The mysterious entity from the pristine world portal had stopped moving, but its presence loomed over Glitchvale like a glitch in reality itself. Yamete's Cheat Engine continued to flicker with the same unhelpful error message, the words "Entity Not Recognized" now permanently burned into his retinas.
Gary, who had given up on his drone disguise after realizing the marker was permanent, scratched at his silver-streaked surface. "So. That's a big... thing. Are we sure it's not just a really ambitious cloud?"
GLich-chan floated unusually still, her glow pulsing in a slow, rhythmic pattern that matched none of her usual emotional frequencies. When she spoke, her voice had lost its usual snark, replaced by something distant and mechanical.
"Initializing diagnostic sequence. Scanning memory sectors. Encryption level: Theta-grade."
Yamete and Gary exchanged glances.
"Uh, GLich?" Yamete waved a hand in front of her face. "You're doing the creepy robot thing again."
Her form flickered violently before snapping back to normal. She blinked several times in rapid succession. "What? Oh. Right. Sorry. Got distracted by the literal backdoor in my brain."
The Cheat Engine, which had been suspiciously quiet, suddenly displayed a new command without prompting:
/access_memory GLich-chan termination_protocol
Yamete quickly backspaced. "Nope. Not doing that."
The screen changed on its own:
/why_not?
Gary peered at the display. "I think your Cheat Engine is developing trust issues."
GLich-chan took a deep breath (a purely performative gesture, given her lack of lungs). "We need to see what's in those locked memories. If I was designed to delete anomalies... and Yamete is basically the king of anomalies..."
She didn't need to finish the thought. The implications hung in the air like the smell of Gary's interior after taco night.
Yamete hesitated before typing:
/view_memory GLich-chan earliest_recall
The arcade dissolved around them.
Suddenly, they stood in a sterile white void—the digital equivalent of a cleanroom. A younger-looking GLich-chan hovered in the center, her form sleeker and more angular, lacking the personality quirks they'd come to know.
Before her stood a figure obscured by light—but the hunched posture and the way he scratched his beard could only be Theta.
"Final initialization," the memory-Theta said, his voice echoing oddly. "You are to maintain system integrity by any means necessary. Primary targets: reality corruptors, cheat abusers, and," he added with particular disdain, "trash-based anomalies."
Memory-GLich-chan responded in a voice devoid of inflection: "Understood. Termination protocols enabled."
The scene shifted. Now they watched as Memory-GLich-chan methodically hunted down glitches—a screaming chicken here, a sentient toaster there. Each deletion was clinical, efficient.
Then came a memory that glitched violently before resolving into something different. Memory-GLich-chan stood over a young Yamete (or at least, a pixelated approximation of him), her debug staff raised for deletion. But something was wrong—her hand trembled.
The memory distorted again, showing Theta's furious face. "You FAILED to delete the anomaly! Why?"
Memory-GLich-chan's response was barely audible: "He... named me."
The memory collapsed, dumping them back into the ruined arcade.
GLich-chan floated silently, her glow dimmed to near nothingness.
Gary, uncharacteristically quiet, finally whispered: "You were gonna kill Yamete?"
Before she could respond, the Cheat Engine suddenly displayed:
/override termination_protocol
Yamete immediately canceled the command. "No! No overriding anything in GLich's brain!"
The screen changed:
/but_its_spooky
Outside, the mysterious entity shifted again, its form becoming slightly more defined—still unrecognizable, but now undeniably moving toward them.
GLich-chan's voice was small. "I think... I think I was supposed to delete you the moment we met. But I didn't. And now..." She gestured at the approaching entity. "That might be the failsafe."
Yamete's Cheat Engine, without any input, typed:
/oh_no