Donovan:
The telecom chirps with an incoming message. It contains a Tokyo based LTG, designated as a cell phone. The contact name is Calisto.

Inside:
"People who know me, call me the Fool. What kind of gear and softs do people need?"

Trixie:
The rat squeaks slightly from where the sceptre rests tucked into your belt. He paws at your stomach with tiny little hands in a kneading motion.

Trixie had forgotten about the little app the Fool had given her. He holds up the stick and lets the rat dangle in front of her face, looking at it quizically, trying to decern what it is up to.

Inside:
The Fool looks curiously towards Trixie as the young elf pulls the scepter from her waist. The rat waves its tiny little paws, gesturing her to lean closer, to speak in whispers.

"I'm not sure why it is acting this way. The purpose of the application was to find me wherever I am at within the Matrix--a specialized Locate Decker and Trace utility."

Stepping closer, the checker faced man almost reaches forward before stopping himself.

"May I?"

Donovan takes out his earplug cell and jacks it. He dials the number for Calisto on the screen and lets it ring.

"I am known as Sun's Warrior." Nanashi answered. "It shouldn't be too hard to find the applications we want, once we solve the issue of finances."

Calisto answers the phone while moving closer to the deckers. "Hello."

"Ah'm glad to hear about the software. Personally, I've got plenty of general utilities, but ah'm light on anything combat oriented, like Attack, Medic, Shield, Armor, etc.

Unless somebody know's a specific bit of paydata we can snatch right now, Ah'd say we should log out, inform Callisto and the mage about what we're going to do, and get a few hours of shut eye, start fresh in the morning and all that hunting for some worthwhile info."

Donovan replies, "Hey, Calisto! I saw your message on my hotel telecom. You need help with something, and I think I'm just the right guy to help you. The name's Donovan Kess."

"I'm a professor of magic at a university, and I know a few things about electronics and computers."

Trixie nods to Fool and holds the utility between them to hear what the rat has to say.

Calisto's voice immediately takes on a warm glow, as if talking to a childhood friend. "Hi, nice to meet you. I assume Jaron called you and let you know what a pickle I'm in?"

Inside:
The rat seems to reach for Trixie's ear an almost conspiratorial look working across his thin lips.

"He's here, and yet not here. I sense my master in farther reaches even as I sense him here."

Straightening up slightly, the Fool looks perplexed and frightened.

"Let's log out as Jack recommends. Some things are best spoken of in person."

Trixie nods sharply, eyeing the Fool. Her icon imediately begins to disipate.

Nanashi also logged off. At least he was starting to get a clue now, even if he still had alot to learn.

Jack gave the hound dog a final scratch behind digital ears as he tilted the brim of his hat just so, his own personal logoff command.

Blinking his eyes open, he tugs the plug free, glancing at Trixie.

"What's up, hun?"

Each body gives a quiet gasp and jerks back into motion, under Calisto's watchful eye. The limp form of Biomage is still resting as the assassin continues her phone call. Lastly, the Fool's body shakes and he sits up.

Donovan replies casually, "Well, no. He must be busy. All I got was a message to call you. I can meet with you somewhere if you'd like."

"Then we can talk about how to get you out of that pickle," he adds jovially.

"Sure, it's just like Jaron to just send a mystery message. Let me get you the address for where I am staying." She pauses from the phone to lock eyes with the nearest decker on her side. "Everything ok?" She holds out her hand with the thumb up then down then up again. "Ok here's the place. I basically need some help with a sticky technical issue I'm having here with some local hardware I bought. Not to pressure you, but how soon can you get here?" Her voice conveys a playful desperation, as if asking the person on the other end of the line to share in her comical misery.

Trixie, unable to answer Jack just yet, looks to the Fool, "What was that? What did it mean? I thought the app was to track you down, now its... what?"

Decker HQ:
"Some things stay, some things go. Mental patterns moving high and low. On the beach and through the air, my friend scours all the fare. Traces left behind have come full circle, when first I danced with death and gained an ear full."

"The All-Father is with you? In the same way that he tainted me, or more so?"

Donovan says, "That's only a few miles from where I am. I can be there in a half hour maybe. I have some calls to make back home that I can do on the way. I'll see then - oh, and I should tell you what I look like. I'm a tall, good-looking guy with white hair, and brown on black cybereyes."

---------------------------------------

After hanging up with Calisto, Donovan e-mails his department head before grabbing his instrument case and other gear. He leaves a message

"I'm going to have to stay in Tokyo for a bit longer. Tell my TA that he will probably have to handle my lectures for a couple of weeks. He's a bright kid, and I think he can handle it. I'll submit my notes on anything I learn to the group when I get back.

--Donovan"

After e-mailing, he heads out to the street to try and catch a train to Calisto's locale.

Decker HQ:
"High and low, to and fro. Finders weepers, losers keepers. You were found and keep you must. I found him and weep my trust."

"Finders weepers, losers keepers... If I must keep, how am I the looser?"

Decker HQ:
"Like Cervantes' gold, some secrets are best untold. What you keep is not your own, what he took was not for loan."

A visable shiver runs through Trixie at the Fool's last words.

She turns to Jack and Nanashi, "That rat on a stick that I had is a custom Trace utility gave to me by Fool. Its what I used to track him down later on so we could arrange this meet. While we were inside, the rat told me, 'He's here, and yet not here. I sense my master in farther reaches even as I sense him here'. So does this mean that Fool can co-locate?"

Her eyes narrow as she turns back to Fool, "Are you a part of All-Father? Is that what it was saying?"

Calisto drops the facade as soon as the call ends. Turning back to the group she lets the smooth mirror fall back into place. "First, before we get too far I have a question. Did you figure out why he talks like that?" She gestures towards the Fool. "Is he this indirect in the matrix?"

Donovan:
Stepping off the train in a suburban section of Uptown Tokyo, you stride confidently through the apartment complexes that nearly reach the sky. You turn the corner and stop at the address given. Your supposed to meet this group on the twelfth floor. Opening the door to the lobby, you slam into an invisible wall of magical energy before crossing the threshold.

"You know, assuming your riddling speech isn't out of preference, we might be able to rig up a speaker so you can use that tranceiver to share your thoughts a bit more clearly outside of the Matrix..." Nanashi suggested, finally putting a piece of the puzzle in place.

Decker HQ:
The Fool had resumed his tinkering with the spare electronic bits hidden between old pizza boxes and takeout containers, but stopped at Nanashi's comment.

"Clear as crystal, near dismissal. I can tell you this, if a cell is missed. He was two and now is one, when all was through, he had won. Young choices gave me voices, what he took from me what wasn't free."

Another piece slotted into place. "That's what you've been working on, isn't it?" he asked. "Let me know what you're looking for, and I'll see if I can dig it up..." thinking a bit more. "Oh." realizing the Fool had already told him what was missing, he handed over his cellphone.

Decker HQ:
The Fool smiles at the offer for help. He takes the offered cellphone and pulls the back casing off of it. There is a Frankensteinian sense of grace in his motions as he pulls the SIM chip off the board and slots a standard FUP from the pile of components on the table. Connecting an assortment of seeming random bit of silicon and plastic, the older decker solders the pieces together and pulls a short length of optic cable out of his satchel. Plugging into the monstrosity from a dataport in his arm, he turns the volume up on the speaker phone setting.

"Thank you."

Calisto:
Your P-sec vibrates with an incoming message. Encrypted with the delicate touch of a man from your past, you recognize Toriyama's personal seal.

A few well-placed keystrokes that are more muscle memory than actual thought and the file begins to decrypt itself.

"Greetings daughter, here was the last of the information you needed.

"The data that you provided from the electrode net appears to be some kind of worm to borrow processing power. It has a signature and style that is similar to Dr. Markham Zeidel's work. I would offer to put you in touch with him, sadly though he has recently passed away, perhaps you can find the individual who worked with him on this project as it is not his programming alone which created this file. The one odd thing that my design team still has not cracked it what kind of system this is attacking. It does not meet any of the current standards for hosts or stand-alone workstations."

"Glad I could help. Now let's see... we have Zeidel, a matrix researcher who predicted AI. After he had some sort of transducer implanted, he started getting less stable, until he died of self inflicted wounds...which he shouldn't have been able to make. Then there's Mennon, who was an otaku hunter, until All-Father rewired him. That's about all I've picked up thus far...am I missing anything?" he asked. "Oh yeah, thinking of Zeidel...the trode net...I was going to see if I could pick up any resonances from it." he added.

Decker HQ:
"I believe that Zeidel was correct, as I said inside Jack's deck, I found something similar to the All-Father a few years ago--I didn't know what it was until I got too close and got scorched. There are still pieces missing for me, but I think that somehow Zeidel got funding for his research and was trying to create a small-scale version of his theorized consciousness. If that's the case, maybe it passed through the doctor using his brain as a connection between the small network and the Matrix. The problem is still figuring out how the All-Father is maintaining itself. If he is running on a system, my deckers should find a trace of him. If instead the All-Father is running on Otaku power, since they have a direct connection to the Matrix, he might be expanding his power by collecting more tribes. The more people he has plugged in, the more he could do. Of course this is all conjecture...I can't prove any of it or even explain how it would be done."

Donovan catches himself against the wall to avoid falling down, and then he steps back a bit and rubs his head. Peering into the astral plane, he makes a call to Calisto while trying to figure out what he just ran into.

Donovan:
Shifting your senses to the astral, you see a glowing wall of protective energy thast blankets across the doorway. Whoever lives here must either pay well or have some kind of magical security issue.

A ward.. That's what I thought. I could break through, but maybe there's another way in. It would be a shame to destroy the ward if it isn't permanent. Somebody must have put it up for a reason, Donovan thinks to himself.

Donovan jacks his cellphone as it continues to ring and looks around to make sure that no one is watching him. With plenty of people around, he thinks twice about levitating himself up to the roof. He slots his Japanese linguasoft in case he needs to talk in Japanese and begins looking around the door for a buzzer or doorbell for either the building's owner or front desk or for a twelfth floor tenant he might recognize.

Donovan:
You look up and down the street, noting people in the process of walking home. Children are playing a game involving some kind of ball and metal toys on the plascrete across the way from you. Running down the list of names, you are unable to sort them out by floor, but can narrow the list down to two people whose first name begins with a C.

Donovan walks around the side of the building, trying to find a place, such as an alley, where he will be less noticed.

Calisto quickly glances to her image link to confirm the call and with a thought answers.

"Hello?"

He was two and now is one, when all was through, he had won...

Trixie slumps back in the spot she is seated, never having rised after leaving the matrix. Those who watch her closely see her eyes flutter closed. Behind her lids you can see her eyes moving swiftly, as if she is almost in a REM state.

Jack's takes a moment to contemplate Nanashi's comments.

"I don't think All-Father rewired Mennon, I think he was traumatized. He switched from being anti-Matrix to specifically anit-Otaku. If the All-Father is really using and collecting Otaku tribes, it doesn't make any sense for him to sic Mennon on those same..."

Jack's voice trails off as he notices Trixie, and he rushes over, calling out to Callisto. "Hey, something's wrong with Trixie, you need to get over here!"

Donovan says over his transducer, "Hey! It's Donovan. I'm here, but I can't get in through the building's front door. There's a ward blocking my progress. I could break it down, but I don't want to call too much attention to myself or cause unnecessary destruction of property. Are all of the entrances to the building warded the same way?"

Trixie's lips move slightly as her mind races, a breathy whisper, "Two. Three. Five. Seven. Eleven. Thirteen. Seventeen. Nineteen. Twenty-three. Twenty-nine. Thirty-one. Thirty-seven. Forty-one. Forty-three. Forty-seven. Fifty-three. Fifty-nine. Sixty-one. Sixty-seven. Seventy-one. Seventy-three. Seventy-nine. Eighty-three. Eighty-nine. Ninety-seven..."

Here eyes flutter back open and she slowly sits back up, giving Jack a confused look, wondering how he appeared next to her so quickly. Blushing slightly as everyone once again making a fuss over her, she meekly says, "I think I figured something out..."

She takes a deep breath, seeming to gather herself and all the ideas floating through her head.

"He was two and now is one, when all was through, he had won... That is what the Fool said. All-Father isn't just a single entity created by Zeidel, is it? All-Father and Zeidel entered a power struggle and All-Father won. He had been trapped on the host that Zeidel created him on, but then he used Zeidel as a bridge to get into the main matrix systems. I'm guessing he did it with Zeidel's wireless uplink, though I'm not sure how...

See, unlike Deus and Morganna, All-Father doesn't steal processor time from other computers, instead he steals it from the parts of a person's brain that isn't in use. They likely don't even know they are being used as a host. Thats where the BTLs come in, they act as a backdoor into a brain for All-Father to use.

Do you all realize the implications of this? Just how scarey it is? If he can somehow tap into the organic computer of a metahuman brain for power... and the more BTLs he spreads, the more power he can tap into... He can run rampant all over the matrix, unhindered by the hosts processing power. He can tear through IC like butter, then dump the IC on some unwitting metahuman and let the IC tear their mind apart, leaving All-Father free to move untouched. And right now he is only tapping enough to keep things going without anyone knowing he is there... what happens when he really needs a boost of power and pulls hard on his... hosts.

That also explains why he wants Otaku for his use. Their brains would not only be more useful for processing power, but if he dumps some IC into them, then they would be more adept at handling it, because they don't need a deck to deal with it."

Towards the end, tears begin to make their way down her cheeks as the horror of the situation takes hold of her.

Calisto takes in the info as she hands the phone to Nanashi. "Hold on let me have you talk to the owner of this place." Unplugging from the phone. "Jaron has sent a replacement for Bio-mage, he needs some info about your security to get in."

Returning to the main conversation. "That explains the info I recieved on the code we couldn't unravel." She quickly passes out the technical info from Toriyama, deleting the personal references between them. "So how do we stop the All-Father?"

"Wait... read that one more time? 'Perhaps you can find the individual who worked with him on this project as it is not his programming alone which created this file.'

Zeidel had a partner? Why didn't Jaron mention that... Oh... right... because All-Father programmed it. Nevermind."

"Ah...I'm sorry about the ward." Nanashi said as he took the phone from Callisto. "The rest of us were otherwise occupied, so I didn't know you were coming. Anyways, the wards on the lobby aren't mine, so you'd have to either mask or break them. I can let you through the ones upstairs, though."

Donovan says cheerfully, "It's an understandable precaution. Someone with less benign motives than myself could pose a real danger without any police around. I know they're everywhere here in Tokyo, but it would still take them a little time to respond.

"Listen. I'd rather avoid any needless attention by breaking the wards. Masking isn't something I can do. I can break through the wards if absolutely necessary, but tell me about how I can get to the ones you mentioned upstairs. I can't turn invisible, but I can fly."

"Actually, the original reason for the wards wasn't people, but spirits. For some odd reason, the place is an astral magnet. Even the wards don't manage to keep them all out. Anyways, if you could levitate up to the roof, I could let you in there. "

"You got it," Donovan says.

He doesn't bother to look around to make sure no one is watching him because there are so many people around. With a thought, he controls the sustained spell tied to a bit of plant matter contained in a resin disc that is connected to an earring he is wearing.

In only seconds, he is on the roof, saying, "I'm there."