Vaudevillain

Dylan stared at the message his friend had ended on.

DemarX:

We're going to have to start from scratch

You'll have to make everything again

Dylan tried to rationalize. Maybe someone else had taken the factories. Maybe it was someone with shapeshifting powers, and they transformed into John's character. Maybe the mice were lying to him.

His mind whirled with all the options he imagined. Dylan tried to find one, just one, that seemed plausible. None did. If someone could shapeshift why pick John's character, why not use Dr. Zlo? There didn't seem to be a reason. And Dylan doubted the mice would lie. There wasn't a reason for that either. Vert wouldn't make a game with traitorous minions unless the description called for it. All of Dylan's thoughts settled on one thing, John lied.

"Why?" Dylan muttered.

"You say something?" Riptide asked.

"Why would he do this?" Dylan repeated.

Sweet Dream fumed, "Did that *ss admit he took your stuff?"

Dylan didn't answer; he just stared at the message. He tried to search his mind, did he do something? Was John getting back at him? Dylan couldn't think of anything, but his brain wouldn't get past the thought.

"Is it my fault?" He said. The words barely a whisper.

"The f*ck it is," Sweet Dream snarled. Her anger at the whole situation rising to the back of her throat. "That prick only wanted to use you."

Riptide glared at his friend, "Dream, chill."

Dylan didn't hear it, too lost in his own thoughts. His mind kept circling through a whirlwind of rationalizing thoughts, desperately trying to snatch the correct answer from the maelstrom. It still didn't come, not even when John sent another message.

DemarX:

You there?

The message hung in the air, like an anvil in an old cartoon. Dylan stared at it as if his eyes could burn holes into the thing. He didn't want to reply. He wanted to say nothing, ignore the entire thing. If he thought hard enough, he could believe one of the ideas his brain had dreamed. Instead, his hand moved on instinct.

Superfan39526:

Why did you lie?

_____________________________________________________________________________

John looked at the message, not entirely understanding what his friend messaged.

DemarX:

What do you mean?

Superfan39526:

I know you grabbed the factories

John paled. Impossible. There was no way Dylan could know about that. John had gone in when the others were out. He'd made sure of it.

DemarX:

I don't know what you're talking about

Superfan39526:

Don't deny it

The mice saw you take it

All the color drained out of John. The mice! How did he forget about them? He realized he hadn't; he'd just assumed they were out of the mansion, spying on the mothership. For some reason, he hadn't planned for them to be around.

"Sh*t," John cursed. If he knew that the mice were around, those factories wouldn't even be in the sewers. They'd be gone with the rest of the mansion, and Dylan would be none the wiser. Now, he had to try and fix his fuckup.

DemarX:

I saw the hero coming and took them before he could attack.

It was a weak argument, and John knew it. But in his panic, he couldn't think of another thing to say.

Superfan39526:

Why didn't you message me then?

DemarX:

You were doing the heist

I didn't want to bother you

Superfan35926:

Bullsh*t

You know the list doesn't ping, it only glows.

And besides, it never stopped you before.

So why did you really take them?

John doubled down on his lie, desperate.

DemarX:

I did take them before the hero attacked

And I knew how important the heist was to you

So I didn't want to bother you

_____________________________________________________________________________

Dylan stared flatly at John's message as it appeared. He didn't believe it. He couldn't believe it. Dylan knew how John acted. In every other game they'd played, John had never bothered with waiting to message about something important.

It all started to add up. John had lied to Dylan. Sure, maybe John didn't want Dylan to know about him stealing, but the timing of the attack on the mansion made everything more suspect. Did his friend, the man who'd chat with him about everything superhero, get someone to attack the base to prove a point? And then, John had grabbed Dylan's items out of the mansion before it came down in pieces.

Did this all come from them arguing? Did John decide he'd rather be right than keep a friend? All because Dylan didn't care about the outcome of his plans? He guessed, in the end, the reason didn't matter. John had decided to lash out instead of reconciling.

Dylan knew he should be furious about this; he should burn with white-hot rage, with righteous fury. But it didn't come. All that came was a flood of sadness. All that time, the two had been friends, talking about superheroes and videogames.

Now, that was ruined. Dylan knew he couldn't be friends with John anymore. Or at least, not for a while. Maybe, if his friend apologized, they could work through the issue. But John wasn't even acknowledging what he did, despite the evidence against him. If he'd said sorry, Dylan would forgive him.

That wasn't going to happen now. Dylan knew John well enough that if he didn't say sorry immediately, he'd dig in his heels and fight, even if the battle was already lost. So Dylan wouldn't try. He wasn't going to argue with someone who couldn't acknowledge their wrongs. Dylan closed the message and scrunched his face in an effort to hold his emotions in check.

Someone placed a hand on Dylan's shoulder, "You okay, dude?"

He turned to see Riptide standing over him. At some point, Dylan had fallen on the ground. He wondered when that had happened. The memory of it evaded him.

"I don't know," Dylan answered. "We've been friends for so long, argued about all sorts of stupid sh*t. Why was it this one that broke everything?"

Riptide sat down next to Dylan, "I can't tell ya, dude. I'm not someone who thinks about stuff like that. I try to have fun where I can and let any bad vibes roll off me."

Dylan snorted, "You sound like a self-help guru."

Riptide laughed, "Yeah, man. We're like, all masters of our own destiny and sh*t. Just let the cosmic wave take you where it will."

Riptide brought his hands up in a praying motion and bowed to his friend, "Namaste, dude."

Dylan's snort switched to a soft giggle. He knew he shouldn't be laughing, but the switch in tone was too much. Riptide sounded so utterly ridiculous it broke the somber tone around the room. "Stop. That fits you too well. If you keep doing it, we'll have to change your character."

Riptide stood and held up a peace sign, "Call me Guroovy, the man sent to bring peace and joy to the cosmos."

"Oh god," Sweet Dream said. "That's terrible."

"You're just jealous, baby," Riptide said, shooting two finger-guns at the woman.

The giggle broke into laughter, "Stop!" Dylan said, tears starting to flow down his eyes. Distantly, Dylan wondered why Vert would even bother with adding the function into the game.

"You are such an idiot," Sweet Dream said good-naturedly.

"Hey, I'm fine with that," the man answered. "Long as we all go back to having some fun."

Riptide was right. It didn't do Dylan any good to sit and mope. He could contact John later after he sorted out all his feelings. Right now, he would get back into character and set a course for their next crime. Then he would get off and sort through his feelings.

Wiping the tears off his face, Dr. Zlo stood, "Right! Now that we've stolen this grand spaceship, what should we do next?"

Riptide raised a hand, "Dude, I had a thought. I decided I should be trying to find the biggest and choicest waves all around the world. My goal is to ride all of them."

"Doesn't seem very evil," said Sweet Dream.

"I'm getting to it," Riptide said. "Anyway, I was thinking Dr. Zlo could make a bomb that sets off a giant tsunami for me to surf."

"I see… And what's in it for me?" asked the villain.

"General destruction, a chance to gloat, probably a lot of cash that gets washed out of banks or something."

"I'm game as long as we do something for me next," Sweet Dream said. "I was thinking of using the mothership's tractor beam to steal a ton of candy."

"Dude, that sounds hilarious. Imagine all the reputation we'd get for that."

"Speaking of reputation, why haven't we gotten any for the heist?" Sweet Dream said.

Riptide shrugged, "Dunno. You think it's a bug?"

"Could be, we could submit a ticket."

Riptide opened up his menu and navigated over to the options. Inside he clicked on support and went through the process of making a ticket. As he did, he talked to the others, "Dudes, I wonder how much rep we'd get for stealing this thing."

"It's gotta be a lot," Sweet Dream answered. "Stealing something like this can't be easy."

"No kidding," said Riptide. He finished up the last bit of the ticket and hit enter, "There, ticket submitted. Now, let's go make us a tsunami bomb!"

Sweet Dream went back over to the console, ready to drive it wherever they needed. Dr. Zlo opened up his power tab to figure out the materials they needed. But before either could start, a man appeared inside the control room.

"Woah, hey, guys. Hold up for a second."

The three turned to see a man dressed in a loose t-shirt and jeans. On the shirt were the words, VERT IT, in bold letters. The man looked haggard, like he'd woken up to run straight to work. His hair, tousled and messy, only served to emphasize the effect.

"Hey there," the man waved. "I'm Isaac, and I work for Vert tech support. Our AI helper flagged your ticket as priority one importance, so I popped in to give you a chat. You mind if I pull up the ticket real quick?"

"Uh, no problem, dude," answered Riptide.

The man performed a few practiced motions, pulling up a holographic image of Riptide's support ticket for everyone to see.

"Oh, wow," Isaac said. "You guys really did a number on this."

"What do you mean?" asked Sweet Dream.

"Simple answer is, you weren't supposed to be able to steal the mothership," answered Isaac.

"What?" said Dylan.

"Yeah. See, Vert and the Orange Visitor came up with the whole alien invasion idea, but the team wanted to keep the story as coherent as possible. That meant scripting a ton of the alien's reactions. But that led to another problem."

"Scripted events and a free choice game doesn't mix," Sweet Dream said.

Isaac nodded, "Exactly. Scripting all the aliens made it too easy to bypass a lot of the story. So instead, the guys severely limited the options NPCs could take and did whatever they could to prevent something, well something like what you guys did. That's why the motherships all have one entrance and can't be broken into pieces. That left some choice for players, but pretty much required them to beat the boss below for the key."

"So how did we get past it all?" asked Dylan.

"Honestly, I can't tell ya at the moment. Right now, my best guess is you somehow triggered enough scripted events to trick the mothership. Though, I don't see how you got it to move when you didn't have the key."

"Oh, we used a hacking tool I made with my power," Dylan said.

"Can you elaborate?" asked Isaac.

Dylan gave a brief description of his power and what he intended for the hacking tool.

"Gotcha. Okay, do you mind if we grab your guys' data logs to see what happened here?"

"Yeah, go ahead, dude," Riptide said.

"Awesome, we'll take a look at what happened and get back to you. In the meantime, we kind of need to put the mothership back."

The three friends looked at Isaac, speaking in unison, "What?"