Danball Senki Last Re:Arise

A Power Surge

 " You look like you've been up all night?" Kirito quirked his eyebrow when he met Eva the next day at Blue Cats.

" Don't remind me." The blonde groaned when she flopped on the seat by the counter and face planted her face tiredly in it. " Just... weird..."

" What's weird?"

" A lot of things. One milk shake please Riko." She said to the girl who came to serve them.

" Right on the way. And you Kirito? Coke as usual?"

" Not today. I need the blackest coffee you could afford today."

Eva gauged him for a moment. " Apparently I'm not the only one who had a rough night."

Kirito ruffled his hair. " You could say that."

" Let me guess. Power surge."

Kirito looked back at her, eyes narrowed suspiciously. " It can't be that..."

" We had one too? Yep, it happened." Her eyes narrowed too. " Though for it to happen in both Tiny Orbit and Kamiya Craft as well... could it be a coincidence?"

" Here you go Eva." Riko diposited the glass of milkshake before the other blonde. " Though Kirito, I'm sorry but... the machine is still under repair. Would you like a traditional coffee, it will take longer though."

" Yeah, thanks." Riko then rushed over to the stove to prepare his order.

Eva took one sip of her drink before addressing the shorter woman. " When did the machine broke?"

"Yesterday." She wiped her hands on her apron and took the seat across them while waiting for the coffee to brew. " It was strange though. All of a sudden, everything seemed to go high wire. A few light pulps bursted off just at once and the machine broke off since."

" It happened here too?" Eva had her eyes wide at that.

" Too?" Riko tilted her head curiously.

" The power surge happened in both Tiny Orbit and Kamiya Craft." Kirito explained.

Eva held her chin as she mulled over that. " Since Blue Cats experienced the same occurrence, then it's not a cyber attack."

" Explain."

" When you said Tiny Orbit had the power surge, I thought it may have been a planned attack on both of them but..." She looked back at Riko. " Now that I know it occured to Blue Cats, it doesn't seem like the case anymore."

" Right. Who in their right mind would bother attacking us." Riko had went back to fetch Kirito's drink. The blond however had a very puzzled look.

" Eva, I want to check something. Let's go." He said standing up and trudging his way back to the door just as the other blonde came with his coffee.

" Hey, wait!"...

***

" Took you a while to come seek me." The man didn't even bother coming out from under the table as both Kirito and Eva walked into his Lab.

" You knew it." Kirito began, heading to the desk and pulling back the chair so he could have a better look at William whose hands were busy with the cablage of a few machines. " You knew something was off with that power surge."

" Yup." William finally peeked from under the desk and looked the other blond in the eye. " I did. Well, it was rather a hunch. And after conducting some tests and doing some dirty digging work, I figured it out."

" Figure what out exactly?" Eva inquired with a risen eyebrow as the man took his seat and started typing on his keyboard.

" That it happened all over Japan." He shrugged. " Not just Tiny orbit, not even just Tokio city, it was nationwide."

" The cause?" Kirito leaned forward peeking at his screen as though the answer was there.

" I'm not sure, but it seems to be some kind of... virus." He pulled a code up in front of them and Eva joined in the small huddle.

" What's this code?" She said scanning through it hastly. " It's like..."

" Rebooting every electronic system in Japan? Yeah, that's exactly what it does. That's exactly the true nature of our mysterious power surge. Every electronic device and apparatus were rebooted. Some couldn't take it though and burned out." He pointed at the code he extratced.

" It really was some kind of planned attack wasn't it?" Eva looked down at the older male who folded his arms before him, glaring at the few lines as though demanding an answer.

" It definitely is. The fact that I managed to extract this code from Tiny Orbit's server is enough proof that someone was behind it." William answered. " But why and how he did it, that remains to be seen. For now, we should try to narrow down the source of the surge." He said placing his hands on the keyboard again.

" Can you?" Kirito questioned.

" How many times should I tell you not to underestimate us, deyo~!"

Otacross' voice came from one of the screens surrounding William before his face popped up in front of them. " Otacross-san!" Eva blinked at his sight.

" You're still alive old man!"

" How very rude of you deyo~!" The older man flailed his fist in the air irritatedly before William met his eyes.

" Have you finished what I asked?" The man inquired and Otacross cleared his throught at that.

" Yeah, it's all done. You can check the map I've send you."

William hurriedly pulled up another tap that showed a map of japan with multiple circles all over it, all with different radius and colors. " What's this?"

" This, my dear Kirito, is the map of account log outs the day of the power surge." William elucidated as he zoomed into the map. " We were hoping to use it to narrow down the origin of this unusal attack. All we need to do is to find the place with the most oldest log outs at the time, the one in red and that would be..."

His eyes widened slightly as he zoomed into the biggest red circle he could find on the map. " Tokio city... the attack started from here..." Kirito noted.

" Can't you be any more accurate?" Eva asked and Otacross shook his head.

" The time difference between the log outs are in milliseconds, it was all we could do to sort them by area." Otacross explained.

" Well, it's a start." Kirito stated. " But we still need to look further into it."

" We're trying our best to extract whatever we could from different serves all over Japan. We'll mail you our findings."

" I'm depending on you, Otacross." With a nod of his head, the old man ended the call. William leaned back on his chair with a sigh. " Even with the hackers army, it's all we could do to scavenge bits and pieces, the bigger problem of who launched the attack would still be an ambiguity to us."

Unintentionally Eva rubbed the back of her head before something went through her mind. " William." The older man whirled on his chair so he could face her stoic face. " I need you to do something..."...