"Well, to be honest, I actually downloaded it from someone else, along with some other programs that could be operated in Augmented Reality. I personally haven't attempted to delve into the code, but I'm sure there are plenty of Burst Linkers like my contact that have experience and understanding of the framework and it's weak points."

"As for your fight, don't get cocky; basic programs like those aren't a threat for now, but it's entirely possible that either the programmer has improved those programs from more data gathered of your Avatar and others, or going off my bot hypothesis, a portion of its code has been written for analyzing and learning from its initial trial & error. The next time you fight, everything that your Avatar previously exhibited will be used against you."

"By the way, I suppose in our personal situation, it would be preferable to exchange information about our Avatars, just to even the playing field. I know that Lily is Green Deer, Angelo is supposedly Magenta Reaper, and you know me as Gunmetal Fog."

I don't mean to undermine your victory lily but he is right in that regard they are most likely bots that couldn't think outside of attacking their targets with their weapons and abilities. You still won against two different opponents in a rigged fight and for that im proud of you. Angelo thought to her as he then turned to kris and wondered how he knew that Angelo was magenta reaper but he had to remember that he had a back door program and could simply figure it out. I want to make it a point that the only person I trust is lily you are an unknown and because of that I will find it hard to trust you so I ask that you show us your id, and I in turn will give you mine once we do that then we can discuss each others fighting styles and figure out a plan for investigating this bot user and figure out where the burst linker actually is if he is running bot programs to fight for him. if he can send bots to fight for him then he would skyrocket in burst points for every unfair fight Angelo thought to him explaining how he saw their situation and how Angelo wont trust kris right off the bat if at all during their ordeal so he wanted assurance that if he did decide to betray him or his protégé then he could sell off his information and let someone else deal with him...

Lily didn't appreciate being told that she was getting cocky. Couldn't she enjoy, even for a few moments, the fact that she had won a battle? "I'm not stupid! I know they will probably be more prepared, but damn it, so will I. I don't have to fight the same way to win" She said, annoyed that she couldn't just have a few moments to be joyful. And who did this guy think he was anyway, he'd been trying to find out who they were for a while now, spying on them!

When Angelo said pretty much the same thing, it hurt. Why couldn't she just enjoy good things? She hadn't even really been bragging, just simply pointing out what had happened. She sighed softly, and hugged herself.

"Oh, pish posh" She said, borrowing one of her aunts favorite sayings, "Ids? Angelo, that's just a formality now. He tried to help me, in the battles. Failed, but tried. And he hasn't really done anything that bad to us, in fact nothing really. It's too late now to say "Oh, that wasn't us, really!" not to mention foolish. Having potential blackmail over Kristopher means nothing, if you show him your ID too. Just means he can sell off your information just as easily as you can his" She pointed out

That's why I need his ID if we both have potential blackmail then it means neither of us will rat the other out and if you try to recall he did try to stalk me earlier today, someone who tries to hide in the shadows is someone you want to keep tabs on Angelo explained knowing this is the first time she has dealt with another burst linker personally irl but when they meet and trying to work together knowing that the other can rat them out will keep both of them from hurting the other personally

Kris already knew Angelo's train of thought even before he spoke it, as Kris had already considered this line in cases his initial plan failed, though he would've preferred to be anonymous himself right now. Not to mention Angelo being a Level 5 meant he may know even more tricks of the trade around Burst Link's community, especially concerning the shady sides of it; seeing though how he stuck with his Protoge and acted rather aloof towards others, Kris decided to risk the bluff.

"Sorry, but if you are actually going to play MY game, I'm already leagues ahead of you. You don't seem the type of guy to strike up even formal acquaintances, and even if you tried you don't come off as a charmer nor effective persuader; it's probably why you had to gain a Protoge in the first place. I have my established contacts - they may have been a risky investment, but that will be paid off shortly after I sell them your real life information; last I heard Guardian/Protoge pairs fetched a high price on the black market. Also FYI, I have just enough BP to level up to 4 and then some, so now even the Unlimited Neutral Field will be off-limits to you once I spread the word. Ol' Lil' won't even have to worry about that though; a Level 1 is just the cherry on top for BP hungry Linkers."

"Now let's be reasonable: IDs - really? We all go to the same school, and there's no reason for any of us to fake our real names, not to mention how illegal that could be. No, right now we are on equal ground, as we can easily sell each other out, except I may just do it before you. However, I assure you (do I require an oath?) that my original intent in dealing with you was not at all as tasteless as blackmail: merely a retroactive plan in case things...take a wrong turn. Especially as we now share a common enemy, "the enemy of my enemy is an ally," no? I give you my word, and can give only that (apologies), that until this threat is dealt with, I will harm neither you nor your Protoge, directly nor indirectly, in real life nor in augmented reality. Though that will be for you to decide whether you keep an eye on her or not; I admit she was bold in taking the first approach. I advise you to stick close to her whenever possible, in case the hacker does return and decides to match against all opponents within a close proximity to each other (though unlikely to repeat this mistake)."

"Heh, by the way, and excuse me for getting under your skin a bit, but I've been wondering how you managed to hook up with a girl that easily through a video game. Guess you maybe a smoother guy than I credit you with." Kris couldn't help but foolishly grin, knowing the backlash he'd get, but not caring at all as long as he had the upper hand.

Angelo growled softly as he talked about how he had Angelo and how he could do more damage to him then he could to kris. Angelo cant trust people especially people like him who you know has a hidden agenda people like him make Angelo sick to his stomach with rage thinking back to his kind of people that nearly beat him death. That feeling of wanting to slice their heads off with a scythe was coming back but Angelo would be damned if he was going to screw up an alliance because of his temper issues. true all of it, I would sooner throw you under a bus just for looking at me wrong then work with a person like you. People generally piss me off because they look at me wrong but because this threatens my protégé I wont be slicing your head off. I will protect lily no matter what because she is my protégé Angelo said taking a breath to calm down before he started to talk about how he got lily in the first place and Angelo had a simple answer to that simple she kept trying to be my friend and soon I trusted her enough to make her my protégé. Shes the only person who is able to give me a purpose other then to kill in the virtual world. For the time being we are allies and if you keep your word about not doing anything to us then ill do the same. For now you can show us what you got in terms of your contacts in figuring out how he can initiate fights without being their

Lily stiffened, she hated that they were talking about her like she wasn't there. She cleared her throat, and stood, hands on her hips and feet spread "excuse me!
I am here! I'm not just a cute pile of furniture!" She turned to Kristopher, glaring, she poked him in the chest "if you so much as think about selling my information, and that includes my ties with Angelo, you will regret it. I will repay that betrayal three times over and don't think I won't. I don't give a damn about "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" crap. That's just a way of saying that you'll be ready to betray us-but there's two of us and only one of you"

She felt like she was shaking. She knew her heart was beating fast. "I like my life the way it is, and if you ruin it after this mess is cleared up, I won't be happy. And I don't like not being happy" she refused to look away even though it was something she dearly wanted to do.

"I can look after my self! I'm not stupid. I just won't wear my link when I'm not with Angelo. And he didn't hook up with me! He's my friend, just because you can't seem to be able to have a deeper connection with anyone besides what you can get out of them doesn't mean we do! I like having a friend who doesn't think it weird that I'm a year behind in school then I should be, who doesn't think I'm slow or stupid: do you know how hard it is, to make friends when the first thing they want to know is what happened to your parents? So if all you are going to do in this truce is collect information about us, and make snide comments and look for chances to have either one of us fly off the handle, then you can just get lost now, because j won't stand for it!" She said, surprised her voice wasn't shaking,

Kris winced sharply at the threats he'd just been given, then grew dead serious as the accusations mounted against him. Fuck this, play time's over, thought Kris. He may come off as too manipulative and overbearing in matters of formality, but there was no way in hell he would be misunderstood for his honesty this time.

"I'm sure both of you know the significance of a wired connection, especially to Burst Linkers. Right now, either of us can initiate an unlimited amount of Duels against each other while the cables are still secure, barring Battle Royales. If you have any steam to let off against me, then by all means I can't prevent you from sating your grudge over and over. However, I have enough BP to challenge both of you while remaining on a safe number; we'll all eventually be exhausted and waste our time fighting anyways. And as you both should also know, a Burst Linker who loses all their BP has their program uninstalled, and their memory since installation wiped away. If perchance you do succeed in defeating me, I probably wouldn't give a damn and thought about why you're throwing my body into a ditch or under a bus."

"Otherwise, it appears an alliance or even neutrality between us will only complicate matters. Perhaps if we'd met in a different occasion, I wouldn't be dealing with loose cannons and plain sadism. My intent was never to harm any of you in real life, only to fight you within Brain Burst; if you want to twist those two realities together, then I want to have nothing to do with people who think a video game is reality," Kris snapped-thought, as he slid his chair back to get up. He then opened his voice, and simply stated, "If you are unwilling to learn your lesson, then I have nothing more to offer you."

His hand reached for the cable attached to his Neuro Linker.

And your confusing my threats with promises. I hate shifty people and if you wanted to be in a fight with either of us all you would have had to do was ask you didn't need to use lily to get to me or try to stalk me. The fact that you were in a fight and didn't try to hurt lily is all I need in order to put my faith in you, and keep in mind I said faith not trust. This video game isn't my reality its my release from being a fool who would end up being a serial killer because of his brush of death for no good reason. If you want to leave and do things on your own I wont stop you and if lily is safe then im content to let you work with her only and leave me out of it. Now if you done trying to goat me into pleading for you to stay you can sit down and tell me what you want me to do to help you Angelo said simply not phased by what he said since he was kind of right since both Angelo and lily seemed to be attacking him for no good reason. Angelo will admit to doing things the wrong way since he isn't exactly tactful but assuming that Angelo will let things slide is another

"I know games aren't real, but real life sucks so why not enjoy games?" Lily shot back, "and you may not have wanted to do us any damage in this reality, but there's more then one way to harm people. Watching us, and trying to figure out our identities can be more harmful then simply punch us!" She said, lowering her voice, grimacing slightly. It reminded her too much of kids, curious as they are, asking her questions when they had had that stupid class activity about what your parents did and she had to say what her aunt was.

She was tired of it all. All she wanted was just to be able to be able to make friends easily. To be normal. To not have watched her parents die. "You tried to help, and that's the only reason why I'm still here. But you have to see your actions are not exactly innocent. So I feel valid in saying if you hurt me or Angelo, I will make sure you get hurt back three fold. I'm not talking about the game-alls fair and all that, but in real life."

Ugh, what have I really gotten myself into, thought Kris. Now even he was starting to feel this game creeping into his life. Screw it, if you insist Jangel...

"Okay, let me get things straight. One, Angelo, you're 'promising' me bodily harm, that's not funny. Two, I dislike shifty people too, but at least tell when someone's being honest with you. Three, faith is supposed to be stronger than trust, learn your vocab, rude dude. Yes, I'm calling you that from now on, I really can't give a shit if you throw me under anything for that. Four, for crying out loud, TMI, I'm this close to calling someone else to help you with your issues. Five, I really don't need your help more than you need mine, oh fuck it." Kris plonked himself back in his chair, and majorly facepalmed. Obviously he said all that through the cable, or Kris would also be a madman.

"Okay Lily, your turn. Great, life sucks and you play video games (I don't even understand why your Avatar is Green), but at least understand where the boundaries lie between the two! I'd never intended to blackmail you, cyber bully you, sext you, or stalk you wherever you go because I don't NEED to do that, all I needed to know was that you were Green Deer, and that's IT! I even approached you in real life, offered you an INNOCENT invitation to be tutored, had nothing hidden up my sleeve or behind my back, and then that prick of a hacker shows up and all of a sudden we're pointing fingers at each other and crying wolf! Okay fine, if there was someone REMOTELY close to being "hurt", it would've been Angelo or rather Magenta Reaper, once I'd scouted him out with my programs; what, is there something wrong with exploiting a video game? Yeah, I regret stalking him in the first place now, probably should've been on my jolly good way, okay fine YOU WIN!"

Kris really didn't know where that mental breakdown came from. Like someone else was controlling him to spew out his rubbish...

As soon as Angelo was done he went over and petted him on the shoulder like a father telling his son he was a good boy. then he sat back down now that we have all that out of the way is their anything you want to discuss about the issue at hand Angelo asked still not smiling but glad that he finally got his meltdown over with and so did Angelo and lily, which meant that their aggression towards each other would be halted for the next day at least so now they needed to discuss business and plans. Angelo wasn't going to pretend he still didn't like him or that he wouldn't kill him but at least now they were all on the same page in saying 'I don't trust you about as much as I can throw you so lets get along while we can' At least that's how Angelo saw it at the moment. Everything has been said and understood so now all they needed to do was work together and not kill each other. while you work on gathering intelligence I will go around to neutral fighting arenas and see what I can dig up

"Without anything up your sleeve?" Lily said, with a small laugh "you just said you wanted to find out our identities! Your offer wasn't innocent, nor was dragging me along to a table like you did!" She shook her head and sighed heavily. "Whatever"

"I have to go home and make sure my dog isn't tearing the place apart" she said, deciding that she just wanted to get away for now, she grabbed her bag checking to make sure her keys and phone were in there and that her link was off

"What? You came here of your own accord! And supposedly trying to "throw me off"! I wasn't blocking the door! In fact, I think you've left your reason behind! Good grief, I'm not done arguing with you until I prove I'm not guilty of your baseless accusations, I swear this! Team Rocket's blasting off again..." Kris huffed as he ripped off the cable, got up, and slammed the door behind him while leaving.

Yeah, he didn't know what got into him. Definitely mind controlling aliens.

have fun figuring it out on your own Angelo told him as he took off his neural linker so he could avoid getting forced into a fight then he went with lily and followed next to her for the time being he was going to make sure she stayed safe for a while, his mother would understand and tomorrow he would need to start checking out the neutral arenas and use his reputation to get some information on who was doing this to them and how he was able to do it

"At lunch you ding bat!" Lily shouted after Kristopher, shaking her head. She had lost all reason? She found that ironic! She sighs and started out, wanting nothing but to be home. She knew she wouldn't go online again tonight, and the thought of curling up in the couch with Moe was irresistible, so she started towards her home not questioning when Angelo followed

It was a short walk and they were at her place in what seemed like no time, her unlocking the door

"Stupid flunkie and her logical fallacies! How many times in her argument did she even make sense once? Let's see - almost nowhere? Alright, how about, one, two, three - too many fallacious statements to count! Okay, sure I'm not entirely innocent, but innocent enough to know all I wanted to accomplish was take Lily semi-hostage, and user he to lure (nickname pending) to confirm them; I wasn't literally going to take her hostage anyways, what, am I not the kind of guy to hang out or have a date with? Yeah, scratch that last part, I've been a passive-aggressive introvert for most of my high school... Ugh, probably remembering her wrong, that whole shitstorm went by so fast...oh right, almost forgot about rude dude, or should I call him the sadist now? Great, I'm actually supposed to watch my real life back now. FFS, I never agreed to install Brain Burst to be embroiled in some conspiracy, much less have to work together with those two; what happened with having a simple, guiltless pleasure in life?" Kris muttered to himself as he stormed down the street, up the stairs to his apartment, unlocked and threw open the door (thankfully Mother wasn't home yet).

He dropped himself upon his bed, and just lay there for an eternity in angst.
Maybe I should just uninstall..., his inner voice perked up.
Are you crazy, another went, have you forgotten the power at your fingertips?
What power, the first replied, I don't need any power...
The Accelerated World! the second answered, The power to slow time, quicken reaction, think of the applications: academics,
sports, jobs, relationships, yes even...
Oh...that's cheating, I would have done so already if-
Now's not too late! Remember how much BP you received from the hacker? You could change your strategy, maybe scout players for
their location, pair up with them when the bots return, and if you have to eliminate witnesses...
Ugh, too much trouble, I never asked for this, all I wanted was a normal life...which I may only get if I uninstall now.
Humph, suit yourself, lose your memory and return to your "abnormal" life.
Well...
There is no normality, only what you can seek with ambition and grasp with your own hands. Are you going to let go already?
But a simple life is best, don't tell me I need to work for that!
Your dreams, remember them, live them!
No...

Kris shook himself from his daze, and checked the clock; one hour had gone by as he daydreamed. He groaned, and sat up from his bed, boredom settling in again. Lucky for him no one had challenged him during that period, but he couldn't take off his Neuro Linker until he finished homework and Mother got home. Kris sighed as he began to download the class assignments, but in the back of his head was formulating two new plans...

Once Angelo was sure that lily was back in her home and had her neural linker off Angelo walked to his own house which was a bit of a walk from the school itself. As he walked he couldn't help but think what he could do to figure this out, all he could do was go and check up on the neutral fighting areas like the one in the yellow district and see if anyone else has been through what he has.

As soon as he got home he sighed and said hi to his mother before he ate her dinner and went to his room to study, despite the fact that his world was pretty much assaulted by some unknown bot user he still had to pass his classes so he made sure to study the old fashioned way and use his fathers books for once to study and do it old school with paper and pencil, he could easily digitize the images into his neutral linker once he was finished but at least this time would still help him focus on what he could do if nothing else to protect his protégé

Lily caught Moe before he could escape, putting her Linker on the bench, she glanced about the place. Maybe she could make cookies. Make the place feel warm, and delicious with the scent of cookies. She smiled to herself, but was a bit uneasy. She had relished her independence when she had got the place, but now she felt alone. Moe hung around her legs as she gathered the stuff for cookies, and began to make them. Her Aunt had curious notions about how a young lady should be.

She had to know how to cook. She had to know how to clean. She also had to know how to be handy-know how to fix things, and know how to defend herself. As such, Lily was a curious mix of all of that. She could easily patch a hole in a shirt, as she could build a table. and was comfortable with that.

She went through the motions of cooking, letting the day wash over her, pondering it all. Why was Kristopher so annoyed, so angry at the truth. he had tried to drag her about earlier in the cafeteria, and Lily just couldn't understand it. Nor could she understand te rest of it. They had a right to make sure they were protected, right? She sighed, putting dough on a tray in little balls, and putting the cookies in the oven, before curling on the couch with Moe.

maybe I should have asked if I could have hung with Angelo she thought, but Angelo was already doing so much for her. She didn't want to be a burden.

Kris was finally done with homework; time to put his first plan into action. He opened his email app, looked up Angelo's school email address, and sent him the following:

Hey rude dude (new nickname pending),

Sorry for using school email, some spam-bot got into my private one. Remember I mentioned this guy who likes to fix up parties (his life hack videos are awesome)? I have his email in my contacts, he'll also get his guys together. I'll forward you his address if he wants to add you too, keep in touch. Also, don't email King, I don't want him spamming my inbox. See you (maybe?) at tomorrow's party.

P.S. The theme is to be 'tween fe-lines, read? Your cosplay was so wrong last time.

Kris chuckled, wondering if the recipient could even understand the email, let alone decipher it. Anyways, Kris was paranoid enough of hackers to know emails were child's play (especially if the hacker struck within the school network, like with Brain Burst); and he was just plain paranoid of life anyways. Ah well, if rude dude (THINK OF NAME) didn't get it, that will just leave Kris with his second, independent plan.