Sp4rks's Maiden Fight

Context

Following the events of "ACHEy Breaky Bones" where Sp4rks, Ca1yps0, Lil' Boomer, Skimmer and Carbon were employed by Spider to go in the ACHE and stop White eye from recompiling Deus. Sp4rks & co are together at Spider's meeting point, with them is a suitcase containing a fragment of Deus, the Administrator. The suitcase can only be accessed through a dataport. Most of the team suggest destroying the device, most of their contacts too, but Sp4rks insist about disabling the fragment from inside to learn more about Deus-based AIs, and prove to himself he is able to keep up with them. This is in reference to the worry some of it's relations put in him regarding Marianne, the (secretly AI controlled) matrix-based state of France.

The fragment's personna inside the Briefcase, known as the Administrator, looks like a somewhat square-ish large HR manager, reading and stamping papers most of his time. He is kept in a host looking like an infinite skyscraper of offices in an impenetrable white void, data trails milling around.

Preparation

Before going in, Sp4rks ask Ca1yps0 for some help, which she provides to him between two warnings of how foolish this enterprise actually is. She infuses his Personna with resonnance, raising his Attack attribute to 16 (9+7) and Firewall to 16 (8+8). She also conjures a F8 Machine Sprite, which uses it's Calibration powers on the deck.

Appearance-wise, those effects are manifests as :

• Sp4rks's weapon, Traditionally a Bident takes on the form of a Turquoise-ish Trident with golden accents and a Sea-Serpent styled handle
• Sp4rks's Coat Grows Turquoise-tainted Steel scales.
• Sp4rks's Pan sees the F8 Machine Sprite, a Kraken, coil around it, his avatar grows four additional tentacle-arms as the Kraken plunge his own tentacles in the Pan.

Kitted up and as ready as he'll ever be to fight a Fragment of Deus, he thanks Ca1 and dives in the briefcase in cold-sim, as she gets ready to jack him out at any time.

The fight

As the administrator sees Sp4rks start to rez in it's own office, he scans his avatar. Given Sp4rks was not running silent, he easily understand his intent : 16 Attack and Firewall in addition to every attack and defense programs loaded painted a pretty clear picture. Sp4rks however did not lend the Administrator any time to steel himself, he still was not fully rezzed in as he swung his trident at it. Seeing the hit come the Administrator split his avatar in two along the swing axis of Sp4rks, completely ignoring the Matrix's Personna restrictions as if they straight up did not apply to him.

Having missed, Sp4rks immediately swings again at one of the avatar parts, and luckily he manages to hit an invisible thread keeping the two parts connected. Doing so triggered the secondary part of the Administrator's avatar to explode in a shower of cristalline shards, as the active data inside was freezed and reverted to Deus's default look.

Breaking this link gave Sp4rks just enough time to seize his opportunity, as the Administrator's avatar was closing down his wound he slipped in a black-hole looking bundle of his own code to give himself backdoor access in the target's processes, functionally obtaining 3 marks on the Administrator.

Sp4rks's deck was starting to have a bad time, the Kraken dismissed numerous heat popup warnings as it calibrated the Cyber-5 to perform at it's highest ability, in meatspace the deck became hot to the touch as the Administrator fought back. A Hypnotic data-spike was on it's way towards Sp4rks, what was left of the Administrator's avatar raised up every paper contracts around the building full of offices and sent them in his direction with hypnotic images and text plastered all over them. It was only with the help of the Kraken's four tentacles that he managed to dismiss all of them.

Having been Knocked back by this latest attack, Sp4rks infuses it's Trident with all of the attack power he can, before throwing it with all he has towards the Administrator, who dodges it with ease and a deadpan expression. A sense of dread welled up in Sp4rks when suddenly the matrix glitches, everything is back where it was a fraction of a second ago and Sp4rks adjusts his throw accordingly, the Trident striking true as it pulverizes itself against the core of the Administrator, cracking it's crystalline shell open and pulverizing the rest of his avatar away.

Shattering the Administrator's core had unintended consequences, as it's carefully constructed world shattered alongside it. The impassive white engulfing the tower showed cracks through which a huge crystalline tree could be seen, and the tower itself crumbled down on it's inhabitants. The Administrator's core had little problem floating away from it but Sp4rks was still subject to gravity, it was with the help of the Kraken's tentacles that he latched onto crumpling concrete, jumping from piece to piece to get ever closer to the core.

The Administrator, seeing Sp4rks near to it's weakened core grew vines and tried to latch unto his foe's avatar, at multiple times he was successfull but the vines were effortlessly cut by Sp4rks's scale laden coat, as he continued his ascension and took a leap of faith reaching for the core.

With no trident left, Sp4rks plunges his hand in the core, seizing onto the first thing he can grip and starts pulling on it, the sheer processing power needed caused his deck to turn incandescent as the Kraken painstakingly fixed every system failures that ensued. Feeling it's very consciousness slip, the Administrator latched unto Sp4rks's inherent resonnance and started his update process. Sp4rks suddenly was pulled towards the core as it's arm turned crystalline, milliseconds felt like seconds as his very resonance signature was partly overwritten. Recognizing the crystalline pattern growing on Sp4rks's avatar, and feeling the heat from the now spontaneously burning and sparking deck, Ca1yps0 dumpshocked Sp4rks.

Aftermath

Sp4rks looked surprisingly healthy for what just happened, he however had trouble getting and staying up for some minutes after and had the shakes for about an hour.

Once the initial shock wore off and adrenaline stopped pumping, he got back in the briefcase to check if he actually got it.

The environment was of a somber crystalline tree overlooking a crumbling building, stuck in time. there are crystalline fragments scattered around, containing everything about the administrator outside of it's actual sapient core, who seem to have partly disappeared.

But he noticed that the distinctly crystalline part of his avatar did not go away, he can displace it but never remove it, later he would discover that sometimes his avatar glitches and does things he wanted to do but never actually intended to.

The Administrator managed to survive but at a hefty price, outside of it's very consciousness it lost everything. memories, goals, temperaments, nothing is left. It rebuilt itself by merging with Sp4rks's personna (in a harrowing experience), thus sharing it's brainwaves patterns and thinking similarly (but not exactly) like him.

Mechanical Aftermath

here is what i think applies best to what happened, to be validated by thematics.

• Online Fame - In the shadow and hacker circles, the footage propagated worldwide.
• Distinctive Avatar - The permanent crystalline structure makes it so his persona can never really be anonymous, nor replicated.

• Prank warrior - Sometimes (always at the worst moment), the AI will take a matrix action as Sp4rks's personna. For example Sp4rks thinks "i really want to data-spike Amrei right now", he doesn't because he don't want to die, but the AI does not have this instinct, and it just goes for it.
• Wanted by God - God agents saw the video, and Sp4rks is exactly the kind of profile they have in this bin marked "Recruit material". They monitor his appearances and are trying to recruit him, but if he refuses negotiations they will try to disable him and take him regardless.