Otacon should have seen it coming. He should have known it was possible. He was a computer hacker, for god's sake, and he had experimented to Glitch City and back with his Blue cartridge
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Liquid didn't know what a glitch was. He'd never held a Gameboy before, nevertheless played a video game on one. The system hadn't even been released in Europe before he'd been deployed to Iraq.
He did know, though, that something was fucking wrong here.
He knew it when the music changed, when the world looked wrong and when his Pokemon suddenly stopped being themselves and turned into some kind of blank, mindless automaton. He'd gone to the Pokemon Center and demanded that they find out what was wrong, but all he'd gotten was the same lines of dialogue repeated again and again. Everyone was wrong. Everything was wrong. It was... Lovecraftian
( ... )
Otacon turned so quickly at that he stumbled, falling to his knees with a stunned expression.
"L-Liquid--?!"
Otacon hadn't thought to use his Pokemon against it--because they didn't even register as being the same as they were only yesterday. He didn't know for sure if they would or even could listen to him.
But what he did know was that Liquid had just punched the computerized version of Cthulhu in the face.
"If you never, ever listen to a word I say again, listen to me now. This is more than anyone can deal with. I don't have time to explain, just please trust me and I'll tel you everything later."
He'd never seen Hal Emmerich with such a serious expression before. It was enough to make him pause for a moment--
--which happened to be the same moment that the skeleton recovered from its shock and lunged forward, all jagged teeth and powerful jaws. Liquid's reflexes were just as fast as ever, and he was able to grab the engineer and throw the both of them out of the way in time.
His advantage was gone now; if there had been a time to fight this thing, it was while it was stunned from Liquid's first strike. The best option now was to run until he got into a better position to fight.
Liquid pulled the engineer up and grabbed him by the wrist, then started running.
"You'd better have a damn good explanation for this, Hal!"
Running was a good idea. Running into a building was probably a better idea, which was why Liquid pulled the engineer into a... something or other... as quickly as he could. Hopefully the skeleton wouldn't be able to go indoors.
"I-i-it's like this." He spoke quickly, trying to minimize the technobabble as much as possible.
"This place is a world that's a game everywhere else. But if it's not...if it's actually the game itself somehow, then it's all computerized. And computer programs, th-they're not perfect. They can have mistakes in them. Glitches."
Otacon paused for breath, clearly panicked and shaken.
"That...that thing out there was a glitch in the original game. People called it 'Missingno.', short for 'missing number'. It's leftover data, except it was left in the finished game and encountered when it n-never should have been. It was difficult to defeat, and if you caught it, all sorts of data could be corrupted and destroyed
( ... )
Liquid really didn't follow. He didn't know much about computer systems, and, quite frankly, had little desire to learn them; so long as there were people like Otacon in the world, Liquid could focus on things like killing people, and the engineer could take care of the pesky little things.
All that he got out of this conversation was that the zombiedactyl was bad and was fucking things up, which was the basic assumption that he'd gone into it with.
"Hal."
He cupped the engineer's pale cheek in one hand, tilted it toward him, and kissed him.
"We are not dead. We're still here, and we're not... corrupted, or whatever it was. There's a way out of this, and I'm going to find it."
"...I don't know what we're going to do." Though he sounded calmer, there was a blank and hopeless look on Otacon's face.
"I don't...I don't know how to fix all this. If I had access to the system and its programming, maybe I could do something, but...this isn't a straightforward program. I can't fix it from here."
"Liquid, it's not..." Sigh. "It's not that simple. Think about it. If this is actually a computer game and everything around us is data--then we might be too. And if we're the same as this--" he knocked his hand against the pixelated wall-- "then Missingno can do the same thing to both of us. To anyone here. You, me, Heather, Snake...we could all be in huge trouble."
He did know, though, that something was fucking wrong here.
He knew it when the music changed, when the world looked wrong and when his Pokemon suddenly stopped being themselves and turned into some kind of blank, mindless automaton. He'd gone to the Pokemon Center and demanded that they find out what was wrong, but all he'd gotten was the same lines of dialogue repeated again and again. Everyone was wrong. Everything was wrong. It was... Lovecraftian ( ... )
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"L-Liquid--?!"
Otacon hadn't thought to use his Pokemon against it--because they didn't even register as being the same as they were only yesterday. He didn't know for sure if they would or even could listen to him.
But what he did know was that Liquid had just punched the computerized version of Cthulhu in the face.
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He cracked his knuckles as the skeletal Pokemon shook its head, almost as though clearing it-- not that there was anything there to clear.
"Get out of here, Hal. I'll take care of this."
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He stood up shakily, grabbing Liquid's wrist and pulling with a frantic note to his voice.
"I need you to trust me on this--we have to get out of here. Now."
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The skeletal Pokemon was starting to recover from its beating.
"Hal, I can take care of it. Now stop stalling and get the hell out of here!"
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His voice was quiet, deadly serious.
"If you never, ever listen to a word I say again, listen to me now. This is more than anyone can deal with. I don't have time to explain, just please trust me and I'll tel you everything later."
He tugged on Liquid's wrist again, insistent.
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He'd never seen Hal Emmerich with such a serious expression before. It was enough to make him pause for a moment--
--which happened to be the same moment that the skeleton recovered from its shock and lunged forward, all jagged teeth and powerful jaws. Liquid's reflexes were just as fast as ever, and he was able to grab the engineer and throw the both of them out of the way in time.
His advantage was gone now; if there had been a time to fight this thing, it was while it was stunned from Liquid's first strike. The best option now was to run until he got into a better position to fight.
Liquid pulled the engineer up and grabbed him by the wrist, then started running.
"You'd better have a damn good explanation for this, Hal!"
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Stunned for a second or two, Otacon fell into step running with Liquid. That was good, running was a very good idea here.
"Just trust me, I'll explain later!"
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"...I am open for explanations, Hal."
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"This place is a world that's a game everywhere else. But if it's not...if it's actually the game itself somehow, then it's all computerized. And computer programs, th-they're not perfect. They can have mistakes in them. Glitches."
Otacon paused for breath, clearly panicked and shaken.
"That...that thing out there was a glitch in the original game. People called it 'Missingno.', short for 'missing number'. It's leftover data, except it was left in the finished game and encountered when it n-never should have been. It was difficult to defeat, and if you caught it, all sorts of data could be corrupted and destroyed ( ... )
Reply
All that he got out of this conversation was that the zombiedactyl was bad and was fucking things up, which was the basic assumption that he'd gone into it with.
"Hal."
He cupped the engineer's pale cheek in one hand, tilted it toward him, and kissed him.
"We are not dead. We're still here, and we're not... corrupted, or whatever it was. There's a way out of this, and I'm going to find it."
Reply
"I don't...I don't know how to fix all this. If I had access to the system and its programming, maybe I could do something, but...this isn't a straightforward program. I can't fix it from here."
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It was time for Liquid to do what he did best-- kill things.
"If we destroy those, then things won't get worse. We can figure out what else to do from there."
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He didn't want to wait around until he was turned into some kind of pixellated nightmare.
"If we get rid of this Missingno of yours, then it can't keep corrupting things."
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