"...and that's when the Max you see here showed up." Sam finished explaining the events surrounding the Toys of Power.
"You knew the guy your whole life and you accepted an alternate version as your replacement goldfish?" Ai asked, bewildered.
"Why not just revive the original? We already know there's a respawn chamber," Yu responded.
"Hey! I lost my Sam and you don't see me asking for the respawn chamber," the white lagomorph complained.
"Wait, hold on..." Monica said, raising her arms out to get everyone to stop. "Where exactly ARE we?"
They all looked around, only to realize they were completely lost.
"Well, that's just great," Ai said, annoyed. "Hey Twystar! What does your NPC-sensing radar say?"
It was only when there was no response that they realized the space captain was not with them. And that he wasn't the only one missing...
"Uh... Where's Abe?" Yu said, looking around.
Everyone slumped and facepalmed.
"I don't believe this! We lost them already?!" Ai raised her voice. "Screw it, I'm going to keep opening doors until we find them again, even if it takes me a million years!"
She then proceeded to open a door, finding a somewhat scared boy in a rooster hat, a blue T-Shirt and a necklace with a star-shaped object on it in the broom closet it led into.
WARNING! CHARACTER DATA ACCESS DETECTED.
ACCESSING DISKS...
SEARCHING FOR PROGRAMS...
ALERT: NEW PROGRAM(S) FOUND
DECRYPTING DATA...
FILE 63 DECRYPTED: "SCRIBBLENAUTS UNLIMITED"
ATTEMPTING INTEGRATION...
INTEGRATION SUCCESSFUL
FILE 64 DECRYPTED: "SCRIBBLENAUTS REMIX"
ATTEMPTING INTEGRATION...
INTEGRATION SUCCESSFUL
FILE 65 DECRYPTED: "SUPER SCRIBBLENAUTS"
ATTEMPTING INTEGRATION...
INTEGRATION SUCCESSFUL
NETWORKING...
NETWORK ESTABLISHED
REBOOTING SIMULATION
"Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!" the boy screamed, clutching a notepad to his chest.
"Jeez! Will you shut up?!" Ai said. "We aren't going to do anything to you!"
"AHHHHHHHH- oh. Really? Because if you're lying, I'll use my notepad! So don't mess with me!"
"Wait, what?" Ai said, confused. "Are you crazy? Because we can just lock you in here, you know."
"You... don't know about- Fine, I'll prove it!" The boy then started writing on the notepad. "R... E... V... O... L... V... E... R!"
Time stopped and everything turned a shade darker, save for a gun which blinked into existence and swooped into the boy's hand as if moved by an invisible force.
"Now, you still feel like messing with me?"
"Okay, he should not be carrying a gun right now," Ai said nervously. "Guys?"
Maximilian, Sam and the other Max all pulled out their guns, and Monica drew her sword.
"Err..." the rooster-hatted boy quickly regretted his choice of action. "Any chance we can call a truce?"
"Depends..." Ai said with a thought. "Can you find out where in the Nexus we are?"
Five minutes later, the boy had summoned various things to try and help the Nexplorers find their way back to Abe and Twystar, to no avail.
"Sorry. I'm not even sure what the Nexus IS, so I don't think I'll be much help."
"Well, it was worth a shot..." Yu sighed, sitting down on the ground.
"Hey, try writing your name!" Ai said, trying to spark a conversation.
"M... A... X..."
Maximilian and Max looked at each other with faces that said "Seriously?!".
"W... E... L... L."
Time froze for a second, and when it unfroze, a palette-swapped version of Maxwell with an evil smirk appeared.
"Ah! After 10,000 years I am FREE!" the evil clone Maxwell said in a high-pitched voice. It suddenly grabbed Maxwell's notepad. "Yoink!" the clone quipped, and promptly ran off.
"That's bad, right?" said Ai, shifting in embarassment.
"Ya think?!" retorted Yu, giving off a bunch of cartoonishly large sweatdrops in panic, in typical Animal Crossing fashion.
"Eh, I'm not that worried. If the Nexus is even half as dangerous as my world, and my world isn't that dangerous, he'll learn pretty quickly that abusing the notepad's power for personal benefit gets you in deep trouble," Maxwell said ominously.
"What does that mean?" Monica asked.
The newly created Evil Maxwell Clone™ was running through the Nexus, when it ran into a grouchy mail clerk that wasn't looking where she was going. They collided, and the notepad fell to the ground.
"Hey! Watch where you're going, you little nuisance!" Phyllis said, angrily nursing her beak. "That's the second time this week I've bruised my beak!" The clone stuck its tongue out at her and turned to run off. Phyllis noticed the notepad and smirked. As the clone ran off, the notepad hit it in the back of the head.
"And take yer lousy notebook with ya!" Phyllis stomped off angrily with little cartoon steam spurts coming off of her head. The clone turned around, picked up the notepad, and started writing. "H... O... V... E... R..."
As Phyllis continued storming off in the other direction, a rumbling sound like a jet engine started up behind her. Phyllis stopped and turned to look, only to find herself standing face-to-barrel with a hovering futuristic tank.
"Uh oh."
A few minutes later, the clone was proudly waltzing through the Nexus corridors... straight into a rather ominous-looking encampment. "EXTERMINATE! EXTERMINATE!" voices were heard. Then the clone lost consciousness as something hit it in the back of the head.
The Nexus Explorers (plus Maxwell) were lost as all heck. They opted to sit down on the floor of a corridor to rest while they tried to think of a plan.
"Well, this bites..." Yu mumbled, munching on a pear he'd had stored in a letter for as far back as he cared to remember. He forced himself to swallow, the taste having long since become revolting to him out of sheer repetition.
Suddenly, a set of bells started to ring. Everyone looked around startled, wondering where the noise was coming from.
"Wait a minute... That's my Help Reciever!" Maximilian reached into his tool belt and took out the walkie-talkie he had used to contact Monica a few days earlier. "Hello?"
"Wahoo! Finally, we got the right frequency!" a voice said on the other end.
"Twystar?" Maximilian asked. He looked at Monica. She still had her Help Receiver as well. He shouldn't have been surprised: Donny had given it to her years ago, and she hadn't let it out of her sight since long before they met Yu and Ai. But...
"This is a closed channel. Where are you, and how-"
"-did I open this communication line?" Twystar smiled smugly, knowing full well that nobody but Abe could see him doing so. "I'm a spaceship Captain because I own a spaceship. Me and Abe ended up running around in circles and wound up in the Garage again, so we took advantage of the situation and found my UFO. With a quick jury-rig, we patched the ship's communication system into your Help Reciever."
"Well, what about us?! How are we supposed to-"
"Question," Twystar interrupted. "Did you ever get the feeling that you could sense where you were when you explored places like that sewer beneath Palm Brinks?"
Maximilian rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "Now that you mention it..."
"Both Monica and you should have a minimap while in the non-game areas of the Nexus, as well as anything in an RPG classified as a dungeon. You should be able to retrace your steps back to the Garage. You're welcome."
Maximilian and Monica just rolled their eyes and led the way.
Back in the Garage, Abe and Twystar were sitting and watching as Master Chief and the male and female Commander Shepards tried to sort out what had happened. When they'd discovered that there were two Shepards, naturally some confusion arose.
"Aren't you going to tell them that the player can choose between genders in their game?" Abe asked.
"Nah, they look like they can handle it." Twystar replied, dismissing any responsibility.
Just then, a stray pear hit Twystar in the side of the head. It bounced off of his helmet, knocking it off his head, and flipped in the air, before finally impaling itself on his exposed right horn. They were back.
"Do you have ANY IDEA how far we had to walk to get back here?!" Ai shouted, spouting little steam clouds. "Why did you up and disappear?!"
"Hey, YOU asked ME to join the Nexplorers!" Twystar shot back, rubbing his head. "Back in my galaxy, even the twelve-height-unit-tall Ptok don't mess with the Grox! And in case you haven't noticed, Gabywr like myself aren't exactly gifted in the height department."
The two of them glared aggressively at each other, ready to tear each other apart, when an unlikely member of their group intervened.
"Stop!" Abe shouted, running between them and holding his arms outstretched. "Both of you, stop! Ai, not only did you ask him to join, but when he did, you ignored our disappearance long enough that you had no idea where any of you OR the two of us were!" Abe then turned to Twystar. "And you know perfectly well that the Grox aren't even as tall as you are! I've seen them, I know!" Abe glared at Twystar, a new determination in his eyes. "Don't you understand? We're outnumbered here! YOU let the Grox bully you into letting them do whatever they wanted. If we don't stop them now, no one will! It's time you and everyone else in your universe took some responsibility and fought back!"
By now, Abe had his hands clenching Twystar's shoulders. His heavy breathing finally slowed to normal as he let go. Maxwell just blinked.
"Whoa," he said, stunned.
The awkward silence went on for a couple of minutes. Then it was unexpectedly interrupted by a warning light flashing in the Garage.
"Incoming large vehicle," a computerized voice announced. "All personnel, please take caution while in the Garage."
WARNING! CHARACTER DATA ACCESS DETECTED.
ACCESSING DISKS...
SEARCHING FOR PROGRAMS...
ALERT: NEW PROGRAM(S) FOUND
DECRYPTING DATA...
FILE 66 DECRYPTED: "PSYCHONAUTS"
ATTEMPTING INTEGRATION...
WARNING! MISSING EVENT DATA DETECTED!
RISK OF DATA CORRUPTION BY EXTRAPOLATION: 97%.
RISK OF DATA CORRUPTION BY POST-TEMPORAL COMPRESSION: 12%.
ATTEMPTING POST-TEMPORAL COMPRESSION...
INTEGRATION SUCCESSFUL
NETWORKING...
NETWORK ESTABLISHED
REBOOTING SIMULATION
Instantly, an aircraft appeared out of thin air. Its white body was accented by a pale blue spiral pattern, and it hovered under the power of a whirring purple device on its underside. The jet hung in the air for a few seconds, before slowly and carefully landing in an open area of the Garage. Twystar looked at the jet, then at his steampunk UFO-blimp hybrid, then back at the jet. "Ow, my pride."
A hatch on the top opened up, and five disoriented figures... levitated out of it. That was certainly something new.
"Well," remarked a slender woman in a brightly-colored dress, "This isn't Psychonauts Headquarters."
A tall, green-skinned man with sunglasses turned to her. "There appear to be some locals nearby. I'll try to get some information out of them." He floated down to the ground and walked toward the group.
"Greetings," he began. "My name is Sasha Nein, of the Psychonauts. Can you tell us where we are?"
The Nexus Explorers exchanged numerous glances. Yu then ushered Ai forward.
"What are you doing?! Why do I have to tell them?!" She whispered angrily.
"Because you're better at explaining these sorts of things."
Ai groaned, then looked up at Sasha.
"I hope you're prepared for a bit of a revelation, Mr. Nein. Some of this information may shock you."
"I'm a Psychonaut, young lady. I've extracted the most horrifying of secrets from the most vile of criminals. I doubt anything in your head can surprise me."
Ai cleared her throat.
"The world as you know it isn't real. This place is called the Nexus. It's a hub which connects the worlds of various video games." She smiled in a slightly creepy way. "Give the shock a moment to set in."
Even under his shades, Ai could see Sasha's stone-cold expression change.
"I stand corrected."
Q: When did Abe grow a pair?!
A: He always had a pair, he just finally got fed up when he realized that one argument could escalate into a schism. Nobody who's faced overwhelming odds as often as Abe has could possibly be a coward.
Q: What attacked the Maxwell clone?
A: You have to ask? That was the Grox. The conclusion to this arc of the story comes next time, and it'll easily be double the length of any other chapter so far, so be sure to read it. When it comes out, that is.
Q: Why did the Grox say "EXTERMINATE! EXTERMINATE!"?
A: They do that in-game when they declare war on the player, as a pretty obvious Doctor Who reference.
Q: So what happened to Phyllis? Did the clone shoot her with the tank?
A: Yeah, but I'm sure she'll be fine. As you might guess, dying isn't something that Animal Crossing characters tend to do.
Q: So there's two Shepards now?
A: Yep. We can only guess at how that will turn out.
Q: What's up with that "missing event data" bit?
A: Buckle up, because this one's a doozy.
As you may know, Psychonauts had a sequel hook at the end, but so far doesn't have a sequel. The Nexus had no data to work with, so attempting to predict events occurring in the game world over the next seven years (the time between the real life release date of Psychonauts and the date of the Nexus' activation) would've been impossible, and could potentially cause a conflict with any future sequels. This would render the extrapolation-derived data corrupt and force a hard reset for every character from Psychonauts. Since it didn't want to cause a situation that would result in their memories being wiped, it opted to remove that seven-year "dead period" entirely.
Q: What about Master Chief falling asleep for eleven years? Plenty has happened in that series.
A: Yeah, but Halo actually has sequels. This means the Nexus has something tangible that it could potentially use to update Halo character data without erasing memories. With Psychonauts, a glitch occurs: The data for events that are already in progress (the Psychonauts' flight and subsequent investigation into Truman Zanotto's kidnapping) isn't complete, because the game it's supposed to be derived from doesn't exist. You might argue it's the same for Master Chief, but at least in Chief's case, he was waiting for something to happen, not actively spurring it on.
Q: What if a new game in a series comes out, and it conflicts with what you've established for a character?
A: You can't release a game back in time, so when a new game comes out, the Nexus will add the events of the new game to the characters' memories: Characters will age or die, items will be added, maps will be altered, et cetera.
Q: Doesn't that leave a character with two conflicting memories of events, one where they discover the Nexus, and one where the game series continues as normal with no explanation as to how they got where they are?
A: Yes, but by that point, they usually know they're fictional characters anyway, so that's not as big a deal as it would seem. In the event that no compromise can be reached, the Nexus will perform a hard reset, but it generally tries to avoid circumstances coming to that.
Q: That's a lot to take in.
A: Well, mull it over while you wait for the season finale.
Q: Wait a sec... where the hell did Sam, Max and the Heavy go?!
A: Wait, what? *re-reads* ...huh. Where DID they go? I guess we'll find out soon enough.