"you know, my pocket dimension is fairly secure, has cable, an everful fridge, and an internet connection. So we could eat food and watch the other calvinballers in comfort."

Again, Toastburner engages in battle against the killer-pop-ups. It was a fierce battle, especially considering the pop-ups would respawn considering that Toastburner still had his blade set on the delete code, which sent the pop-ups to the recycle bin, where they were.

Right, Toastburner thought to himself, I have to go about this the hard way.

He threw his cable into the wall, and accessed his control pad.

Recycle Bin -> Toastburner_B.exe -> Restore

!GNIZ Think about it

Toastburner returned to where he had battled the pop-ups before. Quickly, he put the cable into the wall again.

Recycle Bin -> Empty Recycle Bin -> Yes.

He laughed to himself as he pictured the pop-ups being wiped out in the computer equivalent of a nuclear holocaust.

Toastbuner sighed. He wasn't any where nearer to finding the calvinball.

"Right. Time to copy some movies." Toastburner said to himself. He typed into his command prompt: bit_from_tron.exe.

Then appeared a strange floating object. "You're the bit from Tron, right?"

YES

"Do you know where the calvinball is?"

YES

"Cool! Can you get if for me?" Toastburner asked.

NO

"Ugh. Can you lead me to it?"

YES

"Okay. Take me there."

YESYESYESYES

The bit took off, and Toastburner flew after it.

<LAUNCHING NEW PLAYER>
LOGGING EVENT...
PLAY!

Solnac looked around in his avatar form, a wolf, and blinked at the constant whine/hum of cyberspace. "I thought this was Calvinball, not some bad movie ripoff," he growled, and then went to work, using a simple version of a file editor to make a copy of himself, down to the last bite. "Not bad," they both said at once, and then Sol sent his copy off to sniff out the Calvinball.

Jada's nineteen senses all seemed to kick in at once. He detected the oncoming threat, flinched, then turned to the others.

"TB has befriended a computer entity that knows our location. It is leading him directly to us. Although he has no chance against our defences, since we're arguably the three strongest ones in this game, we still ought to be prepared. Where shall we store the ball and/or ourselves?"

Newb took a key out of his pocket and opened a door to his pocket dimension. "Already taken care of. Without this key, the only part of my pocket dimension that can be accessed from here is a small part of my laptop, and even then you would have to bypass my firewall."

OOC: Actually, Arhra's not some inconcievable being of inconceivable power. He's just doing something a bit subtle. But you don't do subtle, do you Dragonsbane? Hmm, that sounded a little hostile. There is also the fact that I've explained how the invisibility works but no one's explained how their abilities to see invisibility work. Also consider the fact that although there appear to be several Arhras running aorund, none of them have used any of Arhra's more usual attacks. The real trick is finding which Arhra is the real one. If you post some ingenious way to find out, I'll tell you.

Toastburner can suddenly hear Arhra speaking to him. It seems that Arhra is using the data-linkages from the Net to do this. It's almost, but not quite, like hacking into a program. His words are simple, "I propose an alliance. You can claim the Calvinball, I have no need for it at present. The Calvinball is currently stored in Newb's pocket dimension and they know you're coming." There is a sensation of laughter, "They have yet to find me though. Do you accept my offer?"

Sitting in his pocket dimension, Newb points at the screen. "Wait, back that up a little, I thought I saw something. Okay, now select Arhra in the text log." Newb watched as one of the many Arhra's began to show up, slightly, with the others remaining as they were. "I knew it. All right, deselect him and select the copies." All of the copies became highlighted, and looked a little less real than Arhra had. "Okay, now use the highlighter on the copies with yellow, and highlight Arhra with green." Newb watched as the copies all became yellow outlines, and Arhra became a green outline. "We've got him."

Arhra speaks from behind him, "How very inventive of you. I've been following you all along. The others are merely shells although even they believe that they are the true Arhra. Of course, you must ask do you have me or do I have you?" Again only Arhra's outline can be seen and barely at that. He had remained unseen for the entire battle, watching and waiting. Now was the time to strike. But he does not leap to the attack, attempting to defeat his opponents by force of arms or by obliterating them with magic. He does something worse.

Arhra simply reaches out with one hand, a flickering corona of energy surrounding it. His hand just lightly touches Newb but that touch is the touch of Chaos. Newb feels his flesh threaten to flow and boil - writhing and mutating in unending flux.

OOC: Of course, it is possible to resist the changing.

And that's when Jada finally came in handy.

Jada lowered the Hellshield, knowing that DB's shield will keep them plenty safe. Now, before I tell you what he did, you have to understand this.

First of all, the idea of Hell, of course, is to scare people into staying in line. If no one believed there were ramifications for doing wrong, then there would be nothing but Chaos and a couple of nice people. But that's not important.

The point is, the forces of Hell are the forces of order. And since Arhra is a creature of Chaos, being in contact with the greatest cause of order in the universe should be excrutiating to him. Therefore, one of his weaknesses is Hell.

Jada concentrated all of Hell's power onto his fingertip and reached for where Arhra's voice was coming from. He made contact just behind the ear, which immediately began to sizzle.

Toastburner heard Arhra's voice, and frowned under his helmet.

"You must not know me very well. I don't do the entire choas thing."

Appearently, Arhra had already left the area, for no reply, either vocal or Toastburner being struck down, came.

"Bit, are we close?"

YES

"Has anyone else found the ball yet?"

YES

"Blast. Just one?"

NO

"More that one person has the ball?"

YES

"Two people?"

NO

"Three?"

YES

"Dang. I'm going to way out of my league."

YES

"Thanks for the vote of confidence."

Toastburner flew on after Bit, trying to mentally prepare himself for the coming battle. In the games he had played, he hadn't really been a major player. He was there, alright, and had been at a few endings, but had never been a major factor.

As he made another turn, his sensors picked up the calvinball, and three...four? One single was fading in and out...calvinballer. Identified as Dragonsbane, Jadarendir, and Newb.

Toastburner came to a stop, still a good distance away from the others. "Bit, thank you. It's going to get pretty ugly around here. You'd better get out while you can."

YES

With that, Bit flew off. Toastburner couldn't blame it. He was about to go up against two of the most experienced calvinball players, and a new foe he had never faced head-on before. He knew his chances were nill-to-none that he'd be able to take them all down.

He watched as Newb suddenly flinched in pain, and as Jada touched thin air, and a wisp of smoke appear. The flickering sensor blip, Toastburner thought to himself, It must be Arhra. That's how he talked to me without him seeing him, he's invisible. So, it's going to a three-way brawl, huh?.

Toastburner looked the situtation over one more time. With Jada and Newb engaged by Arhra, that's left Dragonsbane. In all the games, Toastburner had never even landed a single hit against the mage.

"I guess it's time to change that."

The LPA jet's roared to life. Toastburner clutched his cable-and-blade in his hand tightly. He probably has his missile-reflect shield up. I won't be able to strike until I get close...if I get close enough to even do anything..

He activated the anti-magic shield the techs on the Respawner XVII had been working on. Far from perfect, it negated a mere 5% of any magic attack...but maybe that would be enough to get Toastburner close enough to strike.

The jets came to a full roar, but Toastburner didn't launch yet. He looked down the corridor one more time.

Here we go.

"For glory." Toastburner whispered to himself.

The LPA, finally, shot off like a bullet, towards the battle already taking place.