Chapter Six: Antagonist

"I mean, 'killed' is a silly word. He's standing right there, after all." She motioned with her eyes toward where BYTE was stood. "I didn't kill him, I just… Incapacitated him." She grunted in place a little. "Can you seriously get this blunky hand off of me? I do need to be able to breathe if I want to tell you anything."

Master Mummy used his other hand to remove Twintelle's mask, before quietly removing his hand from her neck. "There are 10 of us here watching you, so don't move a muscle."

"Yeah yeahhhh." She groaned, rubbing her neck. "Where was I?"

"You were about to try and justify why you put us all through hell." Min Min glared.

"You're such a drama queen. But alright, fine. Here's how it all went down…"

About six or seven months ago I noticed a trend among ARMS matches. Specifically that the viewership for each match was getting lower and lower - people were becoming disinterested in ARMS fighting. It was getting stale. Sure, the viewership went up a bit when Brass came back, but it seemed like most people still weren't interested in tuning in for it. They just figured it'd be another easy win for him, just as every Brass championship fight had been up until that point.

I knew that wasn't enough to keep people's attention. I knew the addition of new fighters was also not going to be enough. No, what ARMS needed was unpredictability . Something to really keep people glued to their screens.

So I first tested that theory on the day of the championship fight. I mean, I didn't expect Ribbon Girl to actually win - props to you on that one, darling - but all the same I knew that my intervention would remain the highlight of the evening. The viewership started out poor, rose a little when Ribbon Girl appeared to have a chance, and then skyrocketed when Hedlok turned up.

"Wait." Spring Man paused. "You built Hedlok…?"

Twintelle rolled her eyes. "No, dummy. I broke into the ARMS lab and let him lose. I learnt all manner of silent spy work, lockpicking, and basic hacking for a movie role just a couple months prior."

" I knew it! " Kid Cobra gleed.

"Now, if you'll excuse me…"

I set Hedlok loose on the championship battle and the ratings soard. Manifique! But something more was needed. What was the ARMS league missing? ...Bingo: a villain. Every great story has one. Why should ours be any different?

Hedlok was too mindless - too simple - to be a good fit. But as I rummaged around more through the ARMS lab files that they're apparently just fine with leaving sprawled out on their desks I found a little something called OPERATION SNOWFALL . A new ARMS fighter in the same vein as Helix, but built from the ground up with a focus on ice abilities. He was supposed to debut as the final opponent of this upcoming tournament. From then on he'd likely just be like Helix - another neutral party, and a total snoozefest to the viewers. But I had much bigger plans for him…

Snowman was to be transported to the stadium via the Extravagant Express alongside all other ARMS fighter participants. A train just screams 'derail me!' to a villain, so that's how we get things started. I reprogrammed him through some simple commands I found in some documents lying around so that he would immediately create a blizzard upon waking up, attempt to derail whatever transport he was on if he was on one, and attack any and all people within a certain range. Next I swiped the passcode for the cryochamber, as well as instructions on how to reprogram the timer.

On the first night of the trip, when everyone else was sound asleep, I would just have to get to the cryochamber and set the timer to open the following night. They check the display before parting with the chamber, of course, so I couldn't have set it beforehand. Snowman wakes up, gets on the roof, derails the train. Soft snow all around, we're probably only looking at minor injuries for the most part, but possibly some good collateral damage too.

"And then the Snowman is decommissioned and destroyed." Ninjara butted in, his ARMS folded. "So your plan for a villain was pointless."

Twintelle sighed. "Are you that dense? Snowman was not the villain I was trying to create. Mechanica was."

"Wh-Wh-What?" Mechanica stammered. Everyone seemed in disbelief.

A malfunctioning piece of ARMS lab equipment doesn't help the ARMS league in the long run. Hedlok proved that much. But what if the Snowman wasn't let out by an error, but specifically by a person with malicious intent?

A little kid scorned by the lack of the gift of ARMS! She builds a mechanical suit for a chance at competing, but it's just not enough. She doesn't have actual ARMS. She doesn't have the gift. So, to spite us all, she tries to off us all with hacked ARMS lab equipment and a derailing train. Now that is a villainous plan!

And before you ask, yes , she would have been arrested once it was properly assumed she was the culprit. But the story would do wonders for the ARMS league - enough for me to step in and sort out some wriggle room in her sentencing. She runs a short prison stay and then emerges to my open arms, offering to get her back in the spotlight as a villainess looking to rival the others. Suddenly the ARMS league has a faces and heels system! Exactly the kind of oomph it needed.

"You're a sick bitch." Min Min glared, teeth gritted.

"Drama. Queen." Twintelle shrugged back.

"So where does BYTE come into all of this...?" Questioned Master Mummy.

"Well it does sound like she bit off more than she could chew." Lola quipped, which actually received a handful of chuckles from across the fighters at Twintelle's expense.

"Oh alright, you want the play-by-play? Fiiine." Twintelle sighed.

I break into the ARMS lab looking for something to spark the creation of a villain. I unleash Hedlok to test the waters, I study up on how Snowman works, blah blah blah…

I begin to get closer with Helix. That's an important step I figured out early on, and some behavioural analysis documents from the ARMS lab helped to make that work. By the time we boarded the train he would do whatever I asked on a whim. He's also not a threat to my plan, since he's too ditzy to blow my cover. Perfect.

Night falls on the journey. Everyone is in bed, sound asleep. I take Helix with me through to the first sleeper cart, hovering most of the way there to keep silent. When we reach the champion's suite I have Helix slip out through the window, over the train, and in through the open window in the suite. He's so flexible and silent, he's the perfect accomplis.

It never even crossed Ribbon Girl or Min Min's minds that the open window could have been involved, given that they were over the sea for the duration of their journey.

Helix picks up Ribbon Girl's case, quietly takes it back out through the window and over the train, and then hands it to me. I pull out some bolt cutters that I brought with me - ones identical to those in Mechanica's set, which I had arranged beforehand - and snip the locks open. Now it looks like Ribbon Girl's gloves were used in the attack, so no one expects it was me because why would I use Ribbon Girl's gloves instead of my own? That entire detail was set up just to take eyes off of me. In actuality I did use my own.

I throw my bolt cutters out of the window and Helix returns the broken glove case to beneath the suite's bed where the two lovebirds were sleeping. He then returns to me and I send him back to his room - his role is done.

Next, I equip my mask and my gloves - a Thunderbird and a Parasol, two I'm very familiar with. I time my entry into the cargo carriage carefully to make sure BYTE's back is turned when I enter. His movements are mechanical and noisy , so it wasn't hard to time it right.

I open the door and send my thunderbird through both of them, stunning them in place. My parasol follows and collides with the base of his neck, where I hold it in place as it screws his head off. If I had just stunned him while I reset the cryochamber's timer, he likely would have check for tampering once he regained attention. So he needed to be put out of the way.

Now, BYTE is no ordinary policebot - he's an ARMS fighter. That means losing him would negatively affect the ARMS league. So rather than disposing of his head, I choose to instead plant it in the cryochamber after I'm done resetting the timer. Saves him holding a capable investigation. Of course, had he actually seen me before I was able to stun him, I would have thrown his head overboard. It just wasn't necessary.

Ribbon Girl felt a little sick. She had looked up to Twintelle to a degree, and now she was watching her explain how she effectively killed her good friend.

So! BYTE's head is out of the way in the cyrochamber, BARQ is stunned until I can leave the crime scene, and Snowman is set to awaken early and derail the train. The blame instantly falls on the kid as she's the only one with an understandable motive, the detail of BYTE hardware vs. her own hardware adds an additional secondary motive, her bolt cutters appeared to have been used to steal the 'murder' weapons… And if any focus began to shift onto other present fighters, I could easily shift it back on her. The perfect plan.

And if you were to have stopped Snowman, as you did, I didn't expect it to matter at all. An attempt at making a train derail is near enough to actually making it happen, just with less… Oomph. And I guess that was my downfall, in the end. We were so close to derailing there, just a little more effort on Snowman's part and we'd have sped right past the station and through the stoppers at the end. I craved that oomph, so I did my best not to impede Snowman's efforts. I was hoping the others would be too focused on staying gripped to the train to notice me pulling my punches, but oh well.

She shrugged her shoulders and winked one eye closed. "I guess that means… I am the villain now." She smiled coyly.

"The only thing you are is a stone cold bitch ." Min Min shouted angrily. "How dare you setup Mechanica like tha-"

"Negative." BYTE interrupted, placing a hand on Min Min's shoulder. "Twintelle is also….. Arrested." He extended his ARM around Twintelle and restrained her, disconnecting his ARM once in place.

"Mm, I figured that was coming." Twintelle sighed. "Guess I'll prepare myself to put on the water works for the press. It'll be quite a beautiful spin, I promise~"

"Ughhhh!" Min Min growled. Ribbon Girl put an arm around her.

"So… Um… Should we also arrest Helix or…?" Spring Man asked.

"He doesn't really seem to understand what he's done." Ninjara shrugged. "I guess we'll just have to bring it up with the ARMS lab later. Besides, BYTE only has two ARMS."

"Oi!" Min Min nodded toward Ninjara. "I think you owe someone an apology."

Ninjara sighed to himself, a little embarrassed. "I'm… I'm sorry I pushed you like that."

"No, y'idiot." Min Min glared. "I meant for blaming Mechanica."

He seemed a little surprised, not having put two and two together yet that he had fallen straight into Twintelle's plan. He turned to Mechanica and quietly nodded. "I… I'm sorry for accusing you. She did her best to frame you, so it was hard to see past everything she planted."

Mechanica gave a little nod, as if to say 'apology acknowledged', but not necessarily accepted. This whole ordeal had been pretty stressful, after all.

"I think we all owe Mechanica a big thank you." Master Mummy said, folding his ARMS. "You all saw how close we were to the end of the station. And I'm sure Mechancia's efforts did the most out of all of us to slow the locomotive."

Mechanica blushed. "Th-Thank you…"

Several cars, fitted with snow tires, rolled up to the train. It seems one of the staff members called for police and explained the gist of the events that had unfolded. Twintelle was taken away, though already with an entirely new and fictional demeanour that helped to make her out to be far more sympathetic than she was, and the rest of the ARMS fighters were taken the rest of their journey by car to the luxury hotel by the stadium.