hacker_twins | [Backdated, see below]

"Maybe we're lucky and by then they've switched sides."

"Faf's name got typoed." That's all he's saying for that level.

"Phantom plants bombs. Though hitting them with a sword should not defuse them." But then that is game logic.

"Levi is in a computer area, little late to stop me from destroying everything."

"And they spell yours b-a-s-s," Zero points out. And then blinks and stares at his game screen. "I just found out how Niege knew so much about Hunter activities. We figured someone on the inside was leaking her information. It must have been Kraft..."

Zero snerks in response to disarming bombs by sword. "No, it shouldn't." But then he's back to thinking about the rest... "I think I'll have to tell Blues about some of this. He might know what to do..."

Forte rolls his eyes. He'd heard about that at some point. "As far a musical names go, Bass isn't a bad one." As long as it's pronounced correctly.

He's not sure what to think of the elf X, but since their X is right there on the couch sleeping, he files that oddity away as unimportant. "I'm guessing since the Copy being dead caused a lot of problems, that me going after him now will end in him getting away." After all, what would the other games have in them if the supposed big bad was killed off so quickly.

Zero nods. He can't imagine what would be in the other two games otherwise, either. "Kraft's the one in charge of Weil's troops here. Mega's not going to like how many there are. Weil's got him completely whipped. He's only following because he doesn't believe there's any hope... if we could get to him, the command structure falls apart. And this game has one good chance to do that. And a chance to take a shot at Weil that the game won't even let you do..."

"After that there's been a level with an artificial sun turning things into desert, an electromagnetic weapon... it seems the settlement is dependent on an environment control system it could disrupt. And a..." he pauses and blinks at the one he just read... "an undersea drill submarine packed with explosives meant to drill into the earth and set off a massive earthquake... the hell..." His frown deepens. "Arcadia's an island. That's... ... It's like what Epsilon almost did with the missile. Like Weil can't even notice this stuff would hit everyone."

"We should take every opportunity we get. It gave him time to give some crazy speech, didn't it?"

"By that game, he must be completely out of his mind. Wily sounds sane in comparison." Which is a scary thought in and of itself.

"Yeah, right after Kraft kidnaps Niege to try to protect her. Weil'd have to do a lot worse than tell me I don't want to kill a human in front of Niege... She's a reporter, I'm sure she's seen worse."

"Yeah. At least Wily had just enough sanity not to try to blow up the planet while he was standing on it. The boss for this stage has to be crazy too. What other kind of person signs up for a suicide mission to blow themselves up..?"

"Much worse." He sighs as he fights through the bosses again. Half of them should be dead, seeing as they had blow up in big balls of fire earlier on, but that's how games went.

He shrugs at Zero's question, agreeing. He's not sure if he should be proud of the kids' determination to beat him or not, but before he can figure it out, he beats Phantom for the second time and has to double take at the dialogue. The following explosion has him gaping at the screen. That didn't just happen.

At about the same time, Zero makes a low hiss and almost drops the handheld game system he's using. When he finds the ability to speak, he says, "The stage boss is one of Phantom's. He said he only put up with Weil to get revenge..."

His dropping of the game caused him to lose the first fight against that boss, and he just stares at the words on the screen. Phantom... I will be joining you soon!

"We have to get them back. It can't happen this way."

"I didn't kill him; he blew himself up! Why did he blow himself up?! The others didn't blow themselves up!" He bites his tongue after the outburst and glances at X, hoping he hasn't woken him. This is a really bad time for X to get woken up.

He'll look up to find Techno and Middy, out of an honest attempt to be helpful, squooshing a throw pillow down on X's head to try to prevent him from hearing that.

X was still asleep, but if they don't quit 'helping' they're going to wake him. He twitches a bit and tries to push the pillow off his face.

"We can't go after the copy," he growls lower this time so the two don't have to smother X. "Not while they're there. Not if that's going to happen."

The twins let up on the pillow and X pushes it off his face without completely waking.

"We might be better off trying to steal the copy than scrap him, depending on what he's like," says Zero, knowing Forte won't like that idea too much. "If he's like the megalomaniac that was in the Nexus, he'll have to go. If he's more like Mega or X... then it would explain why Weil would discard him after a while. If that's the case, some of the humans might follow him away from Weil... This game keeps mentioning he at least protected the humans from Weil. It sounds to me like he got in the way of Weil's plans one too many times."

"And we'll have to get the kids away first. Or find some way that can't happen. I know X didn't design any of them with a self-destruct. If we can get that code to all of them before that... I don't know how that's supposed to work, but if it can get Phantom to remember, why would he do something like that?" Zero's guessing blind on some of this, since he'd started with the fourth game instead of the first, but he does know that the sooner they get the kids out of there, the better.

No he doesn't, but he's not as dead set on scrapping him either after seeing Phantom die for the copy. And if he got in the way of Weil, that would help in a big way.

"Make it so undeniably obvious that we're not trying to harm the copy in any way." How to do that, well, Forte doesn't have the slightest idea. Getting the kids back first would be easier.

"He wouldn't if he remembers. But the missions- Harpuia showed up to help Aztec Falcon. That doesn't happen in the game. The same could happen with the others, but most of the missions can't happen for us."

Zero figures it's either steal the 'figurehead' Weil's hiding behind if they want to get the humans on their side, or use X or Mega. X really isn't in any condition for it, and Weil's had too much propaganda out about how Mega abandoned everyone...

"Are you sure about that? In this one, you beat a boss and then teleport right out. When we beat Aztec Falcon, we held back and didn't finish him off. And there were several minutes before we walked out of the place. Harpuia in the game could have just arrived too late."

He sighs. "None of this is going to be easy. Phantom... That isn't the first time you see him in the game, right? You mentioned bombs before. If that happens, it would be our best chance to do something. Even if it's just send someone into the area first and have them spraypaint that code all over the walls."

He picks his game back up. While they're planning, it wouldn't hurt to get past Volt Kraken.

"Hm. Point." And that could give them more chances to get to the kids.

"In a factory captured to generate energy. One of the missions not likely to happen for us. If we can lure him in with one of his soldiers like we did with Harpuia... but which ones are his?" He doesn't remember any of the bosses saying they belonged to Phantom. Though one, Maha Ganeshariff, didn't say whose army he was a part of. But an elephant that swung around like a wrecking ball doesn't seem like a good fit for Phantom.

He frowns as he goes back to playing. Just because they don't want it to get to that point doesn't mean they shouldn't see what else happens.

Zero thinks about that as he finishes Tech Kraken's stage and goes on to the next. "If he's in charge of stealth troops, then they might not be obvious 'game bosses'. Maybe Shadow can help come up with ways to lure out a ninja..."

"And there's always the option of attacking the location anyway, even if we don't need the energy, on the chance it will lure Phantom out."

He just shakes his head at the next one. "Cities a century ago didn't have computerized city-wide security systems, so I think I've hit another that won't happen. For that matter, I don't think any before Arcadia did, at least for us."

"That's a possibility. If there's a way to get a list of who belongs to who, that'd be nice. Taking a look at where the data retrieval mission takes place would be worth a look too, even if the elephant isn't Phantom's. But I doubt it exists." The closest he can match with a lost lab where Zero wakes up would be one of Wily's old ones. Which might fit, but it's a stretch.

He takes note of the copy changing colors, using different elements. So he has weapons copy as well. The second part of the fight is ridiculous. Large wings and a colorful halo. And there was zero in red with helmet with horns. Someone out there must have thought this was clever.

"The copy is a load-bearing boss..." Though he must still be alive. The place went up, sure, and the copy was really badly injured, but he didn't see him die.

"That should be on record somewhere," Middy says.

"Somewhere in Arcadia, that is," adds Techno, before both twins say "We're on it." in unison and try to hack in and get that information.

"Figures. One of those 'take you out with me' kinds? Or did the base just go up on its own? ... Weil's worse on failure than the old man ever was." Between that, the issue with the emergency teleporters earlier, and the 'failsafe' the new gens had been designed with...

That train of thought gets disrupted at the next part of the game Zero's playing, and he just swears. Biting it back, he says. "Now, here's something that's just like Weil... All that crap in the whole rest of the game was a diversion."

"The take you out with him kind. More reason to keep our distance. And this is a shit ending. I might not have the whole story, but X is a dick and you seem fine with that." He puts the game down and contemplates moving to the next one.

"...I think I liked the idea of him being completely nuts instead. What is he really up to?"

"I know X doesn't even like the thought of most of his alts from that time... are you saying there might be something more to the 'deadbeat dad' stuff than the psycho Harpy getting him mixed up with the copy? And... if X is even in these, why the hell are the kids with the copybot? None of them are in this one that I've seen."

"Ever hear of Final Weapon? The real Ragnarok is Final Weapon 2.0... Weil plans to use it to wipe out everything else. Kraft just snapped and tampered with it... but... I don't care what it says here, he was a Maverick Hunter. I can't see him aiming something at a city full of humans. So I guess that makes him Weil's scapegoat for blowing up Arcadia..."

"... ... except that makes no damned sense either, because why would Weil want to blow up Arcadia.. with himself in it."

"He's a glowy elf thing, then he's a glowy ghost thing that's either wearing a dress or the sprite art is being confusing. The multicolored halo could either mean he's full of himself or really is a ghost and it's the game's way of saying he's dead in some form without actually saying so." Forte won't rule out robot ghosts just yet. He's see too much weird shit by now to do so.

"Anyway, if he can talk to game you and hand you your weapon at the beginning, he should have been able to do more. A lot more then the weapon and telling game you to go off the copy. And then he 'asks' you to take over at the end so he can go poof. The world is in shambles and he-" Forte stops there to just growl. He doesn't want to go into another fit that may wake X. He's hoping that them not being in the fourth game means they got away and don't end up like Phantom.

He groans at that. "A plot within a plot within a plot..."

"... and he decided he just didn't care," Zero finishes, echoing what the insane Harpuia alt had said about X. So maybe that hadn't all been about the Copy after all...

"And what the crap is this?" he says giving the screen of his handheld a glare. "Game-me just gave Kraft a speech about how Reploids shouldn't change the world. It isn't 'our place', it's up to humans to change things and and we're just supposed to help... So Game-X is a lazy deadbeat dad, and Game-me is a bigot who just dissed his own species."

"We're in," says Techno.

"Getting the dossier files," says Middy at the same time.

"What a craptastic world this is. I knew it'd be nuts but, seriously, what the hell. How does it get that bad?"

He finally convinces himself to pull over the second game. The first gets a careless toss back into the box.

"It isn't going to get that bad," insists a determined Zero.

He's still scowling, and updates. "Kraft's dead. He blasted the hell out of Arcadia just before that. I have no idea how you can make a crater in an artificial island, but supposedly that's what's left of where Weil was. The place is being swarmed by people looking for survivors."

"... and even with Weil supposedly gone, Ragnarok just powered back up and is trying to crash into that damned human settlement I've spent most of the game defending. Seriously, these people need to move."

"Survival of the strongest. If they're too stupid to move, let it crush them." Not that the game would let you do that.

Blah blah blah, emo cutscene, blah blah intro level, blah, oh hey Harpuia again. That's good.

"Huh, game you gets rescued by Harpuia in the beginning of this. That's a good sign." It meant they could come around after all, though getting that to happen before any self-destructing is what they need.

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