The night was silent except for the gentle rustle of praying mantises moving through the leaves and the footsteps of Priya as she paced the small gloomy hut steadily, a child clung to her hip.
"Could you both stop munching on food and think of a way out? I'm so done mothering a child who's not mine!" She frowned at the sight of Jace's face filled with onigiri.
"Well, I'm hungry after the day." Jace shrugged, taking one of the compact triangles of sticky rice wrapped with seaweed.
"The AI model works well, it's generated a house and meals for even NPCs." Marcus said with a grin.
"But now Priya has a child." Jace wheezed at Priya's pissed off expression at the child clinging to her.
"Why are the glitches reduced?" Priya looked around, "and no major plot holes."
"Maybe because it's 'filler time'?" Marcus rubbed his chin.
"filler time? What the hell is that supposed to mean?" Jace's ears perked.
"You know, the time no plot progression is happening, night falls, nothing relevant to the fanfic's plot happens, especially at an NPC's house." Marcus explained, looking around the claustrophobic wooden hut, as the child clung to his mother.
The hut suddenly vanished into static along with the clinging child and the food.
The sun hung high, casting harsh light across the bright blue sky, making everything below bleed with heat and clarity, a sharp contrast to the widely stretched dark sky present just a moment ago.
They took a moment to adjust to the bright sunlight piercing into their eyes.
The glitching village twisted and shimmered, colors bleeding into each other, the plot holes appearing and disappearing again.
"Priya! That fox kid is standing over there again." Jace rubbed his temples at the sight of blonde teenager's frown.
"Jace! You'll never win! Only through pain and friendship can you grow stronger!" Naruto's words echoed.
"Shut up, you cringey idiot!" Jace's sharp words made everything around glitch.
"I will defeat you! Your darkness can never consume us!" Naruto's voice echoed, an echo that bounced off wooden rooftops.
Jace glanced at Priya, who was crouched behind the flickering ramen stall, eyes scanning the strange flickers around her. There appeared a glitching PC terminal in front of her.
"Marcus!" Priya called out to the sysadmin-turned-mentor to inspect it.
"This might be our key out." Marcus said with a rare smile.
The screen pulsed for a few seconds, a flurry of garbled code flashing before vanishing like a bad dream. Priya's fingers twitched.
"Come on, come on-" she muttered, kneeling to catch the screen when it blinked into view again, this time, she caught a fragment:
`def override_plot():`
"Bingo!" She smiled grimly, her hands moving to modify the code.
Before she could type anything, Jace grunted and shoved past her.
"Priya! He's about to charge at me! What do i do!" Jace adjusted his orange jacket.
The blond shinobi appeared out of the blue at the edge of the square, eyes blazing red, jumpsuit flickering like a broken neon sign.
"You can't run from fate, Jace!" he shouted, throwing a kunai that warped midair into a pixelated butterfly.
Jace dodged, barely, and threw a punch that landed with a thud on Naruto's glitching jaw.
the spiky blonde haired teen growled "You will pay for this, Jace!" in strides heading toward jace to strike.
Marcus stepped out, blue headband tight. "I'm not just some old mentor here for flavor," he said. One hand raised, a gust of yellow chakra wind blasted Naruto backwards, taking out an old wooden fruit cart in the process.
"Damn it, I don't wanna fight a teen."Jace yelled, but Marcus just shrugged satisfied after the blow.
Naruto scrambled up, "Your darkness will never beat my light! Believe it!"
Jace groaned and pulled Priya aside, whispering, "Did you guys get a clue? Can you do anything with that flickering PC to get rid of this screaming fox, at least for now?
Priya nodded, eyes glued to the sporadic screen popping up around the square, this time on a crumpled scroll nailed to a fencepost.
her finger steady on the glitching PC, she typed as fast as she could, fearing it might dissapear:
`disable_rival_instant_teleport()`
A massive glitch appeared in the world. Naruto blinked, mid-teleport, now stuck awkwardly in place for a beat longer than usual, his mouth moved but no words came out, binary 0's and 1's spitting out of his mouth.
"Ha! Take that, power of friendship, my butt!!" Jace smirked as a plot hole swallowed the spiky haired teen into its darkness.
But the victory was short-lived.
A crack ripped open the sky, and through it, a new figure stepped. Black trench coat, spiky hair, a glowing sword at his side, everyone's head turned toward the gloomy teenager.
"Who the hell is that kid now?" Marcus muttered, his eyes gluing back at the terminal on the flickering PC. "Priya! The AI's compiling again, but with slightly altered data dataset." Marcus said to get the attention of Priya, who's eyes were glued to the new person.
Priya clenched her fists. "Great. Just what we needed, someone who actually knows how to fight."
The new rival with a gloom expression, stepped into the glitching village like he owned it.
Priya whispered, "We can piece together more code fragments if we can keep the AI distracted. But every fix just makes the world more unstable."
Marcus stomped on the ground. "Teamwork, or God knows what happens."
Jace shot her a tired grin. "Our best bet right now is to fight him".
The ground cracked in different places around them, the void pulsing like a heartbeat.
"Priya! Do something! The plot holes are back!" Jace exclaimed.
"Hang on tight, Jace! let me try alter the code!" Priya yelled, fingers hovering over the flickering keyboard that appeared and disappeared at random spots.
"Because this is going to get worse before it gets better."