The trio stood in the ruins of what had once been Glitchvale's most questionable arcade, now looking more like a digital warzone. The air smelled like burnt circuitry and the lingering regret of poor life choices. Outside, the whirring of debug drones grew louder by the second, a mechanical chorus of impending doom.
Yamete stared at his Cheat Engine, which had started adding unsolicited tooltips to his commands. His latest attempt at typing "/spawn_cover" had autocorrected to "/spawn_love_letter_to_GLich-chan" before he'd frantically backspaced.
"We can't fight an entire drone army," he muttered, kicking a charred piece of drone debris. "Not when my own tech is rebelling against me."
GLich-chan floated nearby, her glow flickering as she scanned the horizon. "There might be another way. Theta was paranoid about system failures—he always kept backup saves." She turned to Yamete. "If we can find his pristine backup world, the drones might not follow us there."
Gary, who had been collecting drone shards to fashion into what he called "junk armor," perked up. "Ooooh, like a safe room? But fancier?"
"More like a parallel universe where nothing ever glitched," GLich-chan said. "The anti-Glitchvale."
Yamete groaned. "That sounds awful."
The sound of breaking glass from the next street over hurried their decision. Yamete pulled up his Cheat Engine and typed the first thing that came to mind:
/locate Theta_backup
The screen glitched violently before displaying coordinates that shifted every few seconds. GLich-chan squinted at it. "It's... moving? How does an entire universe move?"
Gary gasped. "What if it's like a cosmic USB drive? Maybe Theta put it in his pocket and forgot about it!"
With no better options, Yamete input the most recent coordinates and initiated a teleport. The world dissolved into pixels around them—
—and reassembled in a place that hurt Yamete's soul.
They stood in the middle of a street so clean it reflected the sky. Buildings lined up in perfect grids, their windows identical down to the pixel. Trees grew at mathematically precise intervals, their leaves unnaturally symmetrical. Even the clouds moved in straight lines.
Gary let out a noise like a deflating balloon. "It's... so... boring."
GLich-chan spun in a slow circle. "No glitches. No errors. Just pure, uncorrupted code." She sounded almost reverent.
Yamete took an experimental step forward—and immediately tripped when his foot failed to clip through the ground like it usually did. "Okay, this is wrong. Why does gravity work properly here?"
A bird flew overhead in a perfect parabola. It did not scream obscenities or spontaneously turn into a toaster mid-flight. Yamete felt vaguely offended.
Gary rolled forward and bumped into an invisible wall. "Ow! What gives?"
GLich-chan floated over and tapped the air. A shimmering barrier became visible for a moment. "Admin lock. Theta didn't want anyone contaminating his perfect world."
Yamete pulled out his Cheat Engine and typed:
/gamemode creative
Nothing happened.
/op Yamete
The screen displayed: Command not recognized.
Yamete stared at the device, a cold feeling creeping up his spine. "My cheats don't work here."
Before anyone could panic, a new sound cut through the sterile silence—the familiar whir of debug drones. But these were different. Sleeker. Gold-plated.
GLich-chan's glow dimmed. "Oh no. These aren't just drones. They're Theta's personal guard."
The lead drone rotated to face them, its eye-like sensor focusing on Yamete. "Unauthorized anomalies detected in Purity Sector One. Activating quarantine protocol."
Gary whimpered. "I miss the screaming birds."
As the golden drones advanced, Yamete did the only thing he could think of—he grabbed GLich-chan and Gary and mashed random keys on his Cheat Engine.
The world glitched.
For one terrifying second, they existed in two places at once—the pristine world and the familiar chaos of Glitchvale—before the Cheat Engine spat them back into the arcade ruins with a loud pop.
Yamete's screen displayed a single new line:
/emergency_override: cheats_disabled_in_purity_zone
Gary hugged a broken arcade cabinet like it was a long-lost friend. "Never again. I'll take killer drones over that Stepford nightmare any day."
GLich-chan, however, was staring at Yamete's Cheat Engine with dawning horror. "If the drones can follow us between worlds... and your cheats don't work there..."
Yamete finished the thought. "We have nowhere left to hide."