Arc the third: A New Infinity
Chapter 1: Band Together
I've got exciting news, Mr. Librarian, sir, I've got a job! Yeah, I still seem a little young for a job, but I've been looking forward to this one! They were looking for programs people wrote, and they told me I wrote the best one! And it was all on a high-density floppy disk, everyone else used a CD! They want me to start in a couple days, hopefully I'll have enough money for a place all my own!
I had texted my friends, asking them to pull stunts similar to what Alex had done to keep themselves safe. Franklin messaged me, saying he had told the men in red suits to “bugger right off”, Nathan told them to shove it up their ass, and George's uncle told them to go to hell. I was so proud to have such awesome friends in a moment like that, though in the moment I was worried. Would they not be able to come over again? On one hand, I was determined that we needed to get Felix out of there, come together with Modifiers in hand, and then we could all go storm the capitol and take Roland out, but on the other hand I was terrified. Could a man that lithe fire a gun that massive without absolutely destroying his hands? It wouldn't be a surprise if he had perhaps given himself the strength to carry a weapon that size. Mom came home that night worried for us, Alex had told her what happened and while she couldn't take time off in the middle of a major project, she did want us to stay vigilant. If only Dad was here to watch the door and didn't, y'know, kill a man.
That evening, the doorbell rang. Alex peered out the window, before calling “Ash, it's your friends!”
Alex invited them in as I came downstairs. “Hey, Ash,” Nathan said, standing right next to Franklin with George, Francisco, and Randy behind them.
“Hey, guys! What brings you here?”
Francisco nodded at Nathan, who then took off his backpack and raised his Modifier. “Felix gave us these a while back, I can't exactly remember why, though. And Francisco has two he got from Twitch, he gave the other to Randy. I figured we could all, y'know, make a difference with New Infinity.”
I was a bit emotional. “You... you think we could make a difference?”
“Sure we can, Ash!”
“You guys are so great!”
“Ah, we couldn't really have done it without you, for a few reasons,” Franklin said, “you let us know what had happened to Felix, and you were the person who changed Felix's outlook on the town for the better. He was really closed off about this being digital before you came along and broke it, he had to learn to embrace that, that's why he trusted you with the Modifier, why he came to trust us.”
“So it's time we return the favor!” Nathan said.
I headed back to my room to grab by Modifier and we all sat around the coffee table in the living room. As I tapped the screen to wake it up, the screen was solid red with Happy Infinity's logo on it. Ardy had messed with it, that much I knew. I sighed. Shit.
“Oh, let me help with that,” Nathan said as he produced a bulky cable from his backpack and hooked his Modifier to mine. “Franklin noticed a “Flash Firmware” option in the settings, this way if anyone's stops working for something like this, as long as we have one working Modifier, we can get them all working again. This is just a Serial cable, which means if we get Felix back, we'll have tons of them,” he concluded with a chuckle.
After a few minutes, the screen on my Modifier lit back up with the usual information screen. “I also brought some colorful tape and permanent markers and Franklin's got some other stuff, so we can mark who owns what Modifier.”
We decided we needed a unique logo, something to unify us, and we came up with an idea. The Happy Infinity Company's logo was a grid of four boxes with a C through it, the result of overlaying an H, an I with serifs, and a C. Our idea was a play on that, a single box with a slash through it, the result of an N and an I. After marking the grips and the backs of the screens with the symbol, we each decorated ours differently. Nathan had contoured the edges of his with tron lines, Franklin colored his royal blue with white and red accents, Randy had given his a monochrome pattern across the grip surrounding the logo, Francisco had drawn a Grim Reaper performing a BMX bike trick while playing a flaming electric guitar (for some reason), George put red stripes across the side of the device, and I had colored mine with a dark gray, red, and orange color scheme with the closest approximation of the Team Fortress 2 colors we had. “As of today,” Nathan said, “we are the resistance!”
Randy, Francisco, and Franklin cheered to that, as Alex walked by to fill a cup of water. “So does the resistance want me to toss the egg rolls and rangoons in the oven?”
As food was cooking in the oven, we booted up Super Smash Bros. and Francisco took out his laptop, a cheap little silver thing he probably bought for school. “Hey, Ashley,” he said.
“Yeah?” I replied.
“Twitch told me... he told me I hurt you before, but I can't remember when. I feel really bad about it.”
“That's... that's a tough one,” I said, which was perfectly truthful.
“But, like, what did I do?”
“Twitch told you that this was all a simulation, a digitized civilization, and the two of you worked to bring it down, burning things down on one occasion and messing with Felix's plans every step of the way.”
“But I'm not like that anymore, am I?”
“I dunno, I barely know this Francisco.”
“There's only the one of me, Ash.”
“Well, you know what I mean.”
“Uh... right. But what about Twitch?”
“Felix helped him see the error of his ways. Should we be able to bring him back, he'll be a better person than he was before you two were re-acquainted with each other.”
“No, actually, I had a better idea. See, I made a huge list of information on Twitch, and we can use that to put a new one together in the Modifier, right?”
“I don't think it works that way, I don't know.”
“But we could give it a try sometime?”
“I don't feel comfortable answering that one. Maybe Felix could help us if we can find him and rescue him.”
“Right, let's get him back now, and Twitch after that!”
“Ash, you're up,” Franklin said as he passed me his Pro Controller.
I picked Ryu as my character of choice (thankful we were playing on my console where I bought all of the DLC characters). “So, what's our first step?” Randy said, choosing Luigi.
“Finding a way to get the suits out of here, or at least leave us alone,” Franklin said, “they're going to slow us down if they keep doing their searches. They still think Ash is on the run.”
“Yeah, that might be a good idea. Um, but how are we going to get to Felix?”
“We'll get there when we get there, I guess,” Nathan said, choosing to play as Falco.
“And we're gonna be ready when we get there!” George said, choosing Pikachu.
“Well, if we can't just kick them out, could we somehow make a way to prevent them from coming in?” Nathan suggested.
“Like some kind of shield?” George said.
“Yeah, yeah, that's what I was thinking!”
“I think Felix once mentioned that he could tag individual things and use those tags to sort stuff,” I said, “so we could find out how to get into those files, add tags to us, and then let anyone with that tag pass through.”
“Okay, but how do we get into that?” Franklin asked.361Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡbGe4ZdbnpO
“Are we going to have to get Felix out sooner than we thought?” Randy asked.
“That, or his computer.” Nathan replied.
“I know where one's at,” I said, “he installed some Tandy thing at his front desk, it's right inside the door.”
“Oh, yeah, that ugly plastic thing. Yeah, if it had access to his network then we would just need to download his files or outright use a Modifier to hook it back in later.”
“So when are we doing that?”
“We should probably wait a day or two, or send someone in who hasn't been at the capitol in a while.”
“Uh, hey, guys, I don't know about this, suddenl--” Randy started.
“Look, whoever it is, just ask to check out a book from Felix's library, and when the coast is clear, just unhook all the cables from the back and take the computer. I don't think we'll need the monitor, but if you can score that, then that will save us some time figuring out how to get it displaying on a modern TV screen or Ash's monitors.”
“But what if there's people watching me?”
“Just... we'll have to figure that one out as we go, but I think we can do it.”
“I don't recall us ever asking specifically Randy, though.”
“It's just, I dunno, I haven't been up there much and--”
I ended the round with a spike, taking Nathan's last stock.
“Fine, I guess I'll go,” Randy sighed.
“It'll be easy, Randy,” Franklin said.
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