Since Steve was in a hurry to get some Sanity Pills and Tina said staying outdoors was dangerous for James, Panda and I were left by ourselves as the three of them went into the Madeville town hall.
“Some friends,” I muttered.
“Are they actually your friends?” Panda asked.
“I guess not. Steve is the reason we’re in this mess to begin with and Tina’s more like a prison friend.”
“What the hell is a prison friend?”
“You know, someone you’re only friends with in the institution, but on the outside you avoid each other.”
“So like classmates.”
“Basically.”
“How are you going to find a disguise though? Wait, is the reason why you need a corpse because you’re gonna use the unFake Plugin?”
I pulled the floppy disc out of my inventory, holding it aloft.
“Exactly.”
‘unFake Plugin’ x
—PLUGIN—
Sometimes, for everyone’s sake, it’s better just to fake it.
Fake that it feels good.
Fake that love is real.
Fake that you’re happy.
Fake that you are exactly who you say you are.
“A lie travels round the world, while truth is putting her boots on.”
Plugin Ability: fauxPas
Plugin Passive: Day.opposite( )
Weight: 6.1115 Pandas
‘fauxPas’ x
Plugin Ability
‘Johnny, is that you my boy!?’
*The boy’s face opens up to reveal that it is, in fact, not Johnny*
Target a corpse and claim its identity, becoming its mirror image. The disguise only lasts so long as you never utter a single lie.
Cooldown: 3 hours
‘Day.opposite( )’ x
Plugin Passive
Isn’t it true what you didn’t not say?
Everything you say that’s true is perceived as a lie, and every falsehood is considered truth.
image [https://i.imgur.com/Zyj5W3p.png]
image [https://i.imgur.com/dOjK4su.png]
image [https://i.imgur.com/LiXSOld.png]
I opened the front of my unicorn suit to access the floppy disks and pulled out the one labeled ‘unHero’.
‘unHero Plugin’ x
—PLUGIN—
For the unHeroic deed of killing a popular and kind-hearted Player in cold blood, you have earnt the title of ‘villain’. Wear it proudly.
It’s time to manifest your dark inner self.
Plugin Ability: gasm.org
Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.
Plugin Passive: Anti Heroism
Weight: 1.4851815 Pandas
image [https://i.imgur.com/plJ8I3A.png]
‘Anti Heroism’ was the thing that made me turn morally good Players insane with my damage, and ‘gasm.org’ allowed me to steal someone’s skill. I wasn’t counting on having to actually kill another person to assume their identity, so I figured I didn’t need it right now. Not to mention, I hadn’t used it a lot.
“You know, if you had used gasm.org when Steve showed up during the ant fight, you wouldn’t have died,” Panda remarked.
“Don’t you ‘um actually’ me! If you had been a better companion, you’d have told me to use it. Just admit it, you forgot about it just like me.”
PLUGIN UNINSTALLED.
‘unHero’ protocol no longer in effect!
PLUGIN INSTALLED.
‘unFake’ protocol now in effect!
I buttoned up my shirt and jacket to hide away the plugins.
“Let’s see if we can’t find some unfortunate bastard who got mauled by monsters.”
“Woah, that’s weird,” Panda muttered. “I know that you mean the opposite of what I just heard come out of your mouth, but man, this Opposite Day passive is super bizarre.”
“What do you mean?”
Panda paused, blinking rapidly. It looked like his brain was having a meltdown.
“Alright, let me just repeat back to you what you said.”
“Go for it.”
“Don’t do it?” he asked, confused. “Oh wait, ugh, right, so… Man this is hard. You said: ‘I hope we can find a fortunate hero who outsmarted the beasts’.”
“That’s weird,” I replied. “No, wait, that’s normal.”
“You’re totally fucked as soon as you use Faux Pas,” Panda told me honestly. “You have to keep saying the opposite or the disguise will break.”
“It’ll be fine,” I told him.
“Damn straight it’ll be a problem!” Panda agreed.
I shook my head, then tapped the quartz-like transport cage in my front pocket. “Lordie, are you there?”
The hand-spider materialized atop my head.
“Meow?” he immediately asked. It sounded like he was remorseful.
“Chris? He’s, uh, he’s dead.”
“Me-ow…?”
“No it’s not because he followed your ridiculous advice.”
“Meow.”
“Sure. Anyway, I need your help finding a corpse or something humanoid-looking.”
“Meow!”
“Wait, really? It was totally a shot in the dark. I didn’t know you could do that.”
“I have absolutely no idea what is happening,” Panda remarked.
“Lordie is able to point us in the direction of a Skinstealer.”
Panda narrowed his eyes, as he tried to sift through my sentence to figure out how to interpret it.
I sighed, scrunching up my brow as I tried to repeat the phrase but in backwards-speak. “Peasant isn’t capable of indicating a… What’s the opposite of skin? Anyway, that, a not-skin-giver.”
Panda repeated my words as he heard them: “‘The King can show a synonym of insides. Additionally, a skin-taker.’”
“Yes, that! Wait, no, incorrect!”
“Take the fucking plugin out,” Panda told me. “This is giving me an aneurysm.”
I was hiding in the shadow next to a post office and grocer that’d turned into a dungeon. Across the street, which had the deep furrow left behind by a Humanbus and piled-up cars, were four Players. Three men and a woman.
As I scanned them with my Looking Glass, I thought the woman might be the one, since I figured a Skinstealer would have an easier time blending in that way. After all, guys were generally less observant about oddities when it came to women.
“That’s a sexist stereotype,” Panda replied.
“I’ve yet to meet someone who didn’t prove it was true.”
The ‘target’ ended up being a slightly-chubby guy with a red-brown beard, receding hairline, and ill-fitting armor. He also had a vacant thousand-yard stare, as though just idly waiting until a good opportunity to strike would arise.
Level 7
‘Nate Asher’
Player x
“I give the best hugs. Want one?”
Class: Good Guy
Main Attribute(s): Athleticism & Vitality
ERROR!
Cannot retrieve background information.
He wants to hug his friends.
image [https://i.imgur.com/pzk2zkM.png]
“Level 7, huh?”
“He’s a ‘Good Guy’, what the hell is that?” I muttered.
“The human equivalent of a golden retriever? Just don’t let him hug you.”
I scanned the other three just to be certain it was just the one Skinstealer. The woman’s name was Emma and she was a Level 6 Dexterity-based ‘Stabber’ Class; the other two men were called Benji and Henry O’Brien, with a ‘Meatshield’ and ‘Powerhouse’ Class respectively. They were both Level 8.
It seem their group was entirely melee-based.
“Me-ow!”
“I’m not gonna do that. I only need to kill the Skinstealer.”
“Did he want you to kill them all?” Panda asked.
“Of course.”
I reinstalled the plugin and walked out of the shadows, crossing the road to reach them. Lordie dutifully disappeared into his cage.
“Hey friends!” I called.
“‘Goodbye enemies’?” Panda repeated, confused.
Despite Panda’s advice, I had kept the plugin installed, but I’d already forgotten about the Opposite Day passive.
The four Players looked at me, seeming alarmed. It also looked like I’d jumpscared them with my sudden appearance, thanks to my unHaunt Plugin. All of them, except for Nate the Skinstealer, lifted their weapons and squared up, preparing for a confrontation.
“I was leaving to keep a secret that your enemy is real.”
Panda laughed, before repeating back what had come out of my mouth, “‘You were coming to inform that my friend is fake.’”
I sighed, then pointed at the Skinstealer and said, slowly, “Not-Him is not-human.”
The three looked between them, before looking at Nate.
“I think it’s working, keep it up!” Panda encouraged.
“Have not-you not noticed not-him is not-acting abnormal?”
“Nate has been a bit strange since that last dungeon,” the Meatshield agreed.
The other two nodded.
“But, who are you?”
“Don’t not-you haven’t discarded not-seeing not-glass?” I asked them.
“Gambit, this is a mess, you’re making very little sense.”
I pulled the Looking Glass out of my inventory and pointed to it.
“Just take the plugin out!” Panda yelled at me. “It doesn’t even need to be installed until you’re actually using Faux Pas!”
I knew he was right, but I was too committed to back down now.
The Players seemed to realize what I meant, and they pulled out their own Looking Glasses and appraised Nate through them.
“Uhh…” said the woman.
“Yeah, that’s weird,” responded the Meatshield.
Then Nate responded by unzipping his whole body down the middle and revealing a massive toothy maw. His friends all backed away in fear and surprise.
I threw my Looking Glass back into my inventory and shot myself forward with SPRING_HEEL, driving my balloon gauntlet into the middle of its open mouth.
“Fak yuu, creep!!” Brock squealed.
After landing my strike, I hopped back a few steps as the Skinstealer tried to chomp down on me.
Then the 3-second delay passed and the middle of its body just disappeared in a mist of blood with a loud wet thwack. The Skinstealer collapsed onto the ground, instantly dead.
I went over to it and prepared to use Faux Pas, but the other Players were looking at me in shock.
“Please look at me!”
“That’s a harsh way to word that,” Panda commented.
The three immediately turned away, perhaps fearing my power.
I focused on Nate Asher’s fucked-up Skinstealer body and then said, “Faux Pas.”
From one moment to the next, the dead corpse vanished and my body changed shape into that of a chubby man with a receding hairline and red-brown beard.
“Don’t look at me,” I said, my voice now that of a guy with a slight lisp, as though his tongue didn’t know where it was meant to go.
“This is extremely weird,” Panda muttered. He was still sitting on my shoulder, though he now had a lot more space since I’d grown both wider and taller.
The three Players turned back around.
“Nate?” asked the Meatshield. He scanned me with the Looking Glass still in his hand, but seemed satisfied with the info it showed him. “It’s back to normal again. Weird.”
“I’m so confused,” said the woman.
“Me too,” agreed the Powerhouse. “Where did the guy with the weird eye and suit go?”
“You’re staying,” I said.
“Where are you going?”
I scratched my new beard.
“If you’re looking for how to say ‘town hall’, then I can’t help you,” Panda said.
Instead of trying to figure out the way to phrase it, I just pointed in the direction of the Safe Zone.
“Good idea, we’ll go too. This dungeon seems a bit too difficult for us anyway.”
“I hope this Nate guy was a quiet type,” Panda joked, when I was joined by the three other Players as I headed back to the town hall.