All this running around, well it's getting me down

[voiceless_anon]

Who: Anon and Abraxas
Where: Somewhere on the outskirts of the city.
When: After Yori and Rinz's encounter with the virus, and after Dumont's warning.
What: Anon finds that the Portal has kindly rerezzed the virus that he spent most of his first life hunting.
Warnings: Violence.

Comments

[threat_detected]

Anon knew him best. Strange to think that the program created specifically to destroy him would know Abraxas' behavior better than he understood himself. And true to form, the trailing corrosion leads in a meandering line over street, and pedestrian constructs...then up. Up the side of the tallest tower Abraxas had been able to locate so far. Not quite as tall as he would have liked, high enough that he could crouch on the edge of the last level's overhang, and look out across the lights of the city.

It was quiet up here. The Pain was still just as much a driving force, but after spreading the Pain to constructs, and programs alike, it was...a little less. Just a little.

Just enough to take a moment to pause, to think, to stop. Abraxas never had rest cycles. He couldn't. It might account for some of the more pronounced imbalance he displayed lately, or perhaps it was just another byproduct of the malicious code twisting his reasoning into self-destructive cycles.

Who can say.

[voiceless_anon]

If Abraxas could stop himself for long enough that someone could switch off the Pain and the virus, Anon wouldn't need to destroy him any more. Perhaps Jalen couldn't be regained, but an Abraxas free of pain and poison and perverted code? It would be interesting to find out who he was.

As it was, it was a moot point.

Anon's gaze tracked the fractured line of yellow upwards, finally spotting the dark figure perched on top of the building. He had no doubt that the former ISO could see him, in turn.

[threat_detected]

Oh yes, he could see Anon just fine. But, in that moment, the prospect of another ending, another battle, especially with the very same system monitor ( as far as Abraxas knew ) who had failed to destroy him on several occasions was a waste of both his time, and attention.

For the moment, the similarly opaque, black mask turned towards Anon...then pointedly away. Dismissing him outright. Neither threat, nor target, or really anything of note at all. Instead going back to his musings, and standing up from his crouch. Let the program come to him if he was so insistent, it wouldn't make any difference.

...So why did he stand still, and wait?

[voiceless_anon]

And, incidentally, the only one who had even tried to destroy Abraxas . . . and who, in the end, had succeeded.

Well, if Abraxas wasn't coming to him, Anon would simply have to go to him. The virus was a too great a threat to the Grid to be left alone, the building that the former ISO was standing on bearing mute evidence to that fact. Yeloow corruption was everywhere, glittering in neat parallel lines and squares of yellow light.

The tower next to Abraxas' went up nearly as high as the one that the virus was perched on. It would also keep Anon out of Abraxas' line of sight and give him something sturdy between them.

Climbing up, window by window, protrusion by protrusion, took a while. But, in the end, Anon was standing on top of his own tower and looking up at Abraxas. And this time, he was in disc range.