The Gangs All Here!

There was a wavy wind sound above my head. I looked up and saw someone flying down toward me on sparkly crystal wings.

“Is that a player?” I asked, narrowing my eyes to get a good look at him.

“Look out below!” he shouted in a deep, familiar voice. “The crow is about to land!”

“Crow-boy!” I clapped my hands happily. “It’s good to see you here!”

He touched down gracefully, then kneeled down in front of me. His armor wasn’t as defined or thick as it was last time I saw him, so he must have actually had to restart and ended up getting weaker stuff.

“Truly, I apologize for not being able to defeat The Virus when last we faced him,” he said to me.

“Nah, t’s all good, Crow-boy.” I smiled and knocked on his helmet a few times with my Bom-Bom, gently so it didn't blow up. “As long as you’re here now and ready to get back to the grind, that’s the important thing.”

“I appreciate your wisdom and kindness, Madam Rosaline.”

Gosh, he was making me sound like an old lady or something with that 'madam' thing. I had to teach that boy how to talk to a woman my age. Didn’t make it any less flattering.

Suddenly a bunch of little ghost emoji’s appeared out of him and floated around, five all together. Their faces kept changing into other emoji’s as they fluttered about and looked at everything, including Tensei and me.

“What are these?” I poked one and it giggled.

“Say hello to my chat!” Crow-boy said. “Tensei was kind enough to give them the ability to fly around the game along with us to help out.”

That was a crazy cool feature from her! She was just full of surprises, wasn’t she?

One of the little chat ghosts flew around me and clearly was trying to sneak a peek under the hood. I slapped him aside and glared somethin’ vile his way.

“Don’t even think about it, perv!” I shouted.

“Sorry!😅” -The Winkler

“Hey! Don’t give the rest of us in the chat bad names! You’ll get us banned! 😠” -Ms. Notre-Dame

“はい、あなたは変態で良い人ではありません🖕” -K1lr0y

“I said I was sorry! Can’t help admiring a beautiful lady!😌” -The Winkler

“I hate you so much.😒” -Ms. Notre-Dame

He was lucky I got used to guys ogling me, but that was no excuse to get freaky.

Kinda’ cool that Crow-boy had someone speaking Japanese in his chat though. I’m assuming he was pissed off too.

“Now, now, chat…” Crow-boy rose back to his feet and waved all the ghosts to gather around him. “Let’s not fight over such silly things, nor should we disrespect a woman's privacy. Let us be as calm and quiet as the Nano-MH PC cooling fan, which boasts an astronomical ten thousand RPM while staying quiet as a mouse.”

“Still trying to pay the bills, are we?” I snickered. “Anyways…”

Teny-chan made a motion to get my attention. She had a conflicted look, which made me think she had something controversial to say.

“Mama, I called another person to come help us. I hope you don’t mind…”

“Awww, she calls her mama now 😭😭😭” -Ms. Notre-Dame

“かわいいですね 💗” -K1lr0y

Who else could she call to help us? It wasn’t like Ginger was in any place to join us, since we didn’t know what happened to her yet. I had hope she was okay, but…

A flash of light appeared beside me. I took a step back and gave the light some distance to shine. All the chat ghosts started curiously spiraling around it for some reason, like it was some kind of summoning ritual.

The light formed into a man shape, then faded to reveal a familiar looking Spaniard guy.

“Zorro!” I announced.

The_Zorro: -¡Hola, amigo!-

His character waved to me, so I waved back.

I was both excited and a little skeptical to trust him. Not because I felt he was a bad person, but because I knew he had some secrets he hadn’t shared yet that were probably pretty important.

The_Zorro: -I am sorry for what has happened to Ray. If only I had been there to help…-

The_Zorro: -But now that things have gotten bad, I suppose there is no other choice but to tell you something I was hoping I didn’t have to and blow my cover.-

I was all ears. Whatever he had to say, it was probably going to help us get to the bottom of what was going on.

The_Zorro: -Sixty people who were working on this game went missing without a reason. I needed to know why, so I decided to work alongside The Virus to see if I could get information on their whereabouts. I played the part of a hacker messing with the game for online rep. I made contact, but he wanted me to spy on you and Ray.-

That explained why he happened to be around when we needed his help. At least he had a good reason to be working with the enemy.

The_Zorro: -Well, I know what happened to the devs.-

The_Zorro: -Do you know why I didn’t want to kill those guards before?-

“Are they the missing people?!” I asked in shock.

The_Zorro: -Close, but not exactly. Those guards, and many other NPC’s in the game, are connected to the brains of the missing devs. They’ve been locked up and forced to power the game and make the NPC's human levels of intelligence.-

The_Zorro: -If the connection is severed, or the smart NPC dies, then it hurts the person who’s powering it severely.-

How was that even possible?! This was some next level tech horror, especially if people could get hurt.

"Tensei, did you know about this?" I asked.

"Not this..." She shook her head. "I didn't know they were trapping the devs to power the game. That's not okay."

'Not okay' was an understatement. If this got out, it would absolutely ruin the studio, maybe shake up the industry and the whole world too. This was huge... way bigger than I thought. And to think, we were all right in the middle of it-probably the only people on the planet who could stop it.

What's worse is that if this was how they were treating devs, what could they do with players? Could players get stuck in this game too? I could see it now... The next expansion pack was fueled off the brains of orphans nobody cared about. Jesus...

“Holy ******* ****. Are you serious? They’re using human brains to power their AI? 😨” -The Winkler

“Wow, WTF is going on with this game? 😨” -Ms. Notre-Dame

-The Winkler has been banned for profanity-

“HA HA THAT LOSER IS GONE! 🤣” -Ms. Notre-Dame

“Say hello to my alt, beotchis! 🤣” -The Winkler 2

“Fuuuuuuuu- 💀” -Ms. Notre-Dame

-The Winkler 2 has been banned for bypassing the profanity filter and account ban-

“HA HA HA THAT LOSER IS GONE AGAIN! 🤣” -Ms. Notre-Dame

“I can do this all day, baby. 😏” -The Winkler 3

Oh my god… He kept coming back like a bad movie trilogy.

Anyways, the fact that they were using those devs to power the games AI must have been against the law or something. I asked the group if anyone knew, and one of Crow-boy's chats had some insight…

“Okay, so I’m an attorney.” -Ms. Notre-Dame 

“There are no specific laws prohibiting this because AI isn’t something fully regulated yet.” -Ms. Notre-Dame

“However, if it is proven in court that people are being held against their will, it would likely be charged under article 18 U.S. Code § 1589 – Forced Labor. ” -Ms. Notre-Dame

So we might have an actual case here...

Now it was making sense to me. All the devs must have been pulled into the game to power the AI, or maybe more too if I had to guess. Maybe that would explain why Paul wanted to save them, because he was going to be put in as well.

“Wait, you're an attorney? 😨” -The Winkler 3

“Do I smell a s3xual harassment charge on the horizon? 🤔” -Ms. Notre-Dame

“Fine, I get it… 😑” -The Winkler 3

-Ms. Notre-Dame has been banned for bypassing the profanity filter-

“OMG! 🤣” -The Winkler 3

“We never speak of this again. 😤” -Ms. Notre-Dame 2

There wasn’t a dull moment with that Crow-boy's chat, now was there?

We were pretty much set to head off for our return to Mothbordia at this point, but Zorro claimed he had another player we were waiting on…

Suddenly a clone of his spawned out, but wearing a pink version of his outfit instead of black. He introduced this person as his own daughter, who wanted to help us in the fight using his second controller.

“Oh wow! It's so nice to finally meet you!” I cheered and waved her way. She returned the gesture. Our team was seriously stacked with some great members! “Look out, Virus! We’re comin’ for you!”

“Harrah!” Announced everyone together.

🌹🎮🌹

So, things were getting really bad in the game. Those clouds that were originally just over Mothbordia were quickly taking over the sky. Evil purple, green and red rain fell down from them and caused all the Glitched everywhere to turn into zombies. Not only that, but a lot of the bugs we’d already taken care of returned, worse than before.

Other distortions across the game world were getting really bad too. Trees disappeared, buildings kept blipping in and out of existence, and big pot holes to Hell opened up on the road that would’ve given Chicago drivers a run for their money.

“That’s not the worst of it.” Teny-chan pointed to a wall of light rising off in the direction of Mothbordia. “That’s an update coming out from the capital city. It's expanding outward. Once it touches everything in the game, there’s no reversing The Virus’s corruption.”

“The game’ll be ruined for good,” I said, gritting my teeth. “All that work we put in will be wasted.”

At this point, it wasn’t just about launching the game in a glitch free state. I busted my beautiful butt and pushed my husband to his limits trying to fix this game up, and if it didn’t become the best darn thing of all time, I was gonna’ be beyond pissed off for the rest of my life. No joke!

"How long until it covers the whole map?" I asked her.

"It's going quick..." she poked her chin. "Maybe only a few hours."

Frack... That is not good.

“It will already take us some time to get to Mothbordia…” Crow-boy said as he held the reins of our horse Ruth. “So prepare yourselves and make sure you’re all ready for a fight.”

I was feeling great, despite the circumstances. I had a ton of levels to my name and even had some strategies that I went over with the team. The Virus thought he had us pegged, but boy was he in for a surprise!