Story
This is the beginning of a four-part story:
The story opens on the streets of Lost Angles - a blasted, wasted city inhabited by Nulls (slug-like creatures, each with white markings on a single dominant color). In the distance, Hexadecimal is in her lair, having recovered from "Painted Windows". To Scuzzy and Mike the TV, she is showing off her Looking Glass, which is displaying images of the Supercomputer (the blue skyscrapers on an orange sea, as seen in the opening sequence). "If only Megabyte knew how easy it is to find. But you known what they say: He got the smarts, but I got the power." She becomes bored of gloating, and demands that Mike entertain her. He displays a clip of "The Bride of FrankenBinome". HD demands something else, so Mike shows an opera. But when the fat lady sings, her high note cracks Scuzzy's dome and shatters the Looking Glass. A web of nasty looking tentacles is visible behind it - some of them reach out and grab Hex.
Hack and Slash are babysitting Nibbles, the Null. The two bumbling henchmen appear to have had an IQ upgrade; they are speaking in coherent sentences now. Meanwhile, back in the lab, Dot, Bob and Phong are trying procedure number 9508 in an attempt to turn the nulls back into sprites. The idea is that the defeated player's parameters are stored somewhere in a saved game.
On the other side of the Looking Glass, a circular opening forms, and something black and menacing comes though it. It has more tentacles than an octopus, and at the end of each arm are more smaller arms, like a fractal drawing. It crosses over into Mainframe and takes over Hexadecimal, turning her completely black (with a nasty looking tongue). The nulls, Frisket, and AndrAIa all react when Hex is taken over. The Mainframers follow the nulls to Lost Angles. There they meet up with the media sprite and verminous familiar (Mike and Scuzzy) who, along with Hack and Slash, are fleeing the Null monster: Nullzilla.
Back in the Principal Office, Phong explains that the nulls are isolating Hex, protecting Mainframe from whatever it was that came through her Looking Glass (and it wasn't Alice). Even though nulls drain energy, Hex has transfinite power limits. They will have to contain her. Phong has prepared for just such an emergency. He goes to a door, and says "F.A.B." [The rest of this episode is very much like Gerry Anderson's "Thunderbirds Are Go" puppet animation show.]
Inside a wood panelled office (with pictures of the main players on the wall) Bob is wearing a suit that looks like a black beetle, Dot is a lady bug, Enzo is a grasshopper ["Ah, Grasshopper" says the Ancient One], Frisket is a hornet, and Mike is a gnat. They go through color coded tunnels and speak the magic words to activate their vehicles. "Black Beetle Turbo Pincher Force", "Ladybird Accellerator Spotted Carapace Force", "Grasshopper Sig Pulse Hopping Force", "Woof Woof Woof Woof" (Hornet Force), "Gnat's Slightly Annoyed High-Pitched Buzzing Force". They have to get the vehicles up to speed and then form a giant robot, using the phrase "Reboot Robot Entomologizing Force". [The end result is like Voltron, Dynaman, and countless other mighty morphing power robots.]
The inhabitants of Mainframe are in a panic, shown as a faded-color scene of binomes running around in front of a rear-screen projection of Nullzilla. The giant creature is just about to knock the 8-ball off of Bob's apartment building, when the giant robot shows up. [During this scene, the background music is exactly like a cheezy tune from a 1960's Sci-Fi action show.] Bob tries a sucker punch, which knocks Nullzilla on top of the the apartment, smashing it. "Oh, no. I've just redecorated."
Phong tells them to use the Destructo-Matic weapon. Bob's body language is visible as the giant robot pats its pockets looking for the 'Matic, then changes to Dot's pose as her voice says "Phong, we haven't got a Destructo- Matic". Back in the PO's basement, the mighty weapon is still in its case. While waiting for AndrAIa to fly the 'Matic to them, the team fights the monster in the form of Rockem Sockem Robots (trying to knock its block off) and World Wrestling Foundation pro wrestling (jumping up and down on the opponent). The Destructo-Matic disperses the nulls (smashing a clown). This leaves a weakened Hexadecimal back in her normal form. Whatever caused the problem is gone.
Megabyte's pet null, Nibbles, returns to its crib. MB says, "there you are, Father". [What does this mean? And why did Hexadecimal say "he got all the brains, but I got all the power? Were these two viruses created at the same time? Answers in the next episode!] The web crawler bursts through the roof of the Silicon Tor, swings down and turns MB into a black creature.
Scenes from next week: A large viral sprite having a combination of both Megabyte's and Hexadecimal's colors and markings says, "I am become Gigabyte, destroyer of systems!"