ARCADE SESSION: REBOOTED

[knux400]

[CW: EXTREMELY LOW-RESOLUTION TCP GORE]

"...Fuck you."
"Wait, you didn't even see that? You were on the call screen the whole time?"

You catch about a half-second of MRM's laughter over the other end before you close the window.
 

Echo! What happened? Are you okay?
Something shot me. My wing's broken.
 

You don't recognize this room. You open your map briefly to find Echo's been busy since you last saw her.
 

Closing the map, you call Pickle. You didn't read all the way through the section on making calls, so there's no way you could possibly know the command to minimize the window, but you try the first thing that comes to mind anyway. If it doesn't work, you'll let Pickle know what happened real quick, and then- oh.
 

Either you're great at guessing or the game's interface has your back. Whatever. Time to multitask.

"H-hello?"
"Is your TCP okay? Are they still being attacked? What type is your TCP? All we did in trying to help you was piss off MRM too and now they have it out for both of us, so we’ll need to work together if we want to survive this."
"U-um! Stitch is hurt, but alive, she's not being attacked anymore, I think? A-and she's a blanket type. I spawned a sign for her to read and she was able to get outside of the, uh, dark zone. From there, I was able to throw together enough defenses to ward off the attacker. They left about... a minute ago?"
"Got it."

Halfway through Pickle's sentence, you start typing to Echo.

Can you walk?
Yes.
Get somewhere safe. Use your stealth suit if you can, we don't want a fight on our ha-

Suddenly, the whole screen flashes red. Echo's health bar now has a red ring around it.

WARNING: A KILL COMMAND HAS BEEN ACTIVATED.

Who was that?!? Trinket, what's a kill command?!?
Just hide!

Without another word, Echo ducks into a nearby passageway.

...It knows where I am. I left a trail.
What is it?
A TCP, I think. It's green, it's wearing a suit similar to mine, and its arm looks like it's been cut off and had something jammed into it. That's what it shot me with.
Okay. It's probably a weapon type of some sort, then. If you can't get away, hit it where the shooty thing meets the rest of the TCP, that's where it will hurt the most. You're too far away from our base, so I'm going to take you to another safe place. We just need to find a way to get this TCP to stop following us, and then I'll guide you.
I can hear it coming closer.
 

She's right. The left side of your screen is going dark. If you're going to do something, it needs to be quick.