Chapter Text
This game world was so infuriating, and Kit just knew that she was on her last strand of sanity.
It should have been an actual recon mission for once, but thanks to all of the… problems that had arisen on Flapper’s planet, Dusk had become increasingly concerned with beating Syntax to the punch. The instant he saw even the slightest bit of data indicating that maybe, just maybe, they were headed to another world, even if it didn’t seem like they’d reach it for another two weeks? He wanted the crew of the Nimble there in three days.
To Kaboodle’s credit, and Gobbles’ crash course in interspace navigational systems—
“PRESS. THE. LEFT. BUTTON. FOR. SCAN MODE! HOW MANY TIMES DO I HAVE TO FREAKIN’ TELL YOU?!”
“MY LEFT OR YOUR LEFT?!”
“AM I THE ONE IN THE SEAT RIGHT NOW, DUMBASSAURUS?!”
“TECHNICALLY YES, AND I CAN’T SEE—”
“THAT SOUNDS LIKE A YOU PROBLEM—HEY, SUPER MORON, GET THE HELL AWAY FROM THE TRASH CHUTE, YOU’RE NOT GOIN’ IN THERE UNTIL TUESDAY!”
“Oh, sorry!”
“Kaboodle, no!”
“Kaboodle, absolutely the fuck yes.”
—they had made it there in two.
Unfortunately, that’s where the convenience ended.
The world was much, much, much more complex than Flappers’ ever was. It was some sort of… political, choice-based, strategy-focused, role-playing game set in a world of swords and sorcery. In the past, it was easy to find the Hero and Villain in RPG worlds—good guys had spiky hair and a can-do attitude, and the bad guys looked like Dusk.
Dusk hadn’t been especially fond of that framing, but he never disagreed, so.
In any case, that simplicity was nowhere to be found here. There seemed to be multiple factions in the midst of a five-year war, all of whom seemed to have their own ideologies and intentions for the future of their world—and they all had abilities (and possibly ancient dragon bone weapons) that were capable of destroying the planet long before Syntax could even enter its orbit.
Fun, Kit had thought. Everyone thinks they’re right, while they all go out and do a whooooole lotta wrong.
It unfortunately felt very familiar.
All that was to say that finding any one “good guy” to stop, or one “bad guy” to help, was like looking for… how did Kaboodle put it? ‘A needle in a stack of needles in a box of needles on Planet Needle?’ Something like that.
It took at least a full week of information gathering (and shopping for cloaks, masks, and the closest approximation this world had to platform shoes, to make it not so obvious to the mostly-human world that talking animals-and-an-asshole-robot walked among them) to finally narrow down a possible candidate for the ‘Hero’ role: a stoic swordswoman who just so happened to awaken from a coma that lasted the exact length of the war, and who had just met up with one of the factions’ leaders…
…at the same time that Nimble had caught a signal from a familiar Syntax ship.
Pressed for time, Kit made the call—while Gobbles and Flappers guarded the ship, she and Kaboodle would set out to confirm the leader their Hero had aligned with…
…and from there, find the villain capable of taking them down.
What Kit hadn’t expected (but at this point, really should have) is that one of their quarries would find them first.
The first two arrows had jettisoned Kit’s cloak, revealing Kaboodle to the dim sunlight of the forest. The second pair hit Kaboodle himself, one in each of his arms. As he cried out in sudden pain, his grip still tight around Kit, the two flew backwards into a nearby tree.
Kit could hear the dull shunk of the arrowheads slipping into the bark with expert precision, though her focus was mostly on the sudden headache growing from the point where her skull had slammed flat into the tree. “Ah!”
“Holy hell,” Kaboodle snarled, “I can’t move a goddamned muscle! I thought these assholes couldn’t—ah, shit,” he realized. “We can’t get them, but I don’t think any of them have ever tried to get us.”
“Good point. One problem. You don’t have muscles,” Kit groaned, blinking away the stars in her eyes. “Maybe. Are your wires muscles? Too hard to think right now.”
“Hell if I know, but I do know that you don’t have goddamn arrows lodged in your arms! So get your head together and—”
“Well, would you look at that. Can’t say I’ve ever heard of a talking feline, let alone one with a metallic familiar.” A figure, clad in gold, emerged from the clearing…at least, Kit thought it was gold; it might have still been the concussion. That would also have explained the multiple figures, armed with various weapons, flanking him at all sides. The figure approached, revealing a young, dark-skinned man with slicked back, jet-black hair. His outfit, on closer inspection, was more of a gold and black combination, with a golden epaulet and cloak on his left shoulder and a patterned sleeve on the right. An emblem of a deer sat atop that rightward pattern, a flair which seemed to be mirrored on all of his companions. A massive, almost skeletal archery bow sat upon his back, with a thin carton of arrows attached to his right hip. In his left hand…
“Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me,” Kit muttered.
As soon as Kit’s gaze landed on it, Fold’s eye quickly vanished from the rolled-up ‘map’ he had become. The figure seemed to register Kit’s stare, a smirk emerging at his lips. “I take it you and my little guide here have met? He did say he wasn’t a fan of cats and backpacks, and while I didn’t quite understand what he meant then…”
“Guide?” Kaboodle spat, as best as he could for a machine without the ability to produce saliva. “That piece of shit’s only good for bein’ a coaster.”
“Kaboodle, not the time,” Kit hissed—though she did take some satisfaction in the way Fold shuddered at what she suspected was a memory of the time she had accidentally left a soda can on one of his corners. She looked up at the man before her, sweat dripping down her brow. Is he the Hero’s right-hand? I don’t see anyone who fits her description, but if Fold is here… “What—what do you want with us?” Kit demanded, squirming in Kaboodle’s rather literal iron grip.
“A chat,” the man replied with a cheerful tone. “I think that we would have plenty to talk about.”
A small, almost imperceptible paper tongue stuck out at Kit. She swallowed her fear, leaning forward as best she could. “Whatever he told you—he’s lying, you have to believe me. He’s trying to—well—it’s nothing good!”
“Oh, I’m well aware that he’s trying to use me,” the man drawled, twirling the “map” between his fingers. Kit could only hope that both the motion and the man’s words are. “But, we’re in a sort of… mutual use situation. I’m hoping the same can be true for you.”
“Huh?!” At this, the ‘map’ slipped out from the man’s fingers, unfolding into a humanoid shape. The man’s immediate adjutants drew their weapons as Fold took his full form, but their leader waved them down. “What the Hell are you talking about?! I told you, these—these monsters are here to wreak havoc! You have to have your army execute them, immediately! You have them right where you want them!”
“If you’ll recall, dear map of mine,” the man replied, as he flexed his fingers, “I said that I would follow your path, not your instructions. These two sounded interesting, so I wanted to see what had you so worried. That said, I’m sure we all could come to some sort of an agreement. I think we all want the same thing at the end of the day.”
Kit and Kaboodle shared as best a glance as they could from their precarious position, as Fold’s pale body began to fume red. “No! What I want are these losers buried six feet under, and for you to finally take me to Byleth Eisner! You said she would be meeting us here!”
The leader put a hand to his lips, in mock horror. “Did I say that? I said that I’d help us find her—I certainly hope you didn’t take that to mean she was with my forces.”
Fold clenched his fists, which quickly morphed into a pair of—power cannons?! You copycat! “Wh—you—you lying little snake!” He snapped, much to the gold-clad man’s amusement. “Fine! I’ll take you and the Farcade agents out in one fell swoop! Miss Information will be sorely disappointed she missed out on the fun!”
“Deer, actually,” the leader corrected. “You see, snakes tend to deliberately wrap around their prey in order to suffocate them slowly. Deer tend to be far less vicious, and are happy to co-exist with the people around them…that is,” he added, raising a hand. “Until they feel threatened.”
“What?”
A loud rustling erupted from all sides. Gold and black emerged from the bushes, from the forestry—from within the tree canopies themselves.
Swords, axes, blades, bows and arrows—even what looked to be spellbooks.
All trained on Fold.
“Are you aware of the force of a deer’s bite, my friend?” The leader gestured to his soldiers. “I’d be happy to demonstrate why you never want to find out.”
Fold shot a glare at Kit and Kaboodle, his breath heaving in fury. Then, in the blink of an eye—as a gust of wind blew through the forest—he turned back into a solitary piece of paper. The gale (which seemed rather suspiciously timed, for Kit’s reckoning) pushed Fold in-between the cracks in the soldiers’ formation, before he vanished far into the forest.
A young woman approached from behind the leader, her long pink hair a startling contrast to the darkened greenery of the forest. “Should we bother following him?”
“Nah. We’ll find him if we need to.” Turning back toward his captives, the leader’s smile didn’t fade. “Now, about that chat.”
“Ain’t you gonna friggin’ introduce yourself, or do your arrows have your name engraved on ‘em?” Kaboodle snapped, as the man drew closer.
“You know, friend? You have a point.” As the man came within a few feet of the pair, he knelt down, making eye contact with both Kit and Kaboodle as best he could. “I’ve been at war for so long, introductions and cordialities have fallen a bit by the wayside.” He held out his left hand to Kit. “The name’s Claude. If I’m not mistaken—or rather, if my sources aren’t…
“I think I might just be the ‘villain’ that you’ve been looking for.”