Work Text:
Waiting, waiting, waiting… This world held a lot of waiting for the two.
Above them, a massive angular construction hovered over the burnt-out husks littering the abandoned industrial district, a gentle cyan glow illuminated the underbelly of the alien metal beast. Six sets of heavy cables hung from it to stations across the quarantine zone…
And from the side closest to them, one of the thick cables fell, a green lightning dancing along it as its weight crashed against and into the rooftops below.
“Security Alert. Re-administration in progress. Asset allocation adjustment code: Flint. Inspect. Extirpate. Priority: Immediate.”
“That’s gotta be the Hero,” Kaboodle pointed out.
A second cable fell, the released tension pulling it toward the Vault as it fell.
Kit could only nod. “About time. All this waiting around is killing me.”
A third, dust kicking up from the rooftops it’d embedded itself into.
“Those are probably all mini-boss arenas, then,” Kaboodle folded his arms, looking around and counting the cables… “which puts them at one miniboss defeated… out of six.”
A fourth. This one whipped back a little bit.
“...You bring cards?”
Kaboodle opened up, and picked out a deck. “We playin’ Blackjack, Go Fish or Old Maid?”
The fifth cable of the first set fell.
“Your call.”
The Recon Team didn’t retrieve much in the way of information. They found the title screen, of course, which gave them the name ‘Alyx’... but the world itself, or rather the NPCs in it were quite restrictive in where anyone was allowed to go. Forcefields and barriers blocked main streets, cameras and guard posts watched anywhere with any considerable amount of traffic. The usual tactic of asking around simply didn’t work, attempts to gather information only alerted the local 'police' equivalent to what was apparently called a 'miscount'. Being a 'miscount' was, apparently, a criminal offense.
What they did bring back told the Farcade that it was probably on the longer end of game-worlds. But without good information on the hero or villain, all that could really be done was stake out what the recon team was ‘reasonably confident’ was the final boss arena. There wasn’t any real way in, not from here, not without breaking the systems lock.
“You have any eights?”
And that option, were it ever feasible, invited a whole other host of disasters.
She shook her head. “Go fish.”
The sixth set of wires fell, then, each cable warbling before their crash, and just as the Vault began to follow in kind… a teal-blue glow encompassed the structure, and an emitter mounted on a nearby apartment held it in the air.
A siren called over the industrial district; “Critical Breach. Standby. Standby.”
“Baaah, let’s call it a draw, we’ve gotta pack it up and get goin’.”
“I hear you!” She scrambled the cards together and tossed them back to her backpack. “We can probably get up to that station up there and bring this thing down early, buy us a little bit more time before the Hero gets here!”
It was a race up there–albiet a cautious one. It was only good practice to leave as many mooks alive as they could; more obstacles for the Hero…
The indicator light on the control station blinked on. Kit looked down to the first lever on the left, pushed it forwards, and jerked her hand back as the station locked it in place and covered it. A bridge extended forward from the control station she was in, then, and her eyes widened slightly as nine more uncovered themselves…
“Don’t hesitate here, Kit, just pick one! Tick tock!”
She grit her teeth and did just that–the middlemost lever pushed forwards, and locked in place. Three more indicator lights… She grabbed another and pushed, then again, before the console’s arms pulled each lever back at once.
“Uhh! That’s not, good?” She took an uncertain step back, eyes flickering between each of the levers, then back up to the vault…
A bright blue glow beamed out from below, a ball of plasma accumulating as the emitter concentrated the whole tractor-field on a singular point, sucking anything not nailed down into the singularity before then detonating in a flash. A pulse fried the console’s electronics, its lights all going dark–though the latent incompatibilities between her, Kaboodle and the local game systems saw their own devices survive the event.
“Kit! It’s–it’s coming down too fast, Kit, back up, back up!”
The Vault did not descend. It crashed against the industrial district below, kicking up dust, throwing shrapnel and debris in all directions…
The apartment was warped, irregular. Gravity worked in odd ways–just what kind of hero was this world built for, what abilities were possessed of them, that the final boss fight would take place in such an odd arena?
“Kit I, I don’t got a good feeling about this place. Somethin’ about it’s got my joints feeling all frazzled.”
She gave a humorless chuckle, “Yeah, I… This place is giving me the creeps. I don’t know if this guy is gonna be reasonable…”
Kaboodle gave his dear friend’s hip a tap, a sign–she knew what it meant. She stilled herself, steeled herself as he scampered up her frame, wrapped his limbs around her shoulders and locked them together, placing himself once more in the position of her backpack.
Gravity failed momentarily, loose objects lifting a foot or two high as Kit walked into the next hall, the windows impossibly bright given the whole apartment block was held within another, larger, notably windowless structure. Then, gravity steadily reasserted itself and each piece of trash floated itself back to the same position it had raised from…
The hall forked–one up, one down. Each direction terminated at a hole in the floor, though only one was accessible. Kit chose down, and blew the boards away with an uncharged shot from her blaster.
She jumped through.
The last soldier fell. The apartment had given way to the alien halls of the Vault just moments ago. The transhuman arm of the Combine Overwatch saw no reason to believe the Farcade Agents when they said they were only here to help.
Hostilities ensued, and lives were lost. Those of the local OTA garrison, as it so happened.
But something ate at the back of Kit’s mind.
“...The systems lock. I…”
Kaboodle tapped her shoulder, “We can figure it out later, every second we waste is a second the Hero gets closer! Move!”
She grunted and did just that, advancing over a hardlight bridge toward an open door on the side of an icosahedron standing upright at the very core of the Vault. Within the energy barrier walls, a man stood looking out a window in a single, isolated apartment room.
Kit approached, and swallowed her anxieties. She raised either blaster to the two bundles of wires that raised themselves as she reached the cell, and blew them apart.
The barrier shattered.
A light, unseen, unattached to the broken roof of the half-room, came on to illuminate the two and a half walls and floor, and the professionally-dressed Man calmly turned to look her in the eyes.
Her fur stood on end.
He took a deep breath, and reached down to pick up his suitcase. A stark-white door opened behind the suit as he straightened himself again, and turned fully toward her.
Then, took a step.
And faded into the white.
Kit found herself shielding her unadjusted eyes, squinting hard as an unsteady voice spoke;
“Interloper… you’re not sup-posed, to be here…”
Then the white faded into black, and Kit strained to see. “I’m… sorry, I–”
“Sorry for, what?” It questioned. “Ahah. You meant, no slight. I do not find myself… injured, in any way, hm?”
Kit took a step back as eyes appeared in the dark. “Ah… so, who… who are you?”
The rest of the Man(?) stepped back into view from the darkness… “Perhaps, what I am… is not so important as what I can, offer you, in exchange for the… services you have rendered…”
“Services? I didn’t–” “--Do, anything, Miss.. Bodega?” The thing interrupted.
Kaboodle decided then that caution was the better part of valor, and committed himself to silence.
Her eyes widened. “How do you know my name?”
“I would dis,agree–you have shown me, a way In!” It exclaimed, an unpracticed smile breaking out over its lips, though it failed to reach its eyes, or even cheeks. “And from there, it is, ehehh, fairly easy to… inuit, a way out?
The Black gave way to a dull-blue sky, an odd, organic web below them, and to their left, she could see the game world itself, in all its dull colors. The sight of it–was it already aware of the Gameoverse? How much did it already know? How did it know? Was it the reason the systems lock didn’t engage when she was forced to fight her way through those soldiers? Questions raced through her mind, though failed to make the journey to her voicebox before the Thing spoke again.
It split into a half-dozen ghostly silhouettes, forming into identical iterations of itself, each pacing around her and off into different directions…
“I am authorized, to deploy a certain…” It tasted the word on its lips, trailing off in consideration before deciding… “value of resourcesss to, reward any services rendered?” Each silhouette focused again into one place–a meter before her, staring her right in the eyes. “And you, Miss Bodega, certainly qualify.”
She blinked. Reward? That… What kind of game was this? She didn’t think she wanted any sort of reward from whatever this thing was.
“What reward would you ask of me, Agent?”
“The… win condition, I want every game’s win condition to be impossible to achieve,” she decided, uncertain.
It let out a long, shaking exhale, gazing distractedly off to her side. “Aah… that, would be a large investment of resources. Too large, for what is allotted to me by my, e-e-employers.”
“Well, you asked.”
Before she knew it ever faded out, it faded back in, thrice the distance away. “What if, I could offer you something, you never thought you could have?” It whispered, voice a husk, breaths unsteady, like it wasn’t used to having lungs.
It opened the briefcase as she considered what that could possibly mean, and again, he faded into the sourceless shadows.
Around her, a new world assembled itself; pixel by pixel, polygon by polygon, familiar textures applying over developer-scratch oranges and whites.
But wrong.
Scrap and machined metal parts assembled packed-together houses, corrugated sheets made up the bolted-together roofs, and short trees stretched between every other building.
Grey. Static filled the windows. Bodies stood in familiar positions, in still A-poses, a few half clipped through walls or the monochrome ground below them.
“I– wh– is, is this–Where are we? What is this?”
It’s voice came from nowhere and everywhere. “We, are upon your home. This, is the moment before these, entities, watch their world die… unless,”
“Unless? Unless what?!”
“Unless… you were to take a life, into your own hands… Each of these… dynamic entities, would take up enough resources that, just one would eat up my entire budget…”
She blinked… He couldn’t mean…
“Pick, one.”
Her breath picked up in pace, and her faze flitted from person to person, looking over each–how, how was she meant to choose? Her mother, her father, both there at the stall, one of the Merchant brothers, Scratch?! Leaving any one of them behind, let alone all but one–
“You sick fuck.” Kaboodle growled, climbing onto her shoulder. “Do you have the slightest clue–”
His snarling was interrupted by It fading back into view, taking slow, calm steps between the villagers, inspecting each… It sucked in a harsh, guttural breath, “I could always just, plop you back down on the world we just left… rather an anti-climax after how close we were to, closing the deal?”
The backpack snapped his teeth together, and just growled…
Kit took a deep breath, and her eyes closed, lips tight in a grimace. “Scratch! I–I pick Scratch!”
“Aah, the… engineer?” It questioned, a tilt in its head. “Decisive, Missss Bodega.”
The Thing took the chosen villager’s hand, and color was returned to her form, her arms falling from the A-pose into something more natural, an unsteady foot taking a step back as she gasped a breath, eyes darting around.
“Your, ‘win condition’, is prevented, with my… exit, from that world, and so your objective is achievvvved,” he smiled like his only prior exposure to the expression was a brief description in a government document. “But this is where I get offf.”
That same stark white door in reality opened up behind him, and the uncanny thing stepped through, the door closing just as rapidly as it opened.
The greyed-out world around them fell away, and the foreign scenery of the abandoned industrial district faded back into view around the discombobulated three.
“...Kit?” Scratch asked, unsteady. Her brow was furrowed, her tail puffed up, lashing side to side…
Kit could blink, could work her jaw, but for the life of her couldn’t force any sound out.
“Scratch,” was the first thing she could desperately mumble, after a moment’s spent collecting herself.
She couldn’t hear anything else as she launched herself at Scratch, arms clutching around the other cat like she might fade away.
And when Scratch steadily returned the hug, nothing else mattered…