Omake Prologue: Enter the...Yggdrasil?

[RyderHakubi]

"Yes Bean... you can." Ryder said as she returned to her wall, waiting for Kei...

[Bean Bandit]

Within moments, Keichii returned to the room, a tall, exotically beautiful woman in tow.

Her platinum blond hair gave away her identity immediately, but Bean couldn't help the widening of her eyes...or the quickening of her pulse. She was positively stunning. Impish almond shaped grey eyes in an oval face, with full lips and a figure that made her loose, casual clothes hang off her in a provactive way, despite the slightly tired cast to her features made Bean's head spin...

Well...I seem to have kept SOMETHING...dunno if that's good or bad, though... she thought dazedly. She glanced at the black haired young man leading the woman she knew to be Urd, and felt a pang of sympathy. He had a look that was a mixture of grim and afraid all at once.

Urd turned to look at the two strangers in her sister's bodies.
"Hi!" she smiled slightly.

[RyderHakubi]

Ryder frowned at Kei's eyes, knowing there was nothing she could do to fix that particular problem.  That is, without serious ramifications on Bean...

Still, she did manage to say, "Yo." to Urd's greeting.

[Bean Bandit]

Bean sighed, glancing at the hardwood floor, nodding slightly.

"Hello." she murmured, looking apologetically up at Keichii. He flinched slightly then seemed to remember himself, and gave her a wan smile.

Urd sighed and sat down. "Not a great way to meet, I admit, but we're not going to bite you." She told Bean, exasperation and amusement in her voice.

Bean frowned slightly, but nodded and relaxed.

Urd smiled faintly and nodded. "Right then...I guess It's time to get down to business. Welcome...to the 'real world'" she said calmly.

[RyderHakubi]

"The real world?  Not exactly... for us, we just left the real world.  But, then again, you probably already know that." Ryder replied.

[Bean Bandit]

Urd smiled tolerantly. "Yes, I do...but did you know that yours is actually part of ours?" she asked. "It's actually a remote little corner that's been quarantined until it develops some more...Yggdrasil, our world computer has been monitoring it..."

[RyderHakubi]

With a small chuckle, Ryder added, "Bill Gates' ultimate dream realized after all."

Her eyes suddenly went all business-like, and she asked, "Well, what are we doing here?  It's a dream of mine to be SIed, but there's a catch."

[Bean Bandit]

Urd sighed. "Well, from what I can gather from the sytem logs...Yggdrasil has been hacked." she said flatly.

Bean blinked, her own thoughts forgotten as she boggled at that, and even Keichii looked startled.

[RyderHakubi]

Even the somewhat unflappable Ryder was caught off-gaurd by that, and replied, "Hacked... Hacked... WHO WOULD HAVE THAT KIND OF POWER!!!!"

[Bean Bandit]

Urd sighed and sat down at the table, leaning on one elbow. "It takes less power than you'd think, Kiddo. Yggdrasil was peeking in, doing a systems check, and somehow, someone managed to piggyback a trassmission out along our own scanning band...and once they got in, they dumped a utility program into the mainframe and proceeded from there..."

[RyderHakubi]

Ryder nodded, only understanding half of the information, and said, "Alright, so someone hacked Yggy... what did they do exactly?"

[Bean Bandit]

Urd blinked at the diminutive nickname for the world tree computer, and cracked a small smile. "Oh, they did plenty." She said wryly.

Keichii looked as lost as Skuld, and was scratching his head, shooting uncomfortable glances at Belldandy, who was nervously pretending she didn't see his glances.

Urd saw this, and sighed, turning her attention to Skuld. "Well, according to the system logs that I was able to access, they activated just about every sub-program in every directory, to hide three levels of attack." she explained, ticking them off on slim, elegantly tapered fingers.

"One, they've deactivated the boundary program between seperate universes, which is causing partial merging at the moment, but it will get worse...  We don't know what the specific intent was behind that, but anyone in heaven not busy with repairing the damage to Yggdrasil itself will probably be trying to help restore order here...and unable to look for them." Urd said thoughtfully, tossing her head as a lock of white-blond hair fell into her field of vision.

Keichii stared at Urd in mild surprise, having never heard a serious statement of that length from Urd before. Urd smirked slightly, as if to say 'I know what you're thinking', and went on.

"Two, There seems to have been a virus attack on Yggradsil's root OS." she said, groaning. "This is where it gets sticky, because I'm not sure I understand it myself. We'd need a programmer to simplify it, but from what I understand of the logs, the ultility program dumped into the mainframe was too primitive for the anti-viruses to detect, and was able to make it's way to the main OS, and dumped it's imformation in there. But the information dump was to quick for the simpler OS program to handle, and and father's own access points were overwritten, in favor of this virus' creator."

"I may be getting this wrong." Urd admitted, running a hand through her hair. "I'm only a systems administrator. But what that means, is that someone we don't know has simultaneously usurped father's position, while cutting him off from the system entirely."

[Bean Bandit]

Bean had only understood part of the lecture, but what she did grasp made chills run up and down her spine.

"Oh, F...ah, boy." she corrected herself. Don't look at Keichii, Don't look at Keichii... "Someone just appointed themselves Kami-sama by virtue of a computer flaw..." she reasoned, looking to Urd for confirmation.

[Bean Bandit]

Urd glanced at Belldandy with a slight nod, and a searching look, which the brown haired girl flinched back under.

"Essentially, yep." The white haired goddess agreed. "Which is...where we hope you two will come in." she said, looking to both Skuld and Belldandy.

[RyderHakubi]

"Explain Urd..." Ryder said, her eyes showing the gravity of the situation.

Kami-sama by a computer flaw?  That's f***ing insane!