Arc the Ninth: Crackdown
Chapter 1: Business as Usual
“So now we're in charge of fixing Francisco's mess?” Nathan asked when I briefed him and Franklin on the situation that night.
“Yeah, unfortunately. I still have one to hand to George so we'll have five people plus Felix. He told me that we shouldn't go out of our way to check if we don't have to, he can access some of the missing changes and mark down where they are. He'll fix anything significant, we're mostly fixing things like lamps facing the wrong way, little stuff.”
“Sounds reasonable,” Nathan replied, pointing the gun around.
“So that should be that, just keep an eye out and if you see something that is not right, just revert it back to the save state on your Modifier.”
“You said you had one for George?” Franklin said, “I could get that one to him, he's coming over tomorrow for some help on his Summer reading assignment. School starts for them in about a month from today, and he's wants me to proofread his paper on Of Mice and Men.”
“Alright,” I said, “here you go. Alright, it's getting late, I'm headed home.”
“Alright, see ya, Ash,” Nathan replied as I headed out the door. The mid-summer evenings were always really nice, the air had cooled down a bit and the gentle breezes and the sunset poking out from between the trees always felt very pleasant. As I entered the house, I searched the fridge, grabbed some pizza from the dinner I missed, and microwaved it while looking over the new Modifiers. Felix mentioned updating the firmware in them, but everything seemed to be in order, save for maybe just one new feature. Along the bottom of the touchscreen was a bar that contained the date, a forward and a back arrow, and a “revert button”. I leaned so I could get right in line with the TV, and scanned it. I clicked the back arrow, and the date changed to “6 June 2015”, with the changes highlighted, all of which seemed to be advanced things, nothing about the type of TV, the picture quality, anything. So it seemed all we really needed to do was scan something wrong, backtrack to the last update, and revert, and that would halt Francisco's progress. Neat.
After I finished my dinner, I went to my room to watch the evening Game Grumps episode. They had just started a playthrough of Super Mario Galaxy, and it had been going pretty well so far. George called me later in the evening, thanking me for the Modifier, and Felix called shortly afterward to make sure everything was going alright. I ended the evening with some more art and animation practice. The Wacom Felix gifted me a while back was probably overkill, I was looking at Huion for the longest time because Wacom is so expensive, but at this time I more or less didn't particularly care. Felix was a mystery but it was clear he meant no harm. Tomorrow would be the first actual day Counter Strike is in action, and I'm pretty confident that we'll be able to shut down any of Francisco's attempt to screw with the town. Weird how only a year ago I absolutely hated the town, and now here I was helping save it.
The next morning, I got up before 7:00, was out the door at 8:00 just going for a walk before it got too warm, but kept my Modifier on hand. I only noticed a couple things out of place, things like a bench facing away from the pond and instead facing towards the street, or a lamp in the middle of a baseball field instead of on the corner, but nothing serious. I figured either Francisco didn't do anything like that, or Felix already fixed them. As I walked past the cafe, Felix stopped me. “Hey, out doin' some modifying?” he asked.
“Yeah, just figured I'd clean up anything that got screwed up last night. Doesn't seem like much, though.”
“There was a little bit in the capitol, but I haven't seen much.”
“That's a relief,” I said, “have you seen Francisco or Twitch at all?”
“No, the last I saw them was near the end of the school year,” he said with a shrug.
“Well, be on the lookout.”
“Alright, you take care, Ash.”
When I got back home, I noticed that the door was locked. I reached for my keys to unlock the front door, but none of them seemed to work. I knocked on the door, and after a few seconds Alex opened the door. “Lock yourself out?” he asked.
“Yeah, none of my keys were unlocking the door,” I said.
“Huh, weird.”
I flipped through my email around noon, and got one from the New Infinity college campus. I had applied to their animation major back a couple weeks ago, seeing as I wouldn't need to make some god awful commute or live on campus, and Felix said they were pretty good about accepting applications, but the email said I had been denied. Curious.
“Hey, Felix?” I asked him over the phone.
“How can I help, Ash?” he replied.
“Seems the college denied my application.”
“Huh, that's odd. I can give them a call, if you want, give me just a moment. This should be quick.”
He didn't call me back until later that night, oddly enough. It was during dinner, mom had heated up the leftover pizza and I got my call back. “Hello?” I said, taking the call in the garage.
“The people at the college were awfully rude with me, Ash. I'm sorry, but it seems they aren't accepting applications right now. I don't know what to say. If you want, we could both go and ask them tonight. If they don't want to hear it from me, then maybe they'll hear it from the star student they're shutting out.”
“Tonight? Felix, that--”
“Yeah, it's a bit spur of the moment, I know, but I've got some stuff going on tomorrow that I have to attend to. I can come pick you up here in like twenty minutes and we could go meet with the office of admissions? You could bring your mother if she isn't busy.”
“She has some paperwork she needs to sort out tonight, so that probably won't work. Look, couldn't I just go tomorrow?”
“You could, but I dunno, maybe they need to meet with me in person to sort this out? After all, it's only because of me they're here.”
“I guess.”
“Great! I'll be there soon!”
I sighed as he hung up, and told mom about what happened and will be going on. She was understanding that Felix wanted to meet with them with me, and didn't have any real objections. I got ready and waited up front, and after a few moments a red-painted, wood-paneled vehicle pulled into the driveway, absolutely the most Felix car possible. I rolled my eyes as he walked up to the door and rung the bell. “Ready to go, Ash?”
“As ready as I'll ever be,” I said.
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