Chapter 2: Justification
That evening, Felix called me back to the capitol, he had something to show me, he said. I headed out and as I stepped into the capitol, Francisco was sitting there in the lobby. He immediately got up and started quickly walking at me. I flinched a bit, but was met with a “Hey, I haven't seen Twitch anywhere!”
“What?” I asked.
Why was this on me? “Okay, look,” Francisco started, “Twitch was telling me earlier today that he remembered something about you and him, and now... he's gone!”
Felix stepped out of his workshop and looked at me. “Oh, hey, Ash! Francisco here thought maybe we could help him look for Twitch. Would you want to give us a hand?”
“Uh... sure? Yeah, sure.”
“Oh, that's great, let me jus—oh,” Felix said, heading back for the workshop stairs before stopping to let Ardy pass.
“Hey... Francisco, was it?” Ardy said.
“Yeah, who the heck are you?”
“Ardy, a friend of Felix's.”
That was a goddamn lie and I knew it, they had known each other for less than 24 hours. “And, eh, Ba—Smith, it was Smith.”
I rolled my eyes a bit at that. “Do you know anything about Twitch?” Francisco asked Ardy.
“More than you'll ever know.”
“I've known him for a year, try me!”
“Fine, what 32-bit encryption protocol protects Twitch's data structure?”
“I... What the fu--”
“Yeah, exactly.”
“...No, like, I've been friends with him!”
“Oh, no, I get that, the friends thing, I could see that one workin' out.”
I was getting a bit frustrated with Ardy's gatekeeping and just Ardy in general, I headed down into the workshop myself. Felix was assembling a backpack, loading it up with supplies. “So, eh, Felix, what'cha got there?” I asked.
“Oh, well, I've got two bottles of water each for us in this pocket, a battery-powered GPS here, a first aid kit in this pocket, we have-- one, two, three, f-- four flares in case of emergencies, and a Modifier!”
“It's your town, you're worried you'll get lost?”
“Hey, Ash, you never know!”
Right, of course, obviously. “Oh, Felix, I'm not sure if this is related, but someone was asking about Twitch earlier today.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah,” I said, taking my phone out to show Felix the pictures of the man in the red suit.
“Oh, yeah, I saw that guy earlier today. I got a bit skeptical, so I grabbed his ID with the Modifier here, and it, eh... it lines up with some of the data packets Happy Infinity left.”
“You don't think...”
“I do, Ash, and I have no idea exactly where that guy will end up or what he'll want with Twitch, that's why I'm going through the trouble of packing all this stuff, in case they're hiding from us. Let me grab just one thing.”
Suddenly, I felt a tap on my shoulder and flinched, turning around. Ardy was there, staring at me through a pair of sunglasses while actually tying his tie. “'Scuse me, Baker. Hey, Feli--”
“Why do you call me that?” I asked in a bit of a frustrated tone.
“'Cause that's your name,” he said, bluntly.
“No, it's Smith. Ash Smith. You always end up saying Baker, that's—”
“Your father's last name, yeah, I figured that your mother Meredith would have taken his name and you and your brother would use that.”
“Wh-- how did you figure that out?!”
“You think I'm not familiar with how to access data in Civs?”
“Well, I don't like it, please sto--”
“Alright,” Felix said coming back into the main room of the workshop, “I've grabbed all I nee-- am I interrupting something?”
“Nothin' important, my guy,” Ardy said.
“Actuall--”
“Say, Felix, my man, when we find this Twitch guy, we're gonna get back to work on that file overhaul, right?”
“Maybe later, Ardy, let's go find Twitch first. Ash, you were going to say something?”
“Oh, it's no big deal,” Ardy said, talking over me, “just a bit of squabblin', you know how it goes.”
“No, let Ash talk,” Felix said, gesturing to me.
“Thank you, Felix,” I said, “Ardy's been using Baker instead of Smith as my last name.”
“Tha-- oh, that's was your...?”
“Yeah, and I don't like it.”
“Yeah, Ardy, I'm going to have to ask you to be a bit more courteous to Ash.”
“Yeah, I get it, man,” Ardy said.
He didn't though, I've called him out on this numerous times, and he's never responded to my wishes. Felix grabbed his bag, headed upstairs, grabbed Francisco (who was flipping through Felix's copy of Life as We Knew It since the moon on the cover reminded him of Majora's Mask), and headed out to his car. He stuffed the backpack in the trunk, and then opened the front passenger door. “Francisco, since we're looking for your friend, you can sit up front. I—if you don't mind, Ash and Ardy.”
“It's fine,” I said, more worried about having to sit next to Ardy in the car more than where Francisco sat. I sat in the back driver side and after getting buckled in just stared out the window, trying to avoid Ardy's unnerving gaze. The car roared to life and Felix started heading out onto the road. “So, I saw that red suit guy maybe three hours ago, he headed down 86th street.”
Felix turned the car left down the road, past the arcade and a few other shops before coming to a stoplight. “I'll take a guess on this one, heading down left wouldn't have much, straight down dead-ends, so we're heading right.”
“So, Ash, I gotta ask,” Ardy said.
Oh no. “Ash, ya gotta girlfriend?”
“W—what? No, I'm no--”
“--Right, figured I'd ask if you were a le--”
“No, I mean I'm not looking to date anyone.”
“...Why not, had a rough time with that?”
“No, just one or two run-ins, it just wasn't for me.”
“Right, I mean, yeah, that's... y'know. Got another one for ya,”
“No, I don't really want to answ--”
“How's your day been?”
It... it was alright,” I said, “you're not helping matters.”
“That's what you think,” he said.
“...You better not have done what I think you did.”
“What, what do you think I did?”
“You messed with me like you said you would last night, didn't you?!”
“To give you the good day I promised you.”
“Well, I didn't need you messing around with me, I said no.”
“Come on, for someone like you? How co--”
“I said no!”
Felix looked up into the rearview mirror. “Ardy, we're going to have a serious talk when we get back about this one.”
“I wasn't the one who shouted in your car, man!” he shouted.
“Okay, but your behavior towards someone I would consider a friend is... we'll talk about this later. Wait, is that them?”
I looked over top of Felix's seat to see the man in a red suit walking into the woods. Felix quickly drove the car onto the dirt path. The man kept weaving between the trees, trying to avoid the path altogether, but Felix kept an eye on him and was able to keep up with the man no matter what shortcuts he took. Eventually, the road emptied into an old campsite, and we got out of the car. Francisco began to circle around the park, looking for Francisco, and eventually called out. “Hey, there he is!”
We rushed through the trees to find Twitch and the man in the red suit together, the man interrogating Twitch. “I told you, I don't know anything else about Felix!” Twitch said to the man.
We kept a safe distance behind, and Felix took off his backpack and set it on the ground. “Come on, kid, you have to know more!” the man said.
“Fine, if you want more, I can tell you about the first time I met him, but there's literally nothing important in there.”
I looked over to see Felix taking a gun out of his backpack, maybe a M1911, his hand shaking as he watched the man question Twitch. “Finger off the trigger, safety disengaged, be aware of what's past the target...” Felix mumbled to himself quickly before taking a shot.
The bullet hit the dirt quite a ways away from the man, who shouted out in fear along with Twitch. Felix stepped out of the woods and into the clearing. “Let that young man go!” Felix said in a stern voice I had never heard from him.
The man panicked, pulled out some sort of Modifier-like object, and quickly scanned Twitch. Felix lunged at the man to stop him. The man kept looking at Twitch through his sunglasses. Twitch sighed, as if he knew what came next. I looked over, Francisco was running and shouting, too. Ardy was nowhere to be seen. And when I looked up, Twitch had disappeared and Felix had knocked the man in the suit to the ground. The man reached for his Modifier, pressed a button on its screen, and he, too, disappeared. The Modifier fell to the ground, its screen disconnecting from the rest of the device, the screen shutting off.
Felix tried to put the two halves of the Modifier together, but no matter what, the screen would not come back on. “Oh no, oh no, this isn't good... where did they go?”
Felix headed back to his bag, took an old laptop out of it, and logged in, connecting the laptop to his Modifier with an Ethernet cable. As he furiously typed, Francisco wandered around the clearing, cussing and shouting in anger at the man's actions.
“Oh no...” Felix began, “I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but Twitch... Twitch has been completely deleted. He's g--”
“I'll kill them!” Francisco shouted, “They took my friend and I won't let them do that! Fu--”
“Now, Francisco, I get you're upset, I completely understand that. I will be looking through my archives to see if I have an older backup of Twitch and if I do, I will try to patch him back in. Let me get you all home. Ardy? Ardy, where'd you go?”
“He disappeared before the man did, I have no idea where he went, though,” I said.
“Hmm, well, I'll just have to give him a call. I apologize for all I put you through tonight.”
We got back to Felix's car, and he dialed Ardy's number before taking off. “Huh, he isn't picking up. Well, if he's trying to avoid having that serious talk with me, then he can forget it, it's going to happen one way or another. Well, Francisco, do you want to sit in the front again, or--?”
Francisco looked over at me, I could see tears welling in his eyes. “You can have it, Ash,” he said.
“You alright?” I asked.
“I'll be fine!” he snapped defensively, a tone I hadn't heard in a while from him.
Once Felix started the car, he reached into the center console and grabbed a tape, which he fed into the cassette player. “Space Oddity” quietly played on the trip back home. Felix dropped Francisco off first, and on his way home to drop me off, it had started to rain. “It'll be alright, Ash,” Felix said as he turned on his windshield wipers, “we'll sort this one out, we've handled worse before.”
“Thank you for the encouraging words, Felix,” I said as he pulled into my driveway.
I got out of his car and headed inside. It had been a really long day and I just wanted it to end. I stuck some leftovers in the microwave, then headed into the living room to wrap myself in a blanket and play a bit of Splatoon while it cooked. The rain had started coming down harder, and after a short match, I shut the console off and ate in the kitchen. I could have sworn I saw a shadow out past the backyard, though (for my own sanity, mostly) I assumed it was nothing.
At around 8:00, Mom came home and immediately headed upstairs for bed, and about an hour later I figured I'd go to bed as well. As I turned off the Wii U, I heard rapping at the back door again. I was immediately overcome with a sinking feeling, I knew who it was, and I rationalized it was best to simply ignore the sound. As I headed from the laundry room to the stairs, I spotted a figure standing right at the back door, staring in.
I jumped at the sight of the figure, which had immediately begun to pull the door open. I rushed for the door, pushing it shut, trying to lock it and avoid the monster. “Ash, c'mon, it's me, Ardy!” he had said.
I pushed harder to get the door locked. The figure stepped back, and I stared at him through the window. “Now, I get it, we're on rocky terms, you and I, but I figur--”
“Where'd you go earlier today?” I asked.
“Oh, don't worry ab--”
“No, I will worry about it. Did you run so you wouldn't have to deal with Felix, or is there something else?”
“You don't need to worry a single moment about what I'm up to, it's nothin' important.”
“It's pretty damn important if it's more worth your time than saving someone Felix has known for years!”
“Come on, Ash, you don't think I know that, do ya?”
“Then why didn't you act like it instead of flaking on him?”
“I-- we-- d--... hold on, lemme just-- gimme a moment,” he said, before sliding the door shut.
I didn't really want to hear whatever idiotic thing he was about to say, I headed to my room and the moment I did, I was flooded with a warm, comfortable feeling I couldn't describe. Maybe it's because I showed Ardy how much I cared about him (I don't), maybe it was just my mind rewarding me for making it through the long day, but I was overcome with a warm, sleepy, blissful feeling. I curled up in bed and was asleep in an instant.
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