Hello, and welcome to another episode of Strike Heroes: Modern Lives!
...Nothing? Eh, to be fair I can't even hear you cheering, booing, or whatever it is you're doing. Or see whatever you're showing your screen either.
Anyways, I know what you're thinking: really?
...Actually, I don't, but who knows? More on that after the chapter.
Anyways...I think I'm going to cover the reviews first, as usual:
kineke13: Thanks for the review.
Gamerman22: I don't have any of the games you named, but I can kinda see where you're getting at. So far, I've only featured RPGs (Mass Effect and Chrono Trigger), but I do plan on featuring other types of games. Well, after covering a bit of Hyperdimension Neptunia Re;Birth 1. I've got ideas of covering Metro 2033, for instance. Once I figure out how to go about the current dilemma involving that...Apart from that, thanks for the review.
Empty Promise: Like I said above, I don't own the game in question. I do know about Oddjob's unique trait in the game, though, so if I ever found a way to get the game I can have some fun with it. Besides that, thanks for the review.
Aviat0r: Uh, thanks. I can't really repay you with anything that I can think of (well, apart from this update and the Internet I got back in WoF, but...that's a gift from a different person, and I have yet to find a way to get it unstuck from me. Still trying to figure that one out), but it's good to know that you enjoyed this story so far.
stormhawk9891: To be completely honest, it's probably not difficult, but I think there's a slight difficulty spike if you went for it immediately upon being able to leave the Citadel (minus time used to look for things in each system along the way) given you wouldn't have a lot of upgraded powers (depends on how you play; I personally played as a Soldier and had some experience as an Adept but have only beaten all three as a Soldier). Might be wrong there. The definite difficulty for me was a personal mistake: you don't get an autosave until I think some time after you beat that ambush, and I've always found myself dying the first time I embark on the mission. Stupid me, I kept forgetting this fact and remembered it only when I returned to the map...all the way at the beginning of it. I can imagine Perrine getting ticked off a lot at that point after remembering what she went through on Eden Prime (which she never completed herself at the time). Apart from that, thanks for the review.
...And that's about it.
Now, on to the scary Chuck E. Cheese robots!
They're not actually the ones you're thinking of...
...Good point. Still, onwards to Freddy's!
...You have no idea how bad that sounded to us...
XXXXXXXXXX
Animatronics Ahoy! Five Nights at Freddy's with Team RPLY
There comes a time in everyone's life that they have to choose one thing or the other: make homemade dinner or order take-out, have children or not, and yes, even something as ridiculous as whether choosing to sit in front of a computer screen with a particular horror game's title screen showing along with three girls nearby was an extremely good career choice or not.
Especially given the fact that said girls were a shy Britannian girl, a cheerful Fuso girl, and a Gallian girl whose idea was why they were here in the first place.
"So can you please explain to me why you want me to be here at this particular moment?" Roland asked slowly as the "unfortunate" Liberion boy was looking at each of his friends while sitting on a black foldable chair, away from the girls. He was wearing a pair of black gym shorts and a green T-shirt. "I doubt that you three wanted to have a slumber party in Perrine's room and wanted to invite a boy in here with you, especially given the age difference."
"You're the only person here who even bothered watching those Internet videos of people playing this," Perrine replied as she pointed to the screen. Sitting on her swivel-chair in front of her desktop, the Gallian girl wore a navy blue nightshirt.
Apparently, Perrine had gotten the idea, after hearing a bit about it from some friends who had played it, to get her hands on a copy of a game called "Five Nights at Freddy's". Out of the rest of the group, the only one with knowledge about the game was Roland, and that wasn't much given he only watched the gameplay.
Now that he thought about it, Roland thought that Lynette looked a bit uneasy.
"You okay, Lynne?" he asked the Britannian girl.
"Hmm?" Lynette replied as she looked at him. "Oh, I'm fine. Don't worry…" She was wearing a white nightshirt as she was sitting at the foot of Perrine's bed.
Roland raised an eyebrow. "Okay…it's a game anyways, it can't really happen." A quick look back on it had him adding rather hastily, "W-well, I hope it doesn't at least."
"Do we really need the lights off for this, Perrine?" Yoshika asked out of curiosity. The little Fuso girl was currently wearing a light blue nightshirt as she sat next to Lynette's left side.
The current set-up of the room was the screen giving off the only real source of light. While the Gallian Witch and Mio (both shared the room, surprisingly enough) had installed a desk lamp for their source of light, it was off to give the room a more horror-themed look.
Instead, it looked a bit more like a doctor would lodge a complaint about the situation.
"Right," Perrine said to get their attention. "Now, I call to order the first meeting of the newly-formed Team Reply."
…That was another thing Roland found odd: if it hadn't been obvious when Perrine said it, she had started watching a show called "RWBY" and was enjoying it at the moment. Apparently even going so far as to think of a team name off the fly: the fact that a folder on her computer (marked for situations like this) said "Things for Team RPLY to do" (which explains why the team name was what it was) probably didn't help things too much.
"Uh, Perrine?" Roland tried asking. "You do know that by the letters' positioning that I would be the team leader, right?" It was true from what he had seen of the show in question so far (case in point: the leaders of Teams RWBY and JNPR were Ruby and Jaune respectively).
"Thanks for reminding me…" The Gallian girl had wanted to find a word that would have started with a "P" but it was either RPLY (which did not begin with a "P" but made a lot more sense than other words she tried) or PRLY (pronounced "pearly"), and the only reason why it was RPLY was because she had flipped a coin to decide the outcome. "Anyways, let's just get started, shall we?" Perrine moved her mouse to click on the option to start a new game, and the group was instantly greeted with an ad for the job in question: that of a security officer.
"Doesn't sound too bad…or hard…" Yoshika said as she looked at the screen before it went to a view of the office. "Though why do they have the lighting like that?"
"And why is there a power supply?" Lynette added as she and Yoshika got up and stood behind the Gallian girl to watch Perrine attempt Night One.
"Shush!" Perrine told them. "I'm getting a phone call." Soon, the message started playing, some guy who said that he was finishing his last week talking about the company policy. He mentioned a few things, like the fact that there would be a missing persons report filed as soon as the carpets were bleached or something or other (the girls were a bit stunned at the fact that the guy was sounding a bit too calm at the moment) before he got to the part about the animatronics, stating that they were left in a "sort of free-roam mode at night", including the fact that it had something to do with making sure their servos didn't lock up or something.
Then it came to the "interesting" bit: what would happen if one was found by the animatronics.
In the interest of not beating a dead horse too much, the girls' reactions were varying: Yoshika was a bit shocked, Lynette was trembling as she was muttering something about not seeing animatronics in the same sort of light again for a while, and Perrine…
"It doesn't sound so bad…" the Gallian girl said as she brought up her camera monitor for the umpteenth time (she had been advised by her friends to stay vigilant while playing the game).
"Perrine, you don't know what that would entail, do you?" Roland asked carefully.
Perrine looked at him, slightly annoyed. "O-of course I do! I'm not stupid!"
"Just checking…"
Around 3 A.M., Perrine was checking the cameras when she noticed something off: for some reason, the rabbit (Bonnie) was missing from the Show Stage area (which had the chicken, Chica, and the bear, Freddy Fazbear).
"Oh dear," Lynette said quickly as Perrine worked on looking through cameras quickly in order to try finding Bonnie. "I wonder where he is currently…"
Perrine couldn't find him and, bringing the monitor down, checked the doors using their lights. Once she turned on the one for the left side, the girls saw that Bonnie was right there, staring at them. Acting on frightened instinct, Perrine shut the door quickly and sighed in shallow relief.
"Who was that?" Yoshika asked.
"That would be Bonnie," Roland pointed out for the little Fuso girl.
"Bonnie…is it a girl?"
"…No, Yosh. It's a guy. Well, in an animatronic sense, it's a guy."
"Is he gone yet?" Lynette asked.
Perrine flicked her door light on and could see the silhouette of Bonnie outside.
"Not yet," the Gallian girl said as she brought up her monitor and checked around the cameras a bit. Once she found the Show Stage area, she then realized that Chica was missing. "Oh lord, not the duck too…"
"Chicken," Roland corrected.
"Whatever. Where could she be?" Perrine cycled through her cameras before stopping at what was left of the Kitchen camera (apparently it was the only one that had no video feed. It at least had audio, though). She could hear some slight shuffling from the area. "What in the world is she doing in there, making a pizza?"
Roland shrugged his shoulder.
"Um, Perrine?" Lynette tried as she realized something. "Your battery power…"
"Huh?" Perrine replied as she looked and noticed her remaining reserves. "Forty-one percent left? Are you kidding me? Who even has limited power in a place like this?" The Gallian girl checked her left door light again and didn't see Bonnie there anymore, choosing now to open the door. "At least Bonnie's gone. Now just to be safe…" She checked the right door with its light and was soon staring at Chica through the glass. "Oh merde!" Perrine wasted no time in closing the door in the blink of an eye. "Dieu, I can't believe that happened. Can things get any worse?"
XXXXXXXXXX
Around 5 A.M., Perrine was looking good…if only because she was now holding back Chica and Bonnie with closed doors while checking the cameras with her monitor. Her power was at five percent (Bonnie had went back to his spot and Chica, while she retreated after a while, came back a minute later), and she wasn't sure when exactly she would lose even that, though with the doors shut and her using the monitor and lights it was going to be sooner than she thought.
"Want me to prepare a last will and testament or something?" Roland tried asking.
"Shut up, Roland!" Perrine snapped. "I'm trying to outlast the two doorknockers."
"Two percent…" Yoshika told her hesitantly.
Perrine looked at her power level just as it reached one. "Merde! Where the hell did numbers four and three go?"
"Where the rest of them went?" Roland replied. "Number heaven?"
"You're not helping!"
Roland cringed in return as the power hit zero and everything shut down in the game, the doors opening up.
"Oh dear," Lynette started. They waited a few tense seconds as they awaited Bonnie or Chica to have charged them, but nothing happened. They soon started hearing the sounds of something being played. "What's making that sound?"
"I won't tell you just in case," Roland replied.
Right after, a bell went off.
DING! DONG! DING! DONG!
The sound of children cheering could be heard as Perrine gave off a sigh of relief.
"That was a really close one," she said, panting. "Any longer and I would have been done for."
"You might want to be careful next time, Perrine," Roland warned. "Your power level will be more useful later on."
"Roland-kun's right," Yoshika added. "Just relax and be more careful."
"You don't think I know that?" Perrine asked. "I panicked, that's all. I'll make it through this next night without losing all my power, watch…" The Gallian girl watched as the screen went back to the office for the second night.
There was another phone call from the same guy, congratulating her for surviving the first night of the job while giving her some more tips, including something about an animatronic that seemed to be camera-shy.
"Camera-shy, huh?" Perrine asked as she looked at the monitor and located what the guy called "Pirate's Cove". There was a purple curtain with a sign in front of it saying that the area was closed off. "Well, let's see about making it stay there for a while." She then remembered about her other problem. Well, two of them. "Right, can't just sit here and not pay attention to Bugs and Chuck Lady." She shifted her camera to look at the Show Stage and found Bonnie missing. "Dammit! Exactly what I was talking about!"
As the Gallian girl flicked through camera feeds, Roland felt Lynette tapping his right shoulder.
"Roland?" the Britannian girl asked carefully.
"What is it, Lynne?" Roland asked in return.
"When does Freddy become active?"
"From my knowledge, Night Three. Unless you ran out of power, in which case he's the one that can attack you."
Perrine clicked on the Pirate's Cove camera and took a quick glance before she continued looking for Bonnie, finding him in the Maintenance Room as he was staring right into the camera. Way too close.
"Dieu!" Perrine said quickly once she saw the screen.
"That's not something that I want to be greeted with first thing in the morning, that's for sure…" Yoshika added as she gulped.
"Agreed…" Lynette replied.
"So he's got to be close by," Perrine stated as she returned to the office and flicked on the left door's lights, seeing no signs of Bonnie having moved. Going back to the monitor, she flicked over to the Pirate's Cove camera and saw that there was a fox-faced animatronic peeking out of the curtain. "Merde, at least I know he's there." She then left the camera and checked on the Show Stage, finding Chica now gone. "It's only three in the morning…"
"Check back in the office?" Roland asked.
"Hang on…" She returned to the office and checked the right door with her light, not finding Chica there. She then looked at the left door and shone a light there, finding Bonnie staring at her. She moved the mouse over the button to lock the door and tried clicking on it.
CLICK!
…
"Huh?" Perrine asked as she tried again.
CLICK!
…
CLICK! CLICK! CLICK! CLICK! CLICK!
"Please don't tell me…" Perrine said as she let the realization sink in.
"He's at the door, Perrine," Yoshika tried.
"I know, Yoshika!" CLICK! CLICK! CLICK! "Why isn't this closing?"
"Bonnie's jammed it, Perrine," Roland informed her.
CLICK! CLICK! CLICK! "What do I do then?"
"Dunno. Check your monitor, outlast him, or something."
Perrine sighed. She could try to outlast him and wait for six but knew that she still had the fox to deal with. Pulling up the monitor could work but would leave her vulnerable against everyone else and their creator ("mother" couldn't really be applied to a bunch of murderous animatronics). "I guess I've got no choice, then…" She pulled up the monitor and looked at Pirate's Cove, noticing that the fox was now seeming to be about ready to run somewhere as he was completely out from behind the curtain. "Why does he even hide behind there anyways? I wonder…" She then skimmed through the cameras and returned to Pirate's Cove before sighing. "Could he be hiding from the other animatronics? Why does he even looking like he was injured or something? And what about the pirate motif? I swear, that doesn't seem to fit with the theme in the restau—"
Apparently Bonnie, tired of waiting around for Perrine to pull down the monitor, did it for her, jerking the player's vision a lot as he played his jumpscare.
This led to the following reactions: Yoshika and Lynette, who both happened to be on either side of Roland, jumped and latched on to the closest support pillar they could find, Roland himself, as they gave off screams.
Perrine, the one playing the game, gave off a squeak as she pushed against the desk and managed to push her chair out a bit into Roland before it tipped over backward, sending Roland and his grabbers to the floor.
Roland, not expecting this sort of thing, was understandably shocked while he was busy falling to the floor.
THUD!
"Oh!" Roland shouted in pain before he felt his face get smothered by something soft.
If anyone had wandered into the room at that very moment, they would have noticed that the girls themselves, in their state of panic, had fallen on Roland in some sort of formation: Yoshika was still hugging Roland over his shoulders, Lynette had fallen over his stomach, and Perrine had ended up sitting on his legs.
"That was scary..." Perrine said as she looked at her friends. "Are you three okay?"
"I'm fine," Yoshika said as she let go of Roland and tried getting onto her knees. However, she accidentally placed a hand on Lynette's rear, making the Britannian girl squeak and slap Roland's left thigh. Normally, he would have given off a pained reply but he was unable to do anything of the sort given that he was busy recovering from his last experience. There were even some blood coming out of his nose. "Oh no, Roland-kun's got a nosebleed."
"You didn't happen to land on his face with your chest, did you?"
Yoshika looked down and noticed a small amount of blood around the area in question. "...I think I did." To Roland, she added, "Sorry, Roland-kun..."
Underage, underage, underage... Roland kept repeating to himself mentally. He was perfectly aware of the issues having a house of eleven girls and two boys (himself included) entailed, but he did try his best not to do anything seen as perverted. Life just hated him for some reason, though.
The Gallian girl sighed and said, "Well, best get some sleep. It's a bit late and we might never get any if we play this for too long."
"Alright," Yoshika replied. "We'll get Miss Minna to help us get Roland-kun looked at."
The little Fuso girl and Lynette both managed to drag Roland out, leaving Perrine by herself.
"Man, how hard can this game get?" the Gallian girl said to no one in particular.
She simply exited the game and shut her computer down for the night.
XXXXXXXXXX
...And that's it for the next entry. I do apologize for the rather short chapter (by the amount seen so far).
Now, if you managed to make it this far, I'll explain the reasoning behind this one: I didn't pick this one because it was popular about a year ago. Hell, I didn't get it until some time in my summer break this year. I chose to cover Five Nights at Freddy's because it was one of the few horror games I found myself interested in. I don't play a lot of horror games...I should specify that: I don't play a lot of horror games that don't involve mindlessly slaughtering zombies or aren't RPG-like. FNaF was a game that, when I first saw some gameplay of it on Youtube, I was a bit terrified of given I never saw anything like it before. Then I let curiosity get the better of me and I watched more of it...and then decided after the third game that I would get the first one and play it. So I did. At the time of this update, I've been playing on and off and made it to Night 4 only dying once on Night 2 (I clicked outside the area and, by the time I got back in control of the game, Bonnie had snuck in and attacked once I lowered my in-game monitor).
Plus, it's (at the time this goes up) Halloween, so why not?
Anyways, apart from that, please read and respond and let me know what you think of this entry.
Thanks, have a good Halloween (if you read at a later date, I hope your Halloween went well), and I'll see you guys next time.