Fangirl Ferocity

Indeed, Guile had beaten a lot of guys since they left. Thankfully, even now nobody seemed to have beat him, no matter the game- but the line ahead was long, and each time someone entered his realm, the girls prayed they’d come out defeated, until they were the ones standing in front of him again.

“You’re back!” Guile thought the sisters looked a little overconfident, but he didn’t mention it. “Ren, is the room clear?”

“All clear.” The assistant confirmed.

“The last guy kept switching games, couldn’t make up his mind. I don't think you’ll have as much trouble picking… not this time, at least.”

“Why’s that?” Frankie was grinning.

“You’ll see.”

Activating his trickery after their payment, they returned to the game library.

“I got you something- it was pretty easy to license it. The copyright’s been renewed a bunch, but the rights are up for grabs for cheap. Surprised you haven’t snatched ‘em up yourself.”

“You don’t mean what I think you mean, do you?”

Katie gasped as he pulled out a recreated copy of an ancient Percy Phytoplankton video game.

“That’s that game you wanted!”

“We can play it, if you like. It’s not trivia, is it?”

“No, fighting.” The younger challenger was raring to go. “You won’t be getting a cheat sheet on this one.”

“No? I bet I can still predict your moves anyway.”

“We’ll see about that, won’t we?” She chuckled.

“This game allows up to four players.” Ren noted. “If your sister would like to participate, I will play on the side of Guile.”

“You wanna?” Frankie asked.

“Are you- sure that wouldn’t endanger the plan?”

“It might. I’m willing to take that risk if it makes this more fun. We can always try again, can’t we?”

Katie was very happy to nod in agreement. Finally, they saw eye-to-eye.

“Let the games begin!” A TV was magically rolled in, and the sisters got to witness the original basis for their technology at work- though Frankie was, of course, more excited about just seeing her obsession in game form.

The main menu was simple, befitting what was essentially licensed shovelware. The copyright years on the bottom of the picture were using an outdated system, but the graphics were about as good as they still were in the present.

“There he is…”

Frankie marveled at the digital Percy flailing his mace about the title screen. She wished this copy was real so that she could somehow take it home. When Guile looked into her head, she was perfectly readable- just hyperfocused on the image of this silly anthropomorphic protist.

They went through to the character select screen and began to make their choices out of eight options- Frankie analyzed each and every one before selecting Percy himself by default. Based solely on looks, Katie chose the protagonist’s rival, Barry the Bacterioplankton, an edgy, mean-looking purple… thing with a sword.

Guile always played for keeps, again chipping into the expert’s head to see if she could point him towards the best counter for her pick… until he got more than he bargained for.

What is all this?

Her mind was now racing. So many concurrent thoughts that he had trouble reading all of them. He scanned through at his own pace, but even then it was hard to parce.

Hmm… Frankie pondered. The Mesoplankton Sisters are missing a lot of detail in these designs, you can tell they’re both using the same model with a palette swap. That sucks. Why is Porco the Picoplankton so orange? He was clearly stated to be bright yellow. I don’t like how they made Barry’s sword so small, I think they wanted him to be more similar to Percy but taking away his defining weapon is just sacreligious. But oh my god, these alternate colors are so good. Percy has his Scumwar Arc design! There’s even the scar… holy shit, they gave him a backpack. That’s literally precisely how I imagined the backpack. This might be the best game ever made

Guile promptly chipped out.

All of this information… is completely useless!

It was beginning to seem, even to the MASCOT himself, as though there really was a way to beat him after all.