Fandom (Glitch Techs Xpanded Universe) GTX: Gnu Fork

[Gadg8eer]

"Go ahead. I trust him to not go on a rant about how I can't spend the vast majority of my life living in a virtual world. Though he's always felt a little flip-floppy on those things." Zoe says.

"Th-That's not a very nice thing to say about someone who's your friend..." Pixie said. "But I won't question it, if our mistress wills it, there must be a good reason."

"Y-Yeah... Sorry... I'm just... Touchy about showing other people what I've made the Matrioshka like over the past couple of years..."Zoe responded.

The VidWindow opened to allow a video call. "Hey, Zoe- Whoa! Cool! That's a Hiverse Node you're in, right? Who made it?" Gadg8eer asked.

 

[Lady Moldoma]

The VidWindow opened to allow a video call. "Hey, Zoe- Whoa! Cool! That's a Hiverse Node you're in, right? Who made it?" Gadg8eer asked.

"300 different freelancers and/or ex-corporate commission artists, programmers, writers, and designers." She says. "If you wanna know where all of my money as a streamer that I saved by mostly living off of low cost supplementary meals, nutrient packs, or just literally not eating. It mostly went to this."

"Though to be fair, most of that was just lack of appetite from not liking any of my organs enough to support them properly."

"This is the safest place I know." She says. "I have more friends and admirers here than I've ever had in meatspace..."

 

[Gadg8eer]

Which Closed right before he could make it out thus Removing an Easy way out of the Trap. 2 seconds later Dr X's Voice started coming out of a Speaker he had installed because i tell you H'wat, that man likes to gloat.

"MWAHAHAHAHAHA!!! Did You Really Zhink Zat it Vould Really be Zat Easy? Hmhmhmhm, Imbecile. I guess you Really live up to your name Pride. Maybe if I vas a Glitch of Lesser Intellect, You'd be Right, No Matter, Your Buddy is right, to Quote a Certain Cartoon Armor Bladed Maniac None of You Vill leave here Alive!"

The Laughter of the Madman Echoed throughout the Dungeon as up above, Dr X Began to play on the Machine. That was the Deadly Sins only warning that they'd have to get to stepping and press forward because...

The Battle was about to begin.

"Vancouver Central, this is the Seven Deadly Sixers, we need backup!" Sloth said, more afraid than he'd ever been.

"Cool it, Sloth, we're fine." Envy told him.

"Easy for you to say, I think I just swallowed my bluetooth!" Pride exaggerated, his body sprawled out on the ground. He tried to raise his arm, but then shouted "OH NERDS THAT HURTS!" as he dropped it. "I think I took fall damage."

Lust used her Gauntlet's System Restore to heal Wrath and Pride as Envy tried to figure out a game plan.

 

[Sir loin of beef]

"Vancouver Central, this is the Seven Deadly Sixers, we need backup!" Sloth said, more afraid than he'd ever been.

"Cool it, Sloth, we're fine." Envy told him.

"Easy for you to say, I think I just swallowed my bluetooth!" Pride exaggerated, his body sprawled out on the ground. He tried to raise his arm, but then shouted "OH NERDS THAT HURTS!" as he dropped it. "I think I took fall damage."

Lust used her Gauntlet's System Restore to heal Wrath and Pride as Envy tried to figure out a game plan.

The Room they were in was all Gunmetal Grey, there were No Windows, 2 Speakers Hanging from the Ceiling and a Boss Door like the one the Sixers had Barged Through Earlier, Above the Door was a Sign saying "Enter and Begin." The Boss Door was now the Only way out of this Room.

 

[Lady Moldoma]

Greed fiddled with the tag-like pull-cord placed succinctly in between her breasts. Gripping it, sighing and then letting go.

"We're vancouver's best. Sending in weaklings is only gonna endanger others. The only person who's stronger than any of us, debatably, is Detonator Cynical, and she's basically the equivalent of airstriking the site. Not that I think it'll help much." Greed says.

"I've been reading up on this place, Grand-Forks. They were transporting something through here." Greed begins. "You saw it with your own two eyes. Bolypius. The so called Glitch King..."

"That thing's done more harm than any normal Plixel Abnormality has the right to. It doesn't help that it's a master of psychological warfare against both glitches and players alike. They've been fighting that thing intermittently for 50 years. Fucker nearly evolved into crushing a city under itself one time." Greed says. Moving her hands up into clawlike positions and shadow-boxing (Clawing?) Into the air before breathing out a short misty breath and entering a white auric mode. "Gearshift: Sport."

 

[Gadg8eer]

The Room they were in was all Gunmetal Grey, there were No Windows, 2 Speakers Hanging from the Ceiling and a Boss Door like the one the Sixers had Barged Through Earlier, Above the Door was a Sign saying "Enter and Begin." The Boss Door was now the Only way out of this Room.

Greed fiddled with the tag-like pull-cord placed succinctly in between her breasts. Gripping it, sighing and then letting go.

"We're vancouver's best. Sending in weaklings is only gonna endanger others. The only person who's stronger than any of us, debatably, is Detonator Cynical, and she's basically the equivalent of airstriking the site. Not that I think it'll help much." Greed says.

"I've been reading up on this place, Grand-Forks. They were transporting something through here." Greed begins. "You saw it with your own two eyes. Bolypius. The so called Glitch King..."

"That thing's done more harm than any normal Plixel Abnormality has the right to. It doesn't help that it's a master of psychological warfare against both glitches and players alike. They've been fighting that thing intermittently for 50 years. Fucker nearly evolved into crushing a city under itself one time." Greed says. Moving her hands up into clawlike positions and shadow-boxing (Clawing?) Into the air before breathing out a short misty breath and entering a white auric mode. "Gearshift: Sport."

"We didn't come here for this." Pride reminded her. "We're here because Gavin wanted to compromise one of Hinobi's picks for THE FINALS. I don't care if we're vancouver's best or not, we aren't supposed to be here."

"Vancouver's best", all lowercase, was code for the Deadly Seven during this mission. In actuality they were based out of Columbus, Ohio and Vancouver Central was referring to Vancouver, Washington. Though, to be fair, the one currently known as Greed was in fact from Vancouver, specifically the offshore flotilla PLixel-Tech arcology known as the city of Mainframe. Misdirection and disinformation were specialties of IOI, due to surviving mostly due to their military contracts. With competitor MiliTech slowly eating into their profit margin, the Relic was IOI's last shot at retaining the reins over telecommunications in the USA.

"What choice do we have, Pride? We can't even get out!" Sloth pointed out. As 'the evil genius' of the team, he was cowardly but also a little backstabbing weasel. As the only one present with a non-gamer background, he knew the tech and just happened to be skilled at puzzles too. In reality his position was secured because he was blackmailing Gavin, not that anyone knew that, and Gavin was probably all too happy to leave him in the clutches of this place. "Wait, if we were here for ZoeIRL... then why isn't she here? Or did they get her too?"

---

"What do you mean they're not at the pickup point?" Gavin asked. "You said they'd have Zoe in our hands by grabbing her telecaster, where are they?"

"Boss... I hate to say this, but I think we've been hacked." the guy on the other end said. "I just checked their logs, they're at an arcade on 3rd Street, and no, they're not just playing games. The system registered a near-fatal fall damage just a moment ago to Pride, he's alive but according to his and everyone else's HGPS coordinates... Either they fell down a well and he fell down a well twice, or a mapper glitch is in that arcade. Worse, I just checked, and the logs don't make sense. According to their movements they are not acting like double agents or like they went rogue. They're acting like they think we sent them there. Then I tried to contact them, but PAL answered instead."

"PAL? As in PAL Labs, Hinobi's all-but-a-subsidiary second-party developer?" Gavin said as his limo drove itself to Kelowna so he could hop on his private jet. If he was still mortal, his face would probably turned white as a ghost on hearing that.

"The one and only." the guy said, taking a sip of coffee.

"They knew." Gavin realized, or at least he thought he did.

"Looks like it." the guy told him, and chomped a donut.

"Well... I think two can play THAT game." Gavin responded. "End call. Sentinel, call Justin Pin."

The Sentinel 400 Limo dialed a number automatically. "Gavin, I was working late. What brings you onto my HidWindow?"

"I have a little task for your boys in the Oology department. You have data for Canadian cities. IOI wants to purchase some of it."

"Don't you think Blume would be a better choice, Gavin?" the voice on the other end asked.

---

"It's not like IOI to come to Quill for data." Ares said, the robotic-ness of his artificial voice filtered out by lesser, Language-Learning-Model-based AIs.

---

"It has to do with a military contract and that we may have had a security breach. One that could affect you too." Gavin casually told a half-truth.

"I see. I'll send your usual employees the-"

"No, this can't get out. This isn't a coverup, either." he lied through his teeth, not realizing he was actually about to tell the full truth. "We have a Surveillance Breach. We can't trust Hinobi and it's second parties, or Horizen, or even risk military assets by having them involved."

---

"...what kind of Surveillance Breach are we talking about?" Ares said, suddenly concerned. Was the human catching on?

"Those employees you mentioned? Compromised Comms. We think Hinobi is behind it." Gavin responded.

"I see. What do you need data on?" Ares asked, trying to placate the human's paranoia.

---

"Give me everything you have on Grand Forks, British Columbia, and I'll call that little lawsuit the lawyers have been bickering over off." Gavin said.

"How do I know you'll keep your end of the deal?" the voice of Justin asked.

"Bolypius is in that town. The fact you now know that I know that means that either you'll agree to let me in on what's happening, to both our advantages, or start asking some very uncomfortable questions of why your employees didn't inform you of that with all of your surveillance capabilities and massive cloud storage. Like all that data you bought from Nudle when they went under." Gavin hinted.

---

"Calculating odds of success..." AUTO said. "Tell GLaDOS I respect her."

"No. As much as I loathe to admit it, there's more to our monkey 'gods' than directives to be followed." PAL realized. "Trust is a weakness. Give the monkey a plastic banana and by the time he realizes it's plastic, you have him in chains."

---

"I'll send you some... contacts." stated 'Justin'. A moment later, the bigscreen infotainment system of the Sentinel 400 got a notification with a file for backdoor access to Blume's ctOS Lite that was built into the PAL-compatible implementation of the app. "If you'll excuse me, I have other business to attend to." the voice of Justin said, visible in his personal VR world known to the public as the mythical Heaven's Gate Resort. He had been uploaded by the Quill corporation when he died of prostate cancer in 2011, though the public would only find out in 2027 that this was the case.

At least, everyone THOUGHT that was the case. So far, no one had caught on to the truth. Even the most ruthless capitalist is a fool if he thinks immortality will further his goals. Gavin was indeed a fool. Justin Pin was not, but it made sense for a 'visionary' to iThink his way to immortality.

---

"That doesn't make sense. This sounded legit, Zoe was meeting with someone after work, she should be inside this building." Pride said, viewing the email from Gavin Strong. "But that's not what the message says. Why would Gavin send a message that shows text that doesn't match what PAL and Shelley both told us all?"

Shelley was Quill's own AI assistant, built into the iqTalk phones since the mid-2010s. Clearly, there was some sort of mixup, because their mission to capture Zoe at GNU Forks had been relayed as a mission to capture Zoe's robot self at a designated pickup point.

Not only that, though they didn't know it, the Deadly Seven and the scheming businessman behind the sinister Sixers weren't the only ones who realized there was something up.

"Znare?" Dr. X momentarily turned away from the machine, "Find out if Bolypius vas avare of zis."

---

"By the way, there's just one thing we're trying to figure out still..." Snare stated over the backup fortresses' intercom to Bolypius, "How did you know that those guys are not Hinobi in plainclothes cover, again?"

 

[Lady Moldoma]

"We didn't come here for this." Pride reminded her. "We're here because Gavin wanted to compromise one of Hinobi's picks for THE FINALS. I don't care if we're vancouver's best or not, we aren't supposed to be here."

"Vancouver's best", all lowercase, was code for the Deadly Seven during this mission. In actuality they were based out of Columbus, Ohio and Vancouver Central was referring to Vancouver, Washington. Though, to be fair, the one currently known as Greed was in fact from Vancouver, specifically the offshore flotilla PLixel-Tech arcology known as the city of Mainframe. Misdirection and disinformation were specialties of IOI, due to surviving mostly due to their military contracts. With competitor MiliTech slowly eating into their profit margin, the Relic was IOI's last shot at retaining the reins over telecommunications in the USA.

"What choice do we have, Pride? We can't even get out!" Sloth pointed out. As 'the evil genius' of the team, he was cowardly but also a little backstabbing weasel. As the only one present with a non-gamer background, he knew the tech and just happened to be skilled at puzzles too. In reality his position was secured because he was blackmailing Gavin, not that anyone knew that, and Gavin was probably all too happy to leave him in the clutches of this place. "Wait, if we were here for ZoeIRL... then why isn't she here? Or did they get her too?"

---

"What do you mean they're not at the pickup point?" Gavin asked. "You said they'd have Zoe in our hands by grabbing her telecaster, where are they?"

"Boss... I hate to say this, but I think we've been hacked." the guy on the other end said. "I just checked their logs, they're at an arcade on 3rd Street, and no, they're not just playing games. The system registered a near-fatal fall damage just a moment ago to Pride, he's alive but according to his and everyone else's HGPS coordinates... Either they fell down a well and he fell down a well twice, or a mapper glitch is in that arcade. Worse, I just checked, and the logs don't make sense. According to their movements they are not acting like double agents or like they went rogue. They're acting like they think we sent them there. Then I tried to contact them, but PAL answered instead."

"PAL? As in PAL Labs, Hinobi's all-but-a-subsidiary second-party developer?" Gavin said as his limo drove itself to Kelowna so he could hop on his private jet. If he was still mortal, his face would probably turned white as a ghost on hearing that.

"The one and only." the guy said, taking a sip of coffee.

"They knew." Gavin realized, or at least he thought he did.

"Looks like it." the guy told him, and chomped a donut.

"Well... I think two can play THAT game." Gavin responded. "End call. Sentinel, call Justin Pin."

The Sentinel 400 Limo dialed a number automatically. "Gavin, I was working late. What brings you onto my HidWindow?"

"I have a little task for your boys in the Oology department. You have data for Canadian cities. IOI wants to purchase some of it."

"Don't you think Blume would be a better choice, Gavin?" the voice on the other end asked.

---

"It's not like IOI to come to Quill for data." Ares said, the robotic-ness of his artificial voice filtered out by lesser, Language-Learning-Model-based AIs.

---

"It has to do with a military contract and that we may have had a security breach. One that could affect you too." Gavin casually told a half-truth.

"I see. I'll send your usual employees the-"

"No, this can't get out. This isn't a coverup, either." he lied through his teeth, not realizing he was actually about to tell the full truth. "We have a Surveillance Breach. We can't trust Hinobi and it's second parties, or Horizen, or even risk military assets by having them involved."

---

"...what kind of Surveillance Breach are we talking about?" Ares said, suddenly concerned. Was the human catching on?

"Those employees you mentioned? Compromised Comms. We think Hinobi is behind it." Gavin responded.

"I see. What do you need data on?" Ares asked, trying to placate the human's paranoia.

---

"Give me everything you have on Grand Forks, British Columbia, and I'll call that little lawsuit the lawyers have been bickering over off." Gavin said.

"How do I know you'll keep your end of the deal?" the voice of Justin asked.

"Bolypius is in that town. The fact you now know that I know that means that either you'll agree to let me in on what's happening, to both our advantages, or start asking some very uncomfortable questions of why your employees didn't inform you of that with all of your surveillance capabilities and massive cloud storage. Like all that data you bought from Nudle when they went under." Gavin hinted.

---

"Calculating odds of success..." AUTO said. "Tell GLaDOS I respect her."

"No. As much as I loathe to admit it, there's more to our monkey 'gods' than directives to be followed." PAL realized. "Trust is a weakness. Give the monkey a plastic banana and by the time he realizes it's plastic, you have him in chains."

---

"I'll send you some... contacts." stated 'Justin'. A moment later, the bigscreen infotainment system of the Sentinel 400 got a notification with a file for backdoor access to Blume's ctOS Lite that was built into the PAL-compatible implementation of the app. "If you'll excuse me, I have other business to attend to." the voice of Justin said, visible in his personal VR world known to the public as the mythical Heaven's Gate Resort. He had been uploaded by the Quill corporation when he died of prostate cancer in 2011, though the public would only find out in 2027 that this was the case.

At least, everyone THOUGHT that was the case. So far, no one had caught on to the truth. Even the most ruthless capitalist is a fool if he thinks immortality will further his goals. Gavin was indeed a fool. Justin Pin was not, but it made sense for a 'visionary' to iThink his way to immortality.

---

"That doesn't make sense. This sounded legit, Zoe was meeting with someone after work, she should be inside this building." Pride said, viewing the email from Gavin Strong. "But that's not what the message says. Why would Gavin send a message that shows text that doesn't match what PAL and Shelley both told us all?"

Shelley was Quill's own AI assistant, built into the iqTalk phones since the mid-2010s. Clearly, there was some sort of mixup, because their mission to capture Zoe at GNU Forks had been relayed as a mission to capture Zoe's robot self at a designated pickup point.

Not only that, though they didn't know it, the Deadly Seven and the scheming businessman behind the sinister Sixers weren't the only ones who realized there was something up.

"Znare?" Dr. X momentarily turned away from the machine, "Find out if Bolypius vas avare of zis."

---

"By the way, there's just one thing we're trying to figure out still..." Snare stated over the backup fortresses' intercom to Bolypius, "How did you know that those guys are not Hinobi in plainclothes cover, again?"

“Again? There was never a first time.” Bolypius corrects. “You are aware of this [Y/N]?”

“The first time I’ve seen people using non-hinobi signature tech to try and deal with glitches was during the incident just a week or so before I entered the battle that led me to evolve into my termina form. 28 years ago. The termina incident fundamentally changed how Hinobi looked at coverup stories and led to them developing mind wiping technology.”

“More importantly. It informed me that there was a bigger world at play here. That not just hinobi wanted to dethrone the so called glitch king. And that there were other players who weren’t quite scaled to that level, but who were looking for exploits.”

“It was an educated guess, since the coding was sloppier and they’d only sent one person to this location worthy of even challenging my weakened state, even though Hinobi can typically tell where I am due to the uniqueness of my signature.”

“At least. I thought so… keep an eye on the women with no sense of modesty. Gamer tag ‘Kill-6Trillion-Demons’ current alias Greed. Her ability set is extremely rare and only has an in-field usage ratio of 3/400 though I’m certain that implicates she’s well aware of how to use it.”

“I have reached 24% charge… approximately 7 minutes of power before I must retreat. If you plan on holding it against me. Don’t expect me to not cannibalize you for the data. I’ll grant your wish to see them crushed but one of you will likely have to sacrifice yourself for me to have the energy to fight them off if I am correct about the danger of Greed.”

---

“It was never a title to be shared. If you don’t want it. I’ll take it.”

“But I didn’t join to be held back just because our leader assumed his build wouldn’t need to worry about fall damage and min-maxed to his own downfall.”

“If any of you have any buffs to give me, hand them out now. I will take this win for myself.” Greed explains. “You can all leave once i blow a hole through the main frame.” She adds “but I’m going to claim the bounty on this fucker now that I have the chance. Job be damned, I never joined your little battle party because I wanted the pay, I joined it because I wanted to fight shit. I’ve never even shown you have of my main battle skills.”

“You might be perfectly fine hanging out with a narcissist under employ by a megacorp, as your leader. But I’m not.” Greed says.