Arc the Tenth: The End is Nigh
Chapter 1: Nightmare
I had to pull myself together, I knew I just had to find Felix and he should be able to fix this situation. The house phone couldn't connect and I had no signal with my cell phone, but that wasn't the only way to get in contact with him, surely. Maybe Nathan or someone else would know? I got my keys and went out to my car, and drove down to Nathan's house and knocked on the door and waited. After a minute of waiting to no response I peeked into the window, and it looked like nobody had lived in the house for years. Did I still have his keys? Where was Nathan? I got back in my car and headed over to Franklin's house. The entire neighborhood was destroyed and run down. Somewhere among the ruins, I saw a trail of smoke. Was that someone? I hoped it was someone. I pulled over to the side of the road and stepped out, carefully stepping into the ruins, afraid of what I might find. “Hello? Who's there?” someone asked, startling me.
I looked over and saw a familiar sight, it was Felix laying up against a chunk of a wall, in front of a fire. He looked a bit disheveled, his red vest gone, his white undershirt untucked, a bit of stubble on his face, and his hair not as neat. “Felix? You're alive! What's happened to the town? Where is my mom, Alex, Franklin, Nathan, what's goin--”
“I don't have answers right now,” Felix said with a dull tone, “I'll get back to that one when I can.”
“Where's my--” I started as I pulled out the two parts to my Modifier.
As I started clicking them together, his hand slowly pushed them down. “They won't work here,” he said, not making eye contact at all.
“Felix, are you alright?” I asked.
He seemed out of it, gone to whatever did this to his town. “They have locked everything out. I've been thinking of simpler times,” he said, staring wistfully off into space.
I was starting to get frustrated. “Felix, you can't just sit around in these ruins when Francisco and Twitch have unleashed whatever this is onto your town! Do something, fix it, F--”
“Ah,” he said, shushing me suddenly, “I am doing something.”
Felix got up, turned around, stepped through a door frame, sat down at a chair, and did nothing. I was tearing up. “Felix, ju—just tell me what's going on, please!”
“The wanhope that plagues our kind we will waysend, and into a new era of bountiful weal our destination,” he said.
Felix was gone. I stared at him for a solid minute as he sat there occasionally muttering some cryptic phrase I didn't understand but otherwise sitting in silence. Finally the sight became unbearable, and I shouted at him. “Fine, if you're not going to help fix your town, I'll do it! Try to stop me, come join me, I don't care anymore! If this kills me, reduces me to another corpse at their hands, I don't give a shit! You don't either, because what Francisco said is true, isn't it? Was this all just a ruse, all along? Why won't you be straight with me?! Answer me!”
I turned around immediately and ran back to my car, threw the door open, slammed it shut, and drove back to my own house and rushed inside. After a few deep breaths to stop me from crying at that, I clicked the Modifier together and clicked my refrigerator, and no options came up, just like Felix said. I separated the two pieces over and over, hoping for something, only getting a red screen that said “ADMINISTRATOR AUTHORIZATION REQUIRED”. After a dozen attempts I did finally get a different screen, but all it said was “TOO MANY ACCESS ATTEMPTS. RESETTING USER...” before switching to a black screen.
I was trapped in a corner. I had no way to fix what they had done, and the one person I needed most refused to help me for some reason. But something had to be done. I might get myself killed, I might become some abomination by their hands, but if nobody else was going to stop him, I guess it'd have to be me.
I figured in case anyone else was still around, I should leave a note. “To Whom This May Concern: I am Ashley Smith, and the world has gone to hell. Felix refuses to fix this, so I am going on my own to amend the situation. If I do not return by tomorrow, August 1st, 2015, assume I am dead or worse. Here's to hoping for a better tomorrow.”
I drove down to what was left of the capitol, in front of a new gate with stairs spiraling up the plateau. I checked the Modifier one more time, and a username and password screen appeared. I took a breath, and typed in “NIFELIX” as the username. As for the password, I don't know, he said what he wrote down was encrypted and I never took the time to crack it. I figured that maybe the password was reset, so I typed “password”. No luck, so I typed in my own username “NIASMITH” and my password “AshLand97”, and after a moment of a solid black screen, the standard display flickered onscreen, text and various input fields appearing and disappearing as if the files that make the Modifier work were seemingly being corrupted. It was better than nothing. Part of me wanted to drive down to where Felix was and shove this Modifier screen in his face, but I was here and committed to this, so I had to press on.
I stood before the gate and clicked it. There was no option to revert it to a past point, so I just started deleting properties until nothing was left. I clicked at the plateau and the castle but nothing happened, so I only had limited usage of the device. “WARNING: MISSING CRITICAL FILE 'ANOTHRESETTING.INI'” appeared on the screen. I dismissed the warning and continued up the stairs. The sky overhead was a dark purple-black, and it was becoming a little tough to breathe, but I needed to do this.
After an unholy number of stairs, I finally made it to the capitol's ruins. The glass doors I had entered and exited from so many times were obliterated, two empty frames. I stepped in and looked around, and I had to admit that seeing toppled bookshelves contained ruined copies of Felix's favorite books, the door to the workshop caved in (and the side entrances leading to just a flat wall at the bottom of their steps), and all the signs of the red building's life stamped out were disheartening. I climbed up the steps to the second floor and stepped out onto the balcony for just a second. I could see Felix's fire, I could still see my house, but all the buildings, hills, mountains were all broken-looking and devoid of texture. I turned around and approached the great room's doors, deleting them as I did with the gate and dismissing a low battery warning. A new rocky slope in the center of the room led up to the doors of what I guess was now Francisco's castle.
I clicked the door but found no settings to alter. I didn't come all this way to turn back, so I approached the door and gave it a shove and a kick. A couple more shoves and I heard something give, the doors could open just a bit and I could see a chain holding the door shut. I clicked it from between the doors and deleted it, and the doors came open without much more effort. I was exhausted by this point, but I couldn't stop now. There were two more staircases on either side, leading up to a platform with another staircase spiraling up into the castle. I took my time climbing the steps, my Modifier ready for when I actually got to them. I didn't know what I was going to do to them, not yet at least, but if this Modifier would let me I would send Twitch and Francisco back as far as I could, undo all their mistakes, maybe even send them back to before they arrived and kick them out. I had to change my train of thought, I was starting to sound like Francisco a little. I chuckled at that joke and approached a new massive door at the tops of all these steps.
I could hear some arguing from inside the castle doors, I knew it had to be them. I was only going to get one shot at this, so I had to make it good. As I approached the door with my Modifier raised, the door flung open on its own. Francisco was sitting in a chair facing away from a desk with Felix's terminal on it, and he was wearing some sort of black armor with a cloak. “I knew you were coming, I heard you climbing up the stairs,” he said.
“I don't want to hear it!” I cried, pointing the Modifier at him. What did you do to Felix? To my family, my friends, where are Twitch and Randy?”
“Twitch? I still got him. He hasn't been doing too well but he helped me build all this. Your family, though? Hmm...”
I raised the Modifier up to aim and clicked him.
No options, and a warning dialogue "MISSING CRITICAL FILE "NISETTING.INI'". Shit.
“...They're gone,” he said with a toothy grin.
I rushed towards him, but I suddenly heard a “Sorry,” and found myself on the ground in pain.
“You finally did something right, Randy!” Francisco said.
“Francis, I—I don't feel good about this, Ash is my friend and you had me punch her, it's jus--”
“Friend?! I am your friend and you know it!”
“Bu--”
“You aren't good enough to have other friends! You need me! Who cares about a fat, stupid jock who cried watching Gravity Falls?”
“Hey, wou--”
I started getting back up from being punched, and Francisco got out of his chair, grabbing his Modifier device off the desk. “Randy, you know just as well as I do that Felix wants us all to die, that's why all these settings were still in the code for the city, by exposing this and breaking it down, I'm freeing us and killing him. What part of that do you not understand?! Nobody else cares about you!”
“Francis, I ju--”
As Francisco geared up to punch Randy, I spoke up. “I care, Randy.”
“You d--?” he said just as he got punched in the jaw, sending him sideways.
“And you! Felix's little pawn, I've been waiting for this moment for a long time. Twitch wanted to play the long game with Felix, something about giving him a taste of his own medicine, but for you I've got something special lined up...”
I quickly aimed my Modifier at his and saw a few stats pop up. The screen was really starting to go at this point so I just mashed where the delete button would be otherwise, trying to destroy that thing. It disintegrated in his hands just as mine died, and he looked shocked. He narrowed his eyes, glared at me, and muttered, “you shouldn't have done that.”
I quickly bolted for the terminal, maybe unplugging it would fix things? I didn't have the time to log in to change anything, and even if I did I don't have Felix's credentials. Francisco started screaming at me as he lunged at me. Just as I made it to the terminal and felt around the back, I noticed there was no power cord to speak of. Francisco grabbed me by the throat and hoisted me into the air with strength he must have hacked in for himself. “Pobre Ashley,” he said, shaking his head, “she could have been a normal girl or a geeky outcast if she just stayed out of other people's business, but here she is siding with a maniac and about to die.”
“You're... the maniac!” I strained to say.
He opened giant glass doors behind the terminal desk and took a couple steps out onto its balcony. “If you would have just believed me and Twitch and worked to dismantle Felix, we wouldn't be in this mess, now would we?”
I looked over and saw the terminal glitch, becoming invisible for a second, distorting rapidly. “Uh...” I began, mixed with quite a bit of pain.
“But you just had to help the guy who worked for the company responsible for thousands of disappearances in twenty years!”
“Uh, Francisco...”
“And now look where we are! I'm having fun with my last few moments, once you're dead and gone I'll free everyone else, and you two will rot on an old computer in a--”
“Francisco?” I finally asked, straining.
“Wha--” he began, as the terminal erupted into a giant ball of darkness, toppling him over.
He let go of me, and I only barely caught the guardrail for the balcony. I climbed back over the rail, in pain and absolutely exhausted. The terminal was now a giant sphere of negative energy of some kind, destroying whatever it touched. I quickly bolted around Francisco, ignoring the clear signs I should take a rest, and ran down the stairs. Maybe this would be enough to get Felix's attention, his computer had become a black hole in his own town.
ns 15.158.61.16da2
