REVIEWS AND POWERSTONES PLSSS!!!!!REVIEWS AND POWERSTONES PLSSS!!!!!REVIEWS AND POWERSTONES PLSSS!!!!!
Chapter 15: Midnight Gaming Session — Ganked by a Parent
Angel Island Zone cleared in under nine minutes. No damage taken. Four Chaos Crystals collected — the maximum available in the zone. Four extra lives accumulated through item boxes and rings.
Stack all of those conditions together, and you got Ross scoring a simulated S-rank on his first rerun.
What that also meant: if he had been running the console on his own aura instead of electricity just now, he would have already walked away with the Secret Realm Key for the Sonic 3: Angel Island area.
But Ross's expression showed none of the satisfaction that outcome should have produced. His brow was furrowed. He was thinking.
For someone who had recovered this much of their feel and muscle memory, a barely-passing S-rank was exactly that — barely passing. His actual peak was still considerably further than this.
As for the game itself: after the first defeat of Dr. Eggman and Knuckles pulling his dirty trick, the screen that should have transitioned into Zone 2 — Hydro City — cut to black instead. The game auto-restarted, cycling back to the familiar SE~GA~ screen from the beginning.
Re-entering the game, the save file showed Sonic surrounded by four flickering Chaos Emerald icons.
Ross appeared to still be watching the screen, but his brain had already launched a full post-run breakdown. Where he could pick up speed, where his lines could be tightened, when to press jump to cut unnecessary motion and stop bleeding time, how to read and nail the boss windows. It was all reassembling itself in his head.
He had already concluded that he could comfortably keep it under nine minutes and push for under eight on the next run. Time to use his own aura.
If muscle memory alone was enough for S, there was no reason to sit on it. Get the Secret Realm Key first. SS and SSS could wait — there was no deadline on those, and he knew where his priorities should be.
He also wanted to use this opportunity to run a test: specifically, whether his current aura reserves could actually sustain Entertainment Mode for nine-plus minutes.
Nen operated on a fundamental principle of equivalent exchange. Results required cost.
Ross's working theory was that Little Tyrant's Endless Amusement might exist as a kind of world-patch — a rule woven into the structure of this world rather than a conventional ability built on top of it. If that was right, it would operate according to that rule on its own terms.
Just as Real Mode mapping Sonic's abilities onto his body also meant accepting Sonic's negative condition — dying the instant a hit connected with no money in his pockets — the aura cost for running Entertainment Mode was probably the necessary price for manifesting in-game items as real objects in the world outside the screen.
It worked on a similar logic to Greed Island. Ging's game had item cards whose effects were powerful enough to upend common sense, but in principle those cards only worked within the island's boundaries. To take them out into the real world, you had to clear the game by following its rules — and the rewards were probably exclusive to first-time clearers at that.
By comparison, Little Tyrant's item acquisition conditions were already considerably more accessible. Though that wasn't ruling out Secret Realm Mode having its own additional complications.
So: Entertainment Mode's aura cost was probably one tier above Real Mode. That was Ross's estimate.
Just as he was about to switch power sources and settle in for a tight second run of the first zone, the door opened.
"Ah —"
It had only been about eleven minutes from sneaking into the empty cabin to clearing Sonic 3's first zone. In that window, Ross had poured himself completely into the game and entirely forgotten that what he was currently doing was more or less indistinguishable from breaking and entering.
But when he saw who was in the doorway, the hand he had been reaching to recall the console froze — and the tension went straight out of his muscles.
Because the person who had just pushed the door open was none other than the Hunter Association's highest authority: Netero, the old rascal who cheated when playing games with children.
It wasn't that Ross particularly trusted the old man. It was that he understood the old man's nature as someone fundamentally in it for the entertainment, better than most people did. If it had been Menchi, she might have blown this completely out of proportion. But with the old man himself standing in the doorway, Ross was certain he wasn't in any real trouble.
Besides, all he had done was borrow a TV and play for ten minutes. You don't get thrown off an airship for that.
...But actually, why had Chairman Netero come here personally?
Ross was genuinely puzzled by this. He was proud of his Little Tyrant, but he hadn't grown arrogant enough to think he could catch this particular old rascal's attention. Not yet, at any rate.
The old man said nothing. He stroked his beard and looked down at Ross from above. Ross looked back up at him blankly. Then he held out the controller.
"Does the Chairman want to play?"
"Ho ho~ So this is what they call an electronic game?"
Netero took the controller in stride, visibly pleased that Ross had been the one to break the strange atmosphere first.
At the same moment, two small heads materialized from behind the old man — one black-haired, one white-haired. Gon and Killua. They had been crouching at the door crack alongside the Chairman for a while, peering in.
Their levels of excitement showed a distinct temperature difference between them.
Gon, who had spent twelve years living something close to a wild animal's existence on Whale Island, still could not grasp what was supposed to be entertaining about a small blue animal jumping around on a TV screen. From his perspective, this was considerably less interesting than trying to grab the ball out of the Chairman's hands.
Killua was another matter.
He didn't collect games himself, but occasionally — and yes, he meant occasionally — he would slip into his older brother's bedroom, which reeked thoroughly of committed shut-in, and openly take a session on whatever treasures were sitting out. He might not qualify as a scene insider exactly, but he had worked through the notable consoles and their acclaimed titles.
The blue creature on Ross's screen, demonstrating that extraordinary sense of speed, was something Killua had never seen. With his not-inconsiderable gaming experience, something this good couldn't have been obscure. His brother would definitely have it in his collection if it existed. Was it some kind of personal indie project?
Killua had a feline streak running through his personality, and right now it had him genuinely itching. When he saw Ross hand the controller to Netero, he almost considered acting cute to get his hands on it first.
But having gotten a solid taste of the Chairman's actual capabilities through the ball-grabbing game, Killua was currently on his best behavior — standing there like a child outside an arcade watching the owner play, not blinking, eyes fixed on the screen.
The old man adapted quickly. Ross offered a brief rundown of the controls, and Netero had already absorbed all of Sonic's moves — which, in fairness, amounted to movement, jump, and the crouch-and-hold spin charge.
But the Chairman's eyes were sharp. As he moved Sonic across the screen, his mind went straight back to a scene from the previous afternoon:
Ross himself, on those sheer ninety-degree cliff faces at Frog-Tiger Mountain, running up and down that drop at high speed as though gravity had nothing to say about it.