[RGRC Invasion] We're Going Digital?

[Squall Leonhart]

Leon felt strange. That was probably understating the matter somewhat, but he wasn't a man to waste words when fewer would get the message across. His head was currently spinning anyway, so eloquent thought was a bit out of reach.

'What hit me?' the swordsman muttered in his mind as his hand reached out to brace on something so he could push himself up. It all came back to him slowly now. He and Cid had been working on the computer in the secret lab. Tron was concerned about the magical upgrades he'd gotten from Merlin during the MCP crisis and how it might affect the system, so the wizard was there too. Along the way an argument had broken out, unexpectedly, between the two older men. Unexpectedly they were far more heated than usual this time. Some spell were thrown, some keys were accidentally slammed... and now he was here, feeling strange. 'Merlin had better not have turned me into an animal.'

As Leon stood up and looked at himself and his new surroundings, that turned out to not be the case. In fact it was much, much worse.

'Based on the looks and Sora's stories, this is definitely the world inside the computer,' the leader of the Restoration Committeee observed relatively calmly as he pinched the bridge of his nose with his right hand. One of them must have accidentally set off the machine that brought Users inside the system. But was it just him or were Cid and Merlin somewhere around here as well? He didn't see them.

Leon appeared to be in the middle of a an open hollow of some sort with a square/circular wall rising impossibly high up on all sides. There were two exists from this room. One to a narrow walkway that passed along in front of said exit, and another above the ground floor to a similar walkway on a higher elevation on the opposite side. He didn't know it, but just down to the right if he exited the ground-level way was a terminal that would let him leave the world.

"Tron, can you hear me!?" Leon shouted, hoping that the program would be able to locate him and help him back outside without any incident.

[III]

OOC: I'm really VERY confused over Xaldin's status in the Olbivion Castle invasion but I do know that I did sign out of FM over a month ago and that Xaldin DEFINITELY didn't leave that thread because he wanted to make his way here.

IC:

As a rule, Xaldin did not like technology. Someone of reasonably intelligent proportions had remarked that this was probably because of his fastidious and tidy nature whereas another practical joker had mentioned static and sideburns and dread mops and had been summarily dunked into his breakfast cereal.

Ass.

Today, Xaldin was re-affirming his desire to never be seen dead fiddling with intricate gadgetry and electronics ever again. It didn't help that he had been training in one of the more spacious, open rooms and had assumed (in retrospect, a poor idea) that it had merely been a new training ground and not, as it so happened, a direct and patently illegal port to a different world. Probably required all sorts of fancy gizmos that involved keeping wires through the Darkness and direct communication to a gimmied drive.

Given the acronym 'UCMESAN!' it couldn't be too many people. Xaldin judged it to be in poor taste though.

What the room had done was stab electrodes and wires directly into his brain and digitalize his consciousness. Or soul. Or whatever. It was certainly a messier process than (ah, yes, he did recognize Ansem's elaborate mainframe. He had accidentally made it explode once. The king had never let him touch it again) Ansem's recipe but still, it worked.

"Crap," the lancer muttered nervously, hackles raised. "Now what do I do?"

[Squall Leonhart]

[ You made the three day limit by an hour. XD ]

No response. Leon's right thumb and index finger instinctively moved to the bridge of his nose, pinching it slightly where the scar ran by. If Tron of all people didn't know where he was yet then could be stuck here for a while. But, Sora said there was a way to manually get out if you were a User and Leon had already seen the strength of the Heartless in here from when the MCP created some in their world as well. They wouldn't be much of a threat to him. Still, this world was vast. Was it better to just go looking or to stay put and make it easier to be found?

...

Apparently he was waiting for now.

[III]

“Dragoons!” The lancer ordered imperiously. “Dragoons!”

There was a lot that the Organization had yet to fully understand. One of them were the lower-ranking Nobodies – no one could explain, least of all Xaldin, why they too had the ability to traverse the corridors darkness or why indeed they had intelligence at all – their physical forms were frankly nightmarish and if the physical appearance of a Nobody supposedly reflected the strength of Heart these were warped, warped people when alive. It was an established fact that there were far less Nobodies than Heartless so clearly most soul and body combinations went… somewhere else.

The ones the Organization had found were the leftovers. And Xaldin was pretty sure that even those amongst the Organization that claimed they knew precisely why the lesser Nobodies followed their command, there were things at work beyond their current ken. The only he trusted for insight was Xenmas, and Xenmas was nuttier than peanut factory at even the best of times.

“Dragoons!”

No reply. Xaldin was not terribly surprised. Ever since his death and resurrection the dragoons had been less responsive – he’d have to whip them into proper shape later. Still… why had they ceased following him? While on his first (or second, depending on how one counts these things) life they had followed him near religiously and not it was as if he had collectively stood them all up. It was frankly puzzling. They shouldn’t have been so advanced. Such thoughts indicated they could become self-aware. Possibly rebellious.

Xaldin grinned. He’d probably get the job of whipping them back into their proper place. With that happy thought to buoy his mind the lancer clasped his arms behind his back and slowly started to trek forwards, aimlessly looking for a way out. Even *he* was knowledgeable enough to realize that there must be an emergency exit somewhere.

Damned if he knew where though.

[ooc: I’m just that good. Also, would Leon know Dilan, Xaldin’s Somebody? They’re both from Radiant Garden so…]

[Squall Leonhart]

[The Garden fell when Squall was twelve. I'm going to assume no. Also, I'm going to assume some of your actions and details here to get things moving. That cool? ]

“Dragoons!”

Well, that certainly wasn't Tron.

“Dragoons!”

And again. Dragoons were one particular type of knight order if Leon recalled correctly. It was also one of the breeds of Nobodies that he'd gotten to read about when sampling Jimminy's journal on one of Sora's frequent visits during the Organization XIII troubles. Neither one should really be coming up in this place. Maybe program for reading old document files had gone haywire and was now spouting out a random word it had come across? Yeah, probably not.

“Dragoons!”

Well now, that one was closer. Probably just beyond the wall to his left, in fact. Putting his arms down and steeling his expression Leon walked forward out of the ground-level exit. He was now on a relatively thin path that continued toward and then around the aforementioned wall. Without going any farther himself the swordsman turned to face that direction and waited. Sure enough, Xaldin's random searching brought him right into Leon's sight. Now both men were facing each other on the path, an impossibly high wall to human's left and an impossible deep fall to Nobody's left. Not exactly a good place for an encounter, yet here they were.

With his lightning reaction speed Squall noticed two things about this newcomer nigh-instantaneously. One was that, while Leon himself had awoken to find himself sporting new, irremovable headgear and a body lined in glowing blue(A situation that left the scarred warrior FORCING himself not to think about any details of his new anatomy), this stranger looked mostly as if he might in the outside world. Xaldin had only had his consciousness digitized rather than his entire body, so his form was whatever he projected it to be, it turned out. The second thing was the man's clothes. Among the members of the Restoration Committee, Leon was the only one who would be able to recognize that cloak from personal experience rather than just recorded images or descriptions. It was the presence-masking, darkness-shielding uniform of the members of the Organization.

Leon didn't exactly find himself too happy about the possible ramifications of this. Perhaps he could hope it was all some computer program-related mishap, but just as the voice hadn't been he couldn't exactly make himself believe that for an actual person either. Still, what were the odds of this actually happening?

So... a possible member of Organization XIII with a rather noticeable hairstyle was calling out specifically for Dragoons. Leon had read the journal kept by the cricket. He was able to make an educated guess on this person's identity based on those memories. He very much hoped he was wrong about it.

Staying quiet, the swordsman stared him down.

[III]

"A user. Finally." Xaldin said grinning. It came out more as an injured grimace: he hadn't quite picked up Xigbar's unnerving smile, emotions or no, but he had to make the attempt at least. There were steps to this dance that needed form and structure before the inevitable could and would pan out.

The winds here - and there were winds, little bits of subroutines and data that he could pick at and read instinctively that had alerted him of a presence. Not quite as good as Eurus but close enough. He had hoped that it would be a mere program - the odds of his meeting a user were astronomicaly small given the select group that had access to the mainframe, but as Ansem was so apt to point out, a million to one odds may as well have been a sure thing, given Magick's whimsies.

Time for the play to start. Comedy, tragedy, drama - all was possible, they had yet to truly set the tone and script.

Personally, he was hoping for something involving bladed weapons.

"I assume you are familiar with the mainframe, User?" Xaldin asked, in a perky monotone, hoping to the Xenmas that nobody had perfected the interface HUD... and that no command modules were operational in this division - he was betting on that being true as he had yet to be kicked out. "I am antivirus program Dilan ICTIT5. There has been a breach in security protocol ICUP-4... in particular, I believe that I was activated without proper containment and isolation procedures. The Dragoon units are absent but should have been activated per normal operating procedures."

Blah blah blah jargon. Blah blah blah pretend to be Vexen. While using Xigbar's acronyms. What a riot. If he had a heart, he might not have been able to keep a straight face. As it was, the idea and memory of laughter was so close as to make him twitch, though very feebly.

"I need you to find Tron or a different command module and inform him of the situation immediately. As an experimental program, there are bugs that Ansem has failed to correct for and as such I require partitioning and isolation. Can you do this for me, User?"

[Squall Leonhart]

It wasn't always fun to be right. Take now, for instance. Xaldin had just, inadvertently it would seem, blown away all possible doubt and revealed that he was indeed the Nobody Leon hoped he wasn't. Now there was an enemy in the system and neither Tron nor Sora were present to handle him.

'We can't rely on Sora for everything,' Squall reminded himself with a mental groan. 'But this is definitely an enemy in the kid's league.'

The Heartless and Nobodies were a universal problem meant for the hero chosen by the Keyblade. Leon was just a man protecting his own home. Still, he was in that home(A part of it, anyway) and here was an enemy up to who could guess what kind of trouble? There was no way he was going to turn his back on it. Even encountering the rogue digitalized psyche of Xaldin by pure accident was like a fated encounter in and of itself. Maybe the others outside would be able to spot the trouble and do something... if they were even still outside.

The swordsman's weapon of choice appeared in his hand. Funny how it looked perfectly as it did outside even through he was now sporting blue-tinted skin. Still, he wasn't complaining. The revolver gunblade that his father once wielded as a warrior of the Radiant Garden over ten years ago(<- Will that do for your recognition request?) would be the instrument of his will once again. Leon left bringing out the weapon as his only threatening gesture for now and brought the dull back of the blade to rest on his right shoulder, pointing the sharpened steel upward behind him as he held the gun handle and trigger with expert readiness. His feet shifted slightly so that his left side was just a few degrees more toward his would-be enemy than his right, though the scar-sporting glare stayed aimed perfectly at the man in black.

"You don't belong here. Get out," he said finally, ignoring everything else that the liar had spoken. His tone was commanding, but that wasn't going to have much affect on a Nobody and Squall knew it.

Oh, how had Xaldin blown his act? The Restoration Committee's unofficial leader looked exactly like a program now but the Whirlwind Lancer recognized him as a User immediately. There was only one explanation for that in Leonhart's mind: This Nobody had to have been amongst the group that appeared before Sora, Donald, Goofy and himself at the start of the Key Bearer's last adventure and recognized Leon from then.

That and those acronyms were ridiculously obvious fakes. The members of the Organization were supposed to be mostly geniuses right? Maybe this one was just a random recruit they had picked up with a bad sense of humour.

[III]

Ah, just his luck. A computer nerd. The eyes there were pretty cocksure about themselves.

Well, a lance to the back would have been boring, right? And plus, geek boy here had a gunblade. Not exactly a common weapon – it might even be an interesting fight. He’d heard about some Deep Divers who’d been the beta-testers on the mainframe from Xigbar when he was still Braig – apparently the guys were good enough to fight evenly with the sharpshooter himself.

“I’d love to do so, user” Xaldin said, his voice going back to its usual sweet and sour velvet, scratchy and smooth all at once. His hands slowly crept out from behind his back to hang at his sides, his fingers twitching. He could feel the battle hunger. “I’m afraid that’s not possible at the moment.”

Literally, sadly enough.

“But-” he began to feel the wind more thoroughly – yes, it was wind. He could fight at near full potential. He didn’t feel the usual battle rush and suspected that because it wasn’t actually his body that was here, his usual mid-battle adrenaline boost wouldn’t occur. A pity, but not an untenable situation, either. There were some things even a Nobody could enjoy with only his mental faculties.

“-while I’m here-”

At least none of the real nerds were here. They’d start yelling themselves hoarse about making sure Ansem’s research notes were kept intact while Xaldin could really care less about that stuff. Plus, it wasn’t like his attacks made things explode.

“-why not make the most of the opportunity?”

Out came the lances in their little cyclone vortexes. Grabbing two in one hand and then one in the other, Xaldin gave one of his grins: battle-happy and maniac as the other three floated in the air, waiting for his command.

“Do you dance, Gunblader?”

=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Action Recap:

Xaldin did the talky thing, summoned his weapons and added a final line. Note: if at any point you think it’s unrealistic for Squall to have waited for him to finish (I thought, frankly, it was pushing it with the last line) PM me and I’ll edit.

And about the recognition thing… eh, it’s alright. Just a thought I had.

Equips
Aero: 3/3

[Squall Leonhart]

"No. I don't."

true to the flat statement Squall's next actions were anything but fancy or acrobatic. Instead he turned to face the now fully-armed Nobody head-on and started to walk calmly toward him at an average pace. His form was full of of holes since his gunblade was just resting on his shoulder. After the first step he even went so far as to place his free left hand into his pants pocket, as if it were completely unnecessary for the situation.

And so Leon approached up the slight incline toward the point where the pathway made a ninety degree turn around the wall. That was where Xaldin was positioned, supposedly bottomless abyss both behind him and to his left. Not a great position to be in for a battle, but Leon's wasn't much better.

'All I can do is stall him until Tron finds us,' the swordsman thought to himself as he walked toward the Whirlwind Lancer and maintained a harshly serious stare. 'I'm sure he can expel the security breach once he'd tracked it down.'

A fight wasn't entirely in Leon's favour but making a little commotion would probably help in getting noticed, after all.

[III]

"Now the answer to that question," Xaldin said sadly, "is always yes."

Summoning Boreas, the winter wind, the lancer tossed a measly gale-force wind at the gunblader, letting him know that oh, haha, better get serious or someone is going to be eating outta a tube for a few months, and then hopped up to his preferred height of eleven feet and a few inches.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Action Recap:

Xaldin used Boreas to shoot out gale-force winds at Leon and has engaged Notus so as to treat five feet above the ground as the ground.

Cooldown
Boreas Active Form: 4

Expendable Equips
Aero: 3/3

ooc: ignore the graffiti, this is the situation, amirite? L is Leon, X is Xaldin.

[Squall Leonhart]

Leon's advance was halted and degraded a fair bit as the gust smashed into his form. With his lightning reflexes and enhanced strength the swordsman crouched forward and compacted his form as the wind slid the soles of his shoes back a meter or two. After coming to a halt Squall's steel eyes came up again and focused ahead to the now-airborne Xaldin. With now slow but steady steps he began to resume his walk forward, pushing steadily against the wind as he did so.

He wasn't dancing yet.

[III]

Pressure is equivalent to force over area. Reduce the area and keep the pressure equivalent, then the force must necessarily go down.

Course, anyone who'd had their umbrella blown over instinctively grasped those concepts. This wasn't exactly rocket science yet. Xaldin frowned as his sparring partner moved forwards. His death hadn't left him that prodigiously weak... or at least he hoped it hadn't. Yet, if it hadn't, and if this Gunblader was still moving forward, something wasn't adding up.

Letting his senses taste the air a bit, Xaldin frowned at the incoming data. Ansem's computer truly was a bizarre little beast.

Eurus tasted and teased - and then claimed that Boreas wasn't losing his strength, it truly was this man's mental or physical capacity that was allowing him to resist the oncoming winds. Oh, and that, interestingly, the winds didn't *quite* touch this gunblader. Some sorta force projection, apparently low enough in energy output to be constant, or near enough constant as such things could possibly be.

Then again, it might be the very thing allowing him to resist the wind.

Or, alternatively, Ansem's crap pretend-wind was just being purposefully contrary.

Xaldin sighed dramatically (it felt a bit foolish to yell "Gunblader!") before starting to step backwards - ordering his lances to launch quick, probing attacks. Straightforward for now, he'd just let four of them aim for a limb (one each - no double-teaming, silly little things) and kept two close to hand.

"Where's the fun in this?"

Something he'd asked Sora, once. Slightly different circumstances. Back then, it'd been meant seriously because Xaldin hadn't taken the keyblader seriously.

Here? Rhetorical question. No need to answer. You definitely will.

It's why you carry that gun of yours around. Warrior.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Action Recap:

Xaldin used Eurus to 'see'. As his vision depends on wind, it seems reasonable to assume he'd detect Leon's passive armor thingy. Editable if you disagree.

And Boreas to attack.

Cooldown
Boreas Active Form: 3

Expendable Equips
Aero: 3/3

[Squall Leonhart]

'You can't have fun anyway,' Leon thought with a steely glare at the emotion-devoid Nobody. The swordsman still had his heart but this certainly wasn't his idea of a good time. The wind was dying away now, which meant he could move more easily. Unfortunately his antagonist was suspending himself in the air, which didn't make for a very convenient target. Even less convenient were the four spears now firing at him like guided missiles. A normal man would have barely been able to react to them at this distance.

Leon abandoned his previously forced progression and made a powerful horizontal leap backwards with minimum arc, both hands still in his casual positions. He would land roughly right next to the door he'd come out of to get on the walkway in the first place and quickly resumed a standing pose once he was out of momentum. Since they were fired from above he hoped the partially downward angle of the lances would leave them to strike the ground rather than chase after him. Clearly this wasn't an enemy who planned to make it easy to get at him. Unfortunately if Xaldin could float in the air like that then the chances were good he could fly freely too. Not definite... but at least it created doubt. Leon himself would just keep on falling if he went over the side here.

"I'm not here to amuse you," he said flatly. The swordsman made no further attempts to go on the offensive against the Nobody, though if attacked further he would have to defend himself.

[III]

"Of course you are," Xaldin stated lightly, letting the words settle like pebbles tossed at random. His weapons returned to him, waiting piranhas. Softly they began to glow. "You are also a worthy adversary."

He walked away, heading towards the bend as his weapons formed into a large dragon, almost twenty feet tall, it's tri-part mouth hissing and crackling with energy being stored. He raised his voice ever so slightly, so it would be carried above the sound of the charging weapon. "Long ago, in Radiant Garden, there used to be dragons. Legends have it that they ate princesses, demanded tribute, and had pretensions of royalty."

He nearly had to scream now: if un-aided by a little caprice of the wind, he'd likely be unable to be heard at all with all the proper tone and inflection and so on. "But I think the truth is much simpler: they lived to fight."

And then he was at the corner, back turned but still watching the wind.

"Come now, Gunblader."

[Squall Leonhart]

Leon didn't like how this person spoke of the past of his home... though it further cemented this Nobody's identity beyond doubt. The only people left to remember his world's history were his own friends and the founding members of the Organization. Somehow it felt wrong for him to be displaying familiarity to the land he was working so hard to restore, probably because these were the remnants of those who had their hands in its ruination. Luckily if Leon was good at anything it was suppressing an emotional response to a situation. Still, it looked like a fight was inevitable. Who could guess what drove Xaldin to pursue such things?

This position wasn't looking any more favourable. Fall and it was over. At least, that was his assumption. Maybe it was just a really long fall. Maybe tron would still be able to fish him out. But maybe whatever accident had brought him here in the first place had also messed with Tron's presence in the system because the security program hadn't shown himself yet.

"What makes you think that?" Leon questioned regarding his worthiness, still in an unnervingly calm tone of voice. As he spoke the swordsman returned to his casual forward walk toward his enemy and new form his weapon had taken. It was as if he also had no heart to feel the present danger himself.