The Players: Staring Contest

[Kill Town]

Staring Contest!

The event will being in a giant arena, where the remaining contestants (including Baller) are split up into pairs and must have a staring contest. If you don't know what is...well, for one, why the hell not, and two, look it up. However, as the prisoners begin to spread the virus, things will begin to change. Every event possibility will begin to meld into one another, and will constantly shift and mix together.

Basically, go crazy. Do whatever you want as long as it still follows character usage rules (common courtesy, really) and site rules.

1.) The pace of the change will be left to you. As long as you start with the staring contest and start to make up your own events and mix them in at a random rate, I don't care what it is that you do.

2.) The initial pairs aren't really important, either, since you're all in the same place, just given an opponent for the staring contest. But you should probably decide on it amongst yourselves, anyway, just to keep things straight.

3.) Since you might go crazy with all the freedom I'm giving you, feel free to PM me any question that you might have. I'll answer them to the best of my ability.

[Kaden]

A white room. Two white chairs. A white table between them. It took Kaden roughly one second to get a grip on his surroundings. He did not like them one bit. The PAGER at Kaden’s waist had told him he was walking into a staring contest, he should have expected as much. Unfortunately, his time before stepping through the portal had been spent bracing himself for the almost guaranteed loss in the event, not for the blindingly bright room.

If there was only one thing the courier knew about himself, it was that his mind did not sit still. It wandered. It wandered far and it wandered wide. Sadly, where his mind went, his eyes were almost sure to follow. How do you analyze, scrutinize, and theorize about new things when you can’t see them? Sure, he could just sit and pontificate, but that was just boring. Considering the things in the then-and-there were far more interesting and there was only one such thing.

“Now this doesn’t even seem fair,” the courier began. “You clearly have the advantage.”

Having deduced where his opponent was heading, Orion did not look amused. He crossed his arms and leaned back in his chair. “And why’s that?”

“You could at least pretend to play along,” Kaden sighed, no longer interested in the joke. It wasn’t like keeping one eye trained on the same person was any harder than keeping two. “Otherwise this is going to get really boring really quickly, Orion.”

“Pah. I don’t intend to waste my time with whatever this is supposed to be.” The saiyan began moving, as though to stand up.

“Wait!” Kaden flailed an arm towards Orion, urging him to stop. “Probably a good idea to welcome elimination.”

“The sooner this is over with, the sooner I can get my hands on the pathetic human who put us here.”

“Ah… right. You’re a saiyan,” the courier nodded slowly as he spoke, careful not to let Orion’s eyes leave his direct line of sight.

There was a brief moment of silence while the saiyan settled his weight back into the chair. His gaze burrowed deeper into Kaden, as though looking for something. It was unnerving to the human courier, but he didn’t really have a choice about averting his gaze. In the back of his mind, though, he was thankful that Orion’s eagerness to end their event had abated.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” he finally asked.

“Oh come on, like I need to tell you.” When silence took the place of any expected reply, the courier frowned and continued. “You’re a saiyan. Why take a minute to sit still when you could be running off to bash someone’s face in. No offense, but you’re just a different chapter in the same story.”

“You should be careful about who you provoke,” was Orion’s surprisingly even reply.

“Right there! Instead of actually considering what I said, you threaten me. And you sounded like you might as well have been offering me a cup of tea or something. It can’t really be a surprise to you that people think Saiyans are a bunch of bloodthirsty barbarians.”

“And what of you? Just eating the same drivel because everyone else does. Did you never stop to think that such behavior is necessary?”

“So you’re saying… what? Fighting at every opportunity and starting shit for no actually reason is some kind of… what’s it called? Evolutionary imperative for you guys?” Kaden laughed at the thought. “Ever think that you may not need it if you stopped fighting everyone who looked at you the wrong way… or any way, for that matter.”

“You’re a human,” the saiyan said. “How much time have you spent off of Earth?”

“Ah,” Kaden nodded. Orion’s point was obvious. “So I only think this way because I’m naive?”

“I neither know nor care why you think the way you do. The universe, however, is a bigger more violent place than you would like it to be, boy. Fancy talk and a smiling face will not get you very far.”

“Yeah, and I’m sure that’s the first thing you try every time someone comes after you. Saying things are violent doesn’t mean anything when you’re one of the violent ones. It’s just a self-fulfilling prophecy, at that point.”

“Better violent than dead,” Orion hastily replied.

“Yeah, that seems to have worked real well for you.”

Nodding to the halo floating above Orion’s head had been unnecessary. He didn’t need a reminder of what waited for him once he had been released from Gamer’s clutches. As soon as he did it, though, Kaden felt a pang of guilt. He was simply being argumentative for the sake of it. Otherwise, he would go crazy in a white room with nothing else to think about.

Interestingly, Orion’s counter-arguments had made a lot of sense. It stood to reason that the Saiyan’s general bloodthirst was the result of their environment, otherwise why would all of them end up that way. Sure, there were probably some who took advantage of their perceived barbarism for their own gain, but the same could be said of humans. Ultimately, it came down to the fact that Orion was right; Kaden had no first-hand knowledge of the way things worked beyond Earth’s atmosphere.

“Sorry about that,” the courier finally spoke. It had been awkward keeping eye contact with someone who looked like they were about to punch his face in. “You, uh, died during Friend or Foe, right?”

“… yes.”

“Yeah… I thought so. I mean, it’s hard to forget seeing someone shot right in front of you.”

“…” the saiyan remained silent. The courier obviously had a point to make, and he wasn’t interested in prolonging the conversation.

“I didn’t really get a chance to say anything back in the Carnival, but I… gah. I don’t know. I’m kind of sorry, I guess. I mean, I know it’s not my fault you died… at least I don’t think it is, but all I could do was watch as it happened. I think that, if it happened again, like now, I’d be able to do something. I’d be able to… protect you.”

“I don’t need your protection,” the cycloptic saiyan said. “If you think you can help someone, then help them. If you have the time for half-assed apologizes, then spend it figuring out how to keep yourself from making the same mistake twice.”

“… right.”

Curiously, the courier felt like he was ten years old again, listening to his father. There was someone with a wealth of experience sitting before him and the best thing to do was give his advice the weight it deserved. Kaden didn’t think he had apologized, but if not, then what had he been doing? Trying to console himself? Looking for absolution for something that couldn’t be changed? Asking forgiveness for his previous powerlessness? They were all pathetic alternatives. As Kaden stared at Orion, something flitted through his eye, as though he had more to say; his silence, however, pressed the courier to move on.

“Y’know,” Kaden began again. He ignored Orion’s annoyed sigh. “I have to admit that, deep down, there’s a part of me that likes this kind of stuff.”

“You mean the ceaseless blathering?”

“What? No. That’s just me trying not to be bored. I mean stuff like this,” Kaden waved an arm to their surroundings. “Getting kidnapped and thrown into this kind of… game. It’s happened more times than I would prefer, sure, but… y’know.”

“Not sure that I do.”

“Come on, that’s how, well, I met you. And Piper, and Ashe, and Sage, and Szar, and… well… half the people who are stuck here, actually. I’m not saying that meeting all of them is a good thing, but the people I actually like… well… I wouldn’t trade that for anything.”

“Don’t meet a lot of people?” Orion’s voice had been fairly deadpan, but Kaden could have sworn it was a joke.

“Sure, but most of them are… boring. Someone who you can run through a desert with and fight off giant mutant scorpions isn’t really the kind of person you just stumble upon in the bar.”

“So this has just been a meet-and-greet for you?”

“Of course not. This shit’s dangerous, no doubt, but that doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate the good things about it, right? If all I did was sat around digging myself into an emotional hole… well… I’d wind up getting dropped into a dunk tank, with my luck. But, yeah, it would be nice to meet the same people under more… favorable circumstance.”

The saiyan declined to respond, instead leaning further back in his seat. After several silent moments passed, Kaden leaned forward, placing his arm on the table, and propped his chin up with his hand. Simply staring into Orion’s eye had slowly transcended from being awkward to simply… being. The act no longer prompted any kind of emotional response in the courier. To his surprise, though, Orion finally broke the silence.

“Why did you stop me, earlier?” the saiyan posed.

“When you were about to get up, you mean?”

“Yes. I would have lost the contest and you would have won, putting you one step closer to Gamer, if his words are to be believed.”

“They probably aren’t, but… well… why eliminate yourself when you may not need to?” Kaden answered the question with a question of his own. “In something like this, you have to hope for the best and plan for the worst, right? So, I’m assuming that anyone who gets eliminated ends up dead.” It pained Kaden to say such a thing, knowing some of those who had been cut from the game. “And the more people that are dead, the harder it will be to break out of this bullshit.” A smile crossed the courier’s face as he spoke. “I’m going to make sure we get as many people out of here as possible.”

Despite their situation, a surprising amount of confidence filled Kaden’s voice. He obviously had no better idea than anyone else on how to get free, but he seemed certain that something would present itself.

“You mentioned things like this,” Orion waved a hand to the white room, mimicking Kaden’s earlier movement. “They can definitely be good. They show a person for who they really are. Grow, adapt, or die. Those are your options at times like these.”

“So…” Kaden considered the statement. “You think I’ve grown or adapted?” By Orion’s logic, it had to have been one of those two, since he wasn’t dead.

“How would I know?”

Fair enough. Kaden and Orion hadn’t exactly kept in touch since Friend or Foe… since the saiyan had mostly been dead. While the courier liked to think that he had grown, he was hesitant to convince himself that were the case. Every time he had been in a dangerous situation, every time he had been thrown into some kind of psychotic event, he had had people there to help him… people to lean on. He never would have survived Friend or Foe without Piper’s help. In Dante’s Abyss he would have probably been curled into a fetal for the duration had it not been for Ashe and Sophia. Even in Kill Town, the courier had all of the above to rely on, in addition to Belle, Szar, and, in a weird way, Juno.

To Kaden, there didn’t seem to be anything wrong with looking to other people for help. It was ridiculous to think that one person would be able to solve any problem on their own. Why forgo the help of others when it wasn’t necessary? Some would say that doing as much would stifle the growth of each individual, but that never made sense to Kaden. Working with other people, studying them, learning from them, helping them, all of those things could help people grow much stronger. If not physically, then at least emotionally.

The talk between the two died down as both seemed intent, for the moment at least, to process their own thoughts internally. Eventually, though, Kaden’s boredom won out. It only took so much brain power to mull over someone’s words, and the rest was becoming quite restless. With no other interesting outlet coming to mind, Kaden resorted to his fall-back cure for boredom. Between himself and Orion, hovering above the table, a small orb of cerulean ki burst to life.

Though neither saiyan nor human diverted their gaze to the ball of ki, it was obvious that both became interested. The ball began to move slowly through the air at the courier’s mental prompting, leaving a trail in its wake. Swirling through the air, the courier began tracing out aimless designs for a while before simply letting it all fade away and starting over again. Eventually a memory flashed to the forefront of his mind.

“You’re pretty good with energy, right?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Excellent. Up for a game?”

At first, the saiyan hesitated, but eventually gave in. Following Kaden’s prompting, the saiyan created a small wall of energy that he freely maneuvered through the air. The human referred to it as a “paddle.” At one end of the table sat Orion’s paddle, while Kaden materialized his own on the opposite end. The small ball of energy began moving towards Kaden’s paddle, only to bounce off of it and slide towards Orion.

The saiyan picked up on “Pong” quickly enough, maneuvering his dark blue paddle of ki as well as Kaden guessed he would. Back in Friend or Foe, the courier had taken note of the saiyan’s expert manipulation of energy, learning a trick or two. While Pong was a cure for boredom, it also made maintaining eye contact that much more difficult. At every bounce Kaden to fight the urge to follow the ball’s path. Eventually, though, something else drew his attention.

“That’s odd…” he mused.

“You just noticed?” Orion replied.

“I noticed a couple minutes ago,” the courier admitted. “But I thought it was just my peripheral vision playing tricks on me. No doubt about it now, though.”

“Indeed. The room is growing. Quickly.”

Hesitantly, the courier smiled. While he hadn’t exactly been testing Orion, he would have been surprised if he had failed to notice the change in their surroundings. His experience with the bloodthirsty saiyan Vad, had taught Kaden that the warrior had a keen sense of his surroundings. Since Orion was also a saiyan warrior, the courier extrapolated and was thankful to be proven correct. He was far from a trained fighter himself and was prone to missing things that other warriors would know to pick up on. If they were going to break out of the game, Kaden knew they’d need every skill available to them.

“What do you think is going to happen?” the courier asked.

“Not sure.”

“Well, we should be ready. I get the feeling something’s about to happen.”

[Orion]

Orion was the benefactor of a rich tapestry of experiences. He had instigated war over countless alien worlds, assigned to him by the Cold Dynasty's belligerent agenda. He had mastered the art of combat, capable of pounding any foe into submission with his fists or, failing that, blasting their worthless hides into oblivion. He had ventured to the furtherest corners of the galaxy, born witness to events that he would simply disbelieve had he not been present at the time and had his entire perception on reality twisted and tweaked until it was not the same anymore. He managed to leave the mortal realm and spar against the greatest martial artists the afterlife and possibly the universe had ever known, and even infrequently return to the world of the living, subverting the original sting of death.

But never in his life had he weathered such endless, mundane banter.

Kaden was like an attention deficient disorder mouse locked in a room of cats. He never seemed satisfied with the object at his attention, constantly letting his mind gallop free and subsequently taking him along for the spirited ride. Whatever arbitrary thought sprouted at the time of his boredom was taken hold of immediately and beaten until the human's interested died. It was probably acceptable and commonplace for Kaden, and quite possibly his entire primitive race, to act in such a fashion, but Orion saw it only for what it was; a weakness.

The blonde courier was exceptionally chatty compared to their initial introduction during the Friend or Foe tournament, but that was no doubt contributed to his lack of experience in dangerous and unfamiliar situations. Orion recalled his attempt to seize leadership of the Hunters, and while some of his suggestions held validity, he was in no position to command a ragtag crew of random strangers, that much was certain. Now, he wouldn't just shut the hell up for ten seconds. Every thought trickled unfiltered from his brain and barrelled out of his lips blithely. Orion wondered how Kaden put up with himself.

Still, his relentless impulse to converse dug up some intriguing gems that the cyclopean saiyan couldn't discover on his own. Judging by his fumbled apology about Orion's death, which was a completely different kettle of fish, he held feelings of detached duty, as if his current strength could have easily saved his life. That informed the veteran warrior of two things. One: Kaden was a firm believer in compassion and comradeship, opting to prevent harm occurring to anyone that he could intercept and halt. He figured as much during their Friend or Foe duress, since he stressed their roles as Hunters needed to be ignored for the sake of their prey. His comments merely cemented the conjecture as solid fact.

Two: Kaden presumed his strength had grown to a point where he could intercede on Orion's behalf. He was a vigorous, never-say-die kind of guy, but his abilities were severely lacking. He understood the basics of ki manipulation, and strangely enough for a human, took to it like a duck to water. Orion really wasn't cognisant of how much time elapsed in the mortal universe since his death, but Kaden already had tickets on himself, albeit modestly. To an extent, the disgruntled soldier was curious to witness the courier's newfound powers in action, but that would have to wait until an appropriate moment.

Beyond all of this, however, Orion had become suddenly fixated on Kaden's apology. Perhaps he had things of greater importance to dwell on since his assassination, but now that it was brought to the surface, the saiyan realised just how much he blamed the human. He recalled their exchanges, how the blonde referred to Orion's mind frame of morality and murder to be unfathomably sadist, how everyone deserved to live and no one had the right to make that decision when it ended on their behalf and other naive, idealistic bullshit he had garbled out. However, on a personal level, eventually some of Kaden's preaching planted into Orion's mind. It wasn't solely due to his benevolent arguments; a fraction of the human's beliefs were once property of Orion's, but a bellicose, vindictive universe jaded his own views.

It was those beliefs that made him turn his back on a fallen adversary and accept several gunshots to the back.

Orion wasn't an unreasonable, hate driven monster. Only partly. However, he recognised that some of the blame fell on his own shoulders. He allowed Kaden's septic words in without a thorough rejection, weakly desiring for his old mindset to somehow negate the cognitive dissonance that manifested with his current psyche. Yet it was the courier's incessant steadfastness to his beliefs and the inability to waver from them that had made them halfway convincing. Had Orion silenced the human before his battle with Balrog, perhaps he wouldn't have left the broken fool at his feet before turning heels. The saiyan envisioned how the fight would end if he was there now; towering over Balrog, saying a few choice, arrogant words before curbstomping his skull and ending his life.

But that was then, and this was now. Although Kaden's motor mouth raised Orion's ire faster than most, he still couldn't bring himself to blatantly hate the man. So some of his uninformed perceptions of life were child like and infectious like the plague, but the cyclopean warmonger saw a sliver of himself in the kid. Before the universe mercilessly stomped on his own understanding, he was, much to Orion's chagrin, similar to Kaden. Perhaps, if the human could cling to that hope ...

There were more pressing concerns, though. As Kaden pointed out, and as he realised long before him no doubt, the very room itself was morphing. The walls slid slowly at first, the movements so incremental that it wasn't noticeable, but since both occupants had caught the drift from their peripheral vision, they couldn't both be right. Unless they managed to hypnotise one another with the horribly uneventful staring contest, something lurching from Gamer's voyeuristic mind was approaching them.

Moments had passed since their mutual agreement on the status of the walls, but Kaden was the last to speak and must have felt the bothersome curse of verbal diahorrea prod him into speech.

"Well?" he questioned vaguely, before clarifying with, "any plans?"

"Not as such, no," Orion replied dryly. "Gamer's probably attempting to distract one of us so that we give him a reason to break the contest and kill us. Don't be fooled."

It made sense on paper, but the walls weren't just retreating from them anymore. From the edge of their vision, both contestants observed the walls quivering like a mass of jelly that had been poked. Orion tried to block out the obvious diversion, but his determination was stalwart. He had one chance to slit that nerdy bastard's throat, and he wasn't about to hand it over to Kaden, not while he was still in control of the outcome.

The red eyed courier, however, wasn't so sure. His eyes begged him to look, but he was just as certain as Orion to stay in this contest.

"Uh, Orion ..."

The saiyan had enough. "Can you please just ... shut the hell up?! It's hard enough to concentrate without your mindless babble."

"Fair call, but Orion, I think you should look behind you."

Orion grunted in frustration. Kaden wasn't the type to deceive anyone into a trap. He wanted to win, but his ethics wouldn't allow him a victory through dirty tactics. That meant only one thing; something was approaching from behind.

"If you can see it, then tell me what it is," the mustachioed marauder stated.

"I can't say I've ever seen tentacles grow from a wall, but I'd say that's the most accurate description," Kaden commented, observing with restraint as the writhing white tendrils inched closer to Orion.

"Hmm," Orion murmured. "You have a similar issue."

Indeed, a mass of eager wall worms squirmed towards Kaden. The news didn't help to abate the human's concern.

"There's only one way we can survive this without breaking eye contact," Orion commented, although it appeared Kaden caught on without an explanation.

"Got it," he confirmed.

"On the count of three ..."

"One ... " Orion drew out.

"Two ... " Kaden followed.

"Three!"

In unison, the two dropped beneath the table, at all costs retaining their locked gazes. Orion thrust a hand over Kaden's shoulder while the courier mimicked the same motion. Energy pooled in their open hands, bathing the hospital white room in the hues of their respective dark and light blue ki. The plan was going off without a hitch; Orion had perfect vision of the tentacles threatening Kaden via peripheral vision, while Kaden had the same sight of Orion's would be antagonists. The biggest issue here was the containment of their blasts; neither knew how resilient the energetic tendrils were to computerised energy attacks, so a heaping portion of power was needed to make the first strike the last. However, due to the close proximity of their ally, Orion and Kaden needed to restrict the beam to a fine column so as to not fry the other.

A resounding boom echoed in the featureless room as the two ki specialists unleashed their attacks. Orion instinctively ducked as he felt the heat of Kaden's ki radiate onto his neck. In any other situation, that particular signal meant that the saiyan was under direct attack; it was hard to will his mind to desist any evasive movement, but his extreme discipline ensured his stationarity. Kaden wasn't lying in a field of flowers either, squinting against the immense luminance that the dual beams forged.

The heads of the energy waves sheared through the tentacles like a hot knife through butter, obliterating the flimsy strands into dust. Orion and Kaden, perservering in the staring contest, gradually rose back to their seats, propping themselves up on their table. A wordless moment passed.

"So, d-"

"Do you ever shut up?"

[Victoria]

Victoria opened her mouth to speak, since Orion had yet to answer her. It wasn’t as if much time had passed, but she felt an anxious lump in her throat over the whole ordeal. He could either push her aside like the insistent whelp that she was, or he could let her form this bond she felt so eagerly for. Her words and his answer would have to wait, because their time was up. Victoria stared at the swirling vortex in front of her and considered what may lie beyond it. She wondered what would happen if she didn’t go, but knew the answer. Gamer would kill her if she didn’t comply with his gamer, and so with that thought she stepped into the portal, leaving behind the saiyan once again.

The entire room was white, it reminded her of Limbo. She could only guess that it was a medical room, but something wasn’t right. She sat in a chair, a table in front of her, and another chair was in front of her. The silence was heavy, and she felt confused. What am I supposed to do? She ran a hand along the smooth surface of the table, and noticed that the room had no doors. Am I in prison?

Suddenly a light flashed and someone appeared in the seat opposite of her. Startled, Victoria parted her lips to speak, but was interrupted for the second time in a row. “Don’t tell me…” The boy spoke, and Victoria connected her eyes with his.

“Staring Contest Commenced.” A voice filled the room, and Vic widened her eyes.

“This is a staring contest, of all things?” Victora replied. Here I thought this Gamer had some imagination to him. The kid opposite of her maintained the gaze, and she steeled herself.

“Well, we have no choice but to play his game…but it won’t be much longer now.” He replied and set his hands on the table. Vic kept her eyes on his, holding back the urge to look away. If this had been someone else, someone she knew, she would have lost already.

“Well, what’s your name?” She asked, despite him being her competition. She didn’t want to be bored to death; she needed to keep her mind active.

“Baller- Er, actually, my name is Lance.” His gaze didn’t falter, even though he had flustered in response. She didn’t bother to ask about the blunder instead, she gave him her name.

“Victoria is my name,” she would have shaken his hand but due to the event she dare not move yet. Instead she smiled at him.

“At least this time I’m not fighting.” He said aloud, and gazed intently into her eyes. “I’ve had to fight a lot of girls lately, but I can’t complain about this.”

“Why?” Victoria asked, curious as she looked into his deep eyes. She hadn’t really done this before, not that she would do it again. She hadn’t noticed before, but a person’s eye was actually quite enthralling. She liked the way his eyes had little flecks of color in them.

“I get to stare at a pretty girl; I don’t think I’ll be losing anytime soon.” He smirked and leaned back slightly while maintaining the stare.

“You think I’m pretty? That’s sweet.” She smiled again, leaning back similarly. “Although, I don’t think you’ll win.” She continued and gave him the most innocent of looks.

“Why is that? I can stare for a long time.” He said.

“Well, men have a tendency to react inappropriately to a woman and her body.” She stated, and tapped her lips as was her quirk. “For example, what would happen if I decided to remove my shirt, could you really stop yourself from looking?” She asked this, generally curious.

“That’s a good point, but you underestimate my determination to get out of here.” He replied and held fast. “You’ll have to think of a different strategy I’m afraid, although if you wanted to show me afterward…” He said and quirked his eyebrows up.

“It was just a theoretical discussion, I don’t know if that would be the best plan.” She replied and tilted her head while meeting his gaze with equal determination. “I have a few choice words for Gamer, you see, and I don’t think I’ll be losing to you.” She said this with a smile, and the sweetest of voices.

It was fascinating to stare into another person’s eyes, and a man at that. She wondered if this was what lovers did, staring at each other, aching to embrace each other. As far as events went, though, this one was not appealing. She wanted excitement, not a sit still battle. However, she was a warrior by all accounts, and she didn’t want to lose to this player. Despite being a stranger, she couldn’t help but notice that he was attractive in his own way. If Victoria were any other young woman she would have swooned over him, but she did not take part in such practices. She simply bore into his eyes, looked into the window to his soul, and wondered just how long he could last.

“You know, this could be considered training,” she said, breaking the silence with her soft voice. “We have to learn to endure, right? Fight temptation, hold our ground.” She explained.

“That’s a good way to look at it, but if all you’re doing is defending you won’t get anywhere.” He replied. Vic knew he had a point. If they both had the determination they could stare for a very long time, one of them would have to formulate a plan and work on distracting their opponent. She wanted to win, more than anything, but she didn’t know this player or what would work against him.

“How did you end up here, then? I haven’t seen you before so we might as well talk a bit.” She asked and clasped her hands together on the table.

“I know Gamer; at least I thought I did.” He replied. “We were childhood friends, but I had no idea he would do something like this.”

“It’s alright; we’ll kill him once we get out.” She replied. “I was told that this sort of revenge is allowed, since it’s appropriate to our survival.”

“Er, I don’t know if…” The boy paused, but he didn’t continue. She could see something in his eyes, perhaps an inkling of hope for Gamer. Friends were an interesting concept to the hunter, she wanted to have friends badly, and yet this was evidence of a friendship that wallowed in betrayal. It was fascinating.

“I wonder if this is what Jeremy meant when it came to friends,” she remarked. Lance kept his eyes locked with hers, but she could tell that he was curious. “My superior, he said that friends are a liability, I wonder if he meant that friends can betray you.”

“That could be, or, they could be your weakness.” He gritted his teeth as his said this. “If someone has your dearest friend as a hostage, it could be your weakness, because you would do anything for them, right?”

Victoria thought about that. She played the scenario in her head; the closest thing she could come up with was the idea of Joal being taken by some evil doer. She had to wonder if it would even be possible, he was a formidable warrior, but Lance must have had some truth to his words. If Joal were taken…That would affect me, yes, or if he were killed… Her eyes lit up with understanding.

“I think I understand, but I think that the gain is greater than the risk.” She replied. “I want to have a bond with people; I want them to do anything to save me, just like I would do for them.” She explained. “Isn’t that how we should live our lives? Being there for our dearest friends?”

“You’re naïve, aren’t you?” Lance asked, dubious to her logic. “You have to make the choice for yourself, if you want friends, then make friends, it’s not like anyone can stop you.”

“Easier said than done…” She replied sadly, but she continued to admire his eyes. “Have you ever been in love?”

Lance blushed, and stuttered in reply. Of all the questions she could ask at that time, it had definitely taken him off guard. “I-I guess so.” He wanted to look away; her piercing gaze was making him shift uncomfortably in his seat.

“You don’t have to go into detail. I was just curious.” She giggled and lifted a hand to her mouth. “I don’t know what love is, not really, I know what it is to feel for someone, or care for them, but love is beyond me. Does Jeremy love me, or maybe Joal? I know that my father didn’t, because he wasn’t really my father. Mother was hardly there, so, I wonder if anyone ever loved me. Thus, what is love? Did someone just make up the word?” She rambled on, sharing her thoughts on the subject.

“I don’t know, but it sounds like you have some issues.” He responded. “I think you’ll find the answers if you look for them, at least, that’s my best guess.”

“You’re right! That’s why I’m going to keep making friends, surely if love exists, it will exist in friendship. A long time ago I had friends, although I only saw them here and there, but it was so long ago. I’ve been absent from friendship and bonding, maybe that’s why the concept of love has eluded me.” She replied excitedly.

“You’re really strange, but your looks make up for it.” He replied with a chuckle. “Don’t talk like that too much, or you might scare away the friends you want.” He advised. “Not many people like crazy friends.”

“Right, I’ll remember that.” She grinned and reached her hand across the table. “Say, Lance,” she lowered her voice slightly and gazed at him with such intensity that it made him nervous. She placed her hand on his, and leaned close across the table. “You’re pretty smart; you’ve lived a pretty normal life, well…except for this.” She moved her other hand to indicate the room, but neither of them broke the stare. “Why don’t we be friends? You could tell me more about what life as a normal person is like, maybe,” she hesitated and leaned closer yet, “maybe we can…” she stood to loom over the small table, and over him, and he followed her eyes like a hawk while she stared dreamily into his, “find the answer to love.”

Lance’s face grew hot, and he squirmed in his seat. The girl was maybe six inches away, and her beautiful blue eyes sparkled at him in eagerness. His mind raced; perhaps a fight would have been better after all.

The floor beneath them, unbeknownst to the participants, was beginning to melt. The white cement was beginning to lose its mass, pulling downward like putty. Slowly during their event, the room began to follow, warping and changing subtly from some strange phenomenon. Unfortunately Victoria had other things on her mind, that is, she intended to win this game. Lance was Gamer’s friend, and she was determined to believe that even through evil and darkness, a bond could remain. If Gamer was to die, Lance would not be the one to deliver that killing blow. No, it was Victoria that would kill the mastermind. Friendships could make a person weak, that was what she feared, and Lance could possibly stop any death from befalling his childhood friend because of the bond they shared.

“Lance,” she puckered her lips pushing down on the table and creeping closer. The table pushed down, and as it was made a part of the environment, it melted with the ground. “What the hell?” Her soft voice turned hard, and the ground collapsed. Both contestants fell, and she gave out a shrill cry. It wasn’t a long fall, actually, and it wasn’t a hard one either.

As the two had been battling it out, staring and gazing like two lovers enthralled with desire, the other players were doing similarly. Two of them being men, it was no surprise that they were apt to argue. The saiyan waved his hands, explaining his desire for the young blonde to cease his random chatter. It wouldn’t get them anywhere, and they were both insistent on remaining locked within the gaze, remaining in the battle. It was a battle, staring at someone’s face for long periods of time could be exhausting. Even with the threats around them, they didn’t look away, it was tiresome. Orion stood up and held out his hands, moving them up and down while he spoke. “So either shut up, or stop looking at me, because I can’t take b-”

Victoria fell from the melting sky, hair flying around her from the pull of gravity, and she landed in the outstretched arms of the disgruntled saiyan. She wondered why it happened, and more importantly, why she had fallen from the sky.

“What the….” Kaden kept his eyes on Orion, but not for long. From the sky fell Victoria’s competition and he fell right onto the blonde players face. The two hit the ground and groaned.

Victoria looked up, blushing madly, and then looked at the two men on the ground. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but did he just get Baller in the face? If so, I think that would mean he just got tea-“

“Don’t you dare finish that sentence.” Kaden got to his feet, and rubbed the dirt from his face. “What happened?”

“I won, that’s what happened.” Orion declared, oblivious to the fact that Victoria was still in his arms. “You looked away.”

“Excuse me, but I’m not the one who had a girl land in his arms, I just had a body collide with my face” He pointed at his face.

“So, I guess you could say it was raining men, too?” Victoria mused aloud and tapped her bottom lip. “I don’t mean to say that you’re wrong Orion, and maybe you did win, but considering the fact that everything is warped, shifted, or melting, we should assume that either we’re all fucked and we all just [/i]lost the game[/i], or the round is over. I don’t see any exit portals, so, that either means the event was more than a staring contest, or-”

“Or something has gone seriously wrong.” Lance climbed to his feet and held a hand to his face. “Gamer hasn’t said anything yet, so that means we aren’t done here…but something isn’t right, so I don’t think this was planned.”

“Orion, you can stop holding me now.” She looked up again and he dropped her suddenly, remembering that she had been there. “Ouch,” she stood up from the ground and rubbed her bottom. “Next time I’ll try to aim for the other guy.” She walked past the men to inspect their surroundings. It didn’t take a genius to see that the world around them was morphing into different scenes, becoming different places. “This should be fun.” She remarked and set her hands on her hips.

[Kaden]

While having someone dropped, quite literally, into his face wasn’t the most pleasant thing Kaden had ever experienced, he almost welcomed the excuse to stop staring at Orion. He didn’t have anything against the saiyan, but there were very few people he’d able to stare out for that long. He imagined Orion didn’t really mind, either. With their circumstances changing as quickly as they were, the courier would have plenty to keep his mind occupied.

Despite having doubled its occupants, the white staring-room seemed to have gotten nothing but larger. The two newcomers didn’t seem overly surprised at their surroundings, Kaden guessed they had been previously confined to a similar room. One of them, the pink-haired girl, Kaden recognized as Victoria. They had both been in an event involving a sinking ship. Standing next to victory, though, was someone the courier had never seen before.

“This should be fun,” Victoria commented as she gazed about.

“Fun probably wouldn’t be my first choice of words,” Kaden said, “but at least it should be more interesting than sitting in a white room staring at someone else.”

The walls all around them seemed to be… quivering, as though they were made of nothing more solid than gelatin. With everything the same shade of white, it was difficult to tell exactly what the walls were doing. Orion and Kaden had only been able to discern the wall tentacles that attacked them earlier because whatever mysterious light source that illuminated the room had also cast shadows. With a wall, though, it wasn’t as easy to tell.

Without thinking to consult anyone else present, the courier raised a hand and let a bolt of cerulean ki fly. His thinking was that if he hit the wall with something that was only strong enough to leave a scorch mark, he might be able to better see what was happening in front of him. To everyone’s surprise, the small ball of energy hit the wall and caused a rippled that spread throughout the entire room. In the wake of the ripple, for only a second, the walls seemed to fade, giving way to a completely different landscape beyond.

“What did you do?” the pink-haired woman asked. As she spoke she turned her head to follow the ripple.

“Dunno,” was all the courier had to say. At first.

Taking another step back, he was more interested in the spot he had initially hit than the effect it had caused. There was a small indentation in the wall, which held fast even as the space around it seemed to be barely holding itself together. Running a hand through his hair, Kaden back away from the wall and held his hand aloft.

“Orion. You might want to make a… shield or something,” Kaden advised. Wisps of bright blue energy seeped from his hand, coiling outward, drifting into the air like mist. “I mean… I could do it if you’d prefer, but I think thi—“

“Why?” the saiyan interrupted him.

“You guys saw it, right? There’s something on the other side of that wall. I don’t know about you, but I’m eager to see what’s on the other side. And since there’s no door, I figured we’d just have to make our own.”

“Yeah. I get it. Why the shield?”

“Well… on the off chance that this doesn’t work, the blast won’t really have anywhere to go but back at us. I figure cranking it up to fifty-percent ought to be enough to punch through most walls, but this… isn’t really acting like most walls…”

“You’re kidding, right?” Lance spoke up. “And if this crazy, screwed up wall decides to just… oh I dunno… bounce your little blast back at us, what then?”

“We’ll have a shield,” Orion replied, as though it were obvious.

“Try to keep up, Lance,” Victoria teased.

“Ok, then. On three. One…”

Kaden leveled his hand at the wall in front of him.

“Two…”

Orion stepped between the other three occupants of the room, his energy gathering about him in a swirl of dark blue flames.

“Three!”

A flash of cerulean light enveloped the room, blinding even the person who caused it. As it receded, it seemed to take all light with it. Darkness swept down upon the four with neither rhyme nor reason. Whatever happened to the wall, or the door Kaden intended to blow in it, remained shrouded in both mystery and darkness. All around him, the courier could hear the confused movements and complaints of the other occupants of the previously white room.

He was about to step towards the wall – or what should have been the wall – when a weight fell over him. Not just the courier, but four cries of surprise rang out as an unidentified mass pressed itself upon them. Heavy enough to force Kaden to one knee, the weight sat upon his shoulders… and his head… and…

“What is this?” the courier asked anyone within ear shot. Surprised at how muffled his voice came out, he began speaking louder. “Is this… cloth?”

“Feels like canvas!” Victoria’s voice responded.

Struggling back to his feet proved an incredibly frustrating task for the courier. Every movement he attempted was made labored by the veil of… whatever… that had been thrown upon them. In his mounting annoyance, he resorted to one of the things he did best.

A blue bolt of energy shot into the air, an audible rip accompanying its ascension. Light flooded over the courier as he gazed up at the streak of energy, quickly growing distant. A second, larger blast followed the first, punching a hole in the canvas large enough for Kaden to step through, though that ended up being unnecessary. The canvas fell to the ground around him, revealing the sights behind it.

“Ok. I wasn’t expecting this,” he said to no one in particular.

At Kaden’s feet, sprawled across the ground, was a massive canvas, its bright red and yellow striping identifying it as one of the circus tents that had populated Gamer’s between-event Carnival, which made sense, given that, no matter which way he looked, Kaden found himself smack-dab in the middle of it. In short order, Orion, Victoria, and Baller had freed themselves from the circus tent.

“Look over there,” Lance said, pointing off to a corner of the tent.

Two more protrusions were writhing against the weight of the tent, prompting Kaden and Victoria to make their way over for a closer inspection. Orion cross his arms as he watched the courier and the huntress blast two new holes in the canvas and pull from its depths Ashe and Belle, respectively.

“What is going on?” Ashe asked as Kaden helped her to her feet.

“We’re not really sure. I think it’s a good thing, though.”

“How is someone trying to bury us under a… tent?! A good thing?” Belle fired back at Kaden, jumping to his feet and putting some space between himself and Victoria.

“Oh hey!” It took Kaden a second to process the voice. “Belle! Congrats.” Once again, the hybrid was in possession of his original anatomy. “We’re supposed to be in a staring contest. And separated. Since we’re neither of those things, not everything is going the way Gamer wants.”

“Or he’s just trying to screw with us,” Orion countered. “Don’t let your guard down just because you found a friend.”

“Hey!” Ashe interjected before anyone else could speak. “What do you think this means?”

Grabbing her PAGER, the girl extended it towards Kaden, the closest person to her. Frowning, the courier studied it for several seconds before reaching down and pulling his own free from its place on his belt. There was some kind of message scrolling across its small display, but the letters, if they could be called that, were jumbled and nonsensical. It looked like someone had bashed their head against a keyboard and then deleted every other character.

“I think you broke it, Ashe,” Kaden joked. The girl had already moved on, though.

“What do you think ‘Fission Mailed’ means?”

[Belle Hibiki]

Of all the things Belle had expected, he would have never have guessed that Round Five would be so ... Mundane.

"Staring contest," the hybrid echoed the pager's audio instructions as the plain white room faded into view. There was a table, and two chairs, and across from him was a pink-haired girl that seemed somehow vaguely familiar. He had seen her before, but had never bothered to get to know her... For obvious reasons. "That's swell."

He and the woman pulled out their respective chairs and sat down. Adjusting in his seat, it only took a moment for Belle to realize that something was very ... off about his body. He frowned and reached up to touch his chest, and found that the conspicuous sacks of flesh that had terrorized him for the last three rounds were no longer present. His hands felt different, too - calloused and back to normal. And his voice ... Had he misheard?

"Hello. My name is Belle Hibiki and I'm a guy," Belle tested. Ashe gave him a funny look, but he didn't care. There was no mistaking it - his voice was back!

There was only one more thing to check.

Keeping his eyes locked with Ashe's, Belle slowly reached below the table and cupped his hand over the stretched fabric of the capri pants surrounding his groin. Definitely a guy.

He suddenly wanted to laugh. Or cry. He wasn't sure which, or in what order, or maybe he could do both at once. The utter relief that whatever program Wess had inserted had finally run its course was beyond anything he had ever felt. At last, he was free.

"Weirdo," Ashe made as if to roll her eyes, then apparently thought better of it and kept them on Belle. "Is that supposed to be sexy?" she asked.

"Is what supposed to be sexy?"

She tilted her head vaguely downward. "Grabbing yourself like that."

"What?" Belle looked at her blankly, then realized what she meant. "Oh. Oh, no! I... No. I'm just glad ... I have my penis."

Ashe's lips twitched upward. "I'm sure," she said blandly. "Nice shirt, by the way."

"Nice shir-... ah," Belle trailed off. Of course he was still in the girly clothes that Kaden had helped pick out. At the moment they were feeling more than a few sizes too small, but the shirt, with its bright pink trim, was the biggest issue. Pulling it over his head was out of the question as doing so would break his line of sight to the girl's eyes.

Left with few other options, Belle shrugged, brought his hands to the neck of the colorful tank, and pulled. The room filled with the sound of tearing fabric as the front of the tank split apart, and a second later Belle shrugged it off and threw it to the floor.

"How long do you think this'll last?" he asked, rotating his shoulders.

"What part?" Ashe countered. "The game, or this round?"

"Both, I guess."

The girl shrugged. "The first, I don't know. The second..." She smiled a bit. "Isn't that kind of inappropriate of you to ask?"

"Maybe," Belle admitted, shying back in his chair. Despite his recent spell as the opposite gender, he still did not like it when girls smiled at him. "It seems kind of stupid, though: that this is the kind of thing that could decide if you live or die."

"No argument here," his opponent admitted. "But this whole game has been stupid. I was just in a round where me and Ander had to play as Pac-Man."

"Pack Man..." Belle repeated, deciding not to ask what kind of game someone could play as a bag boy. If Ander had been with the girl, and if she was still in the game, it only stood to reason that the thief had lost in the last round.

Belle let out a long breath through his nose. Despite the fact that the thief had done more than his fair share to piss Belle off - stealing his Dragonballs, playing tricks on him, and putting a knife to Sayana's throat among the highlights - the hybrid had no desire to see the man die. Lose a few teeth, maybe, but nothing permanent.

"You okay?"

Belle refocused. "Yeah," he said, shaking it off. "Fine."

If he was going to win and make Gamer pay for what he had one, Belle was going to have to take things seriously - even if one of those particular things was a stupid staring contest. He drew up his legs and carefully folded them in a lotus position. Bringing his hands into his lap, he placed the tips of his fingers against one another and took another slow, deep breath, clearing his mind. During his training with Master Akiha he had often meditated under freezing waterfalls, upon hard rocks, and through storms. Compared to then, meditating in a relatively comfortable chair in a well-heated room was like breathing.

"What's your name again?" the girl asked, intruding on Belle's thoughts.

"Belle," the hybrid muttered. His vision was beginning to blur around the edges. "Hibiki. Belle Hibiki."

The girl snorted. "Pfuu-!"

Belle scowled. "Shut up! I didn't pick the fucking name, okay?! What's your name, anyway?"

"Ashe."

"That's a stupid name," Belle declared, breaking the touching of his hands and folding his arms.

"Now I remember; you were in the bar with Sage in Dante's Abyss, weren't you?"

"Sage? Oh, the blue-haired chick with the hard slap?" Belle nodded, carefully keeping his eyes trained on Ashe. "Yeah, I was there."

"Why'd she slap you?" Ashe asked, sounding genuinely curious.

Belle made a low growl of frustration. If her intent was to distract him from concentrating, it was working. "I kind of accidentally fell on her and touched her ... You know. Her chest."

"You groped her?"

"I didn't grope anyone, okay?! Why would I want to touch a girl's ... Girl's...- ?"

"Boobs?" Ashe helpfully supplied.

" ... Shut up," Belle grumbled. "Anyway, it was an ACCIDENT. And she stabbed me in the chest later with a goddamn piece of ice after I was nice to her, so I think we're even ... Even if I did almost sit on her while she was sleeping."

Ashe propped her cheeks in her hands and leaned forward across the table. "Sounds like you've had a lot of 'encounters' with her," she observed. "You sure it's not intentional?" she teased.

"Shut. Up!" Belle repeated. "I'm not interested in girls!"

"So you're gay?"

"I'm not interested in boys, either!"

"You're a eunuch?"

"I don't even know what that means!"

As Belle shouted, the room suddenly shook and canted to the side. Belle's hands snapped out to grab the edge of the table and keep himself from falling as the room swayed like a ship on storm-tossed seas. "What the-?!"

Ashe had gotten half out of her chair, but had managed to keep the stare contest going. "M-maybe it's one of the game's hazards?"

The room swung in the opposite direction. Popping open his legs, Belle stood and planted them wide, letting the floor roll under him - another trick he had learned on the Maiden's Dream during its more tempestuous travels. "Do like me," he said. "Don't tense up or you're gonna fall. Relax your legs."

A confused frown passed over Ashe's features. "Uh, okay!" she finally said. "Can I ask a question, though? Why are you helping me?"

Belle stared at her. "What?"

"Why help? I mean, if I fell over, you'd probably win."

"Oh." Belle frowned. "I... Didn't really think about that."

The room's swaying slowed, only to be replaced by a low-grade vibration. The shaking rose from the floor, growing worse by the second, until it felt like a full-fledged earthquake was blossoming underneath their feet. The table started to jump and clatter, and there was a yawning of stressed metal...

A loud, sharp crack sounded, as if from an enormous bolt of lightning, and the floor opened up beneath them. It was as if the ground on which the sterile white room stood had disappeared, the tiles fell through the empty, featureless void below, Ashe and Belle falling with them.

The pink-haired girl reached out to grab his hand. Steeling against his fear, Belle stretched his arm to try and grab her. His fingertips brushed the back of her hand, then briefly tangled with her's, before a sudden buffet of wind ripped them apart. Belle wasn't sure who broke eye-contact first, but he supposed it didn't matter. The darkness swallowed them up; the game was over.

~+~+~+~

Belle hit ground with a hard whump!

"Owww," he groaned. Death was sure a lot more painful than he had expected it would be. Dusty, too.

He sat up and opened his eyes. What seemed like a giant red-and-white veil had been draped over his body, like someone's sick idea of a 'cheery' bodybag. It wasn't until a few seconds later that he recognized the pattern as belonging to one of the carnival tents. From somewhere nearby, he could hear Ashe struggling.

Belle was just about to call out to her when a bright flash of familiar cerulean ripped a ragged hole in the nearby canvas. A second later hands was pulling him out, and Belle emerged from the cover, blinking and disoriented, to find Kaden, One-Eye, Chick number two, some asshole, and Ashe.

“What is going on?” Ashe asked.

“We’re not really sure. I think it’s a good thing, though," Kaden said with his usual penchant for casual banter while the world was falling down around his ears.

“How is someone trying to bury us under a… tent?! A good thing?” Belle demanded. He turned to look around as the others talked. Although the carnival looked the same, something was subtley different about it from before. It was very quiet; the occasional sound of an electronic game beeping in the distance reached his ears over the chatter of the others, but apart from that, he didn't hear or see anyone.

The carnival was deserted.

There was a familiar yawning of metal from somewhere up above, and Belle squinted into the sky.

“What do you think ‘Fission Mailed’ means?” Kaden asked.

"MOVE!" Belle barked suddenly. Before the others could react, he had already grabbed Kaden and Ashe's wrists and started to run. If it was necessary to drag them to safety, he would.

"Belle?!" Kaden hissed as the hybrid yanked on his arm a little too hard. "What are you-!?"

Kaden's next words were drowned out by a titanic creaking of tortured metal. All eyes turned upward as the enormous sign that loomed about the carnival shuddered, flickering rapidly before winking out. Then it started to fall.

The others didn't need a second warning. They started running with Belle as they tore through the alleys. Belle leapt over the obstacles in his way, pulling his charges with him. As he leapt to clear a large tent, he pooled his energy, flushed it through his body, and kicked off the air, rocketing through the sky like a missile.

Seconds later the sign came down. The ground trembled as several hundred tons of steel girding crashed to earth. The force was enough that a wave of dust and debris washed out from the impact, chasing their combined heels before slowly receding.

Belle finally slowed and lowered to the ground, dropping Ashe and Kaden to their feet before landing himself. "What the fuck is that asshole trying to do?" he demanded. "That's not part of the game."

Kaden rubbed his arm. "It's not part of any game," he said, his voice low. "I think ... This place is coming apart."

"What does that mean?" Belle demanded. "What happens if it comes apart? What happens if we're inside when it does?"

The courier ran a hand through his hair. Belle wanted to smack him; now was not the time to pretend like he was in a shampoo commercial. "We need to get out of here," he said finally.

"But how?" Ashe demanded. "The gate was locked."

"Maybe it won't be now. Or we find another way," Kaden explained. "I don't know about you, but I don't want to be here when the system crashes."

"We've had enough crashing already," Belle added, eying the downed sign. "Okay; you know more about this computer stuff than I do, so you guys lead the way!"

"Right." Kaden nodded, then glanced down. "Nice pants."

"... Shut up."

[Kaden]

Not being crushed turned out to be a good thing. Digital or not, Kaden wasn’t in a rush to find out what happened if they died while in a computer, after all, if mainstream science fiction was to be at all believed, being killed in a computer obviously meant dying in the real world. It always seemed cliché to the courier during movies or TV shows, but when he was actually faced with it, he wasn’t in any hurry to point that out.

On the other side of things, the fact that something tried to crush them wasn’t nearly as good a thing. The Carnival had seemed perfect. In every sense of the word. People were always happy, the sights and sounds were always spot on, and nothing ever seemed to go wrong. All of a sudden, as Kaden looked around, he realized there were no people. There were no blaring sirens announcing someone’s victory over some arbitrary game of dexterity, no squawkers challenge anyone within ear shot to test their skills. There was nothing.

“I don’t like this,” Ashe spoke up.

Neither Belle nor Kaden responded. They weren’t big fans, either. Casting a glance at the collapsed sign, Kaden briefed a sigh of relief as Orion, Victoria and Lance were closing the distance between them. Given that all of them had made it through the gauntlet of Gamer’s bizarre events, the courier would have been surprised if any of them had fallen victim to a big chunk of falling metal.

Sadly, the fact that they were all together only meant that they wouldn’t know what was going on together. The Carnival around them, a fake by Kaden’s estimation, seemed to be laid out almost exactly as he remembered it. Even if it wasn’t, it wouldn’t be hard to find what he was looking for. As Ashe, Belle, Lance, Orion, and Victoria exchanged words, ensuring everyone’s safety, Kaden began moving. He probably would have gotten himself lost had Orion’s voice not stopped him.

“And where are you off to, boy?” the saiyan asked.

“The Arcade, I think,” Kaden replied. “If things are laid out the same, then it should be this way, I think.”

“You think this is the time to be playing video games?” Victoria asked, incredulously.

“What? No. The arcade was in a big tent.”

There was a moment of silence as Kaden watched his allies process the piece of information. To his delight, Orion nodded and began walking in the same direction he had been. The others seemed slow to follow, but they did nonetheless. As they were walking, Ashe jogged up beside the courier.

“So… you think there’ll be any fun games in the arcade?” she opened.

“Not really sure. If there was a staring contest in the last tent, who knows what we’ll find in the next one.” The courier shrugged. “Of course, we may not find anything at all.”

“You almost sound sad about that,” the girl observed.

“Not sad. It just wouldn’t be nearly as interesting as walking into a tent and finding ourselves… I dunno. In an episode of Iron Chef.”

“I always wanted them to use Peeps,” Ashe mused.

“Peeps?” Kaden cocked an eyebrow at her. “Like… the marshmallow duckies?”

“Yup.”

“What… could you possibly cook with them? And who would want to eat that?” Immediately after asking, Kaden laughed at the grin that Ashe flashed him. “Touché.”

Fortunately, Kaden’s wild guess turned out to be at least partially accurate. Indeed, there was a large tent where the Arcade should have been. The tent itself, though, was slowly expanding and contracting, as though it were… breathing. A large sign that should have read “Arcade” was, instead, a jumble of characters that didn’t make sense to anyone present. Slowly, the quintet approached the door to the tent.

No one was really eager to take the first step into the tent itself. As the mass of canvas contracted, the door-flap blew towards them wildly, only to swing the other direction as it expanded. Unfortunately, the inside was completely dark. The courier never would have guessed a circus tent could be so… foreboding.

Figuring, since it was his idea to look for another tent, he should be the one to take the risk, Kaden took the first step towards the door. Sadly, his timing was less-than-ideal. About a foot away from the door, the tent contracted, sending the door-flap whipping into the blonde’s face with enough force to knock him to his feet.

Before the door flap could be pulled back into the tent, Ashe reached out and grabbed ahold of the end that had beaten back Kaden, offering to hold it open for him. He was about to thank the girl when the door flap in her hands expanded, wrapped her up, and pulled her into the depths of the would-be arcade. The closest to the door, Kaden was the first one to rush forward and leap through the still-open doorway. It probably looked like an effort to be heroic, but he wouldn’t have been able to sleep well knowing something had happened to the pink-haired teen if something befell her because she was trying to hold a door open for him. That was about as emasculating as it got.

Instead of finding his feet on solid ground, Kaden felt himself tumble through the doorway of the tent and begin an erratic freefall. Sadly, the fall stopped quickly, and abruptly against a hard wooden surface. Struggling to reclaim the breath that had been forced from his lungs, the courier was slow to pick himself from the floor. When he did, he found himself all the more confused about his surroundings.

“Kaden!” came Ashe’s voice. “Are you ok?”

“Yeah,” the courier brushed himself off. “What about you, Ashe?”

The girl quickly informed him that she was also fine, then shared his concern of their whereabouts. The two of them were standing on the upper deck of what appeared to be a pirate ship. While that made little enough sense on its own, the pirate ship looked to be sitting in the middle of the road in a city that looked surprisingly familiar.

“I had to race through this city,” Kaden realized as he looked around. He had narrowly lost to Piper in atop a shiny red motorcycle a couple of rounds ago.

“Look at this!” Ashe called out, motioning for Kaden to join her at the edge of the ship.

As Kaden approached, the girl leaned as far over the wooden railings as she could, trying to reach something below. To the courier’s amazement, she was trying to dip her hand in water. Instead of roads winding their way through the city, the boat was sitting in the middle of some kind of… waterway. Though he would never have found an explanation for such a thing, Kaden’s musings were interrupted by a series of loud thuds behind him.

Belle, Victoria, Orion, and finally Lance all landed on the deck of the pirate ship, some more gracefully than others. Kaden and Ashe quickly shared the very little information they had. No one seemed to have any good guess as to where they were or how they got back. Though they had fallen from the sky, there was nothing above them but stars and even most of those were blocked out by the lights of the city. Before much speculation could be made, a new voice rang out.

“Howdy, y’all. Right fine bunch we got here.”

At the forefront of the upper deck, where one would expect to see a wheel of some kind, was the upper half of a robot. It’s waist fed directly into the floorboards of the ship. His LED eyes blinked from one person to the next as he placed his hands on what would have been his hips.

“Who the hell are you?” Victoria asked.

“Name’s Joans, little lady. I’m your ship, of course. I reckon y’all better get up off yer pimple. We’re about to get this show on the road.”

“What show?” Kaden asked. As he did, he cast a glance upward. Despite the robots speech, there was, indeed, a black flag complete with a skull and crossbones fluttering atop the highest mass.

“And there aren’t any roads,” Ashe pointed out.

“Well if you mail-order cowboys don’t have your spurs in a tangle…” Jonas shook his metallic head. “Tuck in your shirt tails and we may see the other side of this elephant yet. Try tah beat the devil ‘round the stump and each one of ya’ll end up in the bone orchard.”

“What the hell is he on about?” Orion spat. “At least the boy’s ramblings were understandable.”

Before either Jonas or Kaden had a chance to reply, their attention was drawn over the starboard side of the ship. From beneath the big blue watery road erupted a second pirate ship. Though it looked decayed and weathered beyond its useful years, after exploding onto the scene it stayed afloat. Standing at the helm of the ship were a quartet of warriors, only one of whom Kaden recognized as Raditzu. The other three, Bardock, Bra, and Kirano all seemed to sneer at their apparent competition.

“I think we’re... racing…” Belle said after a moment.

“That would be my guess,” Kaden added.

“Why aren’t they wet?” Ashe asked. “They were under water.”

“Get a wiggle on, ya buncha coffee boilers!” Jonas called out. Before they could ask any questions, the half-robot hooked a thumb over his shoulders. On the lower deck was a row of cannons, all pointed towards the other ship. “Ya may be on the hurricane deck, but runnin’ into silk means we’re all goin’ up the flume, so leave me in the saddle and get on them overgrown boomsticks.”

Once again questions ran rampant regarding the meaning behind the robots needlessly cryptic words, but they didn’t have much time to voice them. Swooping in from the sky, a… turtle riding a… smiley faced cloud appeared between both ships. In the turtle’s hands was a fishing rod, with what looked like a traffic light at the end of the line. Jonas hooted and hollered as the traffic light flashed red, then amber, and finally green. With a mighty lurch, their ship leapt forward.

The race was on.

[Orion]

Orion slapped himself in the face and kept it buried in his palm. The situation had shifted from mind numbingly boring to haphazardly random in a matter of minutes. He tried to retrace the series of events that led him here, although the starting and ending points were so bizarrely unrelated that the mere thought brought him to frustration. First Kaden and himself were staring uselessly into each other's eyes in a room so white they could've been enclosed inside a rigorously brushed tooth and now they were commandeering an AI controlled galleon racing beside another mismatched motley crew of losers. Gamer had even been so characteristically idiotic as to provide a cutesy turtle/cloud hybrid to commence the race.

Why me? I just wanted to kill things.

As soon as the levitating traffic lights dangling from the chelonian's fishing rod appeared, Orion knew it was some time wasting sprint to the finish over the choppy waves of ... wherever the hell Gamer threw them. Again, the cyclopean warrior sighed with heavy resignation. The single thread of hope he grasped so tightly was to win this pointless tournament so that even a sliver of a chance to murder Gamer with his own trachea would present itself. Thus, his inclusion in the seaworthy crew was sealed, despite his first instinct to hurl himself off board and will the water into his lungs so that he could return to the afterlife. If this wasn't the final insult, then Orion would have to let his imagination marinate in torturous, sickening ways to fatally wound Gamer.

The brigantine's artificial intelligence had been waxing indecipherable for quite a while now. On hearing his first jumbled, cryptic dialect, Orion attempted to unravel the true meaning behind the regional colloquialisms. Failing and failing hard without a whisper of conversance, he opted to tune out the robot's ramblings. Eventually his excitement reached fever pitch, the tone and urgency of his orders the only reason Orion perked up his ears.

He ignored everything before "so leave me in the saddle and get on them overgrown boomsticks." The beginning of the sentence was understandable; a saddle was the position for the director of a wild animal, so the AI obviously had intentions of helming the galleon to victory. His mention of "overgrown boomsticks" had him baffled, however. What was a boomstick? How was he supposed to "get on them?"

Orion parted his lips to berate the hindering language of Jonas before a familiar little fellow popped out from his robe, clambering up the onyx chest plate before finding a comfortable spot on his wide shoulders.

"What did I miss, old chap?" Sprinkles asked, more enthusiastic than ever.

The idea of flicking the space hamster into the depths of the ocean was an appealing one, but maybe he knew something. "Tell me, hamster. What's a boomstick?"

"Boomstick, eh?" he repeated, leaning on his cane. His beady eyes looked out over the deck. "Why, I'd wager it's those cannons pointing at the enemy ship, what!"

Sure enough, the other contestants were legging it to the side of the brigantine, grasping the bulbous end of the cannons with both hands to advocate better aiming. A silver lighter rested by each armament for lighting the wick that coiled upwards from their tops.

Sprinkles hopped down from the heights of Orion's shoulders and scampered along the ground, heading towards the bow. "I'll spend some quality time with this here AI, old bean! Good luck and all that!"

Before the saiyan could open his mouth in protest, the top hat wearing space hamster was by the torso of Jonas, conversing about the mystery of their existence, no doubt. Orion shrugged off the rodent's abandonment and jogged over to the remaining unmanned cannon. He happened to be situated between Kaden and Victoria, both of whom he surprisingly expected to be of some benefit in this mad sea dash. Kaden had proven his ability to think fast on his feet, moving seamlessly with the flow of the present, no matter where it took him. He was human and enfeebled compared to himself, of course, but he was heads and shoulders over the rest of that fetid gene pool.

Victoria was in the same boat, pardon the pun. Her heritage of humanity aside, she possessed a sharp mind, reflexes and experiences of a master bounty hunter, giving her an edge on almost everyone who was on the ship. She gave him a friendly smirk. Orion couldn't help but return it.

The cloud surfing turtle chirped loudly, garnering the crew's attention. The traffic lights illuminated in turn; the top light shone red, swiftly followed by the amber hue of the middle, and then the green signalled the beginning of the race.

"Go!" it squeaked before ascending into the sky and out of sight.

The entire group almost toppled over sideways from the abrupt and inexplicably instant acceleration of Jonas. Ashe almost lost her footing, but Kaden grabbed her arm, hoisting her back into a standing position. The rest were alert enough to lean against their cannons for support until the disorienting effects of sudden velocity faded. The opposing ship took off like a rocket as well, maintaining a negligible lead which see-sawed back and forth between the two competing vessels.

Orion snatched up his lighter, giving the small cog a curt flick and birthing a perfect flame into life. He examined the enemy galleon, searching for a strategic section to plough a cannonball through. His eye wandered until a shock of black hair entangled his train of thought. There was something vaguely reminiscent of that untamed mane flapping in the wind currents. Until he turned about, Orion wouldn't have guessed who it was.

Raditzu. The name almost burst forth from his memory. Every saiyan of his demographic worth his salt knew the name of the long haired warrior. Raditzu was one of the best saiyan elites the army ever had, crafting and honing his abilities to above saiyan levels, most notably his speed. No one on Vegeta-sei could outrun the spiky hairdo thicket, even when he was intoxicated. Orion then dwelled on the last memories he had of Raditzu; his disappearance. One day, he left the saiyan elites behind, possibly endeavouring to challenge an opponent worthy of his strength. That was the last he ever heard of him until now.

"...ion! Orion!" Victoria's shrill words punctuated through his ear drums.

"What? What!?" he defended harshly.

"Start shooting!" she yelled in frustration for around the seventh time. "Aren't you listening?"

"Hmpf," Orion grunted. Raditzu may be the ne plus ultra for every aspiring saiyan warrior to assume one day, but such prestigious statuses meant nothing on the battlefield, and even less in Gamer's freakish digital land. Orion held the lighter against the wick of his cannon, rolled the barrel towards Raditzu in the hopes of braining the biggest threat on the adversary galleon and held it steady, waiting for the gunpowder to combust.

===

"I say, marvelous day for a bit of yacht racing, what?" Sprinkles chatted away, staring out over the rushing crests of water that crashed against the hull.

"Howdy doo, little buddy!" Jonas exclaimed in what the space hamster presumed was an answer in the affirmative.

A violent wave rocked the brigantine. Sprinkles, totally unaware of the imminent hit, wobbled to and fro to maintain his balance.

"Whoa there, little fella!" the AI cowboy shouted. "Yer 'bout to fall off the horse if you're not more careful!"

"I say!" the furry guinea pig announced weakly, watching his diamond studded cane spin off the side of the deck and plunge into the sea. "Choppy waters, what?" He abruptly fell to his knees, pressing one paw against his stomach.

"Feelin' a little green 'round the gills?" Jonas supposed.

"Rather," came the hamster's reply. His head lurched forward, his stomach protesting at the unfavourable conditions, but he managed to stay its distress. "Feeling a little under the weather, what."

Before Jonas could form another witty retort, Sprinkles burped noisily, expelling a string of ones and zeros that ascended floated like a plastic bag trapped in a whirlwind. His beady eyes widened. "I say, that can't be good. Say old chap, what does it mean when my paw is tingling?"

"Tingling? Why, you been in the cactus patch?"

"I say, never!" Sprinkles' indignation was replaced with intensifying fear as he felt the sensation spread throughout his entire body. "I don't like where this is going, old bean."

===

Here was a welcome opportunity. Blast a cavity through one of the more respected and revered saiyan warriors from Orion's time with no repercussions. Sure, it was restricted to a frivolous sea voyage and it was only valid within some demented human's computer application, but he would take what he could get. A simulation of the real thing was just as good as the real thing, he told himself. He cradled the flame and touched it to the wick long enough for the heat to transfer. The spark chewed through the rope, winding down the coil and closer to the ignition. Orion adjusted the cannon's aim, making sure the long haired saiyan would be reduced to a pile of limbs. He waited with bated breath as the spark consumed the wick and entered the cannon. The line of sight was immaculate. Orion chuckled to himself.

Suddenly, the galleon jerked forward violently, as if a huge weight descended upon the bow. The perfectly timed cannon shot went astray, piercing through the waves half a metre before the enemy boat. Orion, however, was less concerned with the missed shot and more concerned with the massive beast that was sprawled on the deck, subsequently sinking the brigantine's bow and the entire ship with it.

"Whoa!" Kaden cried, pushing his body weight against the side of the cannon to prevent a slippery slide into the water. "Where did that come from?"

Orion would have been in a similar quandary if not for the monocle the size of a monster truck wheel worn by the monster. "What the hell do you think you're doing, Sprinkles?!"

The space hamster wasn't a hamster any more. His new shape was an amalgamation of a dragon with guinea pig features. Fur guarded its body instead of scale, no lengthy whip like tail extended from its back, and besides its teeth filled snout, Sprinkles' face was unchanged. A set of imposing wings unfolded from its back.

"Get the hell off the boat, you cockney bastard!" Orion scorned. "You'll kill us all?"

"Oh, I do say!" he declared in shock, flapping into the air. "I am ever so sorry for the trouble."

"How did you do -- never mind, I don't want to know," Orion cut himself off, taking position by the cannon as Jonas restabilised. The opposing galleon took advantage of the interruption, striding a distance ahead. The cyclopean soldier rotated the cannon forward, but the expanse between the two ships was too great for him to spot Raditzu with any certainty. He huffed, hoping that Jonas was capable of catching up.

Sprinkles soared ahead, enjoying the change of pace. Transitioning from scurrying along the ground, constantly fearful of feet treading all around him to the opposite end of the spectrum, sailing through the skies as an imposing, fire breathing dragon was exhilarating. He felt a pang of remorse for the detrimental effects his unexplained transformation brought to the brigantine of Orion's. As he cleaved through clouds with ease, he pondered if his new form would be of any assistance.

"I say!" he remarked to himself. "Capital idea!"

The space hamster-dragon narrowed his wings against his body, falling into a fantastic velocity. He swooped down over the enemy galleon, performing a pass while a collection of red and orange flames danced joyously between his fanged teeth. A generous application of fire would certainly assist his friend.

Sparkles spun around once more and changed course, flying directly towards the enemy ship's bow. The inferno within his maw was begging to be released, lashing out between his furry lips, and he was happy to oblige. With one final exertion, the race would be over.

He opened his snout, forcing the flames from his throat, but nothing but a string of binary digits escaped. Sparkles frowned in bewilderment before an unpleasant but familiar tingling vibrated throughout his dragon body.

In another absurd metamorphosis, Orion watched the airborne Sprinkles become obscured by a powdery shroud of smoke before emerging from the other end as a helpless trout, sporting a monocle and top hat.

The saiyan facepalmed. Should've drowned him when I had the chance.

[Victoria]

It was beyond bizarre, but she could only expect such things from Gamer now. It was a relief, on one hand, because they were no long held within the boring confines of the white room. Avoiding death was always fun, especially when it coincides with pretty lights and explosions. The team, as that’s what they had to be, leapt from the frying pan and into the fire. The girl followed, unsure of what the goals were, since the world had become one giant cluster of data and imagery. The sky twisted and turned, the ground became water that did not look like water. It only made her want to get out all the more, but their journey was far from over. As they pushed on the team found themselves on a pirate ship, and she went with the flow.

Victoria’s hands gripped the canon tightly, the water splashed and sprayed upon them from below while the ship cruised down the watery road. She gritted her teeth and worked the weapon, the blast tore through their competitions haul and they waved swords at them in anger. She loaded her canon, pivoted it towards her target, and let fire once again. Everything happened around her, her team mates fighting back with equal vigor, and a dragon-hamster soared above. She had to do her part, but the constant rocking of their vessel caused her stomach to churn in disagreement. It had to be at this moment that Victoria would find out she was not seaworthy.

Green in the face, but fighting with determination, she held back the increasing urge to puke her guts out. She let loose another shot towards the enemy and noticed the disappearance of their new comrade, the hamster. She paid little mind, he wasn’t real, and if the saiyan cared he would save him. She raced past the canon and leaned over the ship, no longer strong enough to hold back, she dealt with her sickness quickly and groaned pathetically. “How embarrassing,” she muttered and dragged herself back to her station. Victoria looked around quickly, taking stock of her comrades. The battle, if that’s what it was, had to be drawing to a close. They had been racing across the road-like sea for long enough, and both ships had been hit hard. They had to win, or they would be going down in no time.

Their ship sliced through the water, and she cried out eagerly. “I can see the end!” She pointed towards the line that they had to cross; it was situated between two buildings. “Wait, something’s not right.” She ran towards the front of the ship and stared at the finish line intensely. The wind pulled her hair back, fluttered her skirt, and took her breath away. She turned around suddenly, tried to call out, but nothing came out. The players had seen her moving, however, and watched as their ship raced through the finish line and right into a tattered portal. It had been as if the wall of space had been torn, similar to the tent that had all started in.

In a flash their entire ship was covered in a downpour of water. Victoria raced across the deck, hair soaked and clinging to her body. “We’re not in the same game, it’s changed again.” She shouted against the roaring wind. The others came close, clinging to the mast and the ship.

“Does this look familiar to anyone?” Kaden shouted, holding his arm up in an attempt to abate the washing waves. They were being tossed along on the ocean, caught within one hell of a storm.

“It’s…it’s the same as before,” the young man spoke out, he held on tightly to the ropes and netting that had been tied to the mast. “I was in an event with…Oh, this isn’t good.”

“What, what is it?” Orion demanded and pulled himself closer to the group. “If it’s bad, tell us now so we can deal with it.”

“A monster, in my event there was a Kraken, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it appeared again.” He shouted.

“How did you kill it?” The question had nearly been lost to the wind, but the other pink haired woman had gotten it out before the windy rain had smashed against their ship.

“Our ships killed it together, but…I don’t see another ship.” He answered and looked around helplessly.

“This might be the same, it might not. The last event was similar to yours,” Lance shot Kaden a look and used his free hand to wipe rain out of his eyes. “But it wasn’t exactly the same, since it was pirates ship not a race car or motorcycle. The other ship also had a strange group on it, so, my guess is that these events aren’t the same as before. If we’re going to fight anything here it could be completely different.” He concluded.

“Whatever, damn it, we’re going to capsize if this doesn’t stop.” Victoria cried out and pulled herself across the side of the ship towards the mast.”Let’s work on getting control of this ship, and get out of this storm. If something shows we kill it, simple as that.” She grabbed a dangling rope and pulled hard upon it.

“Spoken like a true warrior, I couldn’t agree more.” Orion reached above the fire haired youth and grabbed another handing rope. The ships sails flapped and began to catch air.

“Hey, don’t have all the fun.” Their pseudo-leader joined in, his blonde hair wet against his face and a keen look upon his youthful features.

The team worked together, everyone did their part. The players separated into groups, grabbing the ropes and letting the wind grab the sails. The ship coursed through the storm, cutting through waves and turning precariously as the ocean played with them. It wasn’t only the ocean that was out for them, it was their worst fear. The ocean began to erupt violently, and the waves thrashed towards them despite the wind having turned towards their favor. A rumble filled the sky, not so unlike the thunder, but the ominous chortle caused a shuttering chill to drag down Victoria’s spine.

“I-is that the Kraken, Belle?” She asked and looked towards him; she remembered his name from Kaden having shouted it. He would know if this were the Kraken or not.

“I don’t know, it could be.” He called from the side of the ship.

“It’s coming!” Kaden shouted and pointed at the swirling water from which the object stirred. They all held fast to the ship, ready to take action if any action could be taken.

The waters sucked inwards as the monster rose from the depths of the ocean, what came out made the hunter stare in utter confusion. A woman’s face arose from the darkness, a very ugly woman. Her huge face wobbled whilst her lips uttered the most horrid laugh that had ever befallen Vicky’s ears. Giant squid tentacles ripped into the air and smashed down around them. Their enemy continued to ascend before them, becoming the most massive human octopus Vic thought she would ever lay eyes on.

“HOLY FUCK WHAT IS THAT THING!” Belle pointed in utter disbelief. “That is definitely not the Kraken!”

“She looks familiar, but not from a previous event.” Ashe replied and looked over at the other players. “What’s the plan?”

“Usually I’d strike up a conversation, but I have a feeling this one won’t be in the mood for a chat.” Kaden held onto the netted ropes behind him with both arms. He stared at the beast, his eyes lit with zeal. Vic looked at him in amusement; it didn’t surprise her that he would have preferred to sort this out with words. She, however, had a method of fighting.

“Like I said, we kill it,” she stared at the giant squid woman, and rushed towards the side of the ship. “You hear that, you freak, we’re gonna take you down!” She roared against the whipping wind. The giant woman replied in laughter and a tentacle crashed into the ocean sending a wave against their rocking ship.

“Bohohoho, I’ll get you Snow White, and you’re little dog too!” The woman cried, her gray hair fell about her gigantic face and she raised her arms causing a series of waves to pound against their ship. Her cackling could only be compared to that of nails on a chalkboard.

“This isn’t looking good guys, she’s coming close!” Lance cried out and the ocean began to toss and turn the ship. Everyone cried out equally, tried to hang on, but the monstrous woman was on them like they were candy in a store. She grabbed them one by one, dropped them into her gapping maw, and swallowed them whole.

However, their untimely demise was not in the cards. They fell through her throat, tattered and torn, and into the darkness. “Are we in her stomach?” Someone asked, the darkness around them made it hard to discern where everyone was.

“Warning, fires have been detected on decks 12 and 15, sections 8 4 through C18.” A voice resounded and the darkness was abolished. The lights and beeps made Victoria looked around wildly.

“What…? Oh no, the Kill Cluster!” Victoria looked at the other players. “This looks similar to one of my events." She pointed towards the large screen in front of them; it was filled with stars that indicated they were in space. “This isn’t the same…” She hesitated and at the others one at a time. “What the hell is going on?”

Everyone’s clothing was the same, but the colors were distorted and tinted. She could only compare it to colors mixed together and washing downwards from a splash of water. She looked down at her own and patted the fabric of her shirt. The garment was fine, and not wet, in fact she was completely dry. The dark brown of her outfit was mixed with a light blue, and slowly oozed away like most of the world they were trapped in.

“Why is mine blue?” She asked aloud, and pointed at Kaden. “Yours is red.”

“This is a ship, maybe color indicates rank?” He replied.

“Let me guess, you’re the leader,” Orion replied smartly and walked away to inspect their surroundings.

“It doesn’t matter, this is just another game, and so what is it now?” Lance walked towards the blinking terminal ahead of the others.

“Warning, inner hull failure imminent on decks 23, 24, and 25. Decompression danger.” That same voice sounded around them, and Victoria turned sharply towards the large screen. A slew of starships appeared with their lasers ready to fire.

“I think this is another battle, and if we don’t start doing something, we’re going to be toast.” She shot a look at Kaden quickly. “What do you think, leader?”

“I wonder if they’d be up for talking this out?” He asked, smiling despite the situation. “Each event has had danger in it, but everything is changing, so I’m going to guess that somewhere in this event is another portal.”

“Just like the tent!” Ashe ran forward. “We must have entered into a new event when we entered that tent, and then when we crossed the finish line.” She explained excitedly. “Each event, whether planned or not, is opening up to another.”

“What do you mean? Are we stuck in this loop forever?” Belle asked, unsure of the new insight.

Orion turned away from the elevator he had been checking and crossed his arms. “No, this wasn’t planned. Gamer likes to make us entertain him, and every time we passed his round he would put us back into the carnival. This is completely erratic, and we haven’t had to hear his whining voice in some time.”

Victoria looked at the saiyan and smiled. He was smart, and she couldn’t help but admire the same thing about her other companions. They each had skills that she found to be more than helpful. If they were right, then the rabbit hole would end somewhere. The portals couldn’t go on forever, and as each event opened up before them, the world suffered its ill fate. She could only guess that the color of their clothing was as much indication of the situation as anything. She remembered the Titanic; the change in her attire had been the work of his game. It wasn’t working here, not how it was supposed to.

“Let’s test that theory, we don’t have much choice.” Lance nodded towards the ships navigation screen, their enemy had grown inpatient, and their weapons glowed with the intent to kill.

[Ashe]

"Kaden!" Ashe called, waving for the courier to look her way. When he didn't reply immediately, engrossed in conversation with the guy with the eyepatch, she ran over and grabbed him, jerking him away violently.

"What, Ashe?" he asked a bit stiffer than he intended.

"The, uh, thing is lighting up over there. The blinky thing. It keeps..."

"Blinking?" he finished for her.

"You have such a way with words," she smoothly replied as he took a sit at the console. "What do you think it is?" she finally asked, leaning over his shoulder.

He shrugged and looked over the console a moment before Orion stepped forward, deftly pressing a button that both of them had seemed to miss. "It's a communications feed," the blond finally announced unnecessarily as the screen before them lit up.

"Is this thing on?" the figure on the screen yawned, revealing nothing more than a massive forehead until it drew back, its long dark and spiky hair coming entirely into view. "Oh, there we go," the man finally smirked, looking over the crowd. "How do I keep getting you guys as my opponents?"

"Would you hurry this up, Raditzu?" a teal haired woman in the back snapped at the man on the screen, prompting him to wave her away.

"I'm just saying. You'd think this Gamer guy would have programmed a better matchmaking system then this. How else can you explain us getting paired down against these guys every single time?" the warrior snidely replied.

"Oh, just fucking blow them out of the sky already," the woman snapped again, burying her face in her palm as if she was ready to take over command at any moment.

Kaden and Ashe exchanged a look as the other pink haired woman came up to join them, standing alongside Orion. "I wonder if they realize there's no sky in space?" Ashe whispered to no one in particular, but Victoria corrected her quickly.

"I'd say the chances here are about the same as our being able to race a pirate ship through downtown."

"Point taken," Ashe acquiesced.

"Tch," the long haired man on screen expressed rudely. "We're supposed to blow you guys up," he announced. "You guys are pretty lucky - or unlucky, I suppose," he considered, leaning back in his comfortable Captain's chair and stretching his large hands casually behind his head, fingers spreading through his thick mane. "You've gotten the honor of being beaten by me repeatedly now. It's not very often one gets to compete with a warrior such as myself and live to tell the tale. Though I suppose Gamer's setup does rather assist you in that problem," he measured with a slight hint of irritation.

"I don't exactly expect any favors from this one," Lance warned from the back of the room.

Before Raditzu could continue his... awkward speech, the teal haired woman in the background cut in front of him. "Consider yourself fucked," she announced icily, the screen going black immediately afterwards.

Everyone sat in silence for just a moment before Kaden piped up good naturedly. "Well, I suppose it's not all bad."

"That's Bra, the current King of the Saiyan race," Orion informed their group.

"How can a girl be a King?" Ashe queried from his side.

He gave her a dismissive look before returning his eyes to the blank screen, grumpily answering her question. "Our race has always had a male heir to the throne before she took her place on it. To call her Queen would imply that her counterpart is the primary ruler and that she is simply his concubine. She has earned her place on the throne in a way recognized by all of our race, and we do not question her right to be there. There are those who disagree with her rule..." he trailed off, his gaze passing over each and every one of them before continuing. "But as you see, this hasn't caused a change of the throne."

"Wait, haven't the Saiyans constantly been fighting civil wars for the throne during nearly the entire Vegeta dynasty reign?" Lance pointed out, provoking a quick response from the cyclops.

"Yes," he snapped, turning to look him directly in the eye. "How does this have any bearing on our current situation?"

Baller's eyes nervously twitched as he held his hands up defensively. "Whoa, calm down there big guy. I just thought since you were handing out information..."

"Information that might make you understand what we are facing," Orion clarified. "Bra is ruthless and temperamental, and if we expect to survive till the next round, I'd recommend everyone grab a defense panel immediately."

"That name is so familiar," Ashe mumbled nearby, spreading her arms wide while thinking out loud. "I just can't remember where I know it from. Maybe someone I know mentioned it once."

"Get your asses in gear!" Belle cried out from behind them, staring at another screen. "They just fired a bunch of shit at us!"

Before most of them could react, the entire ship rocked violently from side to side, throwing most of the group to the ground as a few explosions were heard in the background. "Throw up some more shields or something!" Victoria insisted, jumping back up to get to a computer station.

Ashe managed to find her feet and grabbed the nearest chair before climbing into it, looking around at the strange symbols around her. "I have no freakin' clue what this stuff says," she finally whined, staring wide-eyed. "I never took Latin!"

"Just push some fucking buttons!" Belle raged from the back, frantically slamming his hand down on anything that seemed moveable.

"Uh, some more bad news."

Everyone looked up when Kaden spoke, following his hand to the screen above them. Their eyes widened in unison as they took in what he was saying while their minds came to the same realizations on their own. "It looks like they combined that giant whirlpool pirate fight event with this..."

"Is that a freakin' black hole?" Ashe demanded, looking back and forth at the group. "No, seriously, a black hole?"

"Well, you can't actually see a black hole," Lance pointed out.

"WHAT?" the girl cried back. "Are you kidding me?" she asked loudly, each word punctuated by a wild throwing of her arms in the direction of the screen, as if guiding a plane in for a landing. "What do you call that thing then?"

"A... uh," he began, scratching his arm intently. "Black... space... whirl pool?" he guessed with a shrug.

Ashe began to cross her way towards his general direction when another barrage from the adjacent ship rocked her to her feet again. Directly across from them, both ships found themselves caught within the pull of the maelstrom, the hull of their massive starship groaning under the pressure as they began to glide in perfect choreography across from one another while skirting the outer rims of the gravity well. She pushed herself to her feet and found her chair once more, looking at the screen with panic in her eyes. "Hold on tight!"

"Got it!" Victoria announced, quickly hitting a series of keys before doing a quick fist pump in the air. Everyone braced themselves, to include her, as the shots dissolved just short of actually striking their ship. "Shields are UP," she smirked, leaning back in her chair.

"Great," the cyclops reacted cynically. "Now we should probably blow them out of the sky so we can get crushed by this black hole while in one piece."

"I told you it was a-" Ashe began, throwing her voice across the room in Lance's direction.

"Hey, all I was saying is that in reality you can't actually see-" he attempted at a defense, prompting Belle to intervene.

"Would both of you shut the fuck up already?"

"Incoming," Kaden warned once more, everyone gripping their seats in anticipation.

The energy beams struck the shields just moments before the torpedoes reached them, creating a weak point in the energy field. A series of explosions detonated just outside of the field but to the group's dismay, a small subset of explosives continued their path through the short lived hole that had been blown through the shield before it reverted itself.

"Shit," someone cursed just before the explosions struck the side, prompting the computer to speak up.

"Another hull breach," Victoria informed them, her eyes reading the data on her computer screen as she searched for some method of sealing off the damage. Her hands pressed a few buttons hesitantly, breathing out a relieved breath as the computer spoke up once more to inform them that the damage had been resolved. "We're running out of shields, I think," she continued, frantically relaying the information.

"No," Orion interrupted, at her side suddenly and reading over her shoulder. His finger touched her screen and drew her attention to its location. "Shields are still doing pretty well. They just gave us a smart attack by timing their shots to rip a small hole in a specific location to let them backdoor a smaller attack through the opening before it closed up.

"That's not good," Kaden commented.

"No, it's not," the Saiyan unhappily agreed.

"Doesn't look like we're going to have all that long to worry about it," Lance groaned, looking outside of the ship. Already, they could see the other ship had began to distort, stretching one side lazily towards the event horizon while fighting to keep their weapons directed at their opponent. "You'd think they knew something we didn't."

"What do you mean?" Belle asked him.

"Well, I mean they don't even seem to care that they are about to get ripped apart atom by atom," he continued.

"Uh, because they are just game characters?" Ashe stated sarcastically. "They'll get ripped apart pixel by pixel while we are the ones smashing atoms into one another."

"Maybe not," Kaden considered, standing up suddenly to pace back and forth. "Maybe..." he began, his hand running nervously through his hair for a moment before Victoria realized where his thoughts were going.

"Maybe Lance is right that they know something we don't," she spoke up, prompting him to nod.

"Right. What if the center of the black hole is the next portal out of this event?"

"What if the center of the black hole is the singularity cell annihilating doom of our entire existence?" Ashe countered coolly.

"...right," he sighed, unsure of himself. "Well," he decided, spreading his arms out and gripping the back of the chair he'd been sitting in. "We're about to hit the event horizon either way guys. The way I look at it is this - we can either send all power to the main engines and hope to break the hold of this black hole and hope to whatever power you believe in that we don't get blown away by that other ship as they go down, or we can floor it straight into the center and hope we come out the other side."

Everyone was silent a moment as the grave thought passed between them.

"I mean, everyone is at stake here. So I think we should go with a unanimous decision here," he finished, his eyes still glued to the screen as another series of missiles found themselves deflected by the shields, the gravity of the maelstrom having interfered with the precision targeting.

"...let's give it a shot," someone finally spoke up, prompting a few others to agree hesitantly.

Kaden nodded and looked over to Victoria. "Alright, think you can put all the power into the engines?" he asked her.

"Shouldn't be an issue," came her reply.

"Wait," Belle interrupted. "I thought the scenario of putting all the power into the engines would get us blown up by the other ship?"

Lance shook his head and took the question. "That's if we are trying to fight our way back out of this whirl pool-"

"-black hole!" Ashe threw in with a grin.

"-at a snail's pace while the other ship is firing at us. Because of the gravity, no matter how hard with floor the engines, we'll be barely moving on our way back out of its pull, and that's hoping we don't hit the event horizon before getting enough speed. But if we floor it going into the whirl pool-"

"-black hole-" came the instant reply from the background.

"- then theoretically-" he tried to finish, but this time it was Orion that interrupted him.

"The plan is to boost the engines to send us through the hole before the next volley can decimate us," he explained.

"Yeah, that," Lance agreed.

Belle stared at him a moment. "Whatever the fuck you just said, let's just do it already. And I swear to god, if this gets us all killed, I'm going to come back to life and kick all your asses!" he warned them.

At that moment, Victoria opened her mouth to announce that she'd sent all of the remaining power to the ship's boosters, but everyone found their words caught somewhere in their air passages, unable to escape as their velocity increased exponentially. Their eyes all twitched as one to the computer screen as a volley of rockets seemed to stop mere inches from the direct from of the ship before freezing in place.

The entire ship, and everyone on it, began to stretch out through space, their very thoughts no longer able to continue through their minds as reality itself began to shatter. That was when their consciousness went black.

---

"Did you like the part where we pretended to kill you?" a strange cheery yet computerized voice echoed throughout all of their ears. "That was fun."

Ashe's eyes slowly opened to see her companions all picking themselves up from the floor around her with a series of groans. Each of them stretched their sore muscles as their fingertips danced across their bodies to make sure that every part was where it should have been. Satisfied with her body structure, Ashe noted that their clothing had changed once more into what appeared to be some form of prison garb.

"Please lie down on the ground and remain stationary until a party representative can arrive and escort you to the party room where there will be cake," the voice echoed once more through the room.

"Where are we this time?" Belle demanded, looking around angrily.

"Anyone know what this is?" Victoria spoke up shortly after. In her hands was a large cube with its polished surfaces adorned with what appeared to be... hearts. Pink hearts.

[Ashe]

"So what do you suppose this is for?"

They were all gathered around in a circle as Kaden turned the strange object around in his grip, studying every completely identical plane without any true revelations. "Do you think the hearts do anything?" he asked them again, attempting to use his thumbs to push in on where each symbol adorned.

"It almost looks lonely," Ashe decided, drawing a look from each of the others.

"And how... the hell did you come to that conclusion?" Victoria finally asked, eliciting nothing more than a shrug from the other pink haired girl. Shaking her head, she took the cube back from the courier and gave it another look. "Maybe we're fighting some monster and this is to bash its head in. Or some kind of puzzle box that opens up for weapons."

"Well, I already tried to push different spots on it to see about a switch, but nothing," Kaden pointed out.

Off to the side, the only one of the group with a single eye seemed to have taken in more of the details about their surroundings than anyone else in the group had managed. They had awoken in a room that had been completely circular in structure, completely white, and completely empty, aside from two objects. "A large button... and a cube," he considered, turning the ideas around in his head without speaking out loud.

Belle, on the other hand, had been watching him, having seen absolutely no point in the rest of the group's obsession over the heart patterned box. "So spit it out already!" he finally snapped after having watched the Saiyan turn ideas over in his head. "I'm ready to get the fuck outta' here!"

The rest of the group turned and looked over to see what all the fuss was about, finally prompting the man to voice his thoughts. "Give me the box," he stated firmly, holding out one arm. Without actually waiting for the box to be handed over, he simply reached forward and took it, turning back from the group and walking over to the large button in the floor.

"I think I see where this is going," Lance spoke, but everyone had already realized it moments before. The large man stepped onto the button, inciting a panel of the wall nearby to suddenly slide directly up into the ceiling to reveal an opening. Before anyone could actually go through the exit, however, he stepped back off of it, causing the panel to seamlessly integrate back with the wall and return the state of the room to a doorless cell. "Button has to stay held down in order to open the door, so he's going to put the cube onto the button," he figured.

"Heh," Victoria acknowledged, turning to look at the door as it slid back open. "Well, I'm not going to waste any more time in the padded cell then," she decided, striding through it without another word.

Orion set the cube calmly down, allowing its weight to hold the keep the button pressed in, before turning to follow her through the passage. The rest followed his lead in a fairly cheery mood while looking around at the room just outside of the first one. It was almost the same as the first one, but this one involved a new and more obvious door sitting just atop a ledge. No stairway was in sight.

"Well," Kaden laughed as he gave the group a look. "This was a triumph. Anyone think they can jump high enough to grab onto that ledge?" His gaze fell on each member of the sextet as he gave a shrug. "Well, what about that box?"

Ashe jumped at the chance to help and raised her hand quickly. "I'll get it," she declared, rushing back through the previous doorway. As she reached the cube, she kneeled down quickly to pick it up, grinning from ear to ear as if she had found a treasure.

"Wait!" she heard from the other room, but it was late. As soon as she stepped off the button, the door slid shut, leaving her sealed within the room.

"Oh," she realized, turning and setting the box back onto the button before looking back out the reopened exit. "Hey guys!" she waved. "So I'm not sure this box thing is gonna work."

It was just a moment later when a shimmery circle seemed to appear on the wall nearby, the image of Lance walking towards it. "Guess what Belle found," Kaden laughed from the sliding door as Lance strolled through the open circle with his arms widespread. "Some kind of button that aims a beam at something and opens a hole in whatever its targeting."

"Uh, ok," she shrugged, not entirely getting it but connecting it to some video games she'd played in the past. She picked the cube back up from the button once more as Lance stepped back through the hole in the wall. Moments later, she went through the portal behind him, returning to the rest of the group with the heart adorned cube.

Kaden was right, in retrospect. It turned out to be the perfect stool to help the tallest members of the group be able to pull themselves up onto the ledge before turning to help the smaller members up by the arm. "So here we are," he had said after they all stood next to the door, watching Ashe cradle the cube she'd insisted on pulling up with her. "Four guys, two girls, and a cube."

"Would you rather two girls and a cup?" Ashe piped up from the back.

Someone gagged as the door slid open before them, leading the entire group inside quickly. Immediately the room erupted in gunfire, all of them throwing themselves to the floor immediately as the bullets continued over their head. "Shit shit shit SHIT," Belle cried out, sliding across the floor until a nearby wall blocked the sentry turrets across from him.

Looking across the carnage, everyone had made it to a wall but one - Ashe was cowered behind her friendly companion cube. "Someone take out those turrets!" she screamed, curled into as tight of a ball as she could manage.

Every time one of the group attempted to lean around the corner to help her, however, the room erupted in gunfire once more, causing them to shrink back behind the walls. "We can't reach you!" Lance yelled back towards her, panicked.

"There's a button behind you on that wall," she realized, calling to the group. "Maybe someone can touch it?"

"Not with those guns firing."

Growling loudly, she twisted, kicking the cube as hard as she could across the room from her place on the floor, causing it to hurtle across the room to strike the turret directly, knocking it over. The room burst into bullets once more as it fell to its side, spraying the ceiling randomly in every direction before shutting down on its own, leaving Belle to dive for the nearby button.

His fingers brushed the tip as the human female rose to her feet, grabbing the cube once more before looking to the others. "I'm making a note here," she bragged, holding the cube up like a trophy before gesturing to the turret. "Huge succe-" she began before the floor beneath her suddenly opened, another portal appearing in the direct center of the room where she stood. Her words were swallowed quickly as she found herself in a freefall, the cube floating directly over her head before vanishing through the portal behind her.

Then silence.

"WHAT?" Belle demanded a moment later, his hand dropping from the button on the wall. "I just did what she told me!"

No one questioned the orange haired kid. The only words spoken were those of Orion, taking control of the situation once more. "I don't see any other way to go but after her," he finally stated, looking down into the shimmering black portal.

"What do you mean?" Lance questioned, looking around. "There's got to be somewhere to go other than the big black hole in the floor-"

"Whirlpool," someone quipped on Ashe's behalf.

"And no, I'm gonna have to agree with Orion," Kaden decided, approaching the rift. "Looks like nowhere to go but in. Maybe there will be another event on the other side?"

"Or a way out of this fucking place," Belle grumbled.

[Victoria]

As of being swallowed wasn’t enough, being stretched like putty was on a whole other level of messed up. She felt the world twist in on itself, felt the air sucked out of her lunges, and the darkness envelope her entire being. This was not the first time, and with relief she breathed a sigh and looked at the small room she and her companions had been sucked into. It had been another Gate, one more realm that Gamer had created for their adventure. She had been right; most of them had the same idea, each time they found the portal, black hole, or whirlpool they moved onward. It wasn’t clear as to whether they were going backwards of forwards, but they weren’t dying. The game was becoming unstable, and unable to fulfill its deadly deeds. They managed to warp into the next level, trudging through with only one goal: Freedom.

Victoria followed the troop, and like the other events, this was not different. Despite the cube being marked so pointlessly, it proved to be a necessary tool. She couldn’t help but admire the puzzle dynamics behind the game, but she didn’t want to remain long. She didn’t lack intelligence, just patience. It wasn’t until the gunfire that was unleashed upon them that she considered this place to be less of a snooze fest. Thirsting for some battle, she had attempted to sneak a peek at the enemy, only to nearly have her head shot off. The other female was smart, however, and used the same cube to solve the puzzle. Her victory in hand, she raised the object high, and then proceeded to fall into the newly formed pit that Belle had opened in the ground. It had been placed for the turret, but if anything, it could be their way out.

She jumped down into the darkness, her hair flew upwards with the pull of gravity, and she fought back the urge to scream as she plummeted towards certain death. With her eyes held tight, and her fists clenched, she prepared for the landing. Her body turned within the dark space, and she felt strangeness. Like a feather floating on the wind, she seemed to drift slower and slower until finally landing with little to no notion. Vic opened her eyes and stared at the sky, fluffy fat clouds slowly crept along the dark blue expanse. She held a hand up lazily, and made to grab the puffs with her fingers, much like star catching.

“Wait,” she bolted upwards into a sitting position. “Are we…could we have…” she looked at the others, each of them rising from the ground or standing already.

“No, we’re not out, look,” Kaden pointed towards the horizon. The edge of the world was distorted; code flickered in and out, as if the system could not support the graphics. As if to add to the ominous sight the ground began to shake, and each member of the team seemed to cast a cautious glance at each other and the ground beneath them.

“Hey, check out the digs.” Victoria looked down at her clothing, no longer a surprise, it had changed once more. Her body was adorned with a white and red robe, and a hood that she could wear over her head. “You guys have different clothing too.”

Each of them had different clothing, but it was just that, clothing. Victoria turned away to look across the ocean they had been placed before. The warm sun beat down on them and she felt herself yearning for home once again. It was nice to feel at peace for once, the cold air and the calming waves lapping against the shore made her want to close her eyes. She looked across the water, and her lips curved downwards. They had no time to rest, or to consider themselves free yet. The flickering and trembling were just indication of the bigger threat. She wanted the answers, but so far none had been given. They would have no choice but to keep going, or stay and be killed. She tightened her fists, and faced the team. “We have to move, the code is being…eaten.” She walked past the group and towards the trail that led away from the beach.

“Eaten, how?” Orion looked out across the water with a hand over his eye. “Oh, that’s how.” The others followed with their own eyes. The sky and the water were equally becoming flickering code, and it was slowly moving towards them. The system was beginning to decompile.

“Hey, look, I think that’s a camp!” The young girl called and waved a hand at them. Victoria hurried towards her, wondering how the youth had gotten ahead so quickly.

“Hey, you’re right. What’s with this place, anyway? No monsters, or…anything.” Belle asked and scratched the top of his head. “What’s with that exclamation point?”

“Only one way to find out.” Lance walked past them.

They proceeded towards the small camp. A meager fire produced smoke into the air, while a makeshift shelter made from animal skins cast a shadow on the figure sitting beneath. The stranger sat upon a grass matt whilst a stick of fish cooked upon the flames. They rounded the camp and faced the only person in the vicinity, but held their guard.

“Who’re you?” Victoria asked and looked down at the man. He looked up and made her take half a step back. “What…are you?” She asked, not as confident as before.

“Hmm, this dude looks familiar.” Ashe stated and eyed the humanoid. He stood up and looked at each of them in turn, the bright yellow exclamation point floated above his head, similar to the halo that remained above Orion’s head.

“Humph, this is it?” He replied gruffly. “My name is Margoz, and I’ve got a quest for you.” His lips revealed his savage teeth, and his piercing eyes bore into each of them.

“Look, we aren’t here for a quest, we’re here to advance another level and get the hell out of this game.” Victoria found her confidence again and raised a fist. “Where’s the next Gate, is it another portal, or a whirlpool?” She demanded.

The orc laughed, and then proceeded to place a hand on his torso and laugh even harder. She lowered her hand and lost her resolve. “W-what’s so funny?” She asked.

“This guy isn’t one of us, he probably doesn’t know what’s going on.” Kaden explained.

“Then let’s keep going.” She turned away and moved towards the path.

“Wait, this creature may have a purpose. His quest might be where the level ends, and it might take us further.” Orion said this as he held out his arm to stop her from leaving. “First the race, and then the sea battle…everything is different, we can’t afford to look something over.” He looked at her sternly.

“You’re right.” She nodded and turned around again to look at the quest giver.

“So, what’s our quest?” Ashe perked up, eager to get the game underway.

“A beast has been terrorizing Orgrimmar, and the last hope of the city lies with you six.” He crossed his arms. “Its power is beyond anything we have ever seen, so it won’t be easy.” He nodded grimly.

“What is it?” Lance asked.

“It’s a dragon, his name is Bahamut.” The orc replied ominously, his eyes narrowing. “The last news I received told me that even Thrall,” he paused and took a seat again on the grass matt, “is having a difficult time.” He finished. “I was told that a group would come, and they would save us, and so I waited.”

“Hmm, this is very far-fetched.” Victoria said aloud.

“This isn’t supposed to be realistic, none of it is real. Gamer can make anything, and do anything, as long as we’re trapped here.” Kaden replied and moved a hand through his blonde hair. “All we have to do is kill a dragon right? It doesn’t sound so bad, considering its six against one.” He flashed a smile.

“Yeah, right, because you kill dragons all the time.” Belle rolled his eyes at the older man. “We don’t even know what the damn thing can do!” He exclaimed and raised his hands.

“It can’t be any worse than what we’ve come across so far.” Ashe interjected. “We’ve played how many games now, and we haven’t even been scratched. Maybe we can’t be hurt anymore?” She glanced at the others.

“That doesn’t explain the sign falling earlier; it could have caused some serious damage.” Lance pointed out. “But you’re right, these games have been…sub-par, especially for Gamer.” He held his hand to his chin and lowered his face in thought.

“There’s only one answer to this problem,” Victoria walked past the group and past the saiyan that had stopped her once already. “We can’t go back, it's like Orion said,” she looked towards the ocean, nearly completely eaten by the menacing code, “so we go forward.” She pointed towards the town that was nestled within the rocky mountain it had been carved into. “Who wants to go dragon slaying?” She pulled up the hood of her white robe and looked over her shoulder, she smirked, not ready to be defeated by the game.

[Kaden]

Go to some mythical castle-town and slay the dragon laying siege to it. Seemed simple enough. While, as Belle pointed out, it was true that Kaden wasn’t exactly versed in how to most efficiently kill a dragon, his confidence did not waver. It wasn’t self confidence, not really. He was surrounded by some of the most able-bodied and quick-witted people he had ever met, and the fact that they could all fly around and shoot death rays out of their eyes meant that whatever they came across was in for a very bad day.

Aside from being endlessly entertaining, the series of events that the courier had been thrown into showed him something that he would only have guessed at before. When he talked, the people around him listened. Not all of them seemed to care for the things he said, but they listened nonetheless. He had felt it presumptuous to think of himself as a “leader” of any kind until Victoria began joking about it.

Sure, it had been a joke, and Kaden contextualized that it had more to do with the outfit he had almost been wearing aboard the ship from a couple events ago, but it got him thinking. He wanted to help the people around him escape Gamer. He wanted to watch them succeed against anything he threw at them. He wanted to show them, and himself, what happened when he stopped being detached.

Fortunately, the “Orgrimar” that was being attacked was not far off. Kaden was thankful for that. Their surroundings were nothing more than a barren wasteland, stretching on far into the horizon. Mountains rose up in the distance and every now and then the group would stroll past a fissure or crag that opened into a series of tunnels and caves that snaked their way underground. The latter Kaden only knew because his curiosity had prompted him to release a few Pulses of energy.

Moving from the landscape, Kaden’s mind turned to consider the garb that each person had been thrown into. Interestingly, the game seemed to have had no problem clothing them, unlike a couple events ago. What that could possibly mean remained a mystery, but a glance over his shoulder to the distorted series of ones and zeros off in the distance made Kaden think it wasn’t really a good thing.

Victoria had been the first to take note of their attire, her white and red-trimmed robe taking her interest almost immediately. Belle was wearing a sturdy breastplate and trousers that, remarkably, matched his fiery hair quite well. Walking beside Kaden, Ashe was wearing brown leather pants and vest along with a green shirt and bandana. Orion’s outfit, in Kaden’s eyes, was easily the most interesting; orange and red clothes made up an elaborate ensemble, complete with a long flowing cape. To the courier’s dismay, the saiyan ripped the red wide-brimmed hat from his head and tossed it to the side; the white feather that adorned the hat looked quite stylish. Kaden’s outfit, unfortunately, wasn’t much to look at: a large blue robe and a pointy yellow hat with a wide brim.

“Why didn’t you get a new outfit?” Kaden said aloud as he considered Lance. He didn’t realize he had spoken aloud until the boy answered.

“No clue. Glad I’m not in a dress, though,” he replied, smirking at Kaden.

The truth was hard to argue with, so Kaden simply shrugged. Any response he made would have been cut short, regardless. As the party crested a rise in the wasteland, Orgrimar came into view. Things were not going well. A massive wall stood as the first sight of the city, though it seemed to have done little stop the rampaging Bahamut.

Strewn across the ground, both within and without the city, were countless bodies… or parts of bodies. Green and blue skin mixed with the crimson of blood and the brown of the desolate earth as though painting some horrific picture. Standing in front of it all, casting his glance about the ruined city as though to admire his own handiwork, was the dragon himself.

Standing at least fifteen feet tall, four massive wings adorned the dragon’s back, each glittered as the rays of the setting sun danced off the steel-like surface of his scales. Two massive arms were crossed against his chest, his head turned in the direction of the incoming party, as though he had been expecting their arrival. Against the backdrop of carnage, it took a great deal of willpower for Kaden to keep his stride. Virtual or not, it was a horrendous scene.

“That thing’s huge…” Ashe was the first to comment.

“And it doesn’t look like he had any problem tearin’ through that city,” Lance followed up.

“Doesn’t matter how big he is,” Victoria said, a grin spreading across her face. “We have a job to do.”

“If he stands in our way, he’ll just have to be cut down,” Orion stepped towards the monster as he spoke.

“Besides,” Belle spoke, stepping forward as Orion had. “The bigger they are, the harder they fall.”

There was the source of Kaden’s confidence. It wasn’t even really his own, but around him were people that could be counted on. They wouldn’t back down, they wouldn’t waver, and they would never give Gamer the satisfaction of winning. Regardless of what they had to go through, they would come out the other side that much stronger for it. He couldn’t help but smile.

“Belle, you should make the first charge,” Kaden started. “Victoria and Orion can follow up while Ashe and Lance stay back with me. If you three can weaken it up, I’ll support you while getting ready for the big finale.”

“Are you giving us orders?” Belle turned to Kaden, an eyebrow cocked.

It was all Kaden could do to keep from smiling wider. It was a serious situation and he didn’t want anyone to think he was taking as anything but that: serious. “Yes,” he replied. “I guess I am.”

There was a moment of silence as the team members considered one another. Kaden would have been shocked if Orion even cared whether or not a human was trying to take charge. Victoria, he was hoping would be fine as long as she got to unload on the big beastie. Ashe and Lance didn’t seem like they were in much of a position to be throwing themselves into combat.

Turning his attention to Belle, Kaden could only hope the hybrid saw the glimmer of… emotion in the courier’s eyes. Belle had been the one to point out that Kaden had been detached from his plans, removed from the very things he had suggested in the past. He didn’t want to be that person, and he hoped Belle could see that. Whatever the hybrid saw, it was enough to ease any doubts he might have had.

“Alright,” Hibiki shrugged.

“I hope you’re watching, Gamer.” Kaden whispered to himself as Belle, Victoria, and Orion shot forward. “Because you’re next.”

[Ashe]

Everything erupted into chaos all at once. What had originally been a foolish and near suicidal plan to rush the great serpent had turned into a stupid plan at that. The three of them had gotten just within the dragon's sight before it turned, lashing its great tail across towards them, flinging the remains of buildings at the trio. "Move!" Orion commanded, leaping high into the air before performing a great aerial display between the great shards of iron and wood.

Simply ducking beneath the tail and then actually using his great arms to knock aside any incoming debris, Belle continued his charge at the beast, Victoria falling in beside him once more. The creature's great claws touched down as it's horned maw turned in the direction of its next meal. The world burst into great luminosity as a large beam of ki suddenly slammed into the scaly armored side of the dragon. It spun immediately, its great claws swiping through the air to narrowly miss the cyclopean warrior once more.

Judging as best as she could from the back, Ashe supposed the first line of the assault was doing fairly well. They weren't dead yet, and that was always a plus. "Shouldn't we have some kind of weapons or something?" she asked the remaining team, fumbling her hands along her waistline a dagger or something.

"You'd think so, wouldn't you?" Lance agreed from beneath his blue outfit. "I wonder if this arm canon still works," he supposed, holding his arm up and facing it in the direction of the boss monster. With a slight amount of effort, the canon began to glow, releasing a blue burst of power at it. "Uh, shit," he yelped as it turned towards them.

Kaden threw his arms around Ashe and dived to the side with her as a stream of energy erupted near them from the direction of their opponent, Lance just narrowly avoiding it himself. They lay there for a moment as they waited for the dust to settle, hearing the further sounds of conflict around them as their three team mates reignited their assault. "Thanks," she breathed out, her face an inch from his ear.

"Uh, yeah," he comforted her, pulling himself to his feet and helping her up, brushing the dirt from his sides. Without allowing the situation to grow awkward, his hand grabbed her own, his other hand rising to fire a small blast of energy, deflecting a piece of thrown debris from their path. Lance slid up next to them once more, charging his arm canon again.

The dragon swept its massive set of four wings as Orion leaped into the air to take another shot at it, blowing him and his team away before it suddenly ascended higher into the air. "Dammit!" Belle cursed, glaring up towards it with what appeared to be a small tree in his grasp.

"I'm on it," the other pink haired woman stated, her eyes lighting up with energy before it sparked into her palms. Her hand rose high into the air like a beacon, calling down a strike of electricity towards the rapidly rising beast. Despite its size, it's bellowing wings pushed it away just before being struck, repeating the motion twice more as Victoria tried to call down two more bolts. "Oh bull-" she began, the light fading from her eyes as the ground beneath them suddenly shook.

"What... is going on now?" Lance asked, hearing Kaden's immediate whistle to summon the rest of the group back in.

"Look!" the courier motioned, his hands pointing directly up to the sky. Everyone's vision followed, causing a few downcast looks immediately.

"Its chargin' its lazers," Ashe realized, following the gathering energy that was pooling directly before its open maw.

"Ok, so we start planning a counterattack," Orion decided. "I'll worry about deflecting the beam with my own, you guys worry about-"


"Yeah, about that," Kaden interrupted, his eyes illuminated with a blue hue. "I'd actually highly recommend completely avoiding this one. It just doesn't look... right," he settled on, taking a few steps back with his arms out.

"So how long do we have to get out of here?" Victoria asked, following his lead as the others adjusted to his motion.

"Roughly six more seconds," he stated, pointing just above the creature.

Ashe followed his gaze, lacking the assistance of her own ki but seeing of all things... "Are there really actual numbers up there counting down?" she asked, finding her words clipped as Kaden grabbed her by the arm and turned, running as quickly as he could. Everyone fell quickly behind as they tried to clear the area entirely, rushing through the great gateway of the mountain encrusted town.

3...

2...

1...

They all spared one last look over their shoulder as the massive beam of energy hurtled down from beneath them. Kaden quickly made note of a few subtle differences in the blast before it struck the ground two feet behind them, nearly singing their hairlines. Where they expected an explosion, there was only silence. Nothing was thrown through the air, nothing further happened... at all.

"I don't... understand," Lance groaned, pushing himself back up as others followed suit. "What was so bad about..." His words trailed off completely as they turned in the direction of the former great capital of Orgrimar. "Its... gone. Everything," he breathed, looking around.

The entire mountain, to include the quest giving orc and the ground all the way up to the point just behind them was simply not there. There was just... emptiness. A series of floating code had taken its place. "The beam it fired at us, it was similar to what's decompiling all the code around us. It was like a void zone, eradicating everything it touched and..." His mind burned as he tried to figure out how to best explain what he had seen, leaving Lance to pipe in.

"Formatting it."

"Yeah."

"So we don't get hit by that beam," Ashe noted.

"Yeah, but what's to stop it from just sitting up there and firing the beam over and over?" Victoria asked the group, still upset over her missed bolts.

"Game rules, I hope," Lance informed them. "A game is no fun if it's just completely unbalanced and unfair. There has to be SOME way to beat it, even if it's extremely difficult, otherwise there's no point."

"This is Gamer we are talking about," Kaden mentioned beside Orion.

"And I don't exactly think the rules are in place right now with everything fucking up like this," Belle raged.

"Both excellent points," Lance agreed.

"What's that about?" Ashe suddenly asked, pointing into the nearby fog. Directly before them was a series of hazy figures, all combating an enormous beast of their own. The creature was covered in a thick rocky hide, emulating that of a hundred foot tall mutated armadillo.

"Oh, no..." Lance whispered faintly.

Belle suddenly spun in place and grabbed the man by his chest armor, lifting him up from the ground. "You'd better stop fucking around and start spilling some answers!" he demanded, jerking unintentionally as what appeared to be Piper rushing directly through him while yelling at some distant figure. "These were our friends! What happened to them!"

"Is everyone we know dead?" Ashe whispered, realizing that nearby a wispy image of Sage was trying to help another figure that looked like Ander to his feet. These were all people that had been eliminated.

"No, no, no, it's not like that!" Lance defended himself as everyone closed in. "They are just eliminated, and it looks like they were... Uh," he stopped, considering his next words before closing his eyes with a swallow.

"Start talking," Victoria glared. "Or I'm going to start feeding you to that thing above us."

"You haven't been very honest with us, Lance," Kaden said, crossing his arms while shaking his head. "But everyone deserves a second chance. What exactly is going on here? We're not mad, but we should really know these things."

"Speak for yourself!" Belle seethed.

"Wrap this up," Orion reminded them. "We've got a dragon above us just watching us like ants, and we might end up fighting this other thing as well."

"It's called the Tarrasque," Lance finally admitted. "But first, I was a friend of Gamer, or so I thought. I don't really know what else to tell you guys about that part, because I came into this thinking this was just a fun game to be had. I didn't think that he was this crazy," he pleaded. "It wasn't supposed to be something with any real point to it. From all I knew, it was honestly supposed to be the exact game that you guys were lead to believe."

"So you were deceived like we were," Kaden murmured, beginning to see the underlying point of the event.

"No, actually," he responded, shaking his head. "I still knew a bit more than you guys did since I was supposed to be an NPC role. That thing you guys are seeing is called the Tarrasque. It was supposed to be released as some kind of massive boss monster, but... I mean, we decided that it was just too OP to put into the game."

"OP?" someone asked.

"Overpowered," Ashe answered, not looking to see who she was addressing. "So if it was removed from beta, then what is it doing there? With our friends?"

"They were eliminated and sent to some kind of prison. I don't really know much about it. He told me that it was none of my business because I probably wouldn't get sent there anyway. So I figured he removed it as well, but it's pretty obvious that he didn't," he added gravely. "It's pretty obvious that I was screwed over."

"Typical," Belle grumbled, lowering him finally to his feet before releasing him with a small shove. "So you were part of the game from the beginning, yet you want us to feel sorry for you getting lied to."

"Belle's right," Kaden agreed. "You should get over the emo act and just help us figure out what to do next. We get it - you got lied to. You lied to us as well by not coming clean earlier, so I think we should just get past that and get moving."

"Ok," Lance acknowledged, stretching his back from the stiffness that Belle had placed on it. "Look, the Tarrasque was supposed to be unbeatable, so I'm not really sure what your friends expect to do to it, but whatever is happening, it seems to be weakening. I'm guessing it has something to do with the weapons they are using. Maybe that's why things are acting all wonky."

"Who's that?" Victoria asked, pointing at the growing man that the other group appeared to be fighting through the veil.

"Looks like Magnus," Lance groaned. "He's-" He was going to explain that he was a hacker, and what effect that might have had on the way things were falling apart, but unfortunately for him, he had run out of time.

1...

"SHIT!" Lance cried out, his eyes taking note of the dragon once more. In a move of desperation, his arm canon suddenly changed into a massive fist glowing with a furious light, rising into the air before he brought it down to strike the ground.

No one was able to register what exactly had happened as the ground rippled up like waves around him, throwing the entire group off their feet before the earthen wave carried them quickly away from the impact point of the beam. They had very little warning outside of Lance's move, and only once they came to a stop did they even realize that he'd thrust them outside of the beam's radius.

"Ugh, Lance!" Kaden growled angrily, looking around as the group stood on what appeared to be a small floating island by now, surrounded by fog and code. "LANCE!" he called out.

No one answered.

"Serves him right!" someone said angrily, but Kaden whirled on them.

"No, it doesn't! Don't you have any compassion?" he roared before turning back around. "Forget it, we've got a dragon to fight," he reminded them, trying to calm down. "Ok guys, we're gonna need everyone to combine their efforts for this one," he decided as the ghostly images ran through them.

"Like how? It's up there!" Belle reminded him.

"Belle, you gained control of your Ki while in that training room, right?"

"Yeah..."

"Orion, you already know what you are doing. Victoria, I'm sure you'll handle yourself as well."

The two grunted in agreement as he turned to Ashe. "Ashe, we're gonna all fire at the dragon at once. We've got to time our shot to strike him just before he releases the pool of energy he'll gather before him."

"What?" she panicked, looking around.

He took a breath. "You've been practicing your energy since the last time we met, right?" he asked, a pleading look in his eyes. "When it goes to gather its energy, just before it fires it at us, I'm hoping that with enough force from us we'll be able to push the energy back into it and rock its world just before it sends it to finish us off."

"But... no! I can't!" she realized, turning from person to person.

"Now's not the time for this, Ashe," he informed her, his eyes taking a glowing hue once more. "We've got roughly... six seconds! Just don't try too hard, let it flow on its own and guide it!" he instructed, turning a hand to the sky.

Ashe looked around as the rest of the group followed his motion, each gathering their own pool of energy before them. She hesitantly stuck her hand forward and willed her ki to obey her, to do as she commanded it to do... But... nothing.

"Assshe?" someone stressed from nearby.

"I can't... I can't..." she repeated, trying as hard as she could to not let them down in their moment.

4...

Her need burned through her. She wanted this, to help them all, to not let them down. She needed to do her part and not be a failure. The energy was all there, it was all inside of her, but she just kept swiping her hand through it and missing, as if it were as ethereal as the images of her friends.

3...

She thought of everyone counting on her, but it just wasn't coming. "God dammit!" she finally screamed, turning suddenly and running, her eyes closed, oblivious to the calls of her name from nearby. Hre legs carried her straight over the side of the floating island, leaving her somehow running across an empty invisible world as her friends all began to fade into the fog around her, the world becoming a void.

Time had run out, she realized.

Her friends needed her.

But she couldn't control the enormous energy well within her spirit.

She ran.