Hi! This is my bday fic for oddvector! Happy birthday, and thank you for always being such a wonderful beta and friend! His prompt was the following:

Shoka invites Nagi to play Fantamon or another Pokemon expy. No need to mention the other characters here — I'd like the focus to just be on these two. Shoka thinks that it's fun to break it open using glitches and other tricks, while Nagi struggles to find the pleasure in an approach like that and would prefer to use the tools the developer intended, rather than "cheating" (she might prefer a legitimate Nuzlocke/Wonderlocke challenge?). You can use this to show off your knowledge of different types of glitches/skips. They come to understand/appreciate the other's opinion.

This was a really neat prompt, and things came together pretty quickly once I actually got around to writing it. The extra writing energy during Nano also helped.

Thank you Darkblaw for taking the time to read, beta, and add in more body language!

If, Ands, or Bolts

"This world is but a canvas to our imaginations." —Henry David Thoreau

Shoka had to admit that sometimes old games could be just as fun as the newer ones. For all the improved graphics and streamlined gameplay, sometimes it was nice to experience the crunchiness of a retro title. Sure they could be janky and even BS sometimes, and a lot of people avoided them because of that. But those people were morons who didn't realize that the crusty old mechanics were part of the selling point.

Nagi, naturally, was no moron. She had picked up the original Fantamon because she wanted to have the full context for whenever she had the time to finally try FanGO. She had played some of the FinFan games, but had somehow dodged Fantamon her entire life. So Shoka had suggested starting with the original.

Funnily enough, for Nagi's lore-seeking purposes, the original Fantamon pretty much had no plot whatsoever. It didn't even have any connections to FinFan lore, since it had started as an entirely separate series until it got merged with FinFan for FanGO. But she seemed to enjoy raising her cute little monsters and seeing them grow into big scary monsters.

Meanwhile Shoka had been feeling nostalgic for one of her childhood games, and had decided to do her own playthrough alongside Nagi's.

"So where are you at right now, Nagi?" asked Shoka, as they lounged around Nagi's dorm room that weekend. Shoka was very careful not to touch any of the Lord Tomonami merch so carefully positioned around in the tiny space. Right now they were both impatiently waiting for the EleStra dailies to finally refresh.

"Alas, I have made little progress since we last spoke," said Nagi. "I chose the Path of the Sun, but that means that I had little to effectively combat the upcoming Stone Guardian. So I must grind yet more forest creatures to dust to give my team the necessary experience." She slumped forward and groaned.

"Yeah, that guy's pretty rough if you picked fire," said Shoka. "You could just skip him and get back to him later, y'know."

Nagi's posture perked up slightly. "Erm, skip him? Is he not a required boss? Have I been vanquishing forest creatures for naught, then?"

"Nah, it's good to grind in the early game anyway. Saves you a lot of time later." Shoka shrugged. "And to skip the guardian guy, you have to…uh, hold on, lemme look it up real quick." She plucked her phone out of her pocket.

"How intriguing," said Nagi, adjusting her glasses as Shoka tapped away at her screen. "Though it sounds like the path to do so is rather obtuse, if you have to look it up. I have heard that some older games hide such arcane secrets behind even more arcane methods, however."

"Okay, here we go!" Shoka followed the lines of words with her finger as she scanned the text. "So if you wanna skip the boss, first you gotta have exactly 11 flame spells and 23 attack-lowering spells left on your dragon."

Nagi slanted her head to the side. "Hmm, why that exact number?"

"Dunno, I'm not a programmer," admitted Shoka. "Then, when his goon shouts at you to get back into town, you press B to exit the dialogue and then immediately press the start button, save, and exit. Then when you go back into the game, you can walk right past him. And that's how you skip him."

"Hrmmm…" said Nagi, mouth dipping into a disapproving scowl. "That doesn't sound like an intentional way to bypass the boss."

Shoka chuckled, putting away her phone and leaning back in her seat—careful to not bump into the stacked Tomonami plushies to her side. "Oh it definitely isn't. But part of the real fun of the original Fantamon is turning the game's code into origami and seeing what happens."

"I am…not quite sure if I follow." Nagi's brow tightened and her lips squiggled..

"Sis, do you have any idea how freaking broken this game is?" asked Shoka, smirking. "Seriously, it's a wonder that these games run as well as they do on a casual playthrough. 'Cause if you poke it in the exact wrong places, the game literally loses its goddamn mind and it's great."

Nagi meanwhile had the same grimace she got whenever she ate something she hated. "How is it 'great' that the game is poorly programmed?"

"Because when this game breaks, there's nothing else like it." Shoka leaned her head on her hand and gestured with the other. "Like, honestly, if you wanted the best pure experience of the first game, you're better off with the remake. It irons out a lot of the weirdness and has a lot of the modern conveniences that the later games do."

"Hrmm…And yet that is not the game you recommended to me. Why is that?"

"I mean, I did think about starting you on that one instead," admitted Shoka, lightly flicking at the ring on her ear of her cat hoodie. "But nah, I wanted you to experience the very start of the series, in all its janky glory. Failed focus spell and all."

"I still do not understand how a spell that's supposed to double my power quarters it instead," Nagi grumbled, teeth on edge. "What foul error befell the code to make it have the opposite effect?"

"I know, right?" said Shoka, almost laughing. "It's like how half the spells in the original FinFan just don't work. I dunno how FinFan got a sequel at all when literally half the options don't even function."

"'Tis why I play the remakes of FinFan instead of the original," said Nagi, adjusting her glasses in a way that the reflected light hid her eyes. Shoka could never tell if she did that on purpose or not.

"Yeah, me too." Shoka nodded. "I mean sometimes I'll play the original because it's fun to grind up on the Spire of Strength. Y'know, that place that spawns way stronger monsters than it should? You can just barely beat them and get tons of EXP from that. But otherwise I prefer the remakes, yeah."

"Ah yes, I've heard of that particular mapping oversight." Nagi instinctively reached for the strap of her ita bag, but since she wasn't wearing it she ended up gripping her shirt instead. "Lady Shoka, do you always seek such glitches and exploits while playing a game?"

"If it sounds fun and cuts down on grinding levels, then yeah," said Shoka, folding her arms. "Why would I turn down something that makes the game more entertaining?"

Nagi's finger rested on her chin. "Even if it disregards the creator's original intent? Why choose to play someone else's game if you have no regard for that game's rules?"

"Hey, it's my copy of the game, so what does it matter?" asked Shoka, folding her arms. "It's not like I'm using glitches to cheat against other players or get fake rankings on a leaderboard. I'm just having fun in my own way."

"I suppose that's true," said Nagi. "Still, creating a game is an arduous process, one that requires much consideration for balance as well as function. A-And that is not even considering all the effort that goes into crafting a suitable plot and characters!" Nagi pressed her lips together tightly for a moment before grumbling out the rest of her statement. "Would that Stone Guardian have nearly as much impact on me if I simply bypassed him and then returned with a stronger team than intended?"

"I mean, he's not exactly the most riveting character to start with, so you wouldn't be missing much." Shoka lifted up her hand as she spoke. "He's not even that interesting of a boss fight. He's just a giant HP sponge that barely does any damage back. Like, if you chose Path of the Sea or Path of Nature for your starting dragon he's not that bad, but oh my god he's so annoying if you chose Path of the Sun. So if I'm doing a fire dragon, I usually skip him and come back."

"I see," said Nagi, looking away. "For me, at least, I would rather attempt him in a fair fight, rather than evading the boss battle. Someone put much effort into crafting this scenario, and I want to experience it at the appropriate level."

"Then more power to you, sis." Shoka put on a conniving grin. "You just might be there for a while. So I'm gonna be way ahead of you."

"I already expected you to stay far ahead of me, considering you are experienced in this game and I am not." Nagi adjusted her glasses again, effortlessly sidestepping Shoka's taunt.

"Pfft, fair."

"And in turn, I imagine that you will continue to exploit the game as you see fit," said Nagi. "And, as you yourself said, you have every right to do so. Though admittedly, I still do not understand how doing so doesn't break the immersion of the game outright. Wouldn't performing glitches, whether on accident or on purpose, only remind you that the world that you're playing in is false?"

"I guess for a second or two maybe?" said Shoka, looking up at the ceiling as she thought about it. "Actually, I think in a way it makes me more immersed."

Nagi's mouth fell open. "Beg pardon? I do not understand."

"Sounds weird, I know, but hear me out." Shoka played with the ear of her hoodie for a second before continuing. "Have you ever been randomly scrolling youtube and see a vid on nature or science or something and go 'Holy shit, I did not know that physics worked like that'? Like creatures that can literally glow with bioluminescence and stuff."

Nagi nodded sagely. "Indeed, the natural world has many such wonders."

"Yeah. So it's kinda like that when I come across a glitch accidentally. 'Oh, huh, guess there's more to how this world works than I thought'. Something like that."

"Fascinating," Nagi rubbed her chin. "So what I would see as a jarring flaw, you would see as merely another facet of the world you're visiting."

"Yup. To me it actually adds more depth," said Shoka, stretching her arms. "Like, when it comes down to it, all games are lines of code that somebody wrote to perform in certain ways in certain situations, right?"

"The unfortunate truth of even the most perfectly constructed virtual reality, yes." Just admitting that made Nagi's mouth squirm.

"Right. But when the game does something the creator clearly didn't want it to, it makes it seem more alive, y'know? Like there's actually a whole breathing world in there. And it's not just a lame copy of our world because it's got its own weird physics that we don't quite get." Shoka paused for a sec and patted her hands on her knees. "I dunno, I just find that really cool."

Nagi hit her with a genuine and thoughtful smile. "It is indeed a very intriguing way of looking at it."

Shoka smirked. "And as for when I'm intentionally doing glitch stuff, well, that makes me feel powerful in a way that just leveling up doesn't. It's like I'm harnessing some black magic because I basically am, as far as the game is concerned. I'm taking full advantage of the game's unique code or physics or whatever to do wild stuff. I'm definitely not playing as intended, but that's part of the power trip."

"I see. You certainly seem to favor game situations where you have ample power to crush your foes effortlessly, I've noticed."

Shoka shrugged coolly. "Yeah, because I find that kinda gameplay the most fun. And if you know how to use the jank in a game you can get some ridiculously busted setups."

"Indeed." Nagi tapped her chin as she spoke. "Even intentional combos can end up far more powerful than the creator expected, much less those that were not expected at all."

"But the best kind of jank lets me basically make a whole new game outta it, especially if it's something I've played before," said Shoka. "I mentioned before that the original Fantamon breaks like nothing else. Yeah, I really mean it breaks like nothing else."

"How so?"

"Like, if you really get into it, you can basically reprogram the game to do whatever you want with an inventory glitch," Shoka explained. "I saw one person reprogram the game to play Pong. I saw another person turn the game to a makeshift Gameshark that could port its ACE code into other games. Really crazy stuff like that."

"Oh my." Nagi blinked. "That is certainly something."

"Now I usually don't mess around that deeply with the game, since that inventory glitch stuff's really complicated and one wrong move with that glitch could completely bork your save file." Shoka stuck out her thumb and slid it over her throat.

"All the more reason I would not involve myself in such exploits," said Nagi solemnly.

"But even then there's tons of stuff you can do. Like warping to glitched or unused areas. Or fleeing from a goon right before they see you, coming back, and then fighting a glitched version of the goon. Or making a creature that evolves via item evolve via level up instead, by having it level up while a monster with the same HEX as the item in the second slot. Stuff like that."

"Hrmmmm…." Nagi turned towards a big poster of Tomonami hanging on her wall like she expected to hear His Radiance's thoughts on the matter. "'Tis fascinating, but I fail to see why I would not, say, just use the evolutionary item instead of that rather convoluted setup."

"Well, what if you don't have the item you need yet? You could get that evolution early," explained Shoka. "Makes completing the bestiary easier. And why stop at collecting every creature in the game when you can collect every glitch creature too?"

Nagi's eyes widened. "T-There are glitch monsters as well?"

"Yup!" Shoka lifted her arms over her head and spread out her fingers. "Over a hundred of them."

"Over a h-hundred?" Nagi's hands shuddered slightly as she reached for her itabag but only found her shirt once again. "Heavens…"

Shoka shrugged and feigned nonchalance. "Sure some of them are basically just clones of each other, and some of them you can't even look at without crashing the game."

"Much as one shouldn't look directly at a lovecraftian being..." Nagi made the light reflect against her glasses again, as if that'd help against some kinda space octopus monster.

"Pfft, sure, let's go with that. It's close enough," said Shoka. "But most of the glitch monsters are playable. And all of them are technically obtainable. But you can only get most of them through doing other glitchy stuff. Like having the characters of your name overwrite the actual encounter table of a certain area and getting glitched stuff based on your name."

"So every game is personalized..." Nagi said gravely. Shoka could see her growing pale in real time.

Shoka snorted in amusement. "Something like that. I mean, part of the fun of the original Fantamon is figuring out how to get all the monsters right? Then figuring out how to get the glitched ones is just an extension of that. A hard mode even, since you have to think way outta the box for some of them. Like how would you evolve a glitch monster if it's supposed to evolve with an item that's not supposed to be an evolution item, like a certain type of catching crystal?"

"Hrmmm…" Nagi rubbed the collar of her shirt between her fingers as she thought about it. "Perhaps you must catch it with that very item? And then it will evolve after you catch it?"

"Nope." Shoka felt one corner of her lips lift up. "Gotta think more outta the box than that, sis."

"Errrrrrrrgggmmmm." Nagi's mouth twisted in concentration. Her fingers rubbed against her collar a bit more roughly, pulling the shirt taut. "Then perhaps… Perhaps one must find a way to trick the game into seeing the crystal as an evolutionary item? You mentioned that an inventory glitch allows the player to do whatever they please, so perhaps that is the key to evolving this monster?"

"You know, I wonder if that would work, even if I have no idea how to do it myself," admitted Shoka. She glanced up at the ceiling, in thought for a second. "A lot of glitch monsters do have multiple ways you can obtain and evolve them. But there's a much simpler way for us to evolve this one."

"There is? Hrrmm…" Nagi's lips squiggled again.

Shoka chuckled. "You actually mentioned it earlier."

"I did? Hrrrrrmmmmmmgh." Now the corners of Nagi's squiggly lips turned downward into a frown. Shoka barely contained her mirth. "We have gone over much. Care to refresh my memory?"

"What's another way we can evolve a creature that uses an item?"

"Oh…Oh!" Nagi's eyes widened in realization. "I-If we simply obtain a monster with the HEX number of the required catching crystal, and put it in the second slot of the party, and then level up the first creature, then it should evolve, correct?"

"You got it, sis!" Shoka grinned. "Some glitch monsters evolve through normal means, but others need you to do other glitches in order to evolve them. And since there's a lot of glitches in this game, well, that gives you a lot of possibilities to consider. Do I have to do the item HEX trick? Do I have to level it up past the Level 100 level cap? Can I not evolve into that one at all, and have it get it from a glitched wild encounter instead? It's like a puzzle, but like an actually interesting puzzle and not that stupid block-pushing thing so many games have."

"It certainly sounds fascinating," admitted Nagi, returning Shoka's grin. "Though I certainly don't think I am valorant enough to risk my save data or my carefully raised monsters to encounter such non-euclidean beings."

"Fair enough." Shoka nodded. "You're still stuck on the first boss after all,"

"Ehherereremmmgh…" Nagi flopped forward and let her arms hang loosely.

"I kid, I kid. But isn't it neat that there's essentially this whole other game within the game? It just kinda grew naturally out of the botched code."

"Indeed." Nagi lifted herself back into position. "While I do not want to engage directly in it myself, I would not mind seeing your own adventures into the existential nightmares of Fantamon."

Shoka laughed. "Sure thing, sis. I'm not quite at the part where I can super-break the game yet, but I can show off some of the smaller stuff along the way."

Nagi smiled. "That shall be a fine taste test of what's to come. I shall probably need a bit of time to acclimate to such measures. But figuring out how to evolve the eldritch beings…I believe I will find that rather entertaining." Her smile turned almost cat-like.

"That's the spirit, sis." Shoka pumped a fist in Nagi's direction and grinned widely enough to let a fang pop out. "So here's to breaking the world with our cute little cosmic horrors."

Nagi smiled smugly and laughed darkly. "Heh…heh…heh…Indeed."

I find glitches to be both really funny and really fascinating, hence why oddvector gave me this prompt. Because I know way too much about them haha.

Still got a few more oneshots after this, so some of those will be coming out relatively soon. As always, a lot of this depends on my betas' schedules. Though some of it also depends on what I feel like working on at the time. I may mix working on oneshots with working on Runaway Rocket and/or Cage of Wings, for example. But a couple of these oneshots are overdue bonus giftfics, so I'll probably try to prioritize those. At least until they're in a more polished state and just have to wait for beta work.

Anyway, hope you enjoyed!