!" he called, then took his disk, SPLIT it into two halves down the central s-curved segment line, and threw the two in opposite directions; left and right.

The motions of these two boomerang-like halves would create a straight line across the way, which glew a bright red. They would fly upward and curved to land right back in Tron's hand as a single unit before he'd slip it back where it belonged. Crouching down, he summoned up a typescreen which would effect the line he just created. "Running executable..." he muttered, punching in the codes.

Suddenly, the line would glow a horrible, burning red and erupt upward in a glowing wave of light. "FIREWALL!" Tron called out, creating an effective barrier to keep the heartless back and buy them those precious extra few nanosecs...

[Secondary Characters]

Leon continued to battle Heartless as Tron configured with the controls over by the sailers. As the man rejoined him in the midst of the battle, his instructions were clear.

"Alright. So I'll run over there and get it going, and as soon as I'm on board, you high tail it over here, alright? You've been with me so far, I'm not gonna lose ya now!"

Leon split a Strafer down the middle, flipping neatly over an M.Loader as he raced for the small track that the SS would be coming in on. Suddenly, he heard a loud FWOOSH![/] and an accompanying shout of "FIREWALL!", and a bright red light glared from behind him, casting light onto the sailer.

Leaping aboard, Leon punched in the commands for it to go, cupping both hands and yelling for Tron

"She's all prepped for shovin' off! Get your ass back here so we can get this wagon train rollin' out!"

Leon watched Tron pushing back Heartless after Heartless, praying his command would be answered and they'd have enough time to get the hell outta dodge...

[Secondary Characters]

The heartless were held at bay for now. The Firewall was a big move, and left Tron sorta out of it for a nano, but when he heard Leon calling for him, he knew he didn't have time to take a break. He turned on the spot and started running at full force, having to catch up to a Solar Sailer already on the move. He pumped his legs as fast as he could, seeing the end of the hangar swiftly approaching. He threw out his hand, trying to reach for Leon's, but it was just inches away! He kept running, but the end kept coming like an </end> function ready to cease operations permenantly! Still, Tron kept running and when the inevitable hit, he took a last-ditch effort and leapt off the end, nabbing Leon's outstretched hand in the last second and dangling from the Solar Sailer as it took off like a rocket toward its destination!

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

Tron pulled himself onboard not much later, and took this wonderful moment to sit down and catch his breath. "That was... tough..." he huffed, then looked to Leon. "But it's about to get tougher. No doubt this virus is going to have some serious security protocols in place when we hit the mainframe. We better be ready..."

Tron slowly stood up, looking flat tired now that he finally had a moment. Leaning on the sailer, he began to type into the little control panel, pulling up some data on a screen. "Here's the mainframe..." he said, showing a hologram of the building. "Only one access point, the USB dock. That's here," he explained, pointing out their only means of getting in safely. "The only other way in is way risky. I've only seen one person pull it off, but I wouldn't gamble on it. A drop from the roof directly into the datastream. Suicide."

He looked to Leon, nodding a bit. "Suggestions?"

[Secondary Characters]

Leon watched Tron fleeing forward, racing towards the SS, heartless in pursuit. He gulped involuntarily, wishing he would hurry up. As Tron got closer and closer, Leon gripped the edges, shouting.

"Hurry up! They're right on your tail!" Tron gave a mighty leap, sailing across the gap as the Sailer drew farther away. Barely catching himself, he heaved himself into the basket, giving some plans for Leon and pulling out a mini schematic. Leon recognized the USB dock, nodding firmly.

"I don't know who went in from the top, but we're gonna play it safe. We'll see about sneaking about and staying quiet. Is there any way you can make a decoy with that program of yours? We can have it in here, and have the Sailer leave, so they think that you've gone...and that would make them lax their guard, I think."

[Secondary Characters]

Tron thought on this a moment, then chuckled a bit. "That's... actually fairly clever..." he stated, then started punching in commands. He was able to multi-task pretty well. "It's the same trick the virus used to get in, a Trojan Horse so to say..."

A moment or two later, two holographic images would appear on the sailer, one of Leon leaning against the wall, and the other of Tron at the controls. The program smirked a bit, satisfied with the appearance. "Alright. That's set. Like I said, when we get there, there's bound to be a few programs installed for security purposes. Your plan should get us by them, I think..."

Tron took a moment to stretch his arm now, having not yet truly recovered from the injuries he took during the fight. "Once we get past the main gate, we can use the terminal there to summon your user friends. I have a feeling we might need them." He sighed a bit, checking his datadisk a bit. "Sorry about the mess, Leon..." he said, shrugging a bit. "This thing caught us totally offguard..."

[The Heartless Army]

The Heartless would begin to overwhelm the underwhelming attack force out in the real world. It was simply a matter of the machine pumping out more and more of them faster than the attackers could dispatch them. Across the way from the window where Zola had retreated, a large laserbeam emmitter would be blasting downward into the battlefield below where Zack was fighting. This was the source of the infinite heartless wave.

Those that were overflowing from Zack's battle would crawl up the walls, causing Zola to be flanked on both sides. Zack would be in the middle of the fray down below, also fighting flashbacks to a certain event. An event that ended his-

"FOCUS!" he'd yell, fighting the heartless. They were everywhere! He barely had time to swing at the ones in front of him as others would swipe at his back. There was just too many! When the light came crashing down again, he noticed that there were still more coming, and decided that just had to stop! Looking up, he set his eyes on the machine. It had to go!

"YO, ZOLA!!" he called up to the room above. "Do something about the death-star thing there, will ya???" he asked, then looked ahead. "I-HAVE-HAD-ENOUGH!!!" he screamed, then slammed his sword down, throwing a wave of energy forward to cut a swatch through the masses. He had used Bladebeam, the first phase of his limit. Now for the second!

Leaping high, he brought his sword down hard on a single heartless in front of him, cleanly slicing it in half. Braver! With this, his eyes would glow with Mako energy, and he'd turn on his heal to face the crowd near the elevator. "NO-YOU-DON'T!!!" he screamed, then unleashed omnislash, going nuts on all of them in rapid succession and clearing the elevator to prevent more from flanking Zola.

At the end of his limit break, Zack stood on the elevator, breathing hard and staring at the still massive crowd. "Yo gotta be kiddin' me..."

[kefka]

Zolapaz was hard at work slamming down on the heads of the Heartless with his morningstar, crushing creatures one at a time, opening Corridors on others to banish them. Since he'd been drained of his magic he had no other options, except...

"Halt," he ordered the Heartless advancing on him. Only five of the mass would actually stop, and Zolapaz decided that this would have to be enough. "Attack your brethren, cannibals..."

Soon his new slaves began their very own onslaught while the Nobody went to work turning his attention to the window where Zack had called up to him. He glanced upward at the "death star" the WellVersed had mentioned and hoisted up the morningstar and swung it at the window. It shattered instantly and more Heartless poured in; he snapped his fingers, opening up another Corridor and stepped through.

Reappearing on top of the large machine where it spewed out this laser of sorts Zolapaz went to work hammering it with his weapon. His magic supply was slowly-but-surely coming back to him, but he would have to wait before frying the machine.

"Almost..."

[Secondary Characters]

Leon smiled as Tron took in his plan, looking on satisfied-ly while the holograms of himself and Tron took place, leaning non-chalantly on either side of the Solar Sailer. Leon pulled Tron close to him, keeping his head down.

"Alright, this is how it's gonna go down. When we get inside, we're gonna hang off of the edge on the back, and I'll need you to yell and make noise, throw your datadisk, blah blah blah. The heartless and virally infected should come streaming for that side of this thing. Whatever side they come towards, we've gotta split."

"I'm sure there's cover inside that room, or you can make the holograms run straight in, panic them, then come back out. Either way, there's gotta be a side door or something that we can duck through while all the chaos is going on. Then we re-deploy the sailer to go out, and we're home free."

Leon watched as they closed in on the destination of the USB dock. He braced himself near the back, preparing to hang from the ledge as they entered...

[Secondary Characters]

Tron nodded as they went over the plan, grabbing his datadisk in order to get ready. "You got it," he said, giving a thumbs up. Something he learned from Sora. A quick glance over the edge alerted him to the fact they were getting close. "Let's execute this plan!" he said, then jumped over the edge furthest from the dock in order to hang onto the side as Leon suggested. He'd hit a little button on his belt to get the holograms running. "Initiating protocols now..." he whispered.

Sure enough, the holograms would run forward, making all kinds of noise and throwing their weapons about. They'd run in, and after a moment come running back to the sailer. "Here they come..." whispered Tron, moving along the way to be on the USB dock when the programs got there.

The holograms would be followed by the strangest programs Tron had ever set eyes on. Most of them were odd little purple and yellow .... well... balls and rods, from the looks of things. Yanno what? Uploading picture.
<= front row

Behind this odd... ones and zeroes... came following two more odd programs. One was blue, and the other red but aside from that there was almost nothing seperating the two visually. Uploading...


The red one would be a little ahead, pointing to the running holograms. "C'mon already! Someone catch those two before they get away! Ah, jeez-louize!!" His voice was nasally, and he seemed rather talkitive. Behind him was the blue program, speaking overtop of the first with a duller, deeper voice. "Derr, Slash... The boss ain't gonna like this one bit!"

"I KNOW that, Hack! Just keep chasin' already!"

"You keep chasing!"

"Let's both-"

"Yeah, let's both chase!"

Is it obvious yet that they're obviously not the brains of the outfit? All the programs, binomes and security drones alike, went running to the sailer and climbed aboard, thinking they had finally cornered their querry. "HA! We got you, now!" laughed the red Slash.

"Yeah, and you got nowhere to go, too!" chuckled Hack almost overtop of Slash, receiving a slap from the red one in the process. They were about to continue their little fight when suddenly both holograms disappeared. "HUUUHHHH???" they both exclaimed in unison before turning around to see that Tron had already climbed up onto the dock and had his hand on a lever to operate the Sailer.

"Gentlemen..." he said, then pulled the lever. "We'll take it from here."

"Ahh, noooooo!!!!!" all the programs screamed out as the sailer whisked them away. "They duped us!"

"They tricked us!"

"Well, they tricked you, I wasn't fooled at all, ya dunderhead!"

"Hey, you were in front!"

"No I wasn't ya big, dumb-"

Whatever they said next was too low to hear due to distance.

[Secondary Characters]

Leon laughed triumphantly, clapping a hand on Tron's shoulder in a gesture of camaraderie.

"Well done! Now let's get to work uploading this disk." He glanced around, noting the taint of the viral infection on the walls, the floor, the ceiling, shaking his head sadly. They needed to get this done so that he could restore order to the security system, help out Zack and his odd friend.

"So...let's see that map you got, buddy. We need to know the easiest path through here...not saying it's going to be easy at all, of course..."

[Secondary Characters]

Tron... didn't know how to feel about the clapping of his shoulder. Users were such... weird creatures. He shook his head a bit, then shrugged it off and ran over to a nearby terminal, which was placed on the USB dock to manage datafeeds from the sailers. He immediately began to type into it. "Unfortunately, I don't have a map of the interior, but maybe I can pull up the data here?" he said, managing to pull up something of a rough map of the inside. He would quickly point the most central area.

"That's the CPU. That's where all processing happens in the mainframe. If our virus is anywhere, he's got to be there!" he said, then began to map out a route that would bypass most of the security. "We can get past the password encrypted firewalls if we re-route one of the incoming datapacks from the 'net. We can feesibly go straight into the CPU supposing a direct download can be established..."

Here, Tron looked up to Leon. "Want to call your friends in now?"

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Meanwhile, out in the real world, Zack was getting more and more tired. He had been doing a decent job of protecting the elevator, but much to his chagrin, the heartless were climbing the wall just next to him! He growled, trying to come up with a decent plan of attack here.

The only option really open to him was to give chase. Smacking the button on the elevator to instruct it upwards, Zack prepared for a moving battle. As he passed heartless, he would swipe at them, knocking them down into their brothers or even outright obliterating them. The elevator would climb swiftly, and soon he was at the very top.

Running off, he looked down the clifflike wall at the still teeming heartless. "Crap..." he muttered, then ran into the control room. He looked over to see Zola smacking the machine as best he could, but it was too little and not fast enough! He growled, then hit the button on the console to contact Leon.

"C'mon, man! We're getting creamed out here! What's your status or something???" he yelled into the microphone, hoping for a swift response.

[Secondary Characters]

Leon nodded to Tron, looking at the map of the mainframe that he pulled up.

"Alright. This is pretty much past ground Zero. We need to go in and fight it. But...the Heartless are attacking outside of the mainframe. If I call my friends in here...we have to make it quick so that we can re-activate the system and blast all the Heartless out of Radiant Garden!"

Suddenly, a voice erupted from Leon's communicator. It was Zack! Leon looked up to Tron, speaking into the communicator as he did so.

"Yeah, we're ready to bring you in! Make sure that you and your friend are near the mainframe where I was when I was pulled in. And brace yourselves. Once you're in here, we're not stopping until this system is activated. It'll help us drive the Heartless out of the Garden for good..."

Leon took a deep breath, his gaze focusing on Tron once more.

"Once he gives me the signal, pull them in here. We've got to put an end to this viral infection, once and for all..."

[Cloud]

Zack listened to the instructions, then nodded a bit. "You got it!" he said, then looked up to Zola nearby, probably still working on the machine. "Change of plans, Z-man! Get back in here, and we're taking a techno-dive!" he said, grabbing his sword up once more, dealing with some more heartless that had just arrived.

"C'mon, Zola! I can't keep this area secured much longer!"