game over

the titular kit from the game world called "kit and kaboodle" (kaboodle missing, send help), a game inspired by mega man

kind of did an oopsie when she didn't know beating her game would lead to... everything being deleted

was rescued from the end of her world with kaboodle and became a member of farcade, an organization tasked with preventing other worlds from being deleted in the same way

the only way to do that though is by making it so the hero can't win, which means helping the villains

favourite food is hot dogs with a lot of mustard. normal things

🎮👾 "Oh! You're from that place with Pokémon, right?" The cat hadn't exactly known that term before coming to the city, but she had come across a young woman earlier that day with the same little ball thing that this man was carrying. There must have been a correlation. Kit hadn't meant to blurt that out all of a sudden though, not when she had only passed him while walking home. "Oh, uh... Sorry."

She immediately became self-conscious about how she was coming off and started to rub the back of her head.

🎮👾 This one was probably a side character? A background character? It didn't really matter how "important" anyone was to Kit, at least not in the traditional sense. All characters were living and breathing as far as she was concerned, regardless of the game world they came from. This woman made of only ribbons and a mask just didn't real have "main character energy".

Which was actually better for Kit. That meant there would never be any danger of having to mislead her.

"Me? An NPC? Is it something about how I look?" It had been Kit's fault for bringing up game lingo first, maybe Gangle could relate somehow. But she hadn't expected to hear that label thrown her way even as a question. "Not really! I'm the protagonist of my game world, actually." Even admitting it casually still had the cat looking around nervously for a second.

🎮👾 "Do you come from a world where people capture these Pokémon things and battle them? Hm... I feel like that's pretty common." Kit had uttered that last sentence quietly to herself after chatting Vivianne up. It was a goal of hers to get a sense of the genre of world everyone came from. Partly for her personal curiosity, partly so that she could keep an eye out if she ever ended up seeing them in the future outside of the city.

Assuming they were all from video games anyways, but that sounded like the perfect setup for a video game, didn't it?

🎮👾 It was probably a bad habit from traveling across game worlds, but Kit was always trying to get a read on the people she met to figure out if they were the "hero" or if they played a different role in the world. Being in a place where worlds collided made things more difficult, but at least the same world-ending rules didn't appear to apply.

Else she might have accidentally gotten everyone deleted by now!

🎮👾 "Um... Did I do something wrong?" Kit didn't really think she had done anything. She was just sitting on a bench, eating a sandwich she'd packed herself since she couldn't conjure her own items anymore. But this young woman was just staring at her. Or was she glaring? "Did... I take your spot or something? I'm sorry, I didn't see anyone sitting here when I got here! I can leave!"

🎮👾 Guy with cat ears that wasn't actually a cat. Each game world Kit had visited had been populated by an entirely different looking people, so she usually didn't think too much about it. But aside from her time with Farcade, she hadn't seen so many different people from so many worlds shoved together like this. It was kind of cool in a way.

"I mean I get the gist. We're kidnapped, nerfed down to our starting stats and equipment, gotta beat some challenges to get back up to full strength... but do you have any idea what their end goal is? I've never been in a world where I've had my stats reset like this! Usually I can just keep what I have on me."