#mainverse-crawlerarc

[digitalfcte]

@searching-mage from here

She took a bit to respond, fearing she could end up coming across a bit weird. So hum.. ">maybe in two hours?"

She clutched her phone. What was she doing? Would it be right to do what she wanted to do? How was he going to respond? Where in hell was she getting the strength to do it. Damn, she really had been influenced.

[digitalfcte]

@unfortunateoracle reply to this

"Anthi..." Ayako felt scared about saying something wrong. How did she get to that conclusion? "I'm telling the truth, I'm happy that I get to be near you. I know it's dumb when I could probably protect you better than you could. I know it doesn't make sense... like the conditions are all messed up..."

She gave up a little hiccup as her heart jumped for a second. "Your presence makes me warm. Even if you are cursed, I just want to deny that, fight it as long as I can. If I'm not alone I think I can do it."

[digitalfcte]

Echoes of the Grail War

The town of Fuyuki, where the origin of the Holy Grail War system had been devised. It was indeed a place with very strong leylines like Ayako had read about on the boards.

She remembered about that girl she met once, whose last name belonged to a magus family connected to the system. If that was truth, could that connect her to what happened with Ayako these past few weeks? Could she end up finding out who plotted the war on her town? Why did she even care?

Before she noticed it, she was passing next to a nameplate reading Matou, at the gate of a big house. But it seemed it was empty. "Well then... I shouldn't waste my time here," she thought, before turning around to accidentally face the person she was thinking about.

"Matou..." but now that she looked at her again did she really wonder. Was she a magus then? What was her connection to the Holy Grail War and the Servant Summoning ritual? "are you..."

@egaohitotsude

[digitalfcte]

@drxgonharted is getting scanned

"... Right, I should have thought about mentioning before just taking you in all of a sudden. I'm... different from whatever kind of sick mages created you..."

As she had mentioned, she had just taken the lonely homunculus in after taking readings of a Servant from him. It had been something that scared her at first, but looking at him from afar, lonely as she was, she couldn't help but trust that he wouldn't be a bad person, so she tried to take him in.

"... no offence intended at you of course. I'm a hacker, I guess, I have a more modern approach to reproducing mysteries."

[digitalfcte]

Crawling to the end

After being away for a couple of days, Ayako Ogata could finally be home to her own devices. She felt excited because she felt like things were going smoothly with her new Mystic Code. Having something kind of bulky on her arm seemed strange, but it's the only way she could have fit a desktop-sized processor on it. So she had a gauntlet-type of thing that maybe could be hidden beneath her sleeve, but she wasn't sure of it right now.

It worked by interfacing with Ayako's own Magic Circuits, and it could even show output data to Ayako through what her mind would perceive as holographic images. But the best was how Ayako could finally initiate an AR phenomena with it, and bring out materials she had built digitally to use. A sort of Projection, if that made sense. Since she had found about materials like the Chrome Digizoid, she was studying it's data composition so she could eventually build a shield to protect her spiritron processor better.

"But damn, mister Kuraler has been such a help with this development. I..."

But wait, where was he? Did he go out again to deal with some sort of rogue phantom again? That was the normal thing to do, wasn't it?

[digitalfcte]

"That gum. I remember that brand..." it was weird for the digital phantom to have something like that on him, maybe he was trying to know more about human emotions through consumer products? "So you said it was a girl that gave this to you?"

When she heard her name from the man, her eyes widened up. How could she forget that person? She blamed herself for holing up alone after a long time. Then, wait, what should she do? She wanted to see her.

"But is this a good time?" she asked herself while logging into the popular social network site she didn't use for ages as she had become more disconnected from the real world. Scrolling past the old notifications from empty birthday wishes and invitations she tried to find it. That person's profile. Did she still live in the same place with her parents? It shouldn't take long to get there since Ayako's current town wasn't even outside of their natural perfecture, and her profile still seemed updated. She wanted to see her, she was sure of it. Without much thought, she got out of the house, leaving the phantom alone.

While riding the tram, Ayako started to reminisce about the times they had passed together in high school, playing Gundam Versus on the arcade. If she could have a little bit of that, maybe she could calm herself down. She could try to go back to another mindframe.

"Huh, but where could she be?" of course that could be hard to grasp, considering how much of a spontaneous action that was, uncharacteristic of Ayako.

@pressurecooked

[digitalfcte]

Crawler

It had been weeks since the Holy Grail War incident. Ayako was trying to get herself together after losing someone she could have called a friend. Apparently, that Holy Grail War had been something of a prototype, an experiment by someone, the opposing Master, contracted with the only other Servant during that war. Then Ayako had been chosen somehow. Was it because of her being technically a member of the DMchan? Then someone probably knew about her? That could be dangerous, especially since she knew next to nothing about the author of the incident. Could it even be the famed AkashicMeteor, the admin of the board? But even if it was them, there was no info on the community about their identity.

This damned two person War, disturbing the balance of Ayako's life, and the network itself. It was obvious whoever had created the grail had taken a great toll on the world of digital spirits, utilizing most of the leylines from there. It was a ridiculously impossible feat to achieve, probably only realized through the untapped and unexplored potential of this new world, or probably some extra source that person was using.

[digitalfcte]

@unfortunateoracle from here

"Why are you saying something like that... It's not your fault... it doesn't make sense" it was Ayako's fault, because she was weak, because she was weak she had lost that person that she had at her side. "You weren't even there, I'm not sure if we even knew eachother at the time."

"Please, just don't go off on your own to protect me." she was afraid something could happen to Anthi. After all, whoever fought Ayako was probably still around, even with no Servant of their own.