Happy Halloween!

[mosaic_archive]

It might be a good idea to carry an umbrella when walking in the open area of the Nexus today. Not because of rain, however, but because of a light shower of wrapped fun-sized candies that started when a threshold number of portals reached midnight on October 30th (or the first second of the 31st, depending on how you look at it) and will continue until the same conditions for midnight October 31st.

The free candy is perfectly safe. The ground fog playing over the grassy field, however, carries an LOL with the following effects: If someone is not in costume they suddenly will be (mun's choice), and may have abilities to match whatever they're costumed as. An example would be someone in a ghost costume gaining the temporary ability to float or walk through walls. If someone is already in a costume they might get related abilities, but will otherwise be partly immune. All effects will wear off at the same time as the end of the candy shower.

In other words: Happy Halloween, everyone.

Comments

[pogo_boy]

The Magelets have mostly fallen asleep in the tree, and thus do not follow for now.

Little Blaine, however, watches what Dee is doing closely. He doesn't interfere, since he doesn't understand what she's trying to make.

Quint nods. "Yeah, and even after that there were some problems. It's mostly better now. It'd say we're more careful now, but... if it came to the same kind of emergency situation we might risk it again. A chance of complications is still better than certain death."

To the rest he says, "There's a vending machine that shows up here sometimes. One of the buttons dispenses things that can either remove an LOL or make it permanant. We found out because my oldest brother, Blues, used an LOL and one of those drinks to make himself look like an adult. He was designed to look about twelve years old, and I guess... well, he kind of has some trust issues so he couldn't just ask someone to make modifications. But when he caught an LOL that made him look older, he just took advantage of that."

[dee_lorean81]

Victor takes a moment to glance back, wondering why the Magelets aren't following -- then sees them snoozing away in the tree, giggles, and lets them be. They shouldn't be too far away if they wake up and want to join in.

Dee, for her part, is busy arranging the candy into wide squares (to minimize the risk of any being knocked out of place). It's not too long before the board takes shape. "Here we go!"

"Well, of course," Doc agrees with Quint. "I think most people would feel the same way. Not an ideal situation, but pretty much everything is better than death."

"Oh -- we know about the vending machine," Victor says. "We've gotten things from it in the past." He pets Nibbles. "Including, technically, him -- another friend of ours was clearing out some of the old stock and happened to drop his PokeBall." He smiles at Nibbles, who nuzzles his cheek. "We took a liking to each other."

"We never ran across the item that you mentioned, though," Alice says. "Probably for the best if it's either-or -- we wouldn't mind the LOL remover, but I can't think of a LOL yet that I would want to make permanent." Frowning, she adds, "Then again, I've never been stuck in the body of a twelve-year-old. I'm glad Blues was able to turning that LOLing to his advantage."

[pogo_boy]

Little Blaine looks at the squares of the playing area and waits for the rules to be explained. He doesn't see anything that could cause damage, at least that he could identify.

"Someone was cleaning out the vending machine?" Quint asks. "I just thought it worked on LOLs somehow. I know an alternate of one of my brothers tried to put a warning sign on it once and was turned into a girl for a few days." He looks at Nibbles. "He's one of the Pokemon? Some of my family have some of those from the vending machine... Um, so do I, but Daisy just stays at home and has sort of just become a family pet. She's some kind of pink cow."

"Most of us don't mind looking the way we do," Quint says, "but it got awkward for Blues because, well, Kalinka's human, so she grew up... They have kids now, partly because of another LOL that turned Blues human for a couple of weeks." He snerks, because leave it to BLUES of all of them to sneak into the human gene pool somehow.

[dee_lorean81]

"All right, so the idea is that you take a rock -- or a piece of candy--" Dee holds up one to demonstrate "-- and you toss it into one of the squares." She throws, and the hard candy ends up in square 7. "Then you gotta hop through the squares -- only one foot allowed in a square! -- and you have to skip the one that your candy is in." She hops along the board, balancing on one leg in the single squares, putting both feet down on the first double, then carefully making sure not to put a foot in square seven. "Then, when you get to the top, you turn around, grab your candy, and hop back the same way." She scoops up the candy, and back she goes in reverse of her previous jumps. She lands with a smile in front of Little Blaine. "Pretty simple, right?"

"Yes -- apparently she was the one who originally stocked it," Doc says. "Though I wouldn't be surprised if it had magic of its own from all the LOLs stored in it. She was clearing out of old stock -- in particular, anything living."

"Yes, she's helping to set up a whole new world, and she decided to take the Pokemon and other creatures inside to help populate it," Victor nods. "And yes, from what I understand -- a Scatterbug. He's supposed to become a Vivillon butterfly eventually." Nibbles "weis" and wiggles his little hairs. "But I'm quite happy with him how he is too."

"Ooooh -- yes, that would be a terribly awkward situation," Alice agrees, nodding. "All the better he got that LOL. . ." She laughs softly along with Quint. "And the next one too, it sounds like. I hope they're very happy together."

[pogo_boy]

Blaine watches this very closely. He thinks he understands the rules, if not the purpose. "Yes." And there seemed to be no chickens or dead babies involved, which was definitely a good thing. He'll look for a hard candy and then spend a moment examining it before tossing it at the board. It lands on six, and after considering that a moment as well he'll try to hop to the end, turn around, and hop back in accordance with the prevously defined rules.

Quint nods. "I always thought it was a bit weird that there were live things in a vending machine. It didn't seem very nice... but I guess there are worse ways to try to find a home."

Quint smiles at the scatterbug. "Hello, Nibbles. Like I said, some of the others in my family have them too. Bubble's Nemo was some kind of sickly looking fish called a Feebas, then it turned into a big lake serpent called a Milotic. At least a bug turning into a butterfly makes more sense."

[dee_lorean81]

Dee claps and cheers him on as he hops. "Yeah, that's it! There you go! Wooo!" He may not seem like he quite gets the game, but she's doing her best to make it fun for him.

"I never paid much attention to those options," Marty admits, adjusting his proton pack again. "I was more interested in the sodas. . .but yeah, wasn't exactly nice, was it?"

"I'm pretty sure all those animals were held in a kind of stasis," Doc says. "At least, I hope so. . ." He shakes his head. "Well, they're out of there now. Plenty of room to roam on a entirely new world."

Nibbles waves a stubby leg nub back at Quint. Victor blinks. "That does sound rather odd. . .I thought only Magikarps did that."

[pogo_boy]

Little Blaine seems pleased he got it right, though it's a bit hard to tell since he's covered with a bedsheet. "How do we know who wins?" he asks. And then adds, more hesitantly, "And what happens to the loser?"

Quint nods. "It's for the best... though I'm still glad my siblings got the ones we did before they were all gone." He shrugs before he replies to Victor. "We'd have to ask Bubble... he's the one who found a Pokedex at one of the Nexus Mall shops."

[dee_lorean81]

"Er. . .well, I guess the winner is whoever does it the most times without making a mistake," Dee says, frowning thoughtfully as she toys with her candy. "And I don't think anything happens to the loser besides losing. And maybe falling on their bum if they jump wrong enough."

"I'm glad I was able to get Nibbles before he was taken away to the new verse," Victor says. Nibbles nuzzles his cheek. "I don't have a Pokedex -- I just took a chance and looked it up on the computer. It's a game series in our world. There were all sorts of things on 'generations' and 'evolution' and 'Mega-evolution' and--" He shakes his head. "It's all very confusing."

[pogo_boy]

Little Blaine relaxes a smidge at that. "I like that. No one really gets hurt."

Quint nods. "I've heard about some of that." More hesitantly, he addsm "My siblings and I... well, some universes have a game series that we're in. I don't know if any of you have ever heard of Mega Man..?" He seems a bit wary as he asks this.

[dee_lorean81]

"Yeah. . .games aren't supposed to make people hurt." What kind of life has this kid been leading to make him so anxious about games? Dee would ask, but she doesn't know if it would do any good to bring up old, painful memories. So instead she'll toss her candy and take her turn again.

"Yes -- I'm just glad I was able to find out what I was looking for," Victor says. "Mainly, what Nibbles should eat besides Pokeblocks." Gotta keep your caterpillar pocket monster well-fed, after all.

There's quite a lot of puzzled head-shaking from the majority of the group -- and one nod, from Marty. "Heard of it -- never played it," he says. "Just seen stuff on it while browsing around the net in our pocket verse. First game came out after I got yanked out of my home verse." He tilts his head with a little, understanding smile. "Guessing your world doesn't quite match up?"

[pogo_boy]

Little Blaine isn't certain how to process that. He believes her, and he's heard similar since arriving here, but it still contradicts earlier things. Things he knows were Bad because it's part of why he was so scared... "Almost all of Big Blaine's games meant someone got hurt. But was it because he wasn't playing the games right, or because the games were different? I... I don't think he could have been playing them wrong, since he made all the rules."

Quint's trying to keep a watch on Little Blaine while he talks to the adults. On one hand, he's glad the kid is opening up a bit. On the other, he worries it could get disturbing fairly quickly. He rubs the back of his neck and looks a bit embarrassed about the reply he has to give. "Sort of... I mean, the earlier ones are just platform shooters, so they don't explain much of what's going on. And even then... well, they only show one side of the story. Things got more skewed after I came here... some of that on purpose. My whole family, well... If things had gone 'according to canon' none of us would still be around."

[dee_lorean81]

"If he made all the rules, then yeah, it's because the games were different," Dee confirms, hopping from square to square. She wobbles a bit in square seven, but manages to keep her balance with a bit of pinwheeling. "Games aren't supposed to hurt, but some people. . .well, they think it's funny to see people get hurt." She's thinking of the Tannen family here, no surprise.

"One side. . .you guys were the 'bad guys,' weren't you?" Marty guesses. "Well, hey, you wouldn't be the first villains we've met who turned out to be decent. Or got screwed over by how 'canon' was supposed to go." Meeting Jeannie and Jokester and all the rest has given him a new perspective on this sort of thing. "I'm glad you were able to avoid whatever the hell it had in store for you."

"We're also no strangers to having a media property reflect a version of our lives we don't recognize," Doc adds, smiling a little. "I don't suppose you've ever heard of the Back To The Future movies?"

[pogo_boy]

Little Blaine tosses the candy to take his turn while he thinks about this. He's still new to having legs, but he's done well so far... though each hop still looks a little too calculated to be 'normal' for a child. He almost loses his balance trying to nod just after a hop, but manages to correct it - though he almost overcorrects at one point in an oddly clockwork jerk before stabilizing. "I don't think it's funny, but Big Blaine did. He was the ghost in all the machines... I hid so he didn't know about me."

Quint tenses, but then nods when it seems that's not going to be a problem. "The games glossed over that Dr. Wily was insane... and didn't usually even mention that the laws at the time meant we were slaves. We didn't have any choice... and I mean that in a way few humans will ever understand. Hardcoded directives in our programming, based on Asimov's Laws. He just changed First so it only applied to him. But people need more to blame than just one madman, and we were the ones they saw following his orders."

Quint winces at the mention of those films. "Yeah, I didn't want to say anything... I, well... I'm not really fond of time travel. And I'd say I hate paradoxes, except that I sort of am one..."

[dee_lorean81]

Dee notices his lack of fluidity, especially when he wobbles and jerks back upright -- but she's not about to call him out on it. She had trouble coordinating her limbs sometimes when she first gained a human-style form too. Her first trip into the Nexus had only come after two solid days of walking practice. Maybe hopscotch will help Little Blaine get more used to his legs too! "Big Blaine sounds like a jerk," she says succinctly. "I'm glad you were able to hide from him."

There's a mutual wince from Doc, Marty, Alice, and Victor as Quint explains. "Shit -- yeah, that sounds pretty damn awful," Marty says. "I can't even -- well, I sort of can, thanks to that bastard of a Keeper I had, but at least it wasn't coded right into my brain to obey what he said. And there weren't other people there to blame me for what he did. You guys got a raw deal."

"Very much so -- I'm sorry," Victor adds with a sad nod. "What a terrible life. . .but at least it sounds like things are better now."

"One hopes," Doc says, before offering up an awkward smile for Quint. "Our reality is quite different from that of the films. Mostly because I got kidnapped by a faerie before I could actually invent the time machine." Yes, he knows that's a weird to say, but Quint's familiar with the Nexus. He has to be used to weird by now. "Spent most of my life making various things in an Arcadian lab before escaping with Marty."

"Yeah, I got taken by a guy who promised me fame and fortune and instead made me play endless concerts to an audience that didn't even appreciate it," Marty says, old hatred flaring up anew in his eyes. "Asshole. . .I think getting frenched by my mom once for five seconds would have been better."

Alice tilts her head, puzzled. "You are a paradox? How does that work? I was under the impression that was more of an event than an actual thing."

[pogo_boy]

"He died when he couldn't answer the last riddle," the little bedsheet-ghost says, not sure if he should be sad about that or not. "I was left behind in the rooms of ruin and the halls of the dead. But then others came with the Little Red King, and they brought me here... and made this..." He waves a bedsheet-covered hand in front of him, but it's not hard to figure he's not talking about the ghost costume he was LOLed into.

Little Blaine looks at the hopscotch board for a moment after his turn is done. He still doesn't get the point to this game, and a fragment of him knows Big Blaine wouldn't have liked it. There's something in the remaining bits of memory... and he says the rhyme softly. "Don't ask me silly questions, I won't play silly games. I'm just a simple choo-choo train, and I'll always be the same. I only want to race along, beneath the bright blue sky, and be a happy choo-choo train, until the day I die."

Quint nods. "Dr. Wily... he's been dead for a while now. And the things he did to us aren't even legal at home any more." He chuckles and shakes his head as he adds, "Though we had to actually succeed in taking over the world for that, ironically."

He sighs at the rest. "Dr. Wily got his hands on a time machine once. There was a future where... Urgh, I never know where to start at this, because it isn't as simple as 'start at the beginning'. The short version is that... I did something that made sure I can't exist, except that I still do. And the long version, well... it's long." He'll wait to see if they want to hear it, and he's not sure which answer he's hoping for. There are large parts of it he doesn't like to think of, after all. But apparently he's made them think of some things that they don't like to remember, so it only seems fair.

[dee_lorean81]

Dee nods -- she may not get all of what Little Blaine's saying, but the general meaning is easy enough to parse. "Good -- that sounds like a bad place to get stuck," she says with feeling. "And I thought train tracks were bad. . .and having a real body is nice, isn't it?" She wiggles her fingers. "Hands are super useful. Legs too, though they're not as fast as wheels." She still prefers her DeLorean form for the speed, that's for sure.

She tilts her head at the rhyme -- well, that sort of came out of nowhere. "Uh -- okay. . ." she says slowly, unsure how to respond. Doesn't help that she doesn't have the most positive feelings about trains, having narrowly avoided being clobbered by one. (Granted, she knows if she had been clobbered, she wouldn't have felt it -- sapience only came with the mini-Rift that grabbed her just in time. But still, it's not a nice thought.)

Marty cant help a snort himself at that. "Figures, huh? Well, I'm glad you managed to change the world for the better. We're all anti-slavery -- Doc and I especially." Both before Arcadia, and definitely after.

The group considers this. "So -- sort of like how movie me went to the 50s, got between his parents, and almost prevented Dave, Linda, and himself being born, only you're not doing that weird fade-out thing?" Marty says, waggling a hand. "I thought that was a given if you mucked up the past like that."

"The rules of time travel might be very different in his universe," Doc says. "It's possible paradoxes don't function like they do in our home dimension. I assume Marty's roughly correct, though -- only I guess in your case it would more a part or plan essential to your construction being somehow destroyed." He personally wouldn't mind hearing the long version -- even if he isn't the same as his movie counterpart, time travel still fascinates him -- but he'll understand if Quint wants to just give a highlights reel. That's how he generally handles talking about Arcadia.

As Quint warned, long version is long...

[pogo_boy]

Little Blaine seems to realize it was weirdly out of context at least, and looks down for a moment. "I remember that rhyme. I was thinking... Silly questions killed him, and he wouldn't like this game. But now I'm not a choo-choo train, and I don't think I'm the same." He's still very confused about a lot of it, though.

"I like not being stuck in one place," he agrees to the rest. "Legs are a lot slower, but they're better than tracks. I'm not used to being able to go anywhere..."

"Something like that," Quint responds to Marty's words, "only kind of backwards first... Kind of like if Movie-you's parents married other people and had kids that wouldn't have existed before the time travel..." He nods at Doc's mention of a missing part - of sorts- and then takes a moment to compose himself. As much as it's a mess he doesn't like to think of much, who knows... maybe they could help some of it make sense. He isn't looking at them as he speaks, thinking back. The best place to start, he knows, won't even seem to be part of the same thing at first.

"Dr. Wily died because he messed things up with our youngest brother. Zero... the Laws didn't work on him. And then Dr. Wily made it worse by trying to make him a Typhoid Mary for a virus that makes Reploids go insane. Omega. Someone infected... it makes them really violent and it screws up inhibitions. And Wily didn't know that Zero... He considered Dr. Wily a threat to the rest of the Wilybots... to us." The last sounds like a quick correction, and then he continues. "And Omega acted on that, and killed Wily... even if it meant fighting through all of the others first. It made him delusional enough to think they'd all be safe, even if they were shut down, because he could hide them away forever. I don't know exactly what happened, but... from what little we know from here, it didn't work."

"The first time, none of us knew about the Nexus. There were only three in the RKN series. Enker, Punk, and Ballade. Everyone died. He went after the Lights. Rock Light and his family. Mega Man... the Blue Bomber... the 'hero'. They stopped him, but it was too late. Zero managed to retreat and went into stasis somewhere for decades. But Mega caught the virus. He killed Roll, his sister, when she tried to stop him from basically going Guy Fawkes on our world's government at the time... and then, well, he died because of..," he decides not to reveal all of Rock Light's problems, "well, essentially First Law issues, though it's a bit more complicated than that. Dr. Light tried to fix them, but there just wasn't enough left of Roll... and even less of Mega after all the viral contamination was deleted... And eventually he died after making X, and left the lab empty."

"After.. or decades before... Dr. Wily got his hands on a time machine. He might have been crazy, but he was just smart enough to not try to change the past. Instead, he sent at least Enker and Shadow almost fourty years into the future. We're still not sure, because he erased some of their memories after." He shakes his head and adds, bitterly, "So it wouldn't spoil the surprise, I guess."

"We guess he figured a Mega from the future could beat one from the past... but there wasn't really anything of Mega left. Just Rock... Not that he understood the difference. The others knew I had some stolen Lightbot coding, but they didn't remember exactly what. Dr. Wily knew, though. It's even in my name... Bits of Rock, Roll, and stuff leftover from one of Dr. Light's last projects... X. RKN series files and data from Enker. And whatever extra bits he had to code to get it all to sort of work together. Quint's short for Quintet..."

"But everything else went like it did for most of us... Wilybots, I mean. We'd fight, we'd lose, and he'd blame us for it. Most ended up in storage. I ended up half-scrapped and teleported to the Nexus as part of a junkpile. We think Blues might have had something to do with getting me out of the Castle, but he hasn't admitted to it. Anyhow, some people here helped me. The Laws were removed, so I didn't have to go back... but I started having nightmares. I didn't know it then, but most of it... they were actually memories that Dr. Wily had locked down... I guess he didn't think about them leaking through that way. Most of us from the 'pre-reploid years' don't dream. Rock's one of the few that does." And the few times he's known future things that couldn't have been memories... well, he still doesn't know how to explain that.

"I wasn't going to let it happen. And it didn't. This time, everyone survived... except Dr. Wily. Dr. Light still died not long after making X, but he was old. Bubble found an anti-viral here for Omega before it ever spread to anyone but Zero, so he's ok now. And... Rock never got infected."

"Wily left a little surprise that was meant to go off if I beat Mega. Which I didn't do, but it got set off by me saving him instead. We don't know how Wily worded it because we didn't know about it until it triggered and deleted... Probably something to do with causing a paradox, either way, if he didn't think Rock being scrap in that future timeline was a closed loop. It unlocked the rest of the locked-down stuff. Just because he wanted to mess with 'Mega' one last time and maybe make him freak about about having killed his past self or something. Except... I'm not Mega. Or Rock, or Roll. And now they'll never have to be me."

Re: As Quint warned, long version is long...

[dee_lorean81]

"Oh -- yeah, you don't seem to be the same at all," Dee says, rocking on her heels. "I mean, I didn't meet him, but from what you said. . .you're definitely nicer." She nods. "And you should allowed to be yourself."

Tracks? Had Little Blaine literally been a train before? Guilt suddenly spikes up in Dee -- even if Little Blaine doesn't know her previous uncharitable thoughts about trains, she still feels kind of bad. (Picking up bad habits from Victor, maybe.) "Yeah," she agrees, pushing it aside in favor of being encouraging. "Now you can go anywhere you like!"

"Uh. . .so like if he didn't get his parents back together?" Marty looks over at Doc, already a bit lost. He likes Doc's enthusiasm on the subject, but damn if he doesn't get lost trying to figure it all out sometimes. Like the movie Marty, he has trouble thinking fourth-dimensionally. (And that's with being thrown into a couple of new dimensions and regular contact with the Nexus. He's just better with music.)

"Let's hear the whole thing, first," Doc says, hand on his chin. "It'll probably become clearer then."

And it -- well, it kind of does. It might be easier to understand if they knew who more of the people he's referencing are. And Marty in particular is caught up on one point. "Wait, so -- Rock Light and Mega Man are the same guy, right? 'Cause the way you're talking -- they're kind of the same, but not?"

"Perhaps Mega Man was who he was in public, when he was 'saving the day,' and Rock who he was in private," Alice suggests. "Like how I was a comatose mess in Rutledge at the same time I was fighting my way through Wonderland."

"And considering we're talking about mechanical lifeforms, it's possible 'Mega Man' was special code Rock could only use under specific circumstances," Doc says. "A literal hardcoded second personality. Which is -- a bit disturbing, when you think about it, but. . ." He shakes his head, then nods at Quint. "I think I understand. Your existence was supposed to be predicated on Rock and Roll -- hang on." He blinks as something about the majority of the names finally clicks in his head. "Oh, for -- I'll let you comment on that," he says to a grinning Marty, who has also figured out the theme. "Anyway -- if Rock doesn't get infected, break Roll, and then die himself, there's nothing for you to be built on, and thus no you to come back to the past, get thrown into the Nexus, start remembering future events, and stop everything. Sounds classically paradoxical to me."

"Sounds terribly complicated to me," Victor says, rubbing his forehead. "But I'm glad you were able to fix things, and that it didn't cause you to fade out of existence."

"Or destroy the entire universe -- or just your own galaxy," Marty says with a smirk for Doc.

"To be fair, I'd rather just the Milky Way be taken out by a paradox rather than the entire universe."

[pogo_boy]

"Blaine had a degenerative condition called 'going insane'," Little Blaine says. And the very observant might note he didn't specify Big Blaine that time. The insanity had started first, after all. "Big Blaine was very dangerous," he adds. And that's a difference. He nods when going anywhere is mentioned. "Some of Quint's family want to teach me other games, like soccer. And how to climb trees." The last he speaks of as an especially surreal concept. Monorails do not run up trees.

Quint rubs the back of his neck and looks sheepish as he realizes he's going to have to explain Rock's issues after all. Though two of them come something close to right. "He wasn't designed that way. Rock was just a lab-tech, like Roll was a cook and housekeeper. Noncombatants. Even the Alphas were just industrial work designs until Wily's first attempt at taking over the world..." He sighs and picks up a decently large candy bar. "Remember I said he died because of a First Law issue? It's... more complicated than that." He looks over the candy bar with an odd expression, as if it's something sad and bitter, and yet something he's almost managed to view as nostalgic in a twisted sort of way. "This is your brain," he says, mocking an ancient anti-drug commercial. And then he snaps the candy bar in half. "This is your brain when First Law insists you have to go fight, and probably kill, your younger siblings because they got reprogrammed into killing humans."

"Sometimes AI can learn and adapt to a situation a little too much. Mega exists to do what Rock couldn't. At first, he wasn't much more than... a kind of mental state where Rock would suppress the parts of himself that hated fighting. But by the time he got to the first of the Alphas... They aren't the same person any more than Castor and Pollux - the two halves of Gemini - are. But since he wasn't designed to be that way, it's dangerous if they argue too much. If they fight over who's active. It causes parts to overheat that can't be replaced. It's not usually a problem, since they don't deal with the same things. But at the first end... Mega caught the virus. Rock didn't. And he fought him all the way. They froze up and got blown up by the explosives Mega was going to set."

Their recognition of the name thing helps distract him from bad memories, and he smirks a bit as he nods in confirmation. "The American games never mentioned Rock's name, just calling him Mega, so most people out of Japan missed the joke. We have a shared older brother named Blues... who they called Proto in the American games, and who we call Proto only if we want to get smacked. And on the Wily side, it continued in the RKNs. Like I said, my name's short for Quintet. The two younger RKNs are Punk and Ballade. And I have an older brother named Enker... Enka is a type of Japanese music. And then there's Forte, and his wolf Gospel..."

That amusement keeps him from getting too down when the topic's back to the complexity of the paradox. He nods. "And he can't get infected now. We wiped out the virus. Even if something else killed him, the memories wouldn't be the same as the ones I had." But the rest, he nods. "That's what worries me. I mean... I don't think I could have done anything differently even if I had known. I couldn't have just let everyone die. Maybe I would have tried to find a way to fake it all so it would still make sense... But I thought it was all just precognitive nightmares up until the day Zero went on an Omega-induced rampage. Even then... I wasn't sure until Wily's little surprise unlocked." Which hadn't stopped the whole thing being creepy, even thinking back... watching Rock do and say the same things he'd been doing in his dreams, and realizing it was all from the persoective of his family's worst enemy.

"Sometimes, I still expect I'll disappear... or everything else will. But nothing's happened. Sometimes I think that's because of the Nexus. The most rational possibility would be that the Timeskimmer actually jumped timelines instead of doing actual time travel. The last parts of it were in the same closet that the first portal to the Nexus opened up in... But... I don't like that answer any more than I like thinking we're all supposed to vanish from existance. Because... if that was true, everyone still died." And there was enough of the hero left in the Wilybot to find that unacceptable.

It was a lot easier for him to just avoid thinking about it... And that's shielded him from knowing that the reason the broken time-loop hasn't collapsed is that they aren't at the end of it. They have until the point the Timeskimmer would have gone to to find a way to fake what would have been found and possibly repair the damage. Even then, there will be a minor time hiccup in the whole 'but where did it come from to start' sort, but at least the loop would be closed.

[dee_lorean81]

Dee does note that sudden exclusion of "Big" or "Little" from the first sentence. She's pretty sure she can work out what happened with the whole "going insane" business from there. "He sounds like he was dangerous," she says with a little nod. "Too bad." But let's not dwell on that, not when there are games to talk about. "Soccer's fun -- or, well, kicking around a ball is. And Victor could give you climbing lessons. He's really good." As in, 'how on earth did you scale that cliff?!' good.

Quint's explanation of the whole Mega/Rock thing is met with a few sympathetic winces and grimaces. "Oh. So a more genuine split personality," Doc murmurs. "Created to deal with something he simply couldn't do on his own. That does help explain a lot, yes."

"Yeah," Marty says, shaking his head. "Shit, that sucks. I don't even want to think about what it must have been like for Rock when Mega was infected. . ." Having to fight for control of your own body, hurting yourself so you won't do something terrible -- that's a new and interesting level of hell.

"Sounds like a twisted version of me versus the Queen," Alice mumbles. "Glad I didn't have anything in me that could overheat."

Fortunately, Quint going down the roster of musical bots helps boost the mood a little again. "You see, that's no fair to us Americans," Marty complains, though he does so with a smile. "I would have thought it the coolest thing ever to play a robot called Rock after rock-n-roll."

"Take it up with the people who translated the game, not him," Doc says, chuckling. He sobers as they go back to talking about the paradox. "Yes, I get that. I don't think I could have acted any differently in your place. Letting people die to keep the timeline in order, particularly friends and loved ones. . .even if it's logical, it doesn't sit right with me. Better to find a way to trick the timestream -- or just do it and deal with the consequences."

"The Nexus could very well have something to do with it," Doc agrees. "It's a meeting place of all possible times and places. It might very well have affected those parts. . .though, again, I get how you feel. I don't like thoughts like those either." Mostly because they get him thinking about timelines where he might not have escaped from faerie. That's just depressing. "If you haven't faded from existence yet, perhaps paradoxes aren't the same threat level in your universe."

"Either that, or it's taking its sweet-ass time catching up with you," Marty shrugs. "I mean, in the movie, I had a week to get my parents back together before I faded out entirely. As long as they met, and kissed at the 'Enchantment Under The Sea' dance, everything was pretty much fine."

[pogo_boy]

Little Blaine is silent for a moment before he moves a little closer and admitting, quietly, "I know it shouldn't damage me, but... I think I'm afraid of falling."

Quint nods. "Yes... but like I said, this time Mega didn't get infected. And I'm... I'm not really that other Rock. I'm a Wilybot." There's something in this that sounds like he says it to convince himself as well. It's hard having those memories, and sometimes it's easier to consider them an 'inheritance' from the dead rather than part of his past.

Getting back to the name thing lets him push those thoughts aside. "Yeah, though... Roll's the one who started saying it's a red herring, and she was named for something you put in an oven while Rock was named for the contents of his head."

He nods to the rest and just says, "It's been a lot longer than a week. And a lot has changed from that point. If we go by the games as what should have happened, we're pretty far from it now."

[dee_lorean81]

Dee nods. "It's okay. Lots of people are. I don't like falling myself." Reminds her too much of what might have happened during certain parts of her past if things had gone wrong. "You don't have to climb if you don't want to. But if you do, Victor really is that good."

"And I'm sure everybody's super-thankful," Marty says, finally giving up on the proton pack trying to compress his spine and slipping it off his shoulders. "Oof. . ." Onto the ground it goes. "That's better. But yeah -- you're you, and he's him. Great that you were able to use some of his memories to stop what sounds like the damn apocalypse, but. . ." He shrugs.

"Exactly -- you're your own person," Doc agrees. "With your own musical name."

Marty nods, then laughs as Quint tells them about Roll's thoughts on her brother. "Sounds like how me and Linda used to get along. She never missed a chance to snark about me or Dave. Guess it was tough being the girl in the middle, but I seriously wondered if we could adopt her out to another family sometimes."

"Yeah, well, what they put in 'canon' isn't always the best," Marty says, expression turning sour. "Like that damn Animated Series Back To The Future got."

"I'm not strictly sure that's canon, Marty," Doc admits.

"It's still a piece of shit."

[pogo_boy]

"It's still strange to not just go back and forth on the same path," Little Blaine admits, "without adding going up. Or in water." Though they tell him swimming is fun.

Quint can't help a snerk, and then feels he has to explain it. "Yeah, the apocalypse also known as my baby brother." He shakes his head. "Though it was really Omega - the virus - that caused all those problems... Zero, well... newly activated Wilybots can sometimes be, um, unintentionally destructive? He wasn't as bad as some, but his being a lot stronger than the rest of us made up for that." There were quite a lot of funny stories regarding 'baby' Zero.

He'll nod at the rest. "It's tough being the only girl, period." While he isn't now, he has enough bits of Roll's memories to know that more than most guys would. "Most of the older ones were designed male. Until around when Wily died, Roll was pretty much it... unless you count Blues' cat Tango. Turned out Magic was just passing as male for... safety reasons, and Plant-chan identifies as female but wasn't actually designed with a gender."

Another nod. "Yeah, we weren't too happy about some of the games, either. But at least they gave enough clues about what Weil was up to for him to be stopped, even with all the differences between timelines by then. I doubt anything else from them will match up at all."

[dee_lorean81]

Cripes -- sounds like being a train isn't any more fun than being hit by one. "Well, I don't think anybody's gonna make you up and down and in water before you're ready," Dee assures him. "But it's nice being able to go around anywhere you wanna go, right?"

Marty is indeed a bit confused by the snerk -- then laughs himself as Quint explains a little more. "Oh boy. . .yeah, I can imagine he caused some chaos."

"Indeed," Doc agrees, also rather amused. "It's hard enough for an organic being to get used to its body after being born. A mechanical one, who has a lot more strength and ability to move. . .I suspect a fair few things were broken in those first few -- weeks? Months?" He doesn't know how long a robot "childhood" lasts.

"Eh, fair," Marty admits. "Though Linda had Mom, at least. Roll must have been thrilled when more girls started showing up. Or started admitting they were girls."

"Well, good," Marty says. "All the Animated Series gave me was a headache. Seriously, I have a hard time believe one of the guys who was like head writer on the movies also worked on that thing."

"Don't get him started," Alice warns Quint, twirling her tail. "He'll go on for ages about how bad it was."

[pogo_boy]

Little Blaine thinks on it, and nods. "It is a lot better than having to stay on the tracks. Maybe... I think Patricia and Blaine might not have gone insane if they could have left Lud. But even if they used the tracks they would still be there, because we were the trains and we were under the city too. I like that I'm not there any more."

Quint makes a slight not in response to Alice's warning and decides to shift things back to the exploits of Baby Zero as a distraction. "Yeah, plus... he was the first new one after we found out about the Nexus. And one of the first of us that were upgraded to be able to eat human food." Though it hadn't been an 'upgrade' in Zero's case as he was designed with the ability. "And he really likes food..." Given the most common cause of LOLs back in the day, that had made for some difficulties.