Fresh New Antivirus

Ch. 30 - The Contractual Anime Training Arch Any OP Protagonist Needs: Part 1

"Different possessor, man." Fresh interrupted again. "It ain't your Chara doin' this neither. Wouldn't be here if it were."

"Wait, you know about the script?" Spiffy asked, gaining everyone's attention.

"uh. yeah?" Sans said. "cosmic pull to keep timelines on track is kinda hard to ignore."

Fresh nodded sympathetically with a wince. "I feel that, man. S'not pleasant tryn' to override your programing without external influence, broseph."

"pro ... graming?" Sans asked, rubbing his skull as if to sooth a mounting headache.

Fresh could see the firewalls blocking the full ramification of what was being discussed be blocked from sticking into the Sans's long term memory drive. Interesting. So not everyone could handle the info. Turned into a metaphor in his head in real time, rather than taking it literally.

"right ... good analogy for it." Sans said, absently.

"When did you try to go against your programming?" Snasy asked Fresh, baffled.

"I tried ta swear." Fresh admitted. "Multiple times. Also tried to let Dream tamper with muh emotions and ended up judo flippin' the poor guy. Then there was that time I met Lust and, like, reeeeally wanted to punch him-"

"Fresh." Spiffy interrupted, unimpressed. "You are one day old. How the flip do you already have stories ?"

Fresh shrugged. "Cuz I'm me? And please stop pulling the age card, home dawg. S'not very swag of ya. I got muh credibility to think of."

Sans looked very confused and concerned over who was there to 'help' him.

"well uh. hate to interrupt terribly, but i got a branch to smash." He sighed. "go ahead and mess with the kid, or whatever it is you're planning. It's not like i got much choice in the matter. that's the kind of face that does what they want regardless of permission."

Sans shortcut out of there.

"Welly well well, bro-dudes." Fresh said. "Guess it's time we diddly darn get ready as well, muh radtastic sidekicks."

Snasy rolled their shoulders. "Let's do this." They glanced at Fresh. "Maybe don't be the first attacker this time. Me and Spiffy need some practice too. Kinda hard if you keep obliterating the bot."

"Can do!" Fresh agreed. "Ready?"

Spiffy gave a hesitant nod and Snasy smiled.

Like before, Fresh took the hand of the bot interrupting the usual script, but this time Sans stepped back.

"Sup! Names Fresh." Fresh greeted, again. "Let's go for round two, broski!"

The three entered the encounter. Sans was outside the encounter range and decided to kick back and relax. Maybe catch a nap.

The human's souls floated in front of them, white square outline one the ground between each side, Frisk's soul set in the center as the target as Fresh took the initiative. Holographic options appearing. This time he took a different approach.

ACT

*Talk

"Frisk bro." Fresh said, surprising the other two. "If ya still be awake in there, stay determined ya radical broski. Their control will end soon, Fresh and friends are gonna make it happen."

Deep down, Fresh saw a glimmer of determination spark a little bit brighter.

"Wait. Frisk is still in there?" Snasy said. "I thought you said they were a bot."

"They're controlled by a bot, dude-o." Fresh ellaberated. "The Frisk be half asleep due to the monotony forced onto their daily, yo."

"... I don't know how comfortable I am beating up a kid." Snasy admitted.

"Broski." Fresh said, exasperated. "They're coded to be able ta handle it. They're protagonist material, dawg. Y'all be mixing up how things work in this reality." Fresh sighed. "At the end o' the day, dawg ... we're still just characters. We're predictable."

Fresh looked pretty torn about admitting that out loud.

Spiffy surprised the two and gave Fresh a chop to the top of his head (they had to reach for it) dealing 1hp of damage.

"You're more than just a character." They huffed, hand on their hips. "You're our friend."

Fresh looked at them a moment before laughing. "Aw man dude! That was so cheesy. Pfft. Way to use your attack for the round, bruh." He gave them a brotherly head rub. "Good to see one of us gnarly bros with a rad natural talent at managing their intent."

"That counted as my turn?" Spiffy asked, surprised.

"Yep." Fresh turned to Snasy. "Ya ready? After your turn broski, the bot's likely gonna FIGHT me cuz I'm first on the list, bein's I started the Encounter. Then we be stuck in the attack order."

"Y'know." Spiffy said. "It probably would have been wise to go over how multiplayer works before just hopping in.

Snasy sighed. "... Okay. I'm gonna do it." They turned to Frisk. "We're doing this to save you so ... please don't be mad."

Snasy decided to attack using the keyboard so they didn't need to use their physical skill, avatars irises flashing the color of their soul as they controlled their Vessel remotely. They purposefully didn't aim for crits, but also didn't exactly aim low.

Ther character threw the three darts into the air at the same time and fell down on Frisk like rain. Since this was an encounter and they were human, only their soul was in danger.

They took off 28hp of the bots' total 40. Snasy's face lit up with a giant smile.

"I did it!" They cheer, throwing a fist up. "I didn't kill them!" They turned to Fresh hopeful. "Is that good enough for when the Hacker shows up? Do I just redo what I did?"

Snasy paused and froze when they saw the slash of red aim directly for Fresh.

Fresh just took the attack, not even bothering to dodge. There was no notable discomfort as he brushed down his shirt to get rid of the wrinkles, answering Snasy's question as if the bar on top of his head didn't state he just took 52 damage. That was more than what Snasy and Spiffy had combined.

Fresh hummed in consideration. "Sorry bro. Needs ta be 5 to 10% health, abouts. That means a grand total of 2 ta 4 in this case."

"Fresh." Sansy said, unamused. "Why the funk did you take the hit?"

Fresh shrugged. "Bot might target you guys if it up an' realizes it can't hit me. Not like it hurt bro-dude, I'm just gonna regen the hp loss. That transport hit harder."

The two stared at him for a second as they processed that.

"... there is a lot to unpack in almost everything you say, and it is continually blowing my mind."