The director adjusted her sunglasses and maintained her look over the monitors. Let’s see how that plucky idol deals with the next segment…
She signalled for a cut, and the crew descended onto the set, like bees attending to the hive. The crew replaced the broken furniture, the make up artists buzzed over the guests. The camera workers reset their positions and looked over the script. The audience flooded the toilets and catering area.
Athena closed her eyes, used to the flutter of brushes over her skin, while Geese pretended to be hard like stone, while enjoying every moment, as the girls fussed over him: ‘Such thick blonde hair, look at this! What product you use? Have you considered a moustache, Mr Howard? I think you’d look rather handsome with one! Let’s put a bit of powder here to get that shine off.’
At the same time, the mention of a moustache reminded him again of the dying face of Jeff, after he had inflicted the killing blow. He stiffened a little.
‘No moustache, no.’
The ladies, as sensitive as they were, had spent a great deal of their time up close and personal with guests, glanced at each other, recognising a touchy subject.
‘Ah, I found a white hair! Would you like me to clip it?’ She reached down to pick up a pair of scissors.
‘that won’t be necessary,’ he replied, eyeing her cleavage. ‘After all, you cannot… escape… from death.’
The bell rang, and the doors were closed.
The lens was focused on a freshly fresher Athena, even though it had only been ten minutes. Ah, the magic of television.
Next we have a member of the public, who asked to remain anonymous, but was fine with being called Mr K, who has collected the entire Neo Geo (156), Megadrive (1757) and Super Famicom games (915) library.
The crowd ooohed at the big numbers and gravity in her voice, while some on impulse wanted to search the internet to check that the numbers were accurate, but then remembered that all phone use had been banned by production.
Sitting at home with his collection in the cabinets beside him, Toho smirked to himself at the badly researched figures, he could have done such a better job, if only they had asked him.
‘With our ever so cute but intrepid reporter, Momoko, let’s watch the interview together!’ Athena held up her hand, a kind of bad habit, as this wasn’t a concert, or a match where she was about to pseud-vaporise the opponent.
The audience looked up at the projection screen, which revealed a person sitting in a darkened room with a blinded window just behind. It seemed this mysterious person wore a hoodie, but the face was mosaiced into a mess of blocks.
‘Mr K, what do you think about the closure of the illegal rom site?’
‘I think it’s a real shame’ his voice was digitally masked but Athena began to fear that the hoodie and kansai accent were no mere coincidence. ‘Sites like these have preserved games when companies couldn’t. For example, did you know Sega lost their programming code of Panzer Dragoon Saga? And Sonic?’
‘Well that is a shame isn’t it, what do you think, Mary?’
‘That is an interesting point, indeed, so these sites kept a copy of the source code? As you know, the source code and game rom are two different things’
The director stopped filing her nails and told her assistant to take some notes for some infographic overlays. She would have to make some edits here to cut out the nerdy talk. Most of the audience were already lost.
‘Er… no, but with the game rom, you can decompile the code’.
‘Decompile? What does that mean?’
‘He means to reverse engineer the code from the game.’ Mary started making shapes and gestures in the air. ‘Imagine a game ROM like a car: The programming source code contains all the plans and instructions, while the ROM is just the finished car. With some knowledge you can take apart the car and figure out how it works but it still doesn’t contain the full information.’
‘Ohh’ she pretended, ‘that’s amazing knowledge, Mary! You know a lot of things about this!’
‘I’m an investigator, it’s my job’
Terry started applauding. He’d been applauding for his buddy at every opportunity but nobody had joined in, until now. Andy, Joe & Mai should have been here. He wondered if they had fallen into some deadly trap and were now waiting for him to rescue them. Nah… they were on some boring training trip. That Andy, just no sense of fun. Terry boosted his rally for Mary with some foot stomping and whistles. But… nobody else did. Mary did hear the support though, and made her finger gun pose. The director considered editing in some audience cheers here, but then again, fuck those plebeian scum, it wasn’t her job to make them look good. Her plans were on a much grander scale.
‘So these illegal sites could be used for good purposes?’ asked Athena, still praying that it wasn’t her friend, Kensou, when it was pretty much obviously him.
‘it seems to me,’ said Geese, as he accusingly inserted his chin between thumb and forefinger to show his reasoning, ‘that what you call criminal’ pointing at Mary, ‘is actually an ungovernable group of people that is helping society once again.’
Athena glanced at Takuma, but he was sleeping, so it was back to Mary.
‘Well, Sega did lose the code, but they didn’t lose their games, and the site didn’t have a copy of the code, so Sega still didn’t need this site.’
‘Is that what they told you? You’re a fool! They’re lying! These rom storing services are obviously helping the public when the companies can’t even do it themselves!’ Not allowing Mary to oppose, he continued ‘ You there, boy! Explain!’
‘M-me?’
‘yes, you, Yabo, can’t you defend yourself?’
The director’s assistant started googling Yabo, for the next infographic. The varied results made him wish for a cut.
The figure scratched the back of his head and thought for a second.
‘well there are some games that are not available any more, like the Neogeo network Japan exclusives like Samurai Spirits RPG2, and now that the network has stopped, you just cannot buy this, it’s impossible. With a ROM, it is.’
‘You see there, Ryan, that’s another example of the people taking power into their own hands when corporations have become corrupt! And if I were mayor of Tokyo, this would only be the start!’ He slammed the desk, startling the dozing Takuma, who raised his hands to defend and chop- Mary grabbed his right before it came down, and they started wrestling. Geese, of course, started laughing.
In the audience, Ryo and Yuri stood up and started shouting for their dad to wake up, as Robert and Marco continued to shake their heads in disbelief. Terry, Andy and Joe, at the other end of the bleachers, mistook this noise as encouragement, and so started cheering for Mary. Heavy D, Lucky and Brian saw a fight possibly breaking out and started goading everyone. Very quickly the entire audience was making noise, all apart from Kyo Kusanagi, who suddenly recognised many of the audience as famous tournament fighters. Or were they just here to support the community? There was also the free lunch… Mui Mui had already eaten all the dumplings when he arrived, which reminded him, where was Kensou? Well, probably backstage or something, he supposed. And if pretty much everyone was here, then, where was that guy?
‘Everyone! EVERYONE!’ With her hands clasped around the microphone, Athena looked so vibrant, it was like she was shining in an aura of purple, it almost seemed like she was levitating, but upon blinking, she logically wasn’t.
‘Please stop!’
The director looked around for her other assistant. Looking up from her screen, the tightly suited woman with short cropped hair put aside her laptop, strutted over and crouched beside her. ‘Her stress levels are rising.’ ‘Good, good, now how about the audience?’ They both tipped their sunglasses so they could look each other in the eye, in their almost concave pupils. ‘Wel, it’s not bad, we need a lot more, but, it’s a promising sign.’ ‘Alright,’ said the director, reaching out and stroking the assistant’s hand, ‘let’s proceed.’
This is a work of fan fiction. This work is not to be reprinted, reposted, sold, copied, or stored anywhere but here on orochinagi.com. Please share a link to this page so I can get 0.0001 cents from ad revenue lol. Characters are copyright SNK, I will apply for licence if this ever gets popular (as if). Work is copyright Alan Francois.