AN: A heavy supply of absinthe and a laptop with barely enough available CPU power ... it's almost self-evident what it will lead to! Thanks to omen mortis for the idea of timestamps! Story also owes quite a bit to ArmageddonClan's AoM FF. Warning: complete and total spoilers for the game Cave Story! The point of this story may be a little hard to find, but perhaps it is in there somewhere.
The story begins right at where Agents of Metal Pt.3 left off.
...
8:20 p.m.
The raft with the Ka on it had sunken beneath the ocean surface completely. Some smoke still drifted above the beach, but it was fast dissipating, and soon there would be no evidence of the Viking funeral at all.
Ian thought his head was spinning, not only from the absinthe, but the absolute craziness of the story Erik had unloaded on him. Dimensional gates ... bun pudding ... humongous cats representing the absolute good and absolute evil. It made honestly zero sense. Well, little in Ian's own life did, either. Except that they were now here, the three of them. After all the adventures and warfare were over.
"Fuck," Jo broke the silence. "Lucky there was no audience. This was quite an environmental crime, if you think of it."
"Well, the Ka was also quite the hero," Erik replied in a gravelly voice.
"Wouldn't want to try to explain that to a judge. But right, done what's done."
"Maybe you should just drink more."
Ian remembered that phrase vaguely. It was something Jo had said to him, in their tour van, ages ago. And for a moment he felt emotional – was it something that had been forever wiped to /dev/null when Jo had purged the rogue SCEPTRE personality from her head? He didn't want to ask, to spoil the moment.
Instead, maybe they all just needed to drink more.
...
8:45 p.m.
The crimes kept piling on – now Erik was also guilty of drunk driving, taking them with the pickup truck back to the small wooden cottage Ian and Jo were staying at. But again, no witnesses, and no-one harmed in the process. If the absinthe session was to continue for long, it was certainly better to continue it here than at the beach.
Ian unloaded the laptop they had used for the raft construction guidance from his backpack onto the living room table. He caught Erik staring at it in a prolonged manner, which was odd.
"Hey. What was it about – back at the Agent HQ after your undercover assignment as the satanist coder hero? You said you'd played something you never wanted to play again?"
That too, sent Ian's head spinning some more. The weekend of pure agony and hangover, in the middle of IKEA furniture yet to be assembled, under SCEPTRE's electronic surveillance.
Ian also certainly remembered the game.
"Cave Story," he said with spite.
"I remember you imagined yourself and me as the characters," Jo laughed. "They were named after ... punctuation marks? I'd want to see that too."
Ian thought his hand had been forced. Two against one. He tried to prepare himself mentally, and switched the laptop on.
The first problem was where to find the game. Downloading it on the sluggish 2G connection could take ages. Erik was already preparing the next round of drinks, and it was possible their condition would advance to perilous depths before they even got to play.
...
9:05 p.m.
The problem was actually less than Ian had imagined. The original game in Japanese was only a 1 MB download, plus a further half MB patch for the English translation.
Before they'd start to play for real, there was just one thing to do. The game would get hard as hell, especially later on, and their condition sure as hell wouldn't allow the precise maneuvering that was needed to survive.
So, one last download, a trainer program that would grant unlimited health. Yes, excellent.
Now they were ready.
...
9:15 p.m.
First cave
"So... yeah. You're Quote, a killer robot with no memory. Though you aren't supposed to know that yet. And the basic idea is, go through these caves until you can escape. You're actually on a floating island," Ian briefed them. Jo was at the keys, with Erik looking close by, half of his absinthe glass remaining. "Z and X fire and jump. A and S cycle weapons."
"I can't fire yet," Jo said.
"You don't have a gun yet."
Soon after venturing further, Quote was ambushed by spherical creatures jumping out of the water.
"Those are kind of cute ... but fuck, they're lethal!" Jo shouted, barely avoiding them.
"Good that SCEPTRE was never cute," Erik growled and finished his drink.
Aided by the unlimited health cheat, it didn't take long for Quote to steal his first weapon, which was a basic pistol called Polar Star.
...
9:25 p.m.
Mimiga Village
The story started opening up, with the evil Doctor ruling the island being mentioned for the first time. Quote was now exploring a friendly village where the rabbit-like Mimigas lived. Ian began on his next drink of absinthe.
Some more adventuring, and Quote was ambushed by a robot resembling a toaster.
It could have been a challenge, but with no risk of death, the encounter was quickly over. Ian almost felt sorry for it. Balrog, it was called. Was that a copyright violation? Ian thought, but didn't consider it for more than an instant.
...
9:40 p.m.
Egg Corridor
Meeting more characters, among them a scientist who enabled Quote to teleport to elsewhere. And the drunkenness of all of them certainly advancing.
Here, the music sped up, and the enemies became bigger, resembling elephants ... on absinthe? Or some other rage-inducing chemical. At least they were not pink. The "egg corridor" also lived up to its name, with huge eggs at regular intervals. Something evil was probably being hatched inside them.
"You're just shooting everything that moves. Nothing special," Erik commented. "Though I get it, that the killer robot equates to a SCEPTRE trainee."
"It will get worse," Ian said. "Just wait."
...
10:00 p.m.
Grasstown
Like the name said, lots of grass. And death traps, which weren't particularly dangerous now. A lot of bats, and enlarged versions of the cute spherical creatures, who by now had rotors so they could fly.
"Fuck, still no proper weaponry," Erik said. "Good we never had it that bad."
"We couldn't heal by just collecting hearts either," Jo retorted.
Ian just shook his head and drank the absinthe. Another glass was nearing its end, and he had lost count already. Thankfully he had added water liberally. Otherwise passing out could have been a reality already.
It was kind of absurd to think of hardened ex-Agents playing a video game. Though maybe it meant that they were reverting to their civilian selves little by little? If they never needed to save the world again, that was the preferable thing to happen.
...
10:45 p.m.
Sand Zone
The puzzles in Grasstown had slowed their progress significantly. But finally Quote was in another zone, a desert, having been given the task of destroying the madness-inducing red flowers the Doctor would use for his evil purposes. They could be used to weaponize the otherwise peaceful Mimigas.
As he ventured further, Quote was ambush by a blond-haired female battle robot, armed with a submachinegun. She mistook Quote to be on the Doctor's side, opened fire, and Quote had no choice but to defend himself.
"That's kind of like ... Kim," Erik said. His voice was already profoundly slurred.
Ian was kind of amused ... or relieved. To him this scene rather reminded of him fighting Jo inside SCEPTRE's pyramid, but it was good if there were other interpretations.
"What do I answer here?" Jo asked, as the fight was over. The other robot was asking Quote whether he was going to kill everyone now.
"It probably doesn't matter," Ian said.
"I'm supposed to be the hero, so I'll go with No."
The robot introduced herself.
"So, this is Curly. And ... do I trade to the machine gun?"
"Yes, definitely."
Ian felt like continuing to a minor monologue. "The game doesn't spell it out to you, but it's obvious the robots are a ... battle couple. And most of the fans agree. But the game makes that optional, in a rather cruel manner. You'll see."
Erik seemed thoughtful, and Ian wondered if he was thinking of Kim some more.
"Reminds me of what Jeff Hanneman once said. There's nothing I put in the lyrics that says necessarily he was a bad man because to me - well, isn't that obvious? I shouldn't have to tell you that," Erik spoke.
Ian almost had to laugh. To make a mental leap from that into Slayer's lyrics – it was something only Erik could manage.
But Hanneman had remembered wrong, hadn't he? The final line went "Rancid angel of death – flying free." Rancid. That was some kind of value judgement.
...
11.25 p.m.
The Sand Zone, too, seemed to stretch to almost eternity. Quote was sidetracked to retrieve a witch's five dogs, before he finally could reach the storage where the red flowers were being kept.
Once inside at last, the evilness began properly.
The Doctor himself appeared, along with his minions, the toaster Balrog and a blue-haired goth called Misery. Ian made a connection he had not made before – the Doctor obviously represented SCEPTRE's head of science, the hawk-nosed Baphomet. They certainly shared the callous disregard for life.
One of the Mimigas was force-fed the flowers, upon which she became frenzied, and Quote was forced into a fight to the death. Before this, the village king had also sacrificed himself uselessly, leaving only his sword behind.
And finally, when Quote finally exited the storage, he was stomped by Balrog and teleported away by Misery to the depths of a Labyrinth.
Though Jo had been calm before, now even she seemed shocked by this sequence of gut punches. "Fuck. Now I see. The author of this game is evil."
"It will get worse," Ian repeated.