Video Game Brawl

Chapter 7 - Panic! At the Arcade

The title is literally a song title. Comment if you get it.

"8-Bit?! What are you doing here?" Tara asked as she saw the screen of 8-Bit staring at her through the portal.

"Who are ya calling 8-Bit?!"The 8-Bit-that-wasn't-really-8-Bit screeched as it leapt through the portal.

Tara gasped.

This certainly was NOT 8-Bit.

This newly formed 8-Bit had a black body and green integrated circuits lining his sides. His black wristbands and shoulder had green spikes. His legs were replaced with four spider-like legs.

But what was most striking about this...creature...was that he had a green concave-kite-shaped head accessory, making it look bigger than it really was.

"YOUR 8-BIT IS GONE! I AM VIRUS 8-BIT, A.K.A YOUR DOOM!" Virus 8-Bit shrieked distortedly as its many legs sped towards the masked woman.

Tara tried to dodge from the impending path of this new enemy, but realised she had no need to.

Even with 4 legs, Virus 8-Bit was still incredibly slow. Virus 8-Bit grunted in dismay as Tara retreated faster than him.

At that moment, Tara saw her chance and threw her tarot cards as fast as she could.

Virus 8-Bit jumped, briefly detaching his body from his legs and dodged the cards. Tara gasped at the reflexes of this Virus 8-Bit.

"Dang, this new boss seems better than the last one," Bibi mumbled as she was healed."Jessie did a nice job, using 8-Bit as a reference."

"I AM NOT A FEATURE, I AM A BUG!" Virus 8-Bit shouted as he placed down a strength turret and blasted Bibi.

Bibi parried each and every blast with nothing but Mr. Bat. She took aim and slammed into Virus 8-Bit with all her strength.

"NOOOOOOooooo..."Virus 8-Bit wailed as he fell over on his side, wriggling to get himself up.

Then the corrupted machine had an idea. It pointed its blaster to the ground and shot a volley of bullets. The impact flipped him up and over...and behind Tara.

Tara froze.

Virus 8-Bit harshly kicked her in the leg with one of his purple legs. She rolled over in pain, howling loudly.

"How dare you!"Bibi screamed as she charged towards the machine from behind. Suddenly, another volley of blaster shots came from nowhere , hitting Bibi's back.

"What the-" Bibi said, turning back. She gasped. Another Virus 8-Bit was behind her, wearing an evil smirk.
Behind him were exactly 998 more Virus 8-Bits coming out of the portal.

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Jessie did not like what she saw.

All of 8-Bit's patrol team had been transformed into ghastly figures and had somehow fought their way into the game.

Hold on -- is 8-Bit...

Oh no.

Jessie looked hopelessly at her robot friend. He was starting to look like Virus 8-Bit. His arm was turning green, spikes were growing from his shoulders and wristbands, and a black colour covering started to spread over his body like how moss grew on a log.

That was when Jessie had the wildest idea. She checked her codes and confirmed that she could do it. Then she dialled a number.

"Yes? Ah, yeah...the thing is..." Jessie started to explain the whole thing.

_______________________________________

The virus liked what he was seeing. No, wait, correction: he absolutely LOVED what he was seeing.

It had not taken long to expand his spread of these...mini 8-Bits. Soon, he had possessed an army 1000 strong, ready to corrupt the entire machine.

But when he had tried to do so, a dialog box had popped up, saying that a program was still being executed, and he had to close it first.

Apparently, this program was some video game. Well, it did make sense, considering the fact that this robot was technically an arcade.

Even though he couldn't deactivate the game itself, he decided to close it... by testing out his army and destroy this dumb duo.

But this duo wasn't that dumb. His first machine marched in and was nearly dead now. Then the virus got impatient and sent everyone in.

Wait...

There was a notification above the portal, visible to everyone.

"Player 3 has joined."