Fresh New Antivirus

Ch. 85 - The Calm Before The Storm

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[Notice: Penguin, Unofficial Editor, was yeeted from this side of the 4th wall due to tech issues and is now possessing a furby ... somehow. This has been added to the growing list of Editorial Occupational Hazards and Accident Reports. The rescue team has been deployed.]

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"It's simple really ..." Hidden began, "I'm awful with computers."

Everyone - and that means everyone - deadpanned. Classic, Lust, Nightmare, Fresh, Chaos, even Hidden themself.

Not Error, though. He was still crashed. Any deadpanning there was coincidental and probably imagined. Probably.

Nightmare's office rarely was subject to such levels of deadpan-ery. Rarely, but not never.

"Elaberate."

Hidden slowly turned the spinny office chair they were taped to to give Nightmare a 'no duh i was gonna do that,' expression.

"The reason I avoid intervention is in the multiverse's best interest," Hidden admitted, "Let's just say Void wasn't the only one to have a hand in Fresh's Code. HM is the reason he's ... mostly functional."

RU-DE!

"Bruh, I'm right here," Fresh pouted.

Hidden did a quick command to drop a gummy bear pack on his head, being as they were still tied up. And couldn't possibly get out.

He looked at the pack then back at them, then shrugged.

"Bribe accepted, broski."

"Good, good," they gave the ghost of a smile before turning back to Nightmare with a serious expression, "Fresh is the best two DIY coders and an otherworldly bot could come up with, even with all the stuff that falls into the Void as reference. And Fresh is technically the second attempt at patching the world balance. You know it's bad, like, bad bad, when the AI is the better coder. Even if it's a slightly sentient one. No offense, HM."

<There is no offense to be taken. Coding is not my primary function, analytics and surveillance is.> Higher Management communicated.

"... okay, Broski-bro, I know I up and accepted the bribe, but sheesh, bruh, some offense taken," Fresh complained, pouting over the gummies, "Just say ya don't like how I came out, yo."

Hidden blinked and looked at Fresh in confusion, "Why? The code may suck, but I think you're cool? I'm the one who changed the name from Refresh to Fresh knowing what that'd do," they smirked before adding in monotone, "Verbal fingerguns."

"... mood officially raised and grievances forgiven, broski."

Nightmare looked from Fresh to Hidden.

"Point made," Nightmare conceded. "Please refrain from assisting in improving the multiverse."

"Verbal salute," Hidden agreed.

SQU-INT.

"You mean cuz my Code, right Noot-Noot?"

Nightmare straightened out his documents, not answering.

"Broski's, be bullying me. So unradical," Fresh said, sunglasses flashing a quick EYE-ROLL, before looking at Hidden recalling something mentioned, "What you mean by second attempt, yo?"

"Oh uh ... Papercrane," they answered, "Void tried to make a second destroyer, stitching the Sans's codes from destroyed AU's as they were being deleted in his domain. Though he lost track of him shortly after. I was DCed at the time of the attempt."