Rogue

[Albert Wesker]

Good heavens, but...it was starting to get rather warm. That was just one more oddity to be added to the general odd-ness of this verse within a world of verses made by a very odd little person who may very well have been a legitimate god. Until now, Cricket's passage along one of the many massive paths of information — the equivalent of lazily drifting down a sedate river in an inner tube, really — had been rather uneventful, interrupted only by the occasional passerby and exchange of pleasantries. It had escaped his notice, but for the past short while he hadn't done that, and had, in fact, been drifting along in solitude.

"....I believe this is when most people would say 'I have a bad feeling about this', or something to such an effect..." the normal navi spoke aloud to himself, windmilling his arms to try and stymie his forward momentum. He was partially successful, and managed to regain some semblance of an upright posture, more or less 'standing' in the river of data. A stream of search requests, images, messages and communications, and countless amounts of deep green 1s and 0s shot by him, seeming all the more spritely now that he had come to a halt. Or, well, most of one.

"Oh, good heavens, where have I ended up now?" he fretted, spinning slowly about in place. He would have been satisfied with the sight of anyone else at all, even someone unsavory or as intimidating as Crunch had first appeared. But he saw no one. Only the ever-constant, dizzying array of information flowing this way and that, spiraling off into side paths and branching off to its respective destinations. And a slowly-dwindling amount of it following the main 'current' on ahead. Only a single line of data, hard-coded and encrypted as a mass of 1s and 0s so densely packed they almost seemed a solid mass, continued unerringly onward. And Cricket was firmly anchored and attached to that mass of data, being hauled inexorably along. When had that happened?!

"Oh, that..." he started, faltering lamely. It was a lot of things, and it wasn't a lot of things, at the same time. It was certainly confusing, and probably not good for his continued travel plans, if nothing else. "...that isn't good," he finally finished, opting for the very, very obvious. "And my word but it is getting hot. Dreadfully so." Craning his neck, he spun in place once again, the joint in his ankle creaking as he pivoted on it, searching for the source of the oppressive heat. It reared its head in short order, rounding a bend in the proverbial river, and suddenly everything was a whole lot more clear, as to just what was going on.

Clearer because everything was on fire, really.

"Oh, a firewall..." Cricket stated blankly. He was just... Really, he was just at a loss. Things were that literal, here? It certainly did explain why the traffic had cleared up so much. Firewalls were notorious for only letting things from users with proper clearance and permissions through. They had a tendency to keep other users and information out. Apparently in the Omniverse, where people could physically enter the net, firewalls needed to have a more tangible, dangerous presence. A very powerful defense for encrypted data, honestly. Remarkable, really. It was therefore rather sad that he was so caught up in his admiration of the thing, even in its ridiculousness, that it took him until he had completely rounded the final turn, and was on the final approach to the firewall that the helper navi made a very unpleasant realization.

"....oh, I don't think I have clearance."