Rogue

[Albert Wesker]

After the unexpected but certainly rather interesting meeting with the intimidating — if undeniably jovial and disarming — cyber-garbageman, Crunch, things had rapidly lapsed into dullness and an overwhelming sense of boredom. There was only so much that Cricket could do to keep from pulling his proverbial hair out, and he didn't even have hair to pull out in the first place! He had even briefly contemplated seeing about compiling a bit of data for a sub-program to change his appearance slightly. Perhaps give himself hair to pull out over the boredom he was feeling. He wisely decided not to do such a silly thing, and resolved himself to poke around the paths and byways of the digital verse of information, to see if there was anything else he could run across while remaining relatively safe.

A few new topics of mild curiosity had popped up on some of the messageboards and new domains and websites had been created since his last thorough examination. New alliances and groups on advertisement, and all manner of shenaniganery on display, as per usual. It was hard to pick out what was more than a general curiosity and might actually be of some substance and worth looking into, among all the random tomfoolery and business as usual of the Dataverse. People coming and going, making topics and comments all willy-nilly...there was so much to sort through, so much traffic to try and not get swept up in. A highway of information was still very much a highway, after all! One wrong step and suddenly you were caught up in a thirty messageboard pileup, watching a video about shapeshifting into bizarre shapes and forms, and wondering why you had a half-filled out order form for genuine wood cookware occupying most of your interface, when you didn't even need to eat, let alone cook anything!

Wisely, he had decided not to reveal that almost-accident to his operator, of course.

But there were a few things which did catch his interest. He filed away some of them for later, to share with Colonel when he returned to a place where they could link up again and resume their usual communication and travel, and pulled a few more of them up to peruse right away. Some topic or other about villain leaderboards caught his immediate attention, and he gave it a once-over, finding the entire thing to be both highly amusing, and practical, if a bit unorthodox and self-defeating. Sure, every villain that he had heard about and been told of by his operator had been in possession of an above-average size ego, but openly broadcasting your existence, intentions, and actions just seemed a bit silly. And, in a place like the Omniverse, a good way to get a bounty on your neck, even if you happened to get away with your villainy at the time of the villainous act in question. Still, for someone in a position of enforcing peace and security like his military-minded operator, such a thing could only be useful. Cricket left a cheerful comment on the topic and bookmarked it for future access, being sure to note down a reminder in his memory to bring it up to Colonel when they spoke again.

The next thing he found was a seemingly unrelated pair of topics, one of them calling all heroes, the other requesting all villains. It was...odd, alright. Seemed like there was a big confrontation just waiting to happen with two groups like that setting up. A whole new set of problems to be dealt with if things got out of hand. Cricket bookmarked the both of them as well, on the off chance they were ever updated again, and resolved to bring up contacting the group calling themselves the Avengers to offer assistance, if it ever became necessary. They were always going to have to worry about their own business and agenda first, but given their Institute-appointed occupation, it was likely they would end up working on the same side in at least some endeavors.

The last thing to catch his interest was an ad from, of all places, Syntech. Checking into the information proved that it wasn't just a hoax, and they had managed to locate video and audio feed of events on that crazy island. It briefly gave Cricket hope of finding out whether his operator was still alive and he was going to have to wait an indeterminate amount of time for him to get off that island, or if he had already died and might show up at any moment. Then he saw the paywall. A very minor one, just to cover equipment costs, but all the same, it kept him from actually accessing any information or the video feeds, archived or live.

Now he was just depressed. What a way to start the day.