As the blue avatars death was confirmed, Lily felt a surge of pride and confidence. She could do this. She could do this! She continued close to the red avatar, getting hit a couple of more times, before she was in close. She brought her blades around, to bring it down on the red avatars hands, and dislodge the weapon, beige continuing and following it up with a round house kick.

She want that far from being able to use her special ability either, although what use that would be in this fight, she didn't know.

Before the red avatar could react from the kick, lily was on it again, attacking with her blades, slashing continuously, sticking close to the red avatar

Yep, concluded Kris, these are definitely AI. AI that were specifically programmed to counter the Avatars that they are matched against. The question is what limits the creation of these fake Avatars, if any...

He looked behind him, and just caught the Ice Avatar about to reach striking distance. Deer had just dealt with the Blue Avatar, and was moving in against the Red Avatar. "Eh, we're about done here. I suppose I could try..."

Kris propelled himself right around and behind the Ice Avatar, unequipped Daybreak (and Nightfall), and grabbed the Avatar around the waist. Having lost some velocity by slowing down, it would take him some time to regain speed for take off. "Hold tight, it's going to be a bumpy ride. And to whoever's behind the mask, we're going to have a talk, you and I."

health bar:
lily= ------------------------------------------------------------- -10 small shots
scarlet gunner= ------------------------------------- -40 relentless attacks

special gauge=
lily= -------------------------------------------------------------+100 special gauge full!

As Deer kept attacking the red avatar it kept trying to aim its gun at her trying to make her stop and put in some more damage but it didn't have the reasoning of a real human avatar to try and pull away and then attack. The best it did was keep trying to lift its gun to aim at her and take her down.

health:
Kris= ------------------------------- -50
ice maiden= --------------------------------------------------------------- 0
Special gauge:
Kris= ------------------------------------------------ +70

The ice avatar would have simply given a snappy retort however it seemed that the ability that its been hiding was meant for a grappling move as it let ice spikes protrude from its back threatening to hit gun-metal if he didn't let go its abilities were more meant for close combat and grappling fights as it was obviously since its only ranged attack was simply throwing an ice chunk at him while it was able to turn its arms into ice blades themselves

Lily's gauge was full. She didn't want to use it, yet. She would if she had to. Because Lily knew she could do this, she was doing so well, and the Red Avatar had more health taken from it then Lily herself. She could see that it was trying to bring it's gun up, but Lily moved in smoothly, staying close and preventing that, using her swords and slashing the red's hadns every time it tried to bring the gun up. The thing was stupid, not even trying to move away from her.

Wanting to end this, Lily went for a neck shot, putting all her force behind the slash

Kris shrugged, getting poked by icicles was the least of his concern right now, and at the velocity he was about to travel, could the Ice Avatar even keep up? He aimed his whirling cyclone up to the sky, channeling its winds to rotate upwards through the driving blizzard, and leaping off his right leg, launched himself and unwilling companion into the storm.

health bar:
lily= ------------------------------------------------------------- -10 small shots
scarlet gunner=[color=red] [/color] -100 Decapitation!

special gauge=
lily= -------------------------------------------------------------+100 special gauge full!

Green deer: Victory!
As green deer attacked and aimed for the neck of the red avatar she used enough force and got her blade deep enough that it caused a decapitation making the red avatar headless and with that ensured her victory. Even though it was only a single battle against two npc avatar's she had earned the next pop up that came to her screen LEVEL UP! she could now level up to level 4

health:
Kris= ------------------------- -60 ice avatars stabs
ice maiden= ----------------------------- -50 cyclone attack
Special gauge:
Kris= ------------------------------------------------------------------ +100 special gauge full!

With that attack the ice avatar kept trying to stab gun metal with her ice spikes trying to lower his hp down to the zero knowing his health was low and even trying to get out of his grip trying to bail before his special move kicked in...

Kris dropped the mic Ice Avatar.

health:
Kris= ------------------------- -60 ice avatars stabs
ice maiden= -100 Death drop
Special gauge:
Kris= ------------------------------------------------------------------ +100 special gauge full!

the Ice avatar soon dropped from the sky thanks to gun metal and as a result when the avatar finally dropped to the ground the ground shook and the avatar disappeared and his screen showed You Win!! when he finally won the same screen appered in front of him LEVEL UP! Gun metal was now a level 4 as well.

Lily let out a breath, excited and amazed that she had done this. She let out a triumph whoop and grinned, panting and bending over for a moment to catch her breath. She couldn't believe that she had done this, and she looked about her, grinning still. She had done it! Done it! She laughed, but kept her weapons out, just in case.

Kris raised his eyebrows at the number of BP he'd just received, but he wasn't going to complain. He lowered himself to the ground, catching his breath. Now for the hard part, thought Kris. The instant his body warped out of Augmented Reality and back to Real Life, he had to use Physical Burst in anticipation of his confrontation with Lily...

Angelo went over to her and patted her shoulder with the blunt end of his scythe since he was half her size this was his equivalent to patting her shoulder you did me proud deer, even when put into a trap you fought and won. link out and keep your guard up and when you start walking home take off your nerve gear or you might be forced into the same trap twice Angelo told her soon leaving and coming back to the real world walking into school to find where lily left her real body knowing she would be coming out soon.

Lily nodded, unable to help being a little proud of herself. She grinned, and quickly logged out, turning her link off and taking if off, not wanting to be pulled in again just yet. She was a little shocked to see that Kristopher still there. And...

Well, there was no way out of this now, was there? She pursed her lips, her cheeks reddening, and didn't say anything, watching him

Kris wasn't even following real time. The instant he came back to reality, he whispered, "Physical Burst." Kris warped back to Augmented Reality, and watched patiently for Lily's reaction, while he pondered the events that had just transpired...

Lily gave a soft sigh, and glancing around, she sat down. She was tired and annoyed now that she had been pulled into a battle without warning, no matter that she won, and now kristopher wanted to play games? Fine. She could wait. She crossed her arms over her chest, stretched out her legs and waited. It wasn't like she could just pretend nothing had happened.

Angelo soon found lily and she was sitting with that guy from before that tried to follow me kris something. Angelo felt the air get thick as he walked in to see the situation all he could do was find a way to talk and as much as he hated to talk to others besides his protégé he knew that the situation is unavoidable since they all got pulled into the same situation. He sat down next to lily staring at kris after he finished his physical burst. anything you want to say gun metal? Angelo asked taking a stab in the dark if he see a reaction then he knows that he got him...

Kris counted down the time in AR, as he'd memorized the time conversion rate between AR and RL. After 30 seconds IRL with no reaction, he warped out for the last time, just as Lily let out a sigh and stretched. "Well, seeing as you're apparently stretched for time, I suggest starting with the most recent section your teacher has taught you, and then work backwards on the same chapter," stated Kris, while raising his eyebrow.

He then noticed Angelo enter the school building, and kept his eyebrow raised in surprise, as Angelo continued to walk towards Kris and Lily. This is either way too easy, or game over for me, thought Kris. As Angelo opened the door, Kris tried to relax and beckoned Lily to follow him, hoping to let Angelo deal with the head tutor instead. But hearing Angelo's question nearly made him jump out of his skin...

Lily shot krisopher a look, wondering if he was seriously just trying to make it seem like nothing had happened. She rose as Angelo entered, and planting her hands on her hips, she said "I don't particularly like playing these sorts of games, Krisopher. I don't particularly like being treated like I'm stupid, which you are doing if you expect me to think you a)didn't notice my...loss of consciousness or b) that I didn't notice you were awake either when I returned."

She gave another sigh, running a hand through her hair, "I only came here to throw you off our trail, but that didn't work now did it, so why don't we all be truthful here?"

Angelo walked over gently taking lily away from Kris's grip putting him imbetween the two of them noticing him jump slightly in surprise when he called him gun metal. which explains why he was doing what he did today if you were so desperate for attention you just needed to talk to me or lily instead of trying to deceive us and try to stalk me. now we are all going to sit down and talk about what just happened Angelo said forcing both of them to sit down nearby as he pulled out some cables for them to use to keep the conversation private and he put his neural linker back on just so he could use the connection to both kris and lily. okay kris talk, do you know something about what happened? Angelo asked using the cable link to speak to his mind...

Kris sighed, the gig was up.

He shrugged and thought-spoke through the cable, "All I know is our opponents didn't act with sentience, and I suspect those Avatars were programmed with AI to execute a counter strategy to whatever Avatar they matched against. I also don't understand how the host client, assuming they were bots, hacked our Neuro Linkers (especially mine behind a backdoor/VPN), forcibly connected us to the global network, and rewrote the code of Brain Burst to allow unfair matching."

"I'm sure you as a Level 5 Burst Linker know about the looser security and termination of patches to Brain Burst, ever since some Japanese player beat the game already, which allowed for any player to download external programs for use in-game, but this is simply unbelievable in scope!" Kris crossed his arms and legs, getting comfortable as he waited to see how the Guardian/Protoge pair would deal with him.

"Nothing is impossible, if you know hhow to work the system, Kristopher. You're back door probably isn't as secure as you think seeing as you probably already weakened it yourself making it" Lily pointed out, sighing and sitting back down. Tired, she just wished things could be easy. All she had wanted to do was have some fun in the game, and now this. What had she been pulled into?

But Pride swam over her again as she replayed the fight in her head. She had won it, by herself, in a rigged match. That made her feel frigging awesome. "They weren't exactly very adaptable, and they didn't seem to know what to do when I used normal fighting techniques on them" She said musingly, "They didn't seem to understand that when I was behind a boulder, they couldn't shoot at me"