Pressing Player 2 Start without asking
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MothMan had been feeling off his game for the past couple of days, no thanks to the weird chatroom that had spontaneously manifested on all of Sophia's devices and stubbornly refused to be uninstalled. In addition to fumbling a scam directly in front of an Official (not that they had any real identity to go on at least), the last conversation he had there seemed tailor-made to prey off his anxieties surrounding DarkChips; anxieties he needed to get off his chest.
It wasn't a secret Sophia wasn't in a great mood either, having been dragged to another flipping birthday party she was too old for, all for some random-ass family member she wouldn't even recognise the face of. At least it being hosted at an arcade gave her ample amounts of dark corners to sulk in, and kept the debate between her and her Navi well-obscured by bellowing attract demos throughout the building.
"I'm telling you, we really shouldn't be involved with anything to do with Nebula. Or that EventHorizon person." MothMan sternly asserted, flying in place on the middle of the PET screen. "I thought we agreed to never handle DarkChips, because you know if we were spotted with-"
"I only wanna know what this new Nebula is up to, I don't plan to join them." Sophia half-heartedly cut in, slumped against the wall. "Look, I just think this is the kind of thing we need to have optics on, 'cuz if Nebula's still around they'll want to take all the other chumps by surprise. We need to stay in the loop." Sophia's voice gradually became more assertive as the thought of being one step of people ahead entered her head. "And it's not as if looking into Official Navi patrol patterns means I want to join those jerks."
MothMan stopped fluttering and landed on the homepage ground, retracting his wings. He could tell Sophia probably would have wanted to join Nebula if she had a Navi with a less... sordid history with DarkChips, but the conversation was going in the right direction. "Well we still should keep an arms length." MothMan had relaxed his tone a little, but he wasn't faltering with the sternness. "Nebula's entire M.O. is about the spread and distribution of DarkChips, you can't not be involved with them if you're interacting with the group..."
MothMan simulated an exhale while fiddling with his antennae. "Sorry, it's just ever since that chatroom showed up I've been... feeling off." He admitted. "Especially with those weirdos going on about multiverse BS..."
"Join the club." Sophia confided, not that anyone other than MothMan would have sensed any empathy with the cold tone of her voice. Both the Navi and Operator looked as if they had something else to say, but the commotion nearby from Sophia's family was getting louder and harder to ignore.
"...Let's see if we can hack into the ticket machines." Sophia broke the silence between the two of them as she got off the wall and stood up (not that her posture changed much), before stuffing her PET into her jacket and walking towards the thicket of arcade machines, and well away from where the main party was taking place. It's not as if the family communion would notice her sneaking off, because when was the last time they paid actual attention to her anyway?
-
The arcade seemed unreasonably full, but the crowd seemed to congregate at one end. It left the dance machine open with an audience to entertain, so Bambi set up HQ while Pointe gathered intel via the cameras.
She was two songs in before Pointe sounded in. "It's a birthday party, little star, and I think your new girl is in attendance!"
Bambi took her time entering her name on the scoreboard and getting water while Pointe pulled up a swiped screenshot from the security cameras. Face mask check, bug theming check. Cute sulky edgy girl energy, super check!
"I couldn't hear the Navi through the cameras, but the NetOp was talking about Nebula being back and Officials." Pointe spun in place, before closing the image. "They're going to hack the ticket machines!"
"Great job, Pointe! Let me know if anything else comes up, but I think I've got the rest." Bambi gave the hologram a little kiss before Pointe disappeared. She needed to get the girl's attention, and that was easy enough. Bambi was hard to ignore regularly, but if the girl was a scammer, it wouldn't be hard to speed things along. Edgy girls like easy victims, especially if they thought they could knock them off a high horse.
No one had stepped up to the dance machine in her absence so she took up post again and spotted a young girl in a birthday crown. Perfect. "Is it your birthday? Oh my gosh, come up and dance with me! My treat!"
Birthday Girl was small enough that Bambi could hold her by the arms and spin her around on the dance mat to hit the buttons with more accuracy than an eight year old could alone. It wasn't anything like her own perfect score glowing at the top of the board, but it put her on the first page. and Bambi sent her off squealing in delight when she handed her the giant pile of tickets she had accumulated. A cute and loud siren to snag Buggy's attention, and a generous gift to establish herself as the honeypot worth trying to get into.
-
Lugging her body past several arcade machines, ranging from corny ticket redemption games, pinball tables and some weird cabinets she didn't recognise (Tournament Bushido Ball? My Hero 3?? Super Turbo Mettenna Puncher?! What even was a "Mettenna"???), Sophia landed upon her target: a row of three ticket exchange machines. The rightmost one was out of order, but the other two were unoccupied and fully operational. Despite the gaudy artwork slapped on front, the machines were generic and unremarkable models; the front had a single row of LCD text, a slot to feed in tickets, a small printer to convert the tickets into a single barcode receipt, and the actual important feature: A jack-in port for maintenance.
...Or at least, a jack-in port behind a small locked hatch. Sophia rolled her eyes at the pathetic attempt at security. Sure, it would stop any old idiot from jacking in, but "any old idiot" wouldn't have a PET modded with an overclocked IR sensor, outputting way stronger signals than legal electronics manufacturers would allow. Discretely digging her PET out from her pocket with a tight grip on the handle (the tape holding the handle together was starring to give out, better put a fresh wrapping on once I'm out of this dunghole...), Sophia touched the IR sensor directly on the hatch, pressed the jack-in button and "casually" turned the corner and walked away, making sure there was good distance between her and the machine. Lest it be blatantly obvious she was breaking into it...
Sophia only caught a glimpse of MothMan successfully entering the comp space before having her attention diverted by an ear-piercing squeal from nearby. Startled and recoiling, she instinctively snapped her head up towards the banshee wail's source: a dance machine right at the end of the current row of cabinets. Taking a needlessly hard stare, she sighted two people: A little brat wearing a birthday crown (was she the barely-related family member of the hour or someone who just happened to have the same birthday? Sophia had such little investment in the party she genuinely couldn't tell) and a girl closer to her age with black and white hair, dressed appropriately for a marathon session of the dance game.
Normally Sophia would have brushed it off as a brief distraction and got right back to MothMan, but something seemed... odd. The DDR girl was making a very animated showing of handing princess eardrum-burster a big knot of tickets; while she could just be acting cutesy for the kid, Sophia was getting the feeling she was trying to make the exchange as overt as humanly possible. Bet she wants brownie points from the other arcade-goers for being oh so generous by giving away her worthless tickets... (Sophia was only trying hack her way to a free high-value ticket coupon out of having nothing better to, or so she told herself)
Thankfully the birthday girl excitedly ran off in the opposite direction, hopefully preventing Sophia from being caught off-guard by her again. Regaining her composure and focusing on her PET (but not thinking to move out of DDR girl's sight, which would soon prove to be a fatal mistake), Sophia addressed MothMan. "Anything out of the ordinary in there?"
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Bingo. Buggy had caught sight of her. And she looked pissed about it too. God, Bambi hoped she was Throwawayaccount_307h. She needed her in her collection of crusty girls ASAP.
Then Buggy stopped looking at her and turned back to her PET. That wouldn't do. Bambi didn't get ignored.
Pointe gave her a conspiratory 'pssst' through her earbud. "They're using an IR scanner! He's in! But the door opens both ways."
Bambi smiled. "Yeah? You wanna do some recon? Make sure we got the right girl?"
"Tactical lesbionage action time!" was the only sign off Pointe gave before disappearing. Bug Girl's PET was a bit of a disaster, and Pointe resisted the urge to color code and sort while she was there. Progs were scattered, but they barely acknowledged her even when she waved and simply went back to the (probably illegal) mods they were handling. Amazing what acting like you belonged there did.
The chat was easy enough find, since she saw it in her own PET every day. She only gave it a quick glance, careful to avoid the DMs to maintain some level of privacy despite her current actions. She gave a victorious pirouette before logging out in a shower of holographic glitter.
"Mission success! She's the one!" She exclaimed.
"You're a dream, Pointe! Let's get our new girl!" Bambi chucked her empty water bottle into the nearest garbage can and disentangled herself from the loose circle of children still june-bugging to her since her little show. Buggy hadn't bothered to move from her line of sight, so she power walked her way through the crowd, not bothering to pretend she wasn't heading straight for her.
She seemed distracted, so Bambi gave her a polite tap on the shoulder to bring her attention back to its rightful place. "Hi Throwawayaccount, I'm Doe_Eyed, but you can call me Bambi!""
-
MothMan was fully prepared to report there wasn't anything of note inside the comp, even before Sophia asked the question. As the Jack-In sequence completed, MothMan materialised inside the comp and laid his eyes upon... an utterly perfunctory and indistinct cyberspace, sure enough.
"Nah. It's flat, square and there's not even any stray mystery data floating about. Just a couple of progs here." MothMan relayed. One the two Mr. Progs in question was at the furthest end of the comp space and could be heard muttering the same phrases on repeat; MothMan presumed that one was controlling the LCD, and the one in the comp's centre was responsible for the rest of the machine's functions. Both were conveniently facing away from the point of entry, totally oblivious to the intruder or the fact he was eyeing them up and down.
"Of course it'd be just as boring as the 'games' here." Sophia sneered. "Think you can talk the Prog into giving us free crud?" MothMan flashed a small, but wry grin. "With the old repairman scheme? Don't even need to ask me twice!" he confidently responded. Being far from the first time the two had done a hack like this, the Navi and NetOp didn't even need to discuss a plan; they were already mutually picturing the exact same steps:
- MothMan disguises himself as a NormalNavi, claiming to the main Prog he's a repairman doing routine maintenance.
- Get the machine into maintenance mode, and then poke around to see how the printed receipts format their barcodes.
- With that figured out, make the machine print out an ultra-high value receipt, with zero tells it wasn't legitimately earned.
- Have Sophia swoop around the corner and grab the print-out off the floor, acting as if she was just searching for something she dropped earlier.
- PROFIT!!!
The two gave each other an affirmative nod, followed by MothMan quickly curling into a cocoon and just as quickly bursting out looking far less moth-like. As he approached the central Prog, Sophia herself got closer to the wall and perched her backside on the hand railing. The main congregation further up seemed to be slowly trickling down, and she was fully anticipating some dumbass overexcited kid to run straight into her at breakneck speed if she didn't get out the way. There also appeared to be a small crowd forming nearby; a handy masking noise, provided it didn't get too lively for Sophia's low tolerance of loud sheeple.
But what self-respecting plan survives contact with the enemy? Just as Sophia got herself on standby to look up any technical information MothMan needed, she was taken aback by the familiar sound of a Navi jacking back into her PET. What? MothMan sure as heck wouldn't bail out that quickly, and he hadn't left the PET's view of the comp at all, being well into his repairman routine with the Mr. Prog. Her heart rate rising, Sophia mashed her way through the PET menus to pop up the homepage, coming face-to-face with... nothing? Huh? She then anxiously flicked through her files for any tampering, but everything seemed accounted for and none of the Last Read/Modified dates had jumped to the current date and time.
Sophia's anxiety was now replaced by pure confusion. What just happened? Was one of her hardware mods acting weird? Did the Jack-In port pick up a false positive from some kind of IR light in the arcade? Did a virus try to sneak in her PET, but got deleted by the automatic antivirus program? She closed her wide eyes and shook her head. She needed lock in and be MothMan's second pair of eyes instead of falling for another badly-timed distraction, darn it! Composure regained, Sophia hurriedly closed all the menus and returned to the view of the comp... perhaps in too much of a hurry, as she failed to notice the lingering glitter particles that weren't on the homepage pop up earlier.
The storm of confusion was too brief to break MothMan's attention from the Mr. Prog, whom he had just convinced to put the machine in maintenance mode. "ONE MOMENT GOOD SIR..." The green program spun around and yelled to his fellow Prog: "HEY, WE'RE GOING INTO MAINTENANCE!" The other Mr. Prog yelped and jumped, before beginning to quietly mutter "
*** SERVICE MODE ***" ad nauseam. That's as much as Sophia got to see before a third distraction made itself unwelcome: A small tap on her shoulder."Ugh. Has one member of the Bugby Extended Universe crawled their way here to force family time down my throat?" Sophia thought to herself. Expecting to see someone from main party, she apathetically raised her gaze, asking: "What do you wan-"
Sophia did a massive double-take as her eyes laid upon the DDR girl?! And if her close-up, rosy-cheeked smile didn't throw Sophia off already, calling her by the chatroom username certainly did!!
Leaping off the railing, Sophia could only muster a few variations on "Wha- Whu-" while eyeing up this "Bambi" and trying to get her thoughts in a row. Wasn't this the person who was acting all cutesy and wanting friendship, and then said she would have doxxed you if you ignored her?! Was she trying to get specifically my attention earlier?!
Sophia stood still and took a sharp breath, staring Bambi down. "Have you been following me?" she growled, trying to act cold but failing to hide her incredulity to the situation.
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Bambi gave a thoughtful hum. For someone trying to steal in broad daylight in a crowded establishment, she sure seemed easily shaken up. Prickly girls were so easy to throw off in real life. She might have been disappointed that another so called criminal was so soft, but well, moe gaps were her favorite.
"I wanted to mess around in an arcade, and thought I'd kill two birds with one stone by trying to meet my new friend!"
Bambi gave her best smile, careful to not step any more into her space. Buggy already seemed ready to bolt. "I didnt honestly think I'd be lucky enough to get the right I universe on the right day! Im either soooo lucky or the mods love me that much!"
Bambi held up her PET so Pointe could curtsey cutely, another spray of glitter lighting her up."So this is my Navi Pointe and shes the best. I told you my name is Bambi, and im also the best. What's your name? I know you said you wanted to be friends in chat, but now that we're face to face let's be IRL friends for real!"
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Sophia really wasn't sure what to make of Bambi in the flesh or her extroverted personality, but she didn't believe for a second that Bambi just so happened to arrive at the same place as her on the right day. Sophia was convinced she had to have some kind of ulterior motive; preying off the new blood in the chatroom in some fashion? Certainly seemed like there was no shortage of unscrupulous users in there.
As Bambi continued introducing herself and her Navi, Sophia kept her body tense, still attempting to parse Bambi's character despite having little to work with. She clearly had an ego to flaunt, and Sophia didn't get the impression she just a stupid, socially-overeager bimbo with how effective Bambi had been at tracking her down. Was she some kind of social climber? Trying to get in good books with everyone so she could later exploit their friendshi-
...Crud, Sophia did directly agree to be Bambi's friend in the chatroom. So much for saying that just to get Bambi off her back; she was practically piggybacking Sophia with how much she was on her back now!
"Some advance warning would have been nice." Sophia grumbled. "If we're going to be 'friends', then you and Pointy can start by-"
MothMan had been diligently "maintaining" the ticket machine, but he was starting to hit an impasse as the Mr. Prog was relaying unfamiliar error codes and hardware IDs. Time for his partner in crime to shine. "One moment, I need my operator to look through the technical manual for this..." MothMan confidently told the Prog as he turned around and brought up a video screen of... Bambi introducing herself to Sophia. MothMan's confidence immediately faltered upon seeing the uninvited guest trying to get so close to Sophia, but he had to keep a thick skin lest he gave himself away. Keeping his metaphorical tongue held, MothMan stared at the conversation taking place, hoping Sophia would quickly brush her off and get back to business...
...and then the mention of "the right universe" immediately set off alarm bells for MothMan. For fuck's sake, did one of those multiverse-obsessed lunatics track them down?! The ticket machine could wait, this was a problem that needed to be dealt with imminently. He gave hasty excuse to the confused Prog that he was missing some tools and stormed off to the comp's exit, but not before chucking a cocoon in the corner so he could quickly return later.
Halfway through her sentence, Sophia wasn't paying a ton of attention to her PET beyond keeping a good grip on it. But she was holding it at just the right angle for MothMan to address Bambi and Pointe through the screen. "What is it with you creeps?!" Bellowed though the PET as MothMan materialised on the homepage back in his undisguised form, cutting Sophia off. "If you're trying to indoctrinate her into this multiverse cult nonsense, you can fuck right off."
While Sophia wasn't used to MothMan making himself known to strangers IRL, she swiftly raised the PET up to Bambi's eye level. "If you two don't keep your distance or try anything funny," MothMan flew close to the PET screen and put on a menacing stare towards Pointe. "I'll rip those ribbons right off you. Got it?!"
Just as MothMan finished his threat, a young, squeaky voice called out in the distance. "Sophia! There you are!" Ugh. Sophia slouched in irritation. She was hoping to dodge giving her identity away! The voice's source haphazardly ran towards them: A freckled boy just shy of double-digit age, decked out in party gear and dragging along a bundle of tickets. "Everyone's been wondering where you'd wandered off!" Sophia winced at the family member she only vaguely recognised. "...Oh, are you one of Sophia's friends!?" The boy eagerly asked as he turned towards Bambi, failing to keep an indoors voice.
-
Bambi let her fumble around. Her suspicions were fair enough, and she couldn't fault her for that. She made sure to keep her hands visible, and a pathway clear if Buggy decided to skitter off to her family.
"I'm not here to hurt you. You already said we're friends, so we are. You'll find out there's a tendency for a lot of coincidences in the chatroom." Bambi gave her another smile. If she kept it consistent, Buggy would relax.
The Navi showing up and interrupting Buggy was a little frustrating. Buggy was already struggling with words. That was okay though. "Hello, are you her Navi? I'm Bambi and this is Pointe. I'm Doe_Eyed in the chat. What's your name?"
Pointe didn't flinch at the glare or the threat. She gave a smile, and curtsied again. A Navi getting aggressive because they were protective of their human was right and proper. He couldn't be too bad, if his first instinct was to jump in like this. Maybe should could teach him how to color code his Progs and organizational system. She'd just added 40 new color palettes to her collection. They could go over it together!
Bambi lifted her gaze back to Buggy's face. "I came because I wish my first physical run in with the chat hadn't gone so poorly. If I had known more beforehand, maybe I'd sleep better now." Maybe she would have made better decisions, chosen to scream for Dante at Caffiend instead of running or not followed that officer to her dimension.
"I know its a lot to take in, and you won't believe it on the first interaction, so I wanted to give you the chance to have a better time with it than I had. That's what friends are for, after all. They look out for each other!"
When the boy came running up, Bambi took note of his words. Sophia, huh? That was a cute name. The kid didn't seem to mind Sophia flinched and wincing at him. Bambi gave him a conspiratory smile, like she was letting him in on a secret. "Yeah, I'm Bambi! I'm from out of town so Sophia and I don't get to see each other much, so I was hoping to catch up. Sorry to steal her away, but can I have her for a little longer? Pretty please?"
-
MothMan was visibly irritated that his threats didn't rattle the two of them in any way; in fact, Pointe looked... impressed by his knee-jerk reaction? As much as he wanted to remain iron-clad defensive, it was clear this approach wasn't going to be the winning move against these two.
"The name's MothMan. Or CybercoffeeExpert, if you want to know so badly." MothMan scoffed as he landed back on the homepage's floor. "Just tell me why you're here, okay? I can't stand tinfoil-hat schizos on the Undernet, let alone in-person." MothMan was trying to relax his tone and demeanour, but his attempt to shift to his more friendly persona was being overridden by his steadfast assumption that Bambi was an actively dangerous threat.
As Bambi gave her explanation for wanting to meet them, MothMan kept his arms sternly crossed and expression sceptical, but Sophia's body language seemed to loosen just a little bit. She didn't trust Bambi, but at the same time her brain couldn't easily contrive any hidden intentions or signs of dishonesty behind her words. But that just meant she'd need to worm them out of her instead...
"Yeah... That's what friends are for..." Sophia replied apathetically. "So if we're friends... can you tell me what you know about this chatroom? All I know is that it's impossible to uninstall, and somehow appears on everything you own." "And it's filled with freaks who believe the multiverse is real." MothMan quickly added.
Sophia saw Bambi's lie to the boy coming from a hundred miles away, but didn't bother protesting or refuting it. If anything, it seemed Bambi was trying to get him out of their hair quickly; Sophia certainly wouldn't protest to that.
"T-That's great! Sophia never tells us about her friends, but if you two want alone time that's okay!" The boy cheerily squeaked out to Bambi, not taking in how unimpressed Sophia looked. "Mom just wanted me to tell you they're gonna bring out the birthday cake soon! Don't miss iiiitttt!" He turned 180 and dashed off before finishing his sentence, presumably in pursuit of the aforementioned cake.
Sophia quickly turned her head back to Bambi. "We're not following him by the way. ...I'm not a fan of party food." (Unlike some people, Sophia cared about what she put into her body...)
"Now that he's away..." MothMan raised his voice confidently, now doing a better job of controlling his demeanour. "How'd things go so badly for you then?" There was a twinge of smugness to his voice, as if he was deliberately trying to pull at a sensitive area.
-
"Oof, careful with words like that - I can't imagine people with schizophrenia like being used as an insult to conspiracy theorists." Even evil people needed to have standards. Dr. Regal would never.
Bambi shifted from foot to foot as she thought. "Not much honestly. Its ran by some program called Guardian who has like, a thing for brunettes? You said there was a blue navi that took down Gospel, right? There's tons of him in there, and his NetOP, but they're not always partners?" She avoided them like the plague. Netto and Rockman were nice, but they tended to be followed around by her own personal pain in the ass, and she didn't need another run in.
"I don't understand the science. It's not my thing. But these freak portals open up sometimes, and people or things come through, or sometimes they open up underneath you and you wind up face first in someone else's space. And whether you play into it or lurk around for laughs not believing in it-" like she had "-it doesn't go away and it will find a way to force itself into your life."
As the boy ran off excitedly, she waved until he was out of sight. She was a little disappointed to not be invited back for cake. There weren't any young children in her family so she didn't get the opportunity to see kid's parties, or chill family gatherings, often.
Bambi stilled a bit at Mothman's words, but if Pointe worried that his obvious attempts to poke at old wounds were affecting Bambi in any way past what the experience already had, her fears were squashed when Bambi sprung back to life. Bambi leaned in, hands up, the picture of a teenage girl dying to share her weird experience with a friend in excited confidence.
"Oh Buggy - oh sorry, Sophia - you wouldn't believe it - I got chased into an alleyway. Like a dame at the start of a gritty misogynist detective movie - straight up chased me through the streets while his navi sound-drugged me!"
Pointe is already flipping through the image library before Bambi can turn her PET around to ask her to do so. "Look at this- look at what he did to my beautiful skin! You can see my ribs in the bruises! You can see the pattern of his last-season shoes!" Sure enough, the images she had taken after the bruises had time to bloom purple across her skin showed where Agaki Marc had kicked her. Mottled blue and grey and violet showed darker on the lines of her ribs and revealed the pattern of his soles. "And then! Some weird cop lady showed up and she was okay but she took me on the worst trip ever!" Bambi did a twirl to dramatically drape herself across the ticket machine, throwing one arm over her eyes like even the memory was enough to make her feel faint.
She poked her head back up with a proud smile. "Oh but I'm all healed now though - see?" She moved her jacket aside to reveal the skin just below her crop top- now evenly tan and clear of any fading bruises.
-
Bringing up Gospel alone would have been a surefire way to perk up Sophia's attention, but saying that it gave her a direct link to that flipping Navi that took everything away from her? Now she had a reason to be legitimately interested in the chatroom, beyond begrudgingly tolerating it being thrust upon her.
"Really?" The single word had far more energy behind it than anything Sophia had said to Bambi before, and she seemed an awful lot more animated and excited suddenly. "If I tracked one of them down I could... and then..." (Wait, why was she saying all that out loud?!) She froze in place wide-eyed before returning to her usual slump. "...ugh, nevermind." Not only was trying to pick a fight with whoever managed to delete the SuperNavi destined to end horribly, but was she really thinking about rolling up to the chatroom and just picking fights with random people far more familiar with it? Stupid. "Just... keep going, what exactly is this stuff about multiple dimensions?"
"I'll believe it when I see it." was the sole, curt response MothMan gave to Bambi's description of the portals.
It sounded as if he was cutting off the conversation topic and dismissing her completely; While that wasn't wrong, behind the thick-skinned appearance MothMan was trying to exert, he was doing everything he could to avoid ruminating on the implications of parallel universes existing and the chatroom inviting travel between them. Bambi's off-hand mention of multiple versions of the same NetNavi and operator in particular was really beginning to eat at him. He hated thinking about his past deletions and subsequent backups as-is, but the thought that there really could be a non-hypothetical universe where he wasn't restored from one of those backups made every vertex in his body quiver. Or worse, that there were other versions of him and Sophia that were doing better in life and he had done things wrong for them to be in this seemingly dead-end position in li-
Get your shit together MothMan, none of this was real! It couldn't be real. All of this was just tinfoil-hat nonsense Bambi was spouting. All MothMan had to do was get her out of the picture, and then he would never have to worry about this ever again. He steeled himself to begin pressing on their emotions instead of his own, now that the boy was running off.
Bambi had the initial reaction MothMan was looking for: Hesitant and a little anxious. He opened his mouth ready to pick at this wound further, only to be completely blindsided by Bambi bouncing into excited theatrics. Crap, this was the exact opposite of what he wanted! He tugged at his antennae in irritation as Bambi got into her dramatic recount.
"B-Buggy?!" were the only words Sophia got out before Bambi turned her PET around. For the love of- the one time that Sophia managed to avoid being forced to sit through a meandering photo recap at a family gathering, Bambi had to intrude and do it?! Sophia wasn't particularly shocked by the images (she'd seen far worse on the Undernet already) but brazenness of Bambi showing these as if she was sharing holiday snaps was not lost on Sophia.
"Does this kind of thing happen to you often?" Sophia asked with a slight head tilt. The question was a sincere one, albeit with a motive. She was still trying to puzzle out what Bambi's whole deal was, and her faux-noir story did give her some ideas, but not enough to overconfidently jump to a conclusion just yet.
-
"You probably won't believe it until you see a portal for yourself. I certainly didn't!" Bambi spent most of her free time trying not to remember the portal and what lay beyond it. She had stupidly followed a woman she had trusted - still trusted - and her worldview had been shattered an hour too late to save her from Agaki's attack and years too early for her to be mentally prepared to come face to face with -
Nah.
"I hope I'm the worst thing that comes out of that chatroom for you. When your first interaction started with someone trying to introduce your ribs to your lungs, it sets you up for a lot of anxiety when the next interaction comes." Mel had been fine. Milk had been fine. Eni and his entire entourage had been fine. But she still woke up in a cold sweat multiple times a week from a dream where something came through - sometimes a person, sometimes a thing, always an uninvited guest.
"I'm pretty. Weird men follow me around all the time." she shrugged. and turned her PET back to her. The pictures made it real, which was scary, but having pictures and being able to show them meant that its was the past. She flipped to a copy she had made of one and covered in GIF stickers and emojis.
"Thought I'd give you a treat by having your first interaction be with a hot nice girl like me." She flashed a cheeky grin at Sophia and framed her chin with her hands cutely. "You're welcome!"
-
"I'm sure that's going to get all the likes." MothMan sardonically chimed in to Bambi's intentionally-gaudy photo edit. Far from his wittiest retort, but MothMan didn't want them to get the impression that Bambi's display had caught him off-guard just a moment ago.
"Thanks, I suppose this is an improvement from being kicked to death." Sophia replied before directing her view outwards to the general arcade area. "Although being dragged on these family trips sure does feel like that sometimes."
Meanwhile in the back of Sophia's mind, she had arbitrarily decided she had clocked Bambi's entire personality, thanks to Bambi bringing up her looks twice in quick succession: Bambi was the diva. The socialite. The kind of person who was convinced they were best at everything, had the best looks, and wanted everyone to know it and fawn over them for that. That was her real reason for the visit: To get that all-important first impression and cement her place on the social totem pole before anyone else could. (though Sophia couldn't convince herself that Bambi wasn't telling the truth about everything else...)
...Okay, but what the heck was she going to do with this realisation? Sophia wasn't going to deliberately feed Bambi's ego as she didn't have a use for her, and it would only invite more of Bambi's sickly extroversion to wear her and MothMan down. And this takeaway didn't offer an obvious path to getting Bambi off her back either...
"Excuse us, could we get to the..." A small crowd had snuck up and was trying to cut through where Sophia and Bambi were standing. As they squeezed past, Sophia noticed they were all carrying pretty chunky bundles of tickets... and they were all headed directly for the ticket machines. Crud! They're going to spend ages feeding all those tickets in, and having that many people floating around would ruin any chance of pulling off their scheme discretely for the time being.
...You know what? Screw it. "You wanna do anything together while we're here or..." Sophia directly asked Bambi.
While she was at best only begrudging tolerating Bambi's presence, there was no denying she had made this trip far less boring. Heck, Bambi enthusiastically sharing photos of the time she got the snot beaten out of her was far more interesting than any interaction Sophia ever had with her extended family. And you know what they say about keeping your enemies close...
But that didn't mean she was giving in. Sophia feigned a cough. "Pardon me," she turned her back to Bambi, then feigned a couple more coughs while hastily typing out a message on her PET. "...I'm fine." She turned back around, having quickly stuffed the PET back in her jacket.
🪲 >
looik fora c hnace 2 sdcrew w/ her]#In spite of the speed-derived typos, MothMan heard Sophia's message loud and clear. And thank god, it seems she wasn't falling hook-line-and-sinker for Bambi's bullshit! Now he just needed to wait for a good opportunity to fuck with them...
-
"These ones don't go online," at least not until Bambi needed to launch a vicious social media attack on the Agakis, but that was a plan B. "My online presence is extremely curated, and these don't fit."
Sophia seemed to ....not relax, that didn't seem quite right, but settle. Like she had figured something out, enough to think she had a grasp on their interaction. Perfect.
No one brought their A game when they thought they were dealing with a ditzy bimbo.
The crowd pushed them and she stepped around Sophia lightly. She led them to the skii ball machines, which was sparse with people, and still in line of sight for the adults at the party if they looked over.
When Sophia gave her a little fake cough and turned away, Bambi caught a glimpse of her sticking her gnarly custom PET back in her pocket. As much as she wanted to look over that PET, now wasn't the time. The cough itself was fine enough, as far as fakes go, but the uncharacteristically polite 'pardon me' would have revealed even a perfect fake. Time to call her bluff.
"Oh no if you aren't feeling well, we could go find somewhere to rest? They have benches over there where your family can still see you, so you know, I can't chase you into an alley to kick your ribs or anything," Bambi tossed her a wink. "I'll let you use my lap as a pillow, if you want."
Point took the opportunity to flicker back to Sophia's PET, spinning in greeting to Mothman. "We should get to know each other too! Do you want my prog customizer? We could color code them together." Pointe did a pas de bourrée couru to step closer and curtsied. "You really ought to close the IR scanner connection! It's very easy to get in here!"
-
Sophia followed Bambi's cutesy finger wag towards the skii ball machines. Sure, why not. The area wasn't crowded and one of machines had a couple of leftover balls dispensed from an earlier game. Beats wasting any of her own Zenny.
"I said I'm fine, a stray crumb just fell down my throat." Bambi's emphasis on Sophia's family being within view didn't go unnoticed, but beyond a brief glance in their direction it provoked no reaction. What an empty threat, they never paid close attention to her! "If you want me to lay down on you like some weird cat, it's gonna have to wait." Sophia reached down and picked up one of the cork balls, tossing it up and down in her hands. "Don't you want to show off some amazing trick shots first?" Sophia asked Bambi with the most backhanded "enthusiasm" she could muster.
While Sophia may have been confident that she brushed off Bambi's attempts to get one over her, reaching for the ball left her PET at just the right angle to do a stealthy jack-in...
As much as the day was testing his patience, MothMan had no issue with biding his time on stake-out duty. Not that the skii ball setup was offering much; the machines looked too old to have any kind of jack-in capability, and there wasn't anything else close by of inter-
MothMan's surveying came to screeching halt with the sudden materialisation of Pointe within the PET's homepage. "Prog customizer?? Wh- How did you get in here?!" MothMan angrily baulked at Pointe's sudden greeting.
Wait, the IR sensor? Shit! It was essentially a souped-up jack-in port bolted to the PET after all... "You... look, what I said earlier wasn't an empty threat. I will fuck you up if you're here to pull a fast one." MothMan warned while flaring his wings.
While he really did want to fight Pointe then and there, wasn't he instructed to look for opportunities to fuck around with Bambi? And what better opportunity than having her Navi come directly to you? MothMan relaxed out of his combative stance and put on a more welcoming voice. "Buuuut sure, I would like to know more about you, Pointe. After all, I can tell you know a lot more than you're letting in on." MothMan leaned in with intent. "This isn't your first time snooping in on someone's PET, is it?" (Purely an educated guess, but it wouldn't be hard to recover if he was wrong...)
-
Bambi couldn't help a little laugh. "Trick shot? No no- I'm shit at skii ball! Its just quieter and if I did something weird or violent, your back up could be here in an instant." The mental image, though, of Sophia with her little noodle arms being some kind of unexpected skii ball master definitely piqued her interest. "Can you do trick shots? I'd love to see!"
She tapped her PET to the scanner and balls rattled out noisily. She picked one up, gave it a little toss to mirror Sophia. She gave a sweeping underhanded throw, and true to form, it pinged hard against the top left hole. The momentum carried it to loop that hole's barrier, and it bounced so hard off one off the second widest middle section that it fell right back onto the ramp to roll into her cupped hands. Ugh. "I'm bad at racing games too. I overcorrect the instant things go wrong and it takes me out every time."
She stood back a step to observe Sophia.
Pointe game a smile and then leaned over to waggle her fingers at a curious prog. "Oh, I know you would! I would do the same if someone tried anything on my NetOp. I still think about burning down Agakis house with him and his whole bloodline inside." She had done it to a couple iterations of Sims already, and maybe one day when the CopyBots were all fixed up, she could get a proper plan in place, with itemized lists and timeline breakdowns for what accelerate to buy and what order to seal the doors in to prevent escape.
But she wasn't one to count her chickens before they hatched, and Agaki still had something her NetOp wanted. Pointe was very good at being patient.
She pulled up a copy of the prog customizer she had brought as a housewarming gift, handing it over respectfully with both hands like a proper guest. "Here!"
Pointe gave him a smile. "I'm sure we can have a lovely and insightful discussion, Mothman! And yes, I was in your PET just a couple minutes ago actually! We needed to make sure we weren't dragging an unrelated party into chatroom business!"
-
Bambi describing the choice of location as a safety net in case she did anything nasty took Sophia by surprise. It really did seem like Bambi was doing everything she could to gain Sophia's trust, and it was getting harder and harder to subscribe some kind of hidden malicious intent to her actions. It always irked Sophia when that was the case.
"Don't get your hopes up." Not a particularly enthusiastic response to Bambi's challenge, but Sophia wasn't the boastful type. She stood by idly and watched Bambi's attempts to play ball without comment.
It took Sophia just a little too long to realise that Bambi was letting her have her turn. "Oh, right." She positioned herself in front of the machine, and performed a casual underarm throw without much thought put into the action. The ball bounced it's way up the ramp, and made it's way into... the second-closest ring to the centre? Huh. All of a sudden Sophia was eager to see how well she'd do when actually trying.
Sophia grabbed a second ball. This time, she readied herself for an overarm throw, aiming for a bullseye directly into the highest-scoring hole. After contemplating the angle for a few seconds, she let out a forceful pitch! At first it seemed like the stars had aligned and the ball was about perfectly slide in, only for it to just barely catch the ring's edge, sending it right back into Sophia's fac-
BONK!
"AUGH! BLAST! DANG IT!" The ball didn't really hurt, but the shock of it clonking her so precisely in the face made her exaggerate the pain. Sophia briefly paced around, face covered in her hands, before getting a hold of herself and lowering her hands to glare at whatever Bambi's reaction was. She just knew this would be something she'd never hear the end of...
Agaki, huh? Interesting name, and probably directly related to Bambi's impromptu vigorous rib massage. MothMan made a mental note of it, but held back from enquiring further; not only would that be revealing his hand too early, but he was still registering Bambi and Pointe as a threat (especially with Pointe's idle desire for arson), and trying to invoke something that was a threat to them could lead to retaliation. He would find a better knife to twist in due time.
Pointe's offer of "PROG_CUSTOM.apk" was met with a bemused expression from MothMan, followed by him snatching the file and giving it a hard inspection, akin to someone glaring at a provocative newspaper article. Surprisingly, there wasn't anything particularly sketchy-looking about it. The application was digitally signed, all the metadata looked legit...
...he must have been gripping it a little too hard however, as before he knew it the file began extracting and installing itself! Despite his split-second panic, the quick installation and the very benign user interface that popped up afterwards lead MothMan to conclude there probably weren't any viruses snuck in with it. Before he could vocally question what exactly had just been installed, Pointe began walking him through the application's UI.
Knew it. MothMan felt rather vindicated to learn that Pointe had already been spying on them, as it gave him tangible fuel for his distrust. "You two really are serious about this chatroom business, huh." MothMan crossed his arms. "I hope you don't mind me asking, but have you been involved in any other... sketchy business?" His tone indicated that he, in fact, hoped they did mind the question. "Because I might just have some exploits of my own to share... if you're also willing to." He flashed a (somewhat) friendly grin.
-
The first throw got an excited noise from Bambi. Oh man, she hadn't taken Sophia for an athletic type, but maybe -
Oh. Oh no.
"Oh no oh no oh no!" Bambi stepped forward and tipped her head, trying to peer around Sophia's hands. "You... don't look like you're bleeding, so your nose probably isn't broken. Are you okay?"
When Sophia pulled her hands away glaring, the effect was ruined a little by it looking a little cross-eyed. Bambi turned to the snack counter. "I'm gonna get ice! Just hang on a second!"
The employee manning the counter seemed to have heard the commotion and was already sealing a plastic bag filled with ice, and Bambi look it carefully like it was precious cargo. It was a shame she wasn't sure a good review would stick when she crossed back, otherwise she'd write a glowing one. She shoo'ed away the people who were helicoptering around Sophia but not actually offering any help. "Come on - give her some space."
She pressed the ice pack into the other girl's hands. "How about we find something with less ... uh face smacking potential?"
Pointe scrolled through the interface, pointing out the color picker and the special palettes she had just uploaded with the specific green of Sophia's hoodie in mind (navy blue for a sophisticated touch, terra cotta for a bit of contrast, a couple different options with a couple different pinks because it was just too classic to pass up).
She listened with one audio receptor to the commotion outside and determined her NetOp had it handled.
Pointe turned to Mothman then, and stared unperturbed up into his eyes. "Mothman, if you want to dig for information, you'll find I'm not very receptive to beating around the bush. I can dance around a topic all day." Pun intended. "You either need to be better at being sneaky, or you need to be direct, or I will have every single one of your progs in a hat before I give you something you can find a 'c hnace 2 sdcrew w/ her' as your NetOp put it. I've been operational for nearly ten years, and my programming is built to deal with complex psychological situations for therapy."
Pointe smiled, and pulled up a particularly impractical fascinator with feathers that was just darling. "We have multiple dark chips, two copybots we plan on illegally upgrading, and contacts with black market merchants, current and former net terrorists, and darkloids. I'm not a battle navi, and Fawn isn't a net battler, but we're going to do whatever it takes to survive whatever this chatroom is."
She pulled the fascinator out, and starts adjusting the colors piece by piece. She offers it out to him, smiling gently, sadly. "And considering it doesn't care whether you believe in it before it tries to steal your NetOp from under you, it's good to have friends before something can go wrong."
-
Grabbing an ice pack seemed like an over-reaction at first, but the point of impact was starting to ache more and more now that the initial shock had worn off. And to make matters worse, the nearest arcade-goers had all dropped what they were doing to gawk at her. "What ARE you looking at?!" Sophia burst out at a random bystander, dropping her arms with her fists clenched.
Before anyone could escalate the tension, Bambi swooped in with an ice pack and broke up the crowd. Sophia accepted the ice with a muffed "Thanks..." and swiftly applied it. It was... soothing, and a welcome contrast from how stuffy the building was. "I... need a sit down first..." Sophia lugged herself in the opposite direction of where her family was seated, with Bambi in tow. While there already were benches nearby, Sophia was not in the mood to have half her family swarm her in shallow concern; her already low-capacity social battery was on the verge of leaking and spilling out corrosion.
The two girls shortly found themselves sat by the pinball tables; wasn't necessarily the least crowded place, but most of the patrons were too engrossed in their games to pester Bambi and Sophia. "My luck has been so crummy lately." Sophia confided, slapping the ice pack on the empty side of the bench. "Nothing I've done with MothMan has been going to plan, and you saw how well my attempt at having fun went." She let out a loud sigh. At least Bambi's presence was... tolerable. She seemed to give an actual darn about Sophia's feelings at the moment, and it didn't feel totally vapid either...
MothMan was hardly the decorative sort, but just fiddling with the colour options on a random Mr. Prog was making him begin to appreciate the gift of the customizer. It wasn't uncommon for the progs used by the PET's mods to have firmware errors or conflict with each other; some colour coordination would go a long way in diagnosing those issues faster. Plus it would make them stand out a little more against Sophia's, to be frank, shit file organisation.
A brief look at the hat menu was all that MothMan got before the outside eruption came through the PET's microphone. Crap, had he fallen for some kind of distraction?! MothMan snapped towards Pointe who... looked equally as concerned? He held off any kind of accusation and instead opened a camera window in hopes of getting more context to what happened...
...Not that the jostling view of the pocket's inside offered much clarity. But when it settled, there was just a small enough window through the pocket for MothMan to see Bambi applying ice to Sophia. Okay, so she just smacked herself with a ball? Christ, she still has no pain tolerance at all. MothMan closed the feed and exhaled. Good thing Bambi was doing something about it and keeping her comfor- No no no! These people are crazy, remember!? So what if Pointe is being friendly, accommodating and gave a useful gift with cute hats?! As long as they're spreading this portal lunacy, they can't be trusted! It can't be real...
...Fucking hell, did he really forget to close Sophia's typo bomb? MothMan froze for a second, but quickly pivoted to playing it cool. "I'll admit it... she's crap at speed typing." MothMan gave a mischievous chuckle, briefly pretending he was dodging Pointe's successful bluff call. "But seriously, I'll stop being coy. I do apologise for underestimating you." God, as if he wasn't feeling off his game already, Pointe was showing him up badly. They both were specifically programmed for psychology and had existed for far longer than he had. Best take Pointe's suggestion of being direct, lest he be read like an open book.
"What I mean is, Sophia and I have been making our livelihood through cybercrime for as long as we've been Navi and NetOp. All the tried-and-tested classics: BBS scams, reselling stolen digital goods, breaking into machines to get free shit, as you noticed earlier. I have the inkling you're also on the so-called 'wrong side' of the law, and I want to know all about it." MothMan turned back to the customizer to scroll through the hat selection, still keeping a stern demeanour. "If you want to gain Sophia's trust so badly, that kind of activity is the thing she respects being open about."
Pointe humoured MothMan's request, and wow, he really had underestimated the two of them. "Heh, that's an impressive rap sheet. Can't say I've been anywhere near CopyBots myself, outside of hearing CyberCafé gossip." MothMan replied with a yet-unheard of degree of earnestness.
In spite of that, he had to put a pin in their Not a battle Navi, not a NetBattler. remark. While Pointe could just be acting modest, if there was any potential attack vector against these two, that was it. But as long as Pointe was squatting inside his PET, any hidden cue to tell Sophia to search the arcade for NetBattling equipment would have to wait. Besides, just playing along and not acting underhanded was getting him results.
MothMan took the fascinator with one hand, giving it a slow, quizzical inspection that gradually stilled as Pointe spoke their last sentence. He really didn't like the solemn way they were speaking about the chatroom; directly challenging his vehement denial, warning him it needs to be "survived", and something about the way they said "it tries to steal your NetOp from under you" felt... literal and specific. A redirection of the subject was in order.
"I wouldn't say we do what we do out of survival, it's just that we're not blind to how much of society is rotten to the core." MothMan lowered his arms and made eye contact with Pointe, fascinator still in hand. "And we're sticking on the side that avoids being consumed by that rot."
-
Bambi sat listening, gently running her fingers over the zipper of her big orange slice shaped duffle back. Sophia was so obviously frustrated, and Bambi could imagine. So many nasty surprises in such a short time had a way of making someone feel so small. She had worked her whole life to never be the prey animal, but that work was exhausting and it came crumbling so easily.
There were people tougher than her or Pointe who had gotten knocked on their ass by this. Faster, smarter, stronger, just plain better suited in every single way, people with power bordering supernatural and they still got hurt. People with power that the universe chose again, and again, and again, over and over in every different flavor and circumstance.
Not her or Sophia.
Bambi felt small plenty of times in her life - every week across from her father as he barely made an effort to even project an easier truth onto her, then even more so when he cut it to every two weeks, and every single time the Ijuuin heir made the news for whatever he was making the news for, and whenever she got passed up for a dancer who worked half as hard as her but had fairer skin and and and - but not like this. Not like a child being hunted by monsters no one else could see.
She needed something better than allies. She needed friends. She needed people who would have her back because she would have theirs. She needed to surround herself with people who could make her feel confident enough to fight back with everything she had, and who would feel the same with her in their corner.
First, though, she needed to give Sophia a sense of power she could take away from this. How could she build Sophia up? Bambi was great at building people up, but if she wanted it to stick, she needed to go slow, so Bambi wouldn't take that confidence with her when she left Sophia to home.
Bambi had made good progress with the ice, it seemed. Maybe start there?
She unzipped her bag as she thought, sat it between them. She dug and dug, looking for her carefully labelled and bedazzled pill box in search of the over the counter pain killers she kept. She dug past her extra clothes, sanitary and beauty products, the matchbox for Mel and Milk, the glasses cloth for Hiro and Officer Novella, her multiple box cutters, and kept digging.
"That sucks. Can't even have your whimsy in a arcade without it being a danger to your face."
Now they were getting somewhere!
Pointe beamed at him, scooping up a darling little prog with twitch in its claspers and spinning as she plucked the fascinator from his hands. The fascinator went to the base of the claspers and the movement of the feather when it twitched gave it lovely visual interest. She set it down with a kiss to the flat top of its head.
"We'll have to get them to talk about it then! Probably somewhere else since this is a public space, but they could really bond!" Pointe pulled up the menu again, and chose a fishing hat with colorful decorative lures. "Do you have a prog dedicated to phishing? This would just be perfect." She spins and looks at the progs who are watching them now that one of their companions has a fancy hat shaking fabulously with each tick.
Pointe considered Mothman. Considered the rot comment. He wanted to change the subject, going still at the idea of something taking his NetOp.
"We're still working through the morals of it. Fawn says we're evil now, and i suppose that's fair, if what we're doing is going against status quo. It all sounds very romantic like that." If a rotten society is what they concerned themselves with, though, they would need to get something out of the way. She hated to taint the relationship so early, but Bambi didn't just want to get someone on their side - she wanted a friend.
"We might be what you want to avoid though."
And friends don't keep secrets just because they hurt.
"Fawn is an Achida. We're very rich, and not newly. We're old money and old money is very very dirty."
