Phantasmagoria ✔

REALITY 02 | Acquiesce

- Monroe Household | Nat's Room -
- December 08, 2022 - 

Potato Chips, Moby, Clover, Piattos, Nova and all sorts of junk food laid on the ground of Nathaniel's darkly-lit room. He grabbed a few chips for him to bite before he continues typing something into his computer.

The scene felt awfully familiar. It was like that one Light Yagami Scene.

"I GIVE UP!" Nathaniel suddenly yelled as his hands hit the table. All his chips fell to the floor, but that wasn't his main concern.

"What's wrong with my game? I programmed this just right." He scratched his hair, "I coded everything accordingly, I didn't put anything wrong here..."

"Think, Nat! Think! What could make your game fail? A wrong code? No... A wrong input? Huh, with my skills? Impossible..."

Nathaniel then scurries through his files and even papers. There wasn't anything strange inside it.

He looks for more, and opened every folder containing coded houses, furnitures, NPC dialogues and so forth.

Then, he saw the avatar files. These held the folders of the main protagonist, the side characters, and the interactable NPCs.

Cs_NPC_Friend2_Gabby
Cs_NPC_Friend1_Miggie
Cs_NPC_Hazel
Cs_NPC_Aemi
Cs_Avatar_Girl_Janelle
Cs_Avatar_Lady_Thea
Cs_Avatar_Lady_Deana
C̶̡̃s̸̠̉_̷̙̍A̶̜̐v̴̹͆a̶̺̎t̴̢͗ả̸̯r̸̰̀_̵͚̂G̶̯͠i̴͕͛r̶̞͐l̸͍̋_̷̧̕M̷̽ͅȋ̵̞r̸̢̃a̸̛̰g̴̜͛ë̷̟
̴C̵s̴_̷N̵P̷C̵_̸P̸r̸o̸p̴a̴g̸a̵n̵d̵i̶st_Gwynik
̶C̸s̶_̴N̵P̸C̵_̸P̵r̵o̵p̴a̵g̶a̴ndist_Nelyn
Cs_Item_CarKey1
Cs_Item_CarKey2
Cs_Item_Margarita
Cs_Item_Mojito

He noticed the corrupted file that his main character had the most severe taste of a virus.

The virus began from Mirage's avatar file, and it spreaded to other files eventually.

But why? These avatar files were copy-pasted from their old game co-created by Evie, his friend.

"Wait a minute... Our old game crashed slowly just like..." Nathaniel further came to the realization and grabbed his phone out of his pocket.

Sitting down on his bed with stress written all over his face, Nathaniel hopes that his friend answers the phone.

And that she did.

"Hello? Hello?"

"Evie!"

"Oh, what's up, Nat? Long time no talk."

"Evie! I need your help, please! I'm begging you." Nathaniel got straight to the point, "You're a professional developer there at Nintendo, right?"

"That makes me assume you need help in developin' a software or what?"

"Yes, exactly. Glad we got that clear, Evie."

"Alright, alright. Get to the point, I've got a lot in hand right now."

"Oh, okay, okay." The young developer paused, "So basically I'm making this game for a school proposal, and y'know, prove it to my dad that this dream of mine matters."

"Okay, Nat. Don't get sentimental, sheesh." Evie chortled, "Now what seems to be the problem, hmm?"

"So, um, remember the game we made during High School? I used the old models there, and then it kind of bugged the game I'm developing..."

"Bug? That's it? That's easy. You can do that without my help."

"Evie... Did you think I'll call you if I can?"

"Alright, fine, fine. Let's meet up tomorrow, is that okay?"

"Absolutely! Bro, thank you! You fucking saved me here."

"No problemo, comrade. But... Where do you live again?"

- Monroe Household | Nat's Room -
- December 09, 2022 - 

The next morning, Nathaniel's father was out-of-town that day. This made things perfect for his son, he didn't have to deal with his tantrums over his dreams.

The entrance door opened wide, as a tall woman appeared at the door. She wore a baggy hoodie that covered her curly long hair. Her glasses sat atop her nose and an annoyed expression was displayed across her face.

"Nice house." Evie commented.

Nathaniel rushed his friend to his room, and immediately opened the computer.

"I see you're still into One Piece and Undertale after all these years." She observed his room carefully.

Nat looked as red as a tomato, and coughed it off.

"T...This is it." He stuttered as he pointed to the file. Her remark was completely unnecessary.

Evie looked closer and took control of the mouse and keyboard. She began typing and downloading files from her USB.

"What are you doing?"

"Well, remember our game from High School?" Evie bit her lip, "'Ya see, I was havin' fun with the notepad when we were those youngins... and thought that makin' a virus would be pretty cool, 'ya know? So I... made one."

"Evie—"

"And I inserted it on our game as a prank! But 'ya know what else happened, I kinda made our game fail?"

"Evie— I... I don't know what to say, actually." Nathaniel didn't know whether to cry or be mad or to stay mentally sane.

"But I can fix it! I can fix it!" Evie repeated and then grabbed her huge Drive, "Let me insert this antivirus I made specifically for corrupted files in game!"

"How do you have that—?"

"Well, as a Nintendo employee, you gotta have some sort of back-up when worst case scenarios like this occur on the job." She then added that she was the one who specifically made this thing.

"Is it safe? Is it gonna fix my game???" Nathaniel excitedly thought.

"Yup, and it's gonna take a few hours before it kicks in, it's a slow download."

But the hours didn't matter for Nathaniel, what matters to him was that his game was going to get fixed. It's going to get better... for his game... and for him.