Chapter 4: Sabotage dot exe

Glitch and Bunnie stared down from the overhanging cliffside that they had landed on, their gaze locked with the hideously visage of a Death Egg – though smaller and only partially completed, if the supports sticking out of parts of the sphere were any indication – that was looking blankly back at them. Glitch was the first to break the silence, his expression hard to read through the persistent glare on his lenses, leaving only his brow and mouth to depict the scowl on his face.

"So, this offends me. I'm offended by the sight of this."

It's with these words that he crouches down, the white light glaring off his glasses shifting to a blue as he starts trying to pull up information from his software databanks on this facility. Bunnie looks at him, and asks "What're you doin'?" "I'm going to commit mass sabotage," Glitch plainly responds, before being disrupted by the sound of Bunnie's jets firing up, and her voice piping up with "Not if I get to it first!" Glitch reaches up, grabbing Bunnie by her good hand to stop her as he tells her "Hold on there, little lady," which thankfully stopped her long enough for him to add "If you gimme a second, I can find out where it'll hurt the most. Fortunately, our friends from before have something for us."

Glitch stands up, releasing Bunnie's hand and pointing towards the base. Bunnie would see a hologram of the schematics – pulled up by Glitch from the earlier-obtained data on this location – and using this hologram to highlight two points in the buildings used to support the main construction. "You take the high road," Glitch tells her, highlighting the upper floors and the particular entry. "Hit everything that looks important on these floors and cause as much chaos as you like. I," Glitch's tone was surprisingly cogent when talking about this sort of plan, judging by Bunnie's expression as he highlights the second point of entry, "will take the low road, infiltrate their security and make sure they can't call home."

Bunnie nods, and looks at Glitch, an impressed glint in her eye. "Alrighty. I'll keep ya posted on their movement so you know if they're comin' for ya," she tells him, before firing up her jets again. Glitch shouts an alarmed "Wait!" causing Bunnie to delay her departure once more, hovering with her jets while he says "Gimme your hand," and takes her robot hand. Making like he's placing something there, a small hologram of Glitch would appear in her metallic palm. Confusion set over Bunnie's face as the hologram, its arms swinging and legs squatting in the orange justice style, stayed otherwise perfectly in place as Glitch tells her "It's a tiny version of me, Bunnie! I want you to have it!" His tone had completely changed, and Bunnie wasn't sure what to think. Her scans returned the file as harmless to her systems, so she didn't do anything with it, nor did she have time to even respond before Glitch had hopped off the cliff.

He was happy for the head-start.

As he approached the lower entrance of the main base, he heard Bunnie's jets overhead, sending her to the set of windows along the wall, near the top floors, where she aimed her blaster and opened fire while she flew by. He didn't know how long he had, but considering the fact that the cloaking field seemed to disrupt scanning, Glitch surmised outside communications must at least be on a delay. Besides, Eggman doesn't put together a base he doesn't think can protect itself. But something about this one didn't sit right with Glitch.

Reaching the door he found in the schematics, he discovered a metal bulkhead with a security terminal. "Your doors mean nothing to me," Glitch stated bluntly, before using his data-form to enter the computerized security system. Entering a small cyberspace, there was only one "line" that Glitch could move along, and it didn't take long to reach the other end, where a light waited for him to step through; reappearing on the other side of the door, where a second security terminal sits. This particular door appeared to be wired only to itself, with the terminal here acting as the authorization system. "Why isn't this connected to a central hub?" Glitch asked as the alarms upstairs blared just loudly enough for him to hear down below. He wasn't talking to anyone in particular, but internal monologues were for chumps, and even if he wanted to do that his inner thoughts were already a mess.

Instead, he simply turned away, and proceeded down the hallway, cracking his knuckles as he mumbled "Now, where are the goodies…?" Wandering and wandering, Glitch tried to use the schematics to navigate, but it seemed even this base was still under construction as there were hallways and doors that even that SWAT Bot hadn't been made aware of yet. Glitch's sense of placement was soon lost when he noticed an Egg Pawn.

A Egg Pawn? That design wasn't used yet. In fact, as far as Glitch could recall, Eggman doesn't put together that particular design for a good long while. So who built this one? The Egg Pawn was currently elbow-deep in the wiring behind the incomplete wall, apparently tasked with some form of maintenance. Deciding to act before it does, Glitch uses his data form to step inside the chassis, and try to assume some form of direct control over the machine. Surprise floods the malware mouse as he easily infiltrates the systems of the Egg Pawn, soon finding himself standing in its position with its system interfaces beginning to integrate into Glitch's vision. The status of each physical part was on display, as well as the status of major systems, and everything was reading okay.

"Ten pounds of shit in a five pound bag," Glitch's exclamation was filled with an awe-struck incredulousness, "You're joking about these security systems, Eggman! Were you seriously only expecting the ten-year-old to beat you intellectually?" The sheer indignance at how easy it was to infiltrate this system was enough to distract Glitch for only a moment when suddenly a new window blipped into his vision. Taking a small section of his vision was a window that displayed a 16-bit environment, with a lone Egg Pawn seated in the center. It looks around, seeming to be dumbfounded by its sudden predicament.

[Where am I?] a line of text appears above its head in the display. [Where is my hammer?] it queries as it stands up in the rather idyllic little garden that's spawned. Glitch was dumbfounded, himself, before he used his deductive thinking and excessive imagination to ask "Are you… Is that your soul?" The Pawn in the program started walking around the tiny garden, with new text reading [Searching for Wall…] Glitch's moment of existential revelation is doused by the machine function, and he mutters to himself "Nope. Just locked a roomba in the backyard." Glitch then looks through some of the systems, asking – mostly to himself – "Now where would you go to report your job as finished?"

Glitch's time searching through the Pawn's was interrupted by the machine's "soul" making an audible sound while searching for a wall. Glitch looked at the little display, and said "Alright, guy you can… You can take a break." It occurred to him that the machine might not know what a 'Break' is, but then it decided to make the query. [A… Break? Does this mean the wall is no longer required?]

Glitch stared at the text as the machine stared 'up' at him through the little display. "Uh… Y-Yeah," the stoned mouse stammered out, "You're good. Just… Tell me where your boss is and I'll get your report in for you. Go ahead and chill." The Pawn's gaze went to a little pond in the little glade that it had ended up in. [Request: Please make the pond larger.] Glitch was surprised at the idea of a robot having a want, but he decided to grant the simple request by using his instinctual knowledge of all this code that keeps pouring into his mind to rewrite that itty bitty meadow, giving it a larger pond. This had the unintended effect of messing with the Pawn's colors in the display, but the Pawn didn't seem to notice or care as it simply, quietly, sat down by the pond.

A location pinged on Glitch's display of the schematics. The location to report the completion of work. Following the instructions, he was brought to what appeared to be a network hub, complete with all manner of cables and entanglements connecting to a single larger terminal. "This looks hodgepodge, Eggman," Glitch muttered, before he would plug the Egg Pawn into the system, granting himself access to it, which would operate as a bridge for him from inside the Pawn. "There. Job's reported."

[Am I required to return to work?] a text prompt appeared in the Egg Pawn's little display, and Glitch looked at it, taking a moment of consideration. "I mean… I'm not necessarily saying you can't just… fuck off into the sunset after today. But like… I wouldn't want to keep working here, personally." [I shall consider the option.] The Pawn was remarkably cool with not working here, Glitch thought, before jumping onto the authorized confirmation signal that the Pawn was sending through the rest of the network. Unblocked access to this base's network was a moment away.

Glitch's vision would recover from the time spent inside the Pawn – like wearing a suit of very heavy armor – and find himself standing in a much larger Cyberspace network. Something about the choppy setup of this network was really starting to bug him. The amount of hexagons surrounding certain parts of Cyberspace here suggested that the alarms were still going, but Glitch had tuned those out when he was trying to navigate the basement. From inside Cyberspace, he would try to get in touch with Bunnie, attempting to send her an updated Schematic from inside this system, but communications remained blocked.

Proceeding through Cyberspace was as easy for Glitch as going in a straight line, usually, and this wasn't that much different. The line was connected to where the Egg Pawn's signal was supposed to go, so it should lead him to the command unit in this base, right? That's what he figured, but as he proceeded, he found that the lines started to branch into various directions, and as he tried to figure out which path to take, he would hear a distinctly alarming sound above him. Looking up, one of the hexagons that represented a security process would start attempting to scan Glitch, and he didn't like his odds of getting past clean since he apparently tripped the automatic scan.

Right as he had this thought, the hexagon shifted colors, turning into an alarming red before Glitch teleported above it, giving it a hard mid-air *punt* to stop it from raising the alarm in the rest of the network. Landing on the 'ground', Glitch looked up at the rest of the network, and saw more Hexagons starting to close in on him. He's been made. "...Ah. Shit."

[Threat detected: Containment Procedure commencing.]

Glitch needed to act fast before this became a real problem, and the first thing he could think of was to disrupt their ability to actually reach him. Raising a hand, he focuses not on the collection of what he deemed "Junk data", but on the creation of actively malicious lines of code. A red hue colored the data that flowed into Glitch's hand, and he gave the data a very simple instruction; "Break everything!". He sends this cluster of malicious data into a gap between the hexagons closing in on him, watching it fly into the void of Cyberspace before detonating into a cloud of red, infectious lines and cracks.

The idea of an "earthquake" inside of a realm like Cyberspace seems like a far fetched one, as no core existed to shake. And yet, this strange realm of existence, now infected with malevolence, quaked and shifted under Glitch's feet. The hexagons surrounding him vanished as the representation of livable space was rent asunder by what Glitch thought was a simple command being executed. As the "quakes" stopped, Glitch's nervous laughter was the only sound that granted him solace, the words "Whoops", and "I'm in danger" getting mixed into it.

Walkable segments of Cyberspace were now scattered throughout a chaotic void, the result of severe but still reversible damage to the system he just caused, and as Glitch attempted to navigate, he would find himself pulled in multiple directions. Finally, as he reached the end of his current rope, he looked up at an upside-down segment of Cyberspace. Jumping as high as he could, he reached out towards it, and gravity itself seemed to shift him towards it, turning his stomach a bit as he lands on his feet.

So navigation wasn't impossible, but he knew not the extent of the damage he just caused. In order to figure that out, he sends out a 'ping' of data in the form of a tiny cluster, trying to find out where "clean" data is supposed to end up. Unfortunately, the little cluster just detonates in his hand, leaving a strange slimy texture on his hand that he doesn't react well to, shouting "Ew! No! EWW! GROSS!" while shaking it off. After that little mishap, his new option was one of more concerted effort. He needed to explore literally every angle.

So, Glitch is soon surrounded by multiple copies of himself, Intended to be holograms, in Cyberspace they all look as real as he does, which gets a stoned giggle out of the whole lot of them. "Heheheh, cool," they say almost in unison, before the main one gave his orders. "Find an exit, before the system recovers." With that brief instruction, every single copy split off in a different direction, leaping to different separated segments of Cyberspace.

Any Glitch that discovered a dead-end would re-merge itself with another, creating a process of elimination until someone found a way out. If it wasn't the main Glitch that found it, he would simply switch positions with the one that did. That moment finally came, but when the switch was made and the rest of the copies re-merged with the original, Glitch did not like what he saw.

Sitting in front of him was a clear boundary between the plane of reality he was in – Cyberspace – and the plane of reality he was in before – Mobius – and that boundary was not marked with a computer, but a simple, physical step forward into the halls of the Egg base he and Bunnie were attacking. "Oh ho!" Glitch exclaimed as the revelation hits, "Ooooh ho ho! Oh that's not good!" Glitch's hands were on each side of his head, ruffling up his already disheveled hair as he continues his exclamations of shock.

After a few more moments to absorb what it was he just did, Glitch finally stepped past that boundary, shuddering at the implications, and attempted to establish comms with Bunnie. Still nothing, and now attempting to do so gives him a headache. He needed to keep moving on foot until he felt better about that. Rounding a corner with the pace of someone trying to walk off a bad stomachache at work, Glitch finds a second patch of Cyberspace leaking its way into the building. This particular patch was being investigated by several different robots, but it was the only way forward, so Glitch simply walked past them as if he belonged there anyway. The machines' focus on the initial problem proved enough to keep them from looking at him, so he slipped right into the new Cyberspace patch, where he felt alarmingly better.

The line in this patch seemed more kept-together, and was somehow even more isolated from the rest of the network that he was in before, but despite this it was affected by Glitch's attack, which made him wonder just how hard he really hit them. After navigating a while, a new face – or familiar one – would appear. The Egg Pawn from earlier, its outer hull colored the way it was in the strange little display before, was standing in a section of Cyberspace looking completely lost. Glitch, realizing who he was looking at, shouted "oh, hey guy!"

The machine jumped, startled by Glitch's sudden voice, before looking towards him. "Greetings," it wasn't speaking only in text now, and its posture seemed to relax after identifying him. "It would seem my navigation has failed me. I have been having trouble finding the exit." "Oh, yeah, shit's wild right now, but if you go back the way I came I think you'll find some of your buddies, they'll be way more up-to-date on this than me." Glitch was speaking rather casually now, but second meetings are always less awkward than the first.

The machine looks past him, and spots a vertical corner – the one Glitch had rounded before spotting him – and states bluntly "I would like to refrain from verticality. I apologize." "Nature of the beast," Glitch says dismissively, before pointing forward past the Pawn and saying "Let's go this way then." The two continue along as if they were good friends, but as navigation continued, Glitch would shout profanities about "This M.C. Escher-Ass Cyberspace", and describing the network as "Melting-clock-ass" as they twist and turn about. Finally, they find themselves standing before another boundary between the cyber and physical, where the other side has a very annoyed looking cybernetic rabbit looking around.

Stepping out of the Cyberspace with the Pawn, Glitch waves a greeting, saying "Hey, Bunnie." "You! What in tarnation did y'all do!?" Bunnie's response was frantic and actually a little angry-sounding, prompting Glitch to raise his hands disarmingly as he laughs out a "Haha! Whoops!" before Bunnie groans. "Can ya at least reverse this? The blinkin' lights gimme a headache," Bunnie's complaint was made with her good palm to her face, but Glitch's response would be less-than-ideal. "Dude, I don't even know what exactly I did to cause this Escher-infused hellscape, you think I know how to reverse this?"

Bunnie's glare was… Deadly. Daggered, and coupled with her robotic arm – which Glitch only now noticed had suffered some damage – crushing a piece of metal she'd been gripping from an earlier battle. "You better figure it out quick," she tells him in a threatening tone, to which Glitch – with fear in his eyes – turned towards the Cyberspace he just walked out of while telling her "Checking checking checking-" his examination of the system in his scans would reveal an opening into the access that he had accidentally created. He pokes a spot in the wall nearby, speaking out a "Boop", which created a visible pulse throughout the physical and cyberspace walls nearby. Glitch's eyebrows raise in awe, as his display is filled with root access authorizations.

"I have BIOS access to this reality." The statement would have sounded insane out of context. Glitch uses this access to search around, stepping back inside of Cyberspace. Suddenly, a flash of light – no, more like a 'fold' of it, by the shape – appeared in his path. "That's interesting," Glitch muttered, being watched intently by Bunnie and the friendly Egg Pawn as he reached out and grabbed it. The white light that made up this "fold" would suddenly flood into Glitch's physical body, a shout of pain escaping the mouse as he grabs his head with his other hand. With it came a flood of understanding, information on the capabilities of his power, as well as something more.

A flash of a different reality, a place I recognize and don't, a memory I knew was there but could never truly recall it. A vision obscured. A life left behind, a boring one, an expected one for me. Lethargic, lazing, but enjoying the moment as the only thing visible is a blue blur on a TV screen and a controller in hand. I recognize these Frontiers.

The vision ends, Glitch gasps, the pain subsides. Another revelation that cannot be spoken of. A moment from a life past, a glimpse of a better person in a boring world. Or a boring person in a better world? It had only now occurred to him that this was a suppressed memory but not one he himself would want to surpress. Whatever this fold of light was, it revealed to him data that he shouldn't have had access to, and knowing what it is and that it was hidden from him sent a wave of rage through the stoner.

But he couldn't say it. Not to this rabbit, anyway. Instead, he took a breath, and shook it off. Instead, he focused on the first batch of information it gave him, flexing the grabbing hand into a fist a few times as Bunnie came to his side, asking if he was okay. "I'm… I'm fine. It was enlightening, actually." "Whatcha mean there?" Bunnie asked as her concern remained. Glitch did something he hadn't consciously done in a while, and brought a smoldering joint to his mouth, taking a nice long drag as he pondered how to explain this.

Exhaling, he spoke. "It looks like what I did here is reveal an overlap between physical space and Cyberspace. Kind of… Showed where the parallel actually sits." He rubs his eyes under his glasses, lifting the lenses up some as he massaged the bridge of his muzzle, "But at the same time, before I even did that, I simply wandered around in the network, where I was unconsciously… 'leaking' my influence? I guess?" This was where it was a little hard to explain, and so Bunnie filled in the blanks with "So y'all said you were data, like a virus? Don't they usually corrupt files over time if they're made well 'nough?" Glitch pointed to Bunnie, affirming "Yes, it's like that. I was passively infecting files."

"How's that lead to you doin'… this?" Bunnie asks him, motioning to the overlap in spaces with her free hand, the other still on Glitch's shoulder. "I sent out a malicious command to 'Break Everything'. Computers take orders literally, and broke everything, including the part that separates Cyberspace. So it… Fucked up reality, a bit." "Just 'a bit'?" Bunnie asks, ignoring the cuss. "By my estimations? Yes." Glitch drags a breath of smoke from his joint, and adds "If this network was actually connected to Eggman's main base, this overlap would be in every mile between here and… Wherever his base is right now. Robotropolis is out of commission right now." "Shame we can't get Tails on the line, this'd be right up his alley," Bunnie laments.

Glitch blinks, and says "Hang on a moment," before making an attempt to establish communications once again, this time holding his thumb and pinkie finger out like a phone as he leans on a nearby wall just outside the Cyberspace part of the overlap. This time, the link works, and Glitch giggles out a "Coohoohool!" as the call rings. Tails is soon seen and heard as a video feed. "Hey! Where are you guys? You vanished from comms and scanners for a while there!"

"Hey Tails! I'm gonna send you some Geolocation data so you can come pick us up. Long story short, found a secret base, and I have a few suspicions about who's running this show." Glitch's explanation was sidestepped for the moment as Tails could be seen in the video feed leaning to try and look behind Glitch's head, while asking "What… On Mobius is going on behind you?" "Ha ha, let's get to that. First, this is my robot friend!" Glitch points his 'camera' at the Egg Pawn, who waves and says "Hello" in its robotic tone before Glitch brings the camera back around and adds "He says hello!" in a cheerful tone, before continuing without missing a beat, "I'm gonna send you some code you're going to want to isolate before you look at it, it's malicious. If you unscramble it and tell me exactly how it functions I might be able to reverse this."

Glitch raises a hand, that red aura of binary energy surrounding it as he transfers it over the line. Tails looks at a screen away from his camera, where he says "It's… Just a pile of error types to trigger, but a chunk of it is encrypted." "So I passively encrypt, that's good," Glitch remarked as he took a drag from his joint. Tails released a sigh, exasperated in tone, and tells Glitch "You owe me a bag of mints for figuring this one out." Glitch looked down the hallway, spotting a large device with an electronic pad next to it ahead, and saying "Consider it done. I have to go now, I have to… attempt, diplomacy." He cut the line, and quickly made his way to the door in question.

Bunnie and the Pawn follow, and the Pawn says "This is the teleporter to the Egg Boss' room. It would be wise to not alarm him." "Oh, he probably knows we're here. Bet I can guess his password though," Glitch steps up to the electronic keypad, which contained not just numbers, but a full keyboard of letters, which was surprising to Glitch. When he attempted to enter the system the way he had before, he felt a hard jolt, shouting at the sudden pain and jumping away with an "Aaaow! Alright! Need a new plan..." The Egg Pawn stepped up with an "Allow me", pulling an interface cable from its chassis and plugging in to the keypad. "Decrypting…" The machine speaks, and Bunnie says "Well y'all are gonna wanna make it quick!" as she points out the nearby Cyberspace overlap.

Glitch groans. "The shapes are back."

A half-dozen hexagons had escaped the containment of Cyberspace and were rushing down their position, leaving Bunnie and Glitch to keep the Egg Pawn safe. "My blaster ain't doin' so hot here," Bunnie remarks, raising her damaged robotic arm. Glitch, stepping up, gathered binary energy in his hands, telling her "Lemme pick up the slack then," before flickering into a position that was vertically level with the closest of the shapes, chucking a ball of energy in a Data Cluster, hitting his target dead-on! A second security program attempted to attack by swinging itself at him, but Bunnie was quick to respond, leaping in with a flying kick! Glitch landed from his aerial attack, and threw his second Cluster, which struck a third Hexagon and destroyed it.

"It's like smashin' windows!" Bunnie calls out as her next kick sees her leg extend while the other keeps her jet floating her, and smashes a security program. Two left. Glitch decided to try something out, and held a Data Cluster between his hands, and pouring more binary energy into it while keeping it compressed to size. The blue light started glowing white as Bunnie grabs another Hexagon, and frisbees it into the floor. Glitch releases his compressed Cluster, which fired out at blinding speed and, on impact with the target, detonated a large blast that almost knocked Bunnie out of the air! "Holy SHIT! The Zip Bomb works!" Glitch shouts triumphantly, cackling at the efficacy of his new special attack. "Don't celebrate yet!" Bunnie tells him, pointing to a new wave of geometric shapes closing in with proper eggbots in tow.

Glitch raises a hand, saying "No more of that please," while enacting a firewall protocol in the Cyberspace system the enemies were coming from, forming a physical barrier at the Overlap. Though see-through, the foes trying to make it through would find themselves barred, but Glitch didn't think it would last long. Moving to check on the Pawn, he asks "Progress?" "Three characters have been decrypted."

"Three!?" Glitch shouted.

"That is what I said." The Pawn replied.

Glitch looked at the machine a moment, thinking it a smart-ass, before saying "Show me." The Pawn uses its eyes to project a hologram display.

[B- & D-]

Glitch stared at the display confusedly, his brows raised above his glasses as he processes what he's looking at. Bunnie looks at him, asking "What's the matter, stumped?" "It's a pair of names. Just trying to remember whose…" Glitch wasn't about to admit he was stumped when he effectively had an eidetic memory for this kind of information. His glasses lenses changed to that familiar blue of his searching his own personal databanks, while the firewall he erected would flicker as the security programs would enact their automatic authorizations. Suddenly, Glitch lets out a "D'oh!" before moving to the keyboard, saying "You son of a bitch!" and typing a pair of names into the pad.

[Bocoe & Decoe]

The pad of the teleportation device activated with a flash of light, and Glitch pumped his fist with a "Yussss" before hopping into the light, Bunnie and the Pawn not far behind. Blinded by the warping process, their vision recovered in what appeared to be some kind of… Office. Decorated with both a large array of monitors and what appears to be a nice wooden desk, the only things out of place were the strewn-about papers that covered the floor, and the bipedal robot with its hands on the sides of one of the monitors, its grip damaging the glass screen.

That robot's gaze snapped over to Glitch and company. The mouse immediately recognized it as a Robian, despite everything; the design was too… Unique. Personalized by the roboticization process, the machine before him had a set of quills on its head that make him think of a porcupine. The mostly-black chassis made way for bright yellow highlighting, including those trademark spiky quills that seemed to spark with irritation.

The machine turns to face them as Glitch tilts his head. "Well you're not fucking canon," he states, bluntly. The machine's voice was clearly meant to intimidate, as despite the question it bore a powerful confidence.

"Who are you?"

Glitch's responds was full of the same snark and stoned lethargy he could muster for Patch, lazy smirk and all.

"Wouldn't you like to know, weather boy?"