Post by Keter on Apr 1, 2017 9:20:43 GMT -8
When you deleted a navi, they frequently dropped data fragments that could be rather useful. You could pull combat data ranging from skills and attacks from it, pull up log in information from social media, or even something truly sensitive like bank data. It was difficult to tell what you'd get and it took a good bit of time sifting through that data to get something usable, even if you knew what you were doing. Plus navi don’t have an obvious power level attached to their appearance; this made it difficult to determine who was worth trying to take out.
Unrelatedly, all hubs kept a record of everyone who used them, and held onto that record for a brief period. In the Overnet, the tracking system was used by officials to determine criminal traffic and held onto records for about a week. Outside of needing to verify a digital crime, it wasn't actually used for anything and was mostly left alone. Down in the undernet, the tracking system was only put in place because it was a foundational system that couldn't be disabled. An administrator had gone through and made it so that the system wiped itself of information every thirty seconds or so, helping maintain the illusion of anonymity for the average user.
One of the main hubs of traffic in the undernet was compromised. A worm had been inserted years ago, giving a particular operator a feed into the tracking system, giving the operator access to what amounted to a "currently visited by" list that constantly updated itself. Most of the time knowing who was on a particular hub would be extremely obvious just by looking around. It didn’t have a lot of use to access the hub’s logging information, which was why no one had noticed the worm and cleaned it out.
Of course, the worm also gave a very minor detail that most navi wouldn’t expect to be tracked: their Version number. While it was a gauge of a navi’s overall experience, a Version wasn’t exactly a measure of combat power but it was usually usable as such. Low power navi were typically easy to hit in an offensive blitz and delete in short order; most wouldn’t realize they were under attack until the first blow had been struck and an opening move for lots of damage would usually be enough to decide the entire battle.
The operator in charge of this neat little operation had a gang of roughly nine navi who rotated between watching this worm for a likely target and performing other duties. Each navi was interchangeable, but an important note was that despite all appearances to the contrary, they were heavily customized. Specially crafted and built to showcase an entirely different aspect to navigation and optimized to quickly sift through the data of deleted navi, these “NormNavi” were anything but.
Of course, in depth customization and the fine detail work put into ensuring that they could utilize tricks like the worm giving them a constant list of people present had downsides. Of particular note was that they completely lacked for onboard weaponry. This would make them especially vulnerable in direct combat with another navi, but for the most part it was seen as an acceptable price, especially since a sizable stack of battle chips were set aside for each of them to use, in no small part from the fact that they were a raging success. They were simple, basic fare like cannons and swords, but quantity provides a quantity all its own, as they say.
But, really, this is all relatively useless information. No one cares about the set up behind the ambush; they just care about the ambush itself. When they discovered a navi who was wandering around the undernet at V1 aimlessly, they tailed them. After watching the navi handle one or two viruses clumsily, they assumed that the navi was a pushover who would be easily dropped. The navi who volunteered to take down the newbie had waited until they were fairly isolated; no one to swoop into the rescue in what amounted to a back alley.
(TotallyNotA)NormNavi(#4) had already shifted into combat mode, eying the navi he’d been tailing. The kid had managed to run her white-clad and skirt covered ass into a corner and was yelling at either her operator for giving her piss poor directions or at the dead end itself. Honestly, it was difficult to tell given that there wasn’t really someone for her to be yelling at. Norm was moving in nonchalantly, and really, it was lucky the kid had no common sense. She’d be an easy mark, and as he approached within just a scant handful of meters, he accessed the Cannon chip he had loaded and unloaded directly into the kid’s back.
The kid took it right in the spine, slamming forward into the barrier on the edge of the path and collapsing to the ground, the small explosion from the shot providing just enough smoke to cover her shakily getting to his feet, electricity shimmering across her form as his armor changed from white to blue. She was disoriented and not sure where the attack had come from, as far as Norm could tell from the way she didn’t immediately return fire. Less than a heartbeat passed and Norm rushed forward.
The kid had a slightly surprised and dumbfounded look on her face as the Sword appeared on Norm’s arm, Norm’s blade coming down hard, blowing through the clumsily raised arm and slamming full force into the kid’s face, the blade dissipating even as he brought his other arm forward and slammed the kid in the stomach with a second blade, sending her tumbling to the ground.
Still, the kid clearly had something like a head on her shoulders, since she managed to pull a buster and fire it at Norm, the first shot being easily evaded as he slipped back out of range, but the second managed to clip Norm’s shoulder. Norm internally winced at the impact, thankful for the program that let him ignore the pain that came with the damage, and fired another Cannon at the rising kid.
The kid clearly wasn’t ready for the shot and took it to the face, throwing her back onto the ground, her armor flickering to white for a brief moment as she shook her head to regain her bearings and struggled to rise. She almost didn’t react in time to the second rush, Norm coming in with a big and brutal cross slash with two blades at once, her paltry buster shot going wide.
Norm was given a brief moment of satisfaction at deftly getting around the kid’s guard with her hastily summoned blade before he realized that, for whatever reason, the kid hadn’t even bothered to try and guard against the Sword attacks and instead took the opportunity to swing that blade down and just about take one of Norm’s arms off.
The hit was hard enough to knock Norm sprawling, but as an experienced navi, even being in an uncontrolled arc, he wasn’t thrown off his game. Norm managed to turn what had been a graceless trip airborne into a one handed back spring and prep a Cannon in his other hand, launching it at the kid to try and stop a shift in the momentum; it wouldn’t likely be enough to recover the momentum he’d lost to that desperate move, but it would hopefully keep the kid from capitalizing on the shift and gaining more ground.
Of course, there’s a saying about the intactness of plans around the enemy, and it proved true as the kid heedlessly rushed forward, taking the cannon shell, her armor flickering again. Norm had plenty of time to get ready for her approach though, even with the way she ignored the shot. He hit the ground and almost instantly had a blade out and was lunging forward, under a buster shot aimed at his head and stabbed her straight in the gut; he didn’t even bother to let the blade fully dissipate before he summoned the second one, the blade flickering into existence already half way through her body, and that was well worth the buster shot to the face, especially since he followed it up with another cannon blast.
This time the cannon blast had the desired effect and she was sent flying backward, armor doing that curious little flicker again as she did her best to emulate Norm’s own flip and pulling a shitty little somersault and ending up on her stomach on the ground, shakily firing two shots as she scrambled to get back to her feet, especially with Norm already rushing forward.
Norm honestly was starting to be a bit terrified. He’d dealt pretty significant damage to her, he’d thought, and it struck him that he no longer could SEE any of that damage on her. Most navi didn’t show obvious damage, but you could typically feel how damaged they were, and he couldn’t feel that at all. By his count, the girl had taken something like 1800 damage, and that was pretty well outside of the realm of most V1 to take. Taking advantage of the target’s prone state, he desperately jumped on top of her, intent on pinning her to the ground with blades, and was only partially successful; a buster shot knocked one of his blades just wide enough that instead of pinning her arm to the ground, it instead skidded along the blue armor plating into the ground, and he was left at point blank range as the gem on her chest suddenly flickered, glowed brightly, and blasted him in the chest, sending him skyward.
Without many options while airborne, he fired at her with another Cannon chip, the shot slamming into her hard and driving her armor from blue to white and making it stick this time. But before he could ponder the relevance of the change, her buster rang out twice, the first shot something he could twist out of the way of, but the second taking him in the head and finishing him. He didn’t even hit the ground.
“So boringggggg...” Dream pouted, rolling back to his feet as he snagged the bits of data that the now deleted navi dropped. “I was really excited when he threw out that first shot, but he didn’t have anything else. He did do that cool flippy thing though.”
The navi paused to look down at his form and hummed in consideration. “I should probably find somewhere else to be now that I killed that guy. But dang, he didn’t even say anything to me. Am I really that unfun to talk to? Whatever. Back to exploring!”
And with that, he cast his mind back to his goal of exploration and left, the fight behind him already forgotten.
NormNavi wins Initiative!
Turn 1; NormNavi: Use CANNON!
Turn 1; Dream: Take 300 damage. Regenerate 40 HP. Generate Elemenal Aura (Aqua)!
Turn 2; NormNavi: Use Sword! Use Sword!
Turn 2; Dream: Sword has no effect due to Elemental Aura (Aqua)! Sword has no effect due to Elemental Aura (Aqua)! Regenerate 40 HP! Dream used Aqua Buster! Dream used Aqua Buster!
Turn 3; NormNavi: Avoided Aqua Buster! Hit by Aqua Buster! Take 200 Damage! Use Cannon!
Turn 3; Dream: Cannon breaks Elemental Aura (Aqua)! Regenerate 40 HP. Generate Elemental Aura (Aqua)!
Turn 4; NormNavi: Use Sword! Use Sword!
Turn 4; Dream: Sword has no effect due to Elemental Aura (Aqua)! Sword has no effect due to Elemental Aura (Aqua)! Regenerate 40 HP! Dream used Aqua Buster! Dream used Aqua Buster!
Turn 5; NormNavi: Avoided Aqua Buster! Hit by Aqua Buster! Take 200 Damage! Use Cannon!
Turn 5; Dream: Cannon breaks Elemental Aura (Aqua)! Regenerate 40 HP. Generate Elemental Aura (Aqua)!
Turn 6; NormNavi: Use Sword! Use Sword!
Turn 6; Dream: Sword has no effect due to Elemental Aura (Aqua)! Sword has no effect due to Elemental Aura (Aqua)! Regenerate 40 HP! Dream used Aqua Buster! Dream used Aqua Buster!
Turn 7; NormNavi: Avoided Aqua Buster! Hit by Aqua Buster! Take 200 Damage! Use Cannon!
Turn 7; Dream: Cannon breaks Elemental Aura (Aqua)! Regenerate 40 HP. Generate Elemental Aura (Aqua)!
Turn 8; NormNavi: Use Sword! Use Sword!
Turn 8; Dream: Sword has no effect due to Elemental Aura (Aqua)! Sword has no effect due to Elemental Aura (Aqua)! Regenerate 40 HP! Dream used Aqua Buster! Dream used Aqua Buster!
Turn 9; NormNavi: Avoided Aqua Buster! Hit by Aqua Buster! Take 200 Damage! Use Cannon!
Turn 9; Dream: Cannon breaks Elemental Aura (Aqua)! Generate Elemental Aura (Aqua)!
Turn 10; NormNavi: Use Sword! Use Sword!
Turn 10; Dream: Sword has no effect due to Elemental Aura (Aqua)! Sword has no effect due to Elemental Aura (Aqua)! Dream used Aqua Buster! Dream used Aqua Buster!
Turn 11; NormNavi: Avoided Aqua Buster! Hit by Aqua Buster! Take 200 Damage! NormNavi DELETED!
Unrelatedly, all hubs kept a record of everyone who used them, and held onto that record for a brief period. In the Overnet, the tracking system was used by officials to determine criminal traffic and held onto records for about a week. Outside of needing to verify a digital crime, it wasn't actually used for anything and was mostly left alone. Down in the undernet, the tracking system was only put in place because it was a foundational system that couldn't be disabled. An administrator had gone through and made it so that the system wiped itself of information every thirty seconds or so, helping maintain the illusion of anonymity for the average user.
One of the main hubs of traffic in the undernet was compromised. A worm had been inserted years ago, giving a particular operator a feed into the tracking system, giving the operator access to what amounted to a "currently visited by" list that constantly updated itself. Most of the time knowing who was on a particular hub would be extremely obvious just by looking around. It didn’t have a lot of use to access the hub’s logging information, which was why no one had noticed the worm and cleaned it out.
Of course, the worm also gave a very minor detail that most navi wouldn’t expect to be tracked: their Version number. While it was a gauge of a navi’s overall experience, a Version wasn’t exactly a measure of combat power but it was usually usable as such. Low power navi were typically easy to hit in an offensive blitz and delete in short order; most wouldn’t realize they were under attack until the first blow had been struck and an opening move for lots of damage would usually be enough to decide the entire battle.
The operator in charge of this neat little operation had a gang of roughly nine navi who rotated between watching this worm for a likely target and performing other duties. Each navi was interchangeable, but an important note was that despite all appearances to the contrary, they were heavily customized. Specially crafted and built to showcase an entirely different aspect to navigation and optimized to quickly sift through the data of deleted navi, these “NormNavi” were anything but.
Of course, in depth customization and the fine detail work put into ensuring that they could utilize tricks like the worm giving them a constant list of people present had downsides. Of particular note was that they completely lacked for onboard weaponry. This would make them especially vulnerable in direct combat with another navi, but for the most part it was seen as an acceptable price, especially since a sizable stack of battle chips were set aside for each of them to use, in no small part from the fact that they were a raging success. They were simple, basic fare like cannons and swords, but quantity provides a quantity all its own, as they say.
But, really, this is all relatively useless information. No one cares about the set up behind the ambush; they just care about the ambush itself. When they discovered a navi who was wandering around the undernet at V1 aimlessly, they tailed them. After watching the navi handle one or two viruses clumsily, they assumed that the navi was a pushover who would be easily dropped. The navi who volunteered to take down the newbie had waited until they were fairly isolated; no one to swoop into the rescue in what amounted to a back alley.
(TotallyNotA)NormNavi(#4) had already shifted into combat mode, eying the navi he’d been tailing. The kid had managed to run her white-clad and skirt covered ass into a corner and was yelling at either her operator for giving her piss poor directions or at the dead end itself. Honestly, it was difficult to tell given that there wasn’t really someone for her to be yelling at. Norm was moving in nonchalantly, and really, it was lucky the kid had no common sense. She’d be an easy mark, and as he approached within just a scant handful of meters, he accessed the Cannon chip he had loaded and unloaded directly into the kid’s back.
The kid took it right in the spine, slamming forward into the barrier on the edge of the path and collapsing to the ground, the small explosion from the shot providing just enough smoke to cover her shakily getting to his feet, electricity shimmering across her form as his armor changed from white to blue. She was disoriented and not sure where the attack had come from, as far as Norm could tell from the way she didn’t immediately return fire. Less than a heartbeat passed and Norm rushed forward.
The kid had a slightly surprised and dumbfounded look on her face as the Sword appeared on Norm’s arm, Norm’s blade coming down hard, blowing through the clumsily raised arm and slamming full force into the kid’s face, the blade dissipating even as he brought his other arm forward and slammed the kid in the stomach with a second blade, sending her tumbling to the ground.
Still, the kid clearly had something like a head on her shoulders, since she managed to pull a buster and fire it at Norm, the first shot being easily evaded as he slipped back out of range, but the second managed to clip Norm’s shoulder. Norm internally winced at the impact, thankful for the program that let him ignore the pain that came with the damage, and fired another Cannon at the rising kid.
The kid clearly wasn’t ready for the shot and took it to the face, throwing her back onto the ground, her armor flickering to white for a brief moment as she shook her head to regain her bearings and struggled to rise. She almost didn’t react in time to the second rush, Norm coming in with a big and brutal cross slash with two blades at once, her paltry buster shot going wide.
Norm was given a brief moment of satisfaction at deftly getting around the kid’s guard with her hastily summoned blade before he realized that, for whatever reason, the kid hadn’t even bothered to try and guard against the Sword attacks and instead took the opportunity to swing that blade down and just about take one of Norm’s arms off.
The hit was hard enough to knock Norm sprawling, but as an experienced navi, even being in an uncontrolled arc, he wasn’t thrown off his game. Norm managed to turn what had been a graceless trip airborne into a one handed back spring and prep a Cannon in his other hand, launching it at the kid to try and stop a shift in the momentum; it wouldn’t likely be enough to recover the momentum he’d lost to that desperate move, but it would hopefully keep the kid from capitalizing on the shift and gaining more ground.
Of course, there’s a saying about the intactness of plans around the enemy, and it proved true as the kid heedlessly rushed forward, taking the cannon shell, her armor flickering again. Norm had plenty of time to get ready for her approach though, even with the way she ignored the shot. He hit the ground and almost instantly had a blade out and was lunging forward, under a buster shot aimed at his head and stabbed her straight in the gut; he didn’t even bother to let the blade fully dissipate before he summoned the second one, the blade flickering into existence already half way through her body, and that was well worth the buster shot to the face, especially since he followed it up with another cannon blast.
This time the cannon blast had the desired effect and she was sent flying backward, armor doing that curious little flicker again as she did her best to emulate Norm’s own flip and pulling a shitty little somersault and ending up on her stomach on the ground, shakily firing two shots as she scrambled to get back to her feet, especially with Norm already rushing forward.
Norm honestly was starting to be a bit terrified. He’d dealt pretty significant damage to her, he’d thought, and it struck him that he no longer could SEE any of that damage on her. Most navi didn’t show obvious damage, but you could typically feel how damaged they were, and he couldn’t feel that at all. By his count, the girl had taken something like 1800 damage, and that was pretty well outside of the realm of most V1 to take. Taking advantage of the target’s prone state, he desperately jumped on top of her, intent on pinning her to the ground with blades, and was only partially successful; a buster shot knocked one of his blades just wide enough that instead of pinning her arm to the ground, it instead skidded along the blue armor plating into the ground, and he was left at point blank range as the gem on her chest suddenly flickered, glowed brightly, and blasted him in the chest, sending him skyward.
Without many options while airborne, he fired at her with another Cannon chip, the shot slamming into her hard and driving her armor from blue to white and making it stick this time. But before he could ponder the relevance of the change, her buster rang out twice, the first shot something he could twist out of the way of, but the second taking him in the head and finishing him. He didn’t even hit the ground.
“So boringggggg...” Dream pouted, rolling back to his feet as he snagged the bits of data that the now deleted navi dropped. “I was really excited when he threw out that first shot, but he didn’t have anything else. He did do that cool flippy thing though.”
The navi paused to look down at his form and hummed in consideration. “I should probably find somewhere else to be now that I killed that guy. But dang, he didn’t even say anything to me. Am I really that unfun to talk to? Whatever. Back to exploring!”
And with that, he cast his mind back to his goal of exploration and left, the fight behind him already forgotten.
NormNavi wins Initiative!
Turn 1; NormNavi: Use CANNON!
Turn 1; Dream: Take 300 damage. Regenerate 40 HP. Generate Elemenal Aura (Aqua)!
Turn 2; NormNavi: Use Sword! Use Sword!
Turn 2; Dream: Sword has no effect due to Elemental Aura (Aqua)! Sword has no effect due to Elemental Aura (Aqua)! Regenerate 40 HP! Dream used Aqua Buster! Dream used Aqua Buster!
Turn 3; NormNavi: Avoided Aqua Buster! Hit by Aqua Buster! Take 200 Damage! Use Cannon!
Turn 3; Dream: Cannon breaks Elemental Aura (Aqua)! Regenerate 40 HP. Generate Elemental Aura (Aqua)!
Turn 4; NormNavi: Use Sword! Use Sword!
Turn 4; Dream: Sword has no effect due to Elemental Aura (Aqua)! Sword has no effect due to Elemental Aura (Aqua)! Regenerate 40 HP! Dream used Aqua Buster! Dream used Aqua Buster!
Turn 5; NormNavi: Avoided Aqua Buster! Hit by Aqua Buster! Take 200 Damage! Use Cannon!
Turn 5; Dream: Cannon breaks Elemental Aura (Aqua)! Regenerate 40 HP. Generate Elemental Aura (Aqua)!
Turn 6; NormNavi: Use Sword! Use Sword!
Turn 6; Dream: Sword has no effect due to Elemental Aura (Aqua)! Sword has no effect due to Elemental Aura (Aqua)! Regenerate 40 HP! Dream used Aqua Buster! Dream used Aqua Buster!
Turn 7; NormNavi: Avoided Aqua Buster! Hit by Aqua Buster! Take 200 Damage! Use Cannon!
Turn 7; Dream: Cannon breaks Elemental Aura (Aqua)! Regenerate 40 HP. Generate Elemental Aura (Aqua)!
Turn 8; NormNavi: Use Sword! Use Sword!
Turn 8; Dream: Sword has no effect due to Elemental Aura (Aqua)! Sword has no effect due to Elemental Aura (Aqua)! Regenerate 40 HP! Dream used Aqua Buster! Dream used Aqua Buster!
Turn 9; NormNavi: Avoided Aqua Buster! Hit by Aqua Buster! Take 200 Damage! Use Cannon!
Turn 9; Dream: Cannon breaks Elemental Aura (Aqua)! Generate Elemental Aura (Aqua)!
Turn 10; NormNavi: Use Sword! Use Sword!
Turn 10; Dream: Sword has no effect due to Elemental Aura (Aqua)! Sword has no effect due to Elemental Aura (Aqua)! Dream used Aqua Buster! Dream used Aqua Buster!
Turn 11; NormNavi: Avoided Aqua Buster! Hit by Aqua Buster! Take 200 Damage! NormNavi DELETED!