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[Dwarmin]

>Lehtonen-sama, if I may respectfully remind you of what happened last time you neglected to sleep to analyze new data.

"The explosion was very minor."

[Chevaleresse]

>If that is the case, then I believe my dictionary files need an update.

[Dwarmin]

WindKnights laughter could be heard ringing in the PET. He was glad of the good humor while he was busy raking up the data now strewn all over his formerly nice yard into neat piles, and had hung up a few of Scores data pads on the line to data dry.

"Heheheh...working in haste, one may miss important details. It would be a shame to lose important data for the mere fault of impatience, Good Wizard Kauko. You may feel full of energy now, on account of the excitement of victory and in no small part due to those abominable beverages you consume-but soon, the exhaustion you are holding off will come back. Such is the way of the young, to wind themselves up and down with such vigor. The key is in recognizing and respecting your own limits." WindKnight understood the workings of Human beings a bit more than the usual Navi. Benefits of age, he guessed.

...

"Both my Navi are ganging up on me! Alright, alright...I'll hit the sack. I'm pretty sure between Scores jokes and WindKnights lectures, I'd be put to sleep anyway.

...But I can't promise I won't wake up early!" He finished excitedly-a spring flush of youthful energy, not yet totally dimmed by fast approaching adulthood.

He hopped out out of the van, packed up his stuff, and reckoned on the distance to home. He as a general rule, was poor at navigating the 'real world', which was chaotic and unplanned-so unlike the NetWorld.

"Alright, good night everyone!

...Lumi, let's go! ...Did she fall asleep in the car?"

[SeriousConcentrate]

"No, I'm awake. I was just daydreaming." Lumi had a tendency to do that when nothing was going on, like a long car ride. "Good night, Damian, Tom, Ti." She followed her older brother out of the van. "Home is this way, by the way." She pushed down her desire to start climbing and running around the place - she had to get Kauko home first at the very least.

[Dwarmin]

"...Oh, yeah! That's the way toward the..." Kauko mentioned a popular local chip shop. Every neighborhood had at least one! "...Hey, you're getting that glint in your eyes that makes you climb fences and explore abandoned servers in haunted houses. SnowMan won't lecture you, but didn't you just listen to mine? We should probably get some sleep. Start again fresh tomorrow. I don't want to cause another minor explosion-really, it was very small, hardly any fire-and, you don't need to go climbing in the dark and end up freerunning over rain slicked rooftops as the rangers chase you with helicopters."

The last part was probably sarcasm.

[SeriousConcentrate]

"Relax, I'm not going to. For one thing you'd fall behind within thirty seconds and we both know you'd get totally lost soon after." Lumi walked backwards for a bit so she could talk to Kauko as they went. "We should really get you a GPS. Then it wouldn't matter if you couldn't read a map at all. And it'd probably blow WindKnight's mind." Lumi chuckled quietly and put her hands in her hoodie pockets, turning around to face forward.

[Dwarmin]

"Kauko has done an excellent job upgrading my memory capacity!" WindKnight said defensively, voice speaking up from the PET. "At least, as far as I can recall."

WindKnight could be funny too, but only dad Jokes.

...

"...I don't get lost, I just don't always know which way I want to go! And sometimes I change my mind and start going to another place. Rest assured, I always know where I am going at precisely the moment I'm choosing to go there." He said confidently. "Also sometimes the directions don't match the GPS, that's why I don't like using them. It tells me to walk 500ft straight to Yogurt Lane, and there's some sort of spiky shrubs in my way, I'm not sure if they are decorative or ornamental. If I was on the net, I'd just delete those shrubs from existence!"

[SeriousConcentrate]

"You can, y'know... go around the shrubs. Or over," Lumi said, shaking her head. "Honestly Kauko, it's OK to have your head in the clouds sometimes, I do it too, but you gotta have your feet on the ground too."

"Eyes on the prize, guys," SnowMan piped up. "Both of you need to rest for the hunt tomorrow, and then we'll be raking in the cold hard cash."

[Dwarmin]

"Hopefully we find something more worthy on this journey than merely money." WindKnight pondered. "I do enjoy these 'retro' chips we've found, of Old Antikythera. They interact most pleasantly with my systems. For some reason. Truly, they knew how to make them to last back then."

WindKnight was also referring to himself, of course.

[SeriousConcentrate]

"Nothing's more important than doing the job right," SnowMan responded. "The money's a nice reward for those that can use it, but I enjoy the work. The scouting, exploration... the hunt, whether viruses or usable data."

"That's why we get along so well," Lumi commented, but otherwise was content to let the Navi speak among themselves.

[Dwarmin]

"You young Navi, always working yourselves into an early deletion." WindKnight chided. "You need to learn to relax as well. I've seen that desolate snowy forest of yours! You could at least have a nice chair."

WindKnight had switched over to a semi-private communication line.

...

"Sis, ya gotta have big dreams! We've gotta get off this island and be free to do what we want-before they catch us all and put VDP brands on our backsides. I'm not working for one of their slave-code shops. Won't be long and they'll probably rename the place to Laconia Island."

[SeriousConcentrate]

"Maybe with the money from this job Lumi can afford to get me a small hunting lodge," SnowMan said. "I'd like a place to display trophies. And of course to have a virus-skin rug on the floor in front of the fireplace, with a rack on the mantle to put my rifle." The Navi chuckled. "...Well, maybe when I'm your age I can retire to something like that, old timer."

"That will never happen," Lumi said, eyes narrowing. "I'd sooner resort to firebombs than let the corps take over our home. You know that."

[Dwarmin]

"Nice to know we still have some rebels against the Evil Empire, but I don't think it is a fight any of us can win..."

Kauko nodded to a nearby ironic billboard, which of course loomed over the neighborhood like a bully who was looking to take your lunch money.

V.D.P

YOUR
PARTNERS
IN
PROSPERITY

[Values~Diversity~Profits]THE LAST ONE IS ACCURATE!

Naturally, someone had already climbed up and added blood-red spray paint graffiti. In fact, that may have been Lumi.

[SeriousConcentrate]

Lumi spit on the ground and shook her head. "Propaganda, all of it. We were doing just fine here without them." She wasn't the one who vandalized this particular billboard, as if she had she would have went a lot harder, but she appreciated the fact she wasn't the only one around who would do so.

[Chevaleresse]

Score listened to the back and forth quietly, arranging her disorganized files and sending a few transfer requests to WindKnight when she realized which ones were absent. Something about the discussion caught her, though, and she paused in place for a moment before pinging her operator.

>Lehtonen-sama.
>If I could ask you a question?