Chapter 234 – Strange Link
“What are you doing?” Asked Yuko carefully watching Ugy, who stood at the room's entrance, leaning on the wall with her arms crossed.
“What do you mean? Can’t you see? I am enjoying the show." Said Ugy.
“mmmHm.” Said Yuko squinting her eyes. She watched the plush bear that sat in its usual spot on the armchair for a few seconds and walked away.
A second later, she jumped out from behind the armchair, startling Ugy with her poke on his cheek.
“Heey. Whatcha doin?”
“For fuck's sake, you spider woman!” Exclaimed Ugy trying to seem unperturbed as if her scare was not successful.
"I told you already! Can’t you see? I am watching the show." Said Ugy in an annoyed voice.
“Whatcha doin?” Asked Yuko and poked him once again, ignoring his words.
“Whatcha doin? Huh? Huh? Tell me. Whatcha doin? Heeey heey. Come on. Tell me. I wanna know. Tell me. I am bored. Whatcha doin plushy, huh? Whatcha doin?” Kept asking Yuko without stopping, repeating her pokes after every word.
“NOTHING! I am not doing anything. Why are you like that?” Said Ugy irritably, but his words went totally by the spider nightmare as she continued to bombard him with pokes and questions.
“Enough already! Why are you doing it?”
“Because I know you are doing something and you are not telling me.” Said Yuko.
“Why do you think I am doing something?”
“Isn’t it elementary, Watson? You have a second screen with codes opened while watching Noah having passionate sex.” Said Yuko pointing at the TV screen. “And you never work while this kind of show is on TV. What was it that you said to me last time? The world can wait when the king is fucking. Right? So it’s not natural that you did not enjoy the show to the fullest. You’re up to something.”
“Tsk.” Voiced Ugy, grumbling something under his breath.
“I was right, right? So what are you doing?"
“There's that interesting thing. A reference to some other database of knowledge.” Said Ugy.
“Ouukey. So?” Said Yuko.
“Nothing. I was just thinking about it and how to open it, so I could not concentrate fully on the show.” Said Ugy.
“Hmmmm. I see…" said Yuko, standing up fully and stretching. She stood near his armchair in silence, watching the TV for a few seconds, then she grabbed Ugy's body into her hands, snatching him from his seat in a split second and wrapped him up into her spider threads.
“No! Stop! What are you doin! NO! Let go of me!” Screamed Ugy in a disturbed voice.
“No! You lied to me, so I will do what I want as well.” Said Yuko starting to walk out of the room with Ugy wrapped into a cocoon still in her hands.
“No. Stop! This is an important moment.” Shouted Ugy's muffled voice through the cocoon.
“I KNOW THAT!” Said Yuko. “Do you take me for an idiot? I understood that you were waiting for something a while ago. You probably wait for the moment Noah is gonna change or come. Obviously, I timed my attack on you so that you would have no time to argue. Tik-tok. Time is slipping away, so speak or you will miss the chance to do whatever you were going to do.” Explained Yuko smugly.
“Ok, ok! I’ll tell you, just let go of me! Quick! This is the moment.” Shouted Ugy in an urgent voice.
“Then you should hurry up with the explanation because he is about to…
“The link! I want to open that new reference!”
Yuko sliced open the cocoon and threw Ugy back onto the armchair’s seat.
“So? Why not just open it later?” She asked after falling onto the couch and leaning against its backrest.
“I can’t do it on my own. I need the User’s consent!” Said Ugy.
“And how are you going to get it?” Asked Yuko
“Shhh.” Said Ugy quickly typing on the keyboard while looking at the screen where Noah and Zinnia stared at each other lustfully before Noah used his skill, ‘Ugly Bastard Transformation.’
“Aaaand…” Said Ugy smirking. “Got it.” He said after a second, breathing out a sigh of relief and leaning into an armchair, looking tired.
“God damn it, woman. You drive me nuts. I almost missed it because of you.” He exclaimed.
“It's not because of me, but because you refused to answer. But I don’t get it. How is his skill giving you any consent?” Asked Yuko raising an eyebrow.
“It doesn’t. I made a small dialog window that looked like an automatic function, which asked him whether he wished to confirm, and gave options ‘yes’ or ‘no’. He is too preoccupied to think well and question why an additional confirmation window came up when there was none in the past.” Said Ugy
“So instead of confirming the use of skill, he gave you consent to something else?”
“Yep.” Said Ugy.
“Why didn’t you just ask, instead of scheming?” Asked Yuko watching as Noah's and Zinnia’s copulation went up a notch in intensity with their transformations, before turning to gaze at Ugy.
“I don’t think he would have agreed.” Said Ugy, shrugging.
“Why not?” Asked Yuko raising an eyebrow in suspicion.
“Well, because I feel that it’s dangerous to open that link.” Said Ugy.
“Dangerous how?” Wondered Yuko noticeably on guard.
“I don’t know, I feel like there is some kind of protection mechanism behind that door or a guard dog of sorts. It gives off an eerie vibe.”
“And you want to open it because…?” Said Yuko.
“Isn’t it interesting? A database that needs protection. What secrets does it have? I want to know.” Said Ugy.
“You intend to risk our lives because it's interesting?”
“Nah. It's gonna be fine. It was dangerous in the past. But now we have it covered with that moon and waves pattern cycle of his, which forcefully normalizes his magic flow. So there is no serious danger. Probably.
“Probably?” Said Yuko unconvinced.
“It’s gonna be fine. I am sure, Ok” Said Ugy.
“But you still do it behind his back.”
“What can I do? You know how he is. If I say, let's try that Link thingy we saw a while ago in the comment section, he’ll ask ‘oh why didn’t we try it earlier if there was such a thing?’, and I would have to say, 'Oh I think it would have killed you had you tried it in the past, so I filtered them and hid it'. What will be his answer?”
“Can’t say I disagree with him.” Said Yuko crossing her arms.
“Tsk, commoners. You jump in fear at every minor thing. There’s no danger. See…” Said Ugy pointing at the screen.
“WAIT! You already opened it?” Exclaimed Yuko.
“Yeah. We would only scare ourselves more with every second we keep discussing it. Better to just tear off the bandage in a single move.” Said Ugy “And see nothing dange….”
“Ugy?” Asked Yuko, seeing him stall in the middle of the sentence.
"...gerous. It's totally okay." Finished his words Ugy.
“What was that?” Asked Yuko.
“What was what?”
“You just stalled as if frozen, then continued to talk as if nothing happened.”
“What are you t…t….t..t….t..talking about? I did not stall. Are you going crazy or something?”
“There! You did it again. You just lagged.”
“Stop it. This is not funny. I am ffffffffffffi fififfine.” Said Ugy.
“Ugy! I am serious!” Exclaimed Yuko, jumping up to her feet.
"Pfffft. Ahahahaha.” Started to laugh Ugy rolling in the seat. “I am serious! You should have seen yourself."
“Asshole! I was worried!” Shouted Yuko starting to walk toward him with a menacing gaze.
“Ok, Ok! I am sorry. This was just a joke.” Said Ugy.
“Bastard.” Said Yuko turning around and falling back onto the couch with arms crossed, without looking at Ugy. “If I worry about you ever again…” she muttered with cheeks puffed from anger.
“I told you it’s fine. There was some weak-ass program that tried to invade the system window the moment I opened the link, but our firewall skill stopped it without me even needing to do much. I overestimated this guard dog too much. If I’d known it was so weak I would not have played it so safe.” Said Ugy.
“And? What information does this database have?”
“Ah, it was a dud.” Said Ugy with obvious disappointment in his voice.
“What do you mean?”
“There was some dummy database that kept redirecting us to another dummy and so on. They just keep redirecting in a circle.”
“Huh? What’s the point of making something like that?” Asked Yuko.
“I guess it was a malicious thing, I guess. The whole point was to make that program attack you when you open the link.” Said Ugy shrugging. “Kind of dumb thing humans would do, I guess. Total waste of time.”
“Tsk. Got us both hyped for nothing.” Muttered Yuko. “I’ll go play some games.” Said Yuko standing up and walking out of the room.
Ugy just waved her away without even looking in her direction, completely absorbed by Noah’s action show that now took up the whole screen.
As Yuko threw a last glance at Ugy before walking out, she stopped and took a step back, glancing at him once again with her eyes squinted. She could swear she saw his whole body smudged in chromatic aberration for a moment.
“Asshole.” She finally muttered after a moment and walked away.
A few seconds after she left, Ugy’s plush body shook and smudged into red, green, and blue colors, as if he had three colored shadows or afterimages, before returning back to normal the next moment.