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Bob was gliding towards the Diner on his zipboard when the vidwindow popped up in front of him.
"BOB!"
"Whoa!"
He braked hard, almost falling off as he did so. In a desperate attempt to remain upright, he clutched at the vidwindow's top corner, and in a matter of a half nano he now found himself dangling precariously over the binary bypass.
"Bob?"
Dot's face peered out from the vidwindow, trying to ascertain why Bob had disappeared. Suddenly, he was there - sprawled across the entire vidwindow, but there. She pursed her lips.
"Uh... hi," Bob waved back at her, with all the dignity he could muster. "What's up?"
"We have a major breach in sector nine! We need you here, right now!"
Bob resisted the urge to mention he was dangling off the vidwindow and therefore it might take a nano for him to figure out how to get off it before getting there. Preferably in one piece.
"Sure, right away."
Dot nodded, and the vidwindow disappeared.
And with it, Bob's perch.
"Warrrrgh!"
It was then Bob realized it was going to be one of those days.
* * *
Bob could see the flashes of light and hear the noise well before he got to the rendezvous point. As he arrived, he began to see why the situation was so urgent.
"Uh-oh."
Dot was at a safe distance, evacuating binomes with the Mainframe patrol. She saw Bob, and waved at him.
"Is everyone all right?" he asked as he glided to a halt.
"I think so. I'm amazed nobody's been hurt though - they just... came out of nowhere!"
Bob followed Dot's gaze past the chaos of panicking binomes, past the pixel smoke and the debris, and got his first look at the cause of the problem.
"Oh, boy."
In the remains of what had been Sector 9, two bizarre-looking winged creatures, one white, one red, were busy having at each other in a showdown that could well take out the rest of Mainframe - that is, it could, if he didn't stop it. Which he would.
He'd feel a lot more comfortable about that assertion if the creatures in question weren't about thirty times his size and breathing flame.
"Bob... be careful."
Bob managed to tear his eyes away from the spectacle just long enough to reply, putting on his usual display of confidence.
"I'll be fine. Mainframe will be back to normal in a couple of nanos - you got the best Guardian in the 'Net, remember?"
Dot's worried expression didn't change. Much. As he glided towards the chaos, Bob wondered who the show of confidence was for most - her or him.
* * *
Bob tried not to be awed by the creatures' sheer size and unusual configuration. They were both similar in almost every sense. Both had scales. Both had a pair of large, leather-like wings. Both had four legs, all of which bore talons on each, and which were being used to tear into each other at close quarters. And their huge, elongated heads reminded him of dinosaurs - creatures he'd seen in the Games.
"Of course! They're dragons! I knew I'd seen them before... " he frowned, "Question is, how did they get here?"
"Why don't you ask them?"
Bob almost fell off his zipboard for the second time that second.
"Enzo!"
"Hey! Isn't this cool?" Enzo's grinning face beamed back at Bob from his perch on his own zipboard. Bob frowned at the young sprite.
"No, it's not cool, and it'll be even less cool when Dot finds out you're here."
Enzo looked back at him sulkily. "S'not fair. I'm always getting told to stay out of things."
"Enzo, please..." Bob paused as the noise intensified, and turned to see what was going on -
- and managed to narrowly avoid a streak of flame as it shot past his head.
"Aie!" he yelped involuntarily. He could swear he smelled singed hair.
"Coooool!" Enzo countered, his eyes widening even more.
"All right, that's it!" Bob's expression hardened. "Enzo, go back to the Diner - " Enzo began to protest, "NOW!"
"Okay..." he mumbled, and sulkily retreated.
Bob watched him go until he was sure the sprite was at a safe distance, then turned to head into the fray. Stopping as close as he could to the tussling creatures, he saw the tear they'd used to enter Mainframe. He'd seen a lot of tears, but this one was different. It didn't have the torn 'edges' - it was a smooth, clean slice, as if one of them had used a talon to deliberately open it.
"Curiouser and curiouser," he mused. Why come here?
The constant roaring was starting to make his head ache. Turning his attention back to the matter at hand, Bob wondered if he knew precisely what he was dealing with. He stepped off his zipboard onto the roof of a still-standing building.
"HEY!" he yelled, trying to get their attention.
They were oblivious, their whirlwind activity continuing to topple towers. White hacked at Red. Red snarled, letting loose another bolt of flame. White dodged, using the opportunity to try for an attack on Red's neck...
"OVER HERE!" Bob jumped up and down and waved his arms around like a windmill. Still no reaction.
"Figures," he muttered. "Glitch! Megaphone!"
An unfeasibly large megaphone sprouted from Bob's keytool. "Cool," Bob grinned. He cleared his throat, and then...
"HEY, YOU! OVER HERE!"
The resulting clamor, accompanied by the electronic screech of the megaphone, had the desired effect. Two elongated heads whipped around, and Bob suddenly found himself under the piercing amber gaze of two dragons, both wondering what this tiny blue thing wanted in the middle of their battle.
"Now that I have your attention..."
* * *
Dot watched the proceedings with Phong and Mouse at the ComCon.
"What are those things?" she wondered aloud. Mouse for a change was also baffled.
"They look like game sprites to me," she offered, "But there's no way they can be."
"Look at that tear," Dot pointed at the screen. "it's deliberate... they didn't come from a game cube, that we know - it's been a few nanos since the last Game. So where did they come from? The Web?"
Phong was searching the archives, his long digits tapping the screens.
"Maybe it's another Megabyte trick," Mouse suggested.
"These days, I wouldn't put anything past him," Dot sighed.
"I find no reference to these creatures in the Archives," Phong said periodically. "They are not of the games, or of the Web. I need to dig deeper into the files to discern their format."
A gasp from Dot caused everyone to stop what they were doing and look at the screen.
The building Bob had been standing on - as well as a large part of Sector 9 - had just caved in, taking the two dragons - and Bob - with it. Buildings crumbled and toppled in on top of them, pixel dust clouding the vidwindow.
"Oh my..."
A stunned silence, as the trio gazed, horrified, at the vidwindow, waiting, watching, hoping they'd imagined it.
Nanos passed.
"Bob..." Dot whispered; then shook herself back to the present. "Get a medivac team down there, STAT!"
As the Medivac scrambled to Sector 9, Dot tried to tell herself that Bob had been through much worse before, he'd be all right. Wouldn't he?