The Carnival

[Kill Town]

Feel free to post here after you've signed up.

For those of you who are still in the game, you can post here in between rounds. It is described in the "Things You Need to Know" thread. There's no specific purpose for this other than to interact with other PCs and to kill time, but I will be grading every single post. I want you to have fun, though, so...you know, have fun.

Once you're eliminated from the game, you will no longer have access to this area.

[Juno]

“Whatever you do, just don’t put some freaking bag on my head, alright?”

The mechanical beings complied with his wish. After his eyes fell shut, one of the robots glanced to his partner, gesturing for the half-Saiyan’s legs. From that point, the task of lifting the boy—however small he may have been—became a team effort, and one of the mechanized droids held onto him by his knees while the other took him beneath his shoulders. The robotics’ backs opened up, revealing jetpack-like machines attached to their spines, and quickly lifted off the ground, carrying their quarry past the skyscrapers of Central City and into the skies of the wilderness beyond within seconds.

The flight was quick—Keith had built the machines to be fast flyers, and that skill was exemplified in this instance. The pair of steel-skinned kidnappers flew almost at pace with the wind, skimming over the wide, rolling plains and lakes alike as they grew closer to their destination. Summers’ headquarters was not known on a map; they did not know where it was in relation to anything else in the galaxy, they were simply programmed to go to a specific place upon completion of their mission.

It was better this way, especially since a skilled warrior might actually be able to take down a few robots during the scuffle. Normally, larger teams were sent, but Juno was at such a severe disadvantage—weakened from sickness—that a pair of bots seemed the most logical course. Summers didn’t want to waste resources on someone that didn’t need resources wasted on them. Rather, the larger teams had been sent after warriors physically capable—a few of Juno’s choice acquaintances among them, the droid realized, examining Juno’s entry in their databases as they flew to the headquarters of the “game,” wherever it was. The half-Saiyan’s database also revealed several details about his combat style; the droid noted that none of them had been present during this battle. The sickness must’ve debilitated him more than the creator had realized.

Eventually, the pair of robots reached their destination, and found themselves inside the extensive headquarters of Keith Summers, the mastermind behind Kill Town and ‘Gamer,’ as he would soon become known to the contestants. They carried Juno just as they’d carried him during flight, finally finding themselves inside the room just before the game room. Passing the quarry off to his partner, one of the robots glanced to the ceiling.

“Mr. Summers,” it said in a dreary, mechanized monotone, “the subject is much weaker than calculated. I have formed a query during my studies—how does the creator expect such a pathetic specimen to be entertaining, when he can do little but sway lethargically due to this illness that he has? The affliction has affected him more than we first realized, sir.” The robot continued to stare upward, awaiting an answer from the master—though he was never fully sure that he would receive one. His concerns were rarely taken with more than a grain of salt; after all, he was merely a droid.

“Worry not,” Gamer finally piped in over an intercom, speaking from an undisclosed location within the base, “I have designed my game beautifully. It will nullify any ailment while the subject is inside; he will feel and act perfectly normal and healthy. Unless, of course, he is injured during the course of the game—then, of course, he just sucks.”

The robot nodded; a satisfactory answer, he thought, though he also knew that he had no right to place judgment on any of his creators’ opinions. Not another word was spoken between the two, and the more sentient bot of the pair quickly turned to his companion, gesturing for him to take Juno into the game room. For the onyx-haired Saiyan, the game was about to begin.

~+~

A sudden jerk brought him to his senses. His eyes popped open, and his stomach soon grew nauseous at the sight that lay before him—his abdomen was pressed up against a safety bar as he gazed down on an admittedly very creepy carnival from the tip-top of the Ferris wheel. He breathed heavily, composing himself and slowly grasping the safety bar for support; panting, he realized that the wheel was, in fact, moving downward, and that the ground was getting closer and closer to him the longer he sat here. Whoever had started this Ferris wheel moving wanted him down, and frankly, he wasn’t about to argue—he was not afraid of heights whatsoever, but he didn’t fancy being trapped up here all night.

He took the chance to observe his surroundings from this vantage point before he lost it—from the looks of it, he was inside a section of the carnival that resembled a theme park more than a traveling circus; a roller coaster rose high above the horizon, and several other rides littered the landscape. Just ahead of him, past the roller coaster, was a water park, also eerily out of place in the splendor of this “carnival.” Several other buildings, which he assumed counted an arcade, a few concessions stands, and some shops, stood farther away, but well within walking distance.

Abruptly, however, Juno considered that perhaps now was not the time to be taking in the scenery—there were circumstances to consider and puzzles to solve. Some things needed to be figured out before he could focus his thoughts on anything else, and now, as the wheel slowly reached the halfway point of its downward arc, the onyx-haired Saiyan felt as if it was safe to think about the here and now. First of all, he was in a strange circus, and he was not alone—someone had to be operating the Ferris wheel, right? But more prevalent, rather than the where and the who, was the why: why would anyone kidnap him and take him to some carnival in what looked to be the middle of nowhere, save for the classy hotel that he assumed was supposed to serve as his—and perhaps others’—lodgings during their time spent in captivity.

“I’m not a fan of games,” he mumbled, sliding back in the seat. So many questions bounced around his mind, but he had few answers to match up with them. The Ferris wheel’s arc was winding down, so he resigned himself to just waiting for them to appear before him, which, if this was a game, as he suspected, he knew they would. They always did. He cursed under his breath as the wheel finally reached the 180 degrees point, coming to a full stop. The door opened, and ever so cautiously, the half-Saiyan stepped out into Hell.

A huge neon sign lit up as he stepped out, spelling out the words ‘Kill Town’ in large, fluorescent, red letters. He stared at the sign for a brief second.

“Well, that’s not foreboding at all,” he quipped to no one in particular, squinting his eyes at the power of the lights. Someone sure went to a lot of trouble to set this place up. His vision flitted from side to side, finally catching the control booth to the Ferris wheel. It was, however, eerily empty, and Juno was left to believe that whoever had been operating his vehicle into this hell hole had bolted right after opening the doors.

And so the half-Saiyan was left alone, standing idly in front of an equally idle circus ride, and in front of a sign that was as bright as the frickin’ sun. The light finally became too much for him, so he shielded his eyes and began to walk away from the Ferris wheel, instead walking out of the section of the park concerning rides and heading straight for the only place he would feel comfortable—the concessions stand. After all, a Saiyan couldn’t do anything on an empty stomach, right? Right.

He sighed; he told himself all of these things, attempting to quell the intense curiosity—and the inescapable paranoia—he had of this mysterious place. He had noticed one good thing, however. Whatever his captors had done, he no longer was in pain and no longer felt extremely tired; his sickness had, for the moment, been quelled. See, there was always a bright side—even if the light wasn’t all that bright.

The walk to the concessions went quicker than he’d anticipated, judging on how far it’d seemed from his point of entry. He didn’t waste any time, and slid up to a large booth that read popcorn, leaning in and glancing around for the shop’s caretaker. No one was in sight, at first glance, but suddenly, the curtains at the back of the booth split majestically and a tall, lanky man walked into view. He had short, orange hair cut not unlike Juno’s, but much shorter, and wore green suspenders over a purple dress shirt. His pants were green, as well, matching the emerald hue of his suspenders. He wore on his face a broad smile that put Juno off, at first. On second thought, though, this man seemed to be the first even moderately welcoming thing he’d encountered in this carnival—so he wasn’t going to pass up the chance to sort out the situation.

“So,” Juno said, breaking the silence, “You, uh… you work… here?” The carnie’s smile didn’t fade, and for a second, the half-Saiyan considered the possibility that he was a robot because of his frozen expression. After several seconds, however, his lips relaxed, and his smile transformed from something more resembling a smirk than a grin.

“Yes,” he replied quite joyously, “My name is Oscar, and I’ll be your popcorn popper today. I’m also a great listener, if you’re interested in chatting. Actually, you know what, I feel like being generous—so I’m going to give you a box of popcorn on the house.” He was very lively, this man, and Juno laughed as he did a weird acrobatic move reaching underneath the counter for a prefilled container of popcorn, still hot and still covered in salt despite how long it might’ve been sitting there. Juno graciously took the donation—he was hungry. “So, what would like to say?”

“Actually,” Juno smirked, “I’d prefer if you did the talking. Tell me about this place…”

[Kaden]

“This should be good,” Gamer remarked to himself as he reclined in his high-back, mesh, executive’s chair.

Screens aplenty filled his control room and, with most of the participants of Kill Town still being… invited, there was time to kick back and watch the show. Not only were his robots capable of transmitting the images they were viewing back to the Gamer, but his computer was set-up to create a composite representation of all these feeds, letting him view the action at virtually any angle he wanted to. Using simple recording/playback filters, he could even pause and rewind.

His unofficial “main monitor” – it was the same size as all the others, but easiest to see from his chair – had been tuned to a particular feed. His robots had found not one to two targets, but three all lumped together. Punching up a database on a separate monitor, Gamer perused what information he had on Vad, Kaden, and Sophia. If they sucked, he wouldn’t waste his time watching. According to his info, though, they didn’t.

A cackle of delight flew from his lips as he watched the first strike against his machines: Kaden let loose with a quick burst of energy. Just as it looked like things were going to get good, though, the large, muscled, armor-clad saiyan shot into the air and flew away. Gamer slapped his forehead as three trapped contestants quickly dropped to two and moaned loudly when Kaden stumbled and two dropped to one.

Incredulously, Gamer scanned over his database of target information one more time, questioning it’s accuracy. Kaden was supposed to possess an uncanny ability to manipulate energy and a ridiculous personal reservoir of ki. Sophia should have been dead, but had come back to life? And Vad was a wanted, murderous saiyan warrior. A poor showing for all three of them. He sighed and shook his head.

“Buncha noobs…”

***

The first thing to welcome Kaden back to the realm of the conscious was the dull ache of being unceremoniously thrown onto the ground. The last thing he really remembered was being stabbed by a needle and being knocked out… after getting chased into an alley by a bunch of robots. If he had the energy to, he would have shaken his head. For all the steps he had taken in learning to competently deal with those kinds of psychotic situations, he still hadn’t been of any help to himself or those around him.

Those around him…

A frown crossed the courier’s face when he tried to recall anything about Sophia. Aside from vanishing on the other side of a seemingly endless stream of robots, he had no idea what had happened to the priestess. Vad had been there, too, but Kaden found himself less worried about the saiyan. If he had been well enough to just fly away, he should have been well enough to look after himself.

Whatever the robots had used to knock him out, Kaden was still feeling the effects of it. Just trying to lift a finger, or open his eyes was turning out to be an incredibly difficult task. He had no idea how long he would be incapacitated in such a manner, or if there had been any permanent damage done. More startlingly, he realized that he didn’t even know if he was alive.

After what felt like hours, Kaden managed to open his eyes. He had been thrown onto his back and found himself staring up at a brightly lit neon sign that read Kill Town. Great. Always a good thing to see when trying to pull one’s self out of a drug-induced stupor. A few more “hours” passed before the courier was finally able to lift his hands or move his legs. It was possible, sure, but he wasn’t about to try something crazy like sitting up. Not moving, however, turned out to be a mistake.

His eyes having fallen shut once again, Kaden was completely unprepared for the weight that was thrown on top of him. Crying out in a mixture of surprise and pain, the courier’s body reacted of its own accord, snapping upright. The adrenaline that pulsed through his veins seemed to have done an adequate job of giving him a much-needed kick-start. As he sat up, Kaden felt the weight roll clumsily over his lap. He was confused, relieved, and then saddened when he discovered that, of all possible things, it was Sophia that had been dropped on top of him.

As gently as he could manage, Kaden rolled the girl off of him and tried climbing to his feet. He got as far as one knee before having to stop and steady himself. Instead of pushing it, he tried to get a better gauge of his surroundings. Unless he was horribly mistaken “Kill Town” looked like a carnival. The number of questions that filled his head about why someone would name a carnival Kill Town and why they would capture people with robots to bring them there were almost as staggering as the drug that still lingered in his system.

“Well, at least it doesn’t look like we’re dead,” Kaden commented to himself as his eyes turned to Sophia. That’s what he hoped it meant when he saw empty space where a halo would have been above her head.

When Sophia began to stir, possibly at the sound of his voice, Kaden let himself fall back into a sitting position on the ground. He wasn’t in any hurry to explore Kill Town, and it did feel reassuring to be near someone he actually knew. It didn’t take long for her to go from incoherent mumbling to full alertness. Snapping her eyes open, the priestess looked around, exhaling deeply when her eyes fell upon the courier sitting next to her.

Kaden had been about to caution the girl to take it easy after just waking up, but silenced himself when Sophia bounced up onto her feet like it was nothing at all. Words escaped the courier as he watched her brush the dirt off of her skirt and stretch any remaining weariness out of her body. As quickly as he could muster, the courier tried to pull himself to his feet to join her. Unfortunately, he didn’t get particularly far. Stumbling onto all fours he just sighed.

“This isn’t even fair,” the courier mumbled.

“Need help?” the priestess offered as her head swiveled about to get a view of their surroundings.

“No no… I’m… fine. Kinda.”

As they often say, the third time was the charm. Once he actually made it to a full, upright and standing position, the courier felt a lot better about… moving. He mimicked Sophia, dusting himself off and stretching and lingering weariness from his joints. After a couple minutes he felt about as good as he was going to.

“So… this is Kill Town.” Not the most clever opener in the world, Kaden had to admit.

“Is it a… carnival? Maybe a circus?” Sophia inquired.

“Sure looks like it. No idea why, though. I mean… seriously, why not just tell people to come to your carnival? These things are usually fun. Why go through all the effort of sending an army of robots after us?”

“Yeah,” the priestess agreed. “I’d go to a carnival, I think.”

“Should we look around? I don’t see that we have many other options.”

“I guess so.”

Kaden had turned to enter Kill Town as Sophia agreed to take a gander, but recoiled as a... word bubble filled his field of vision. Exclaiming his surprise, the courier quickly realized that, no matter where he looked or how he turned his head, the word bubble remained in the same place. The last thing he actually tried doing was actually reading it. It was a simple black box surrounded by a white outline and filled with white text.

Sophia has joined the party!

[Jesper]

Confusion naturally set in after she spent more time pondering over her situation. In fact, she hadn’t had much time to ponder any of the events that she had just found herself going through in the past…several hours, she wanted to say. Those hours definitely felt like minutes, though, and for good reason—she walked through a field of rubble, fought first a mysterious warrior and second an army of robots, and woke up in the middle of a carnival of all things. Oh yeah, and she had just been resurrected. This was cause for anyone to feel a little bit under the weather.

The confusion made its way through her system, and to her surprise, left behind a feeling of…joy.

Or perhaps it was just relief. The healer was so afraid of dying again, and getting stabbed in the neck by a foreign—and incredibly sharp—object did nothing to ease her fears. The bright lights and the amazing sounds that emitted from the large theme park of sorts, however, had a calming effect on her. There were much worse places to be put into as a prisoner, something that she had learned not too much earlier than her arrival.

And after all, who didn’t like the carnival?

The pair took a step forward simultaneously to enter the theme park, as they had apparently been placed right outside the entrance. A glance behind her shoulder provided Sophia with not much more knowledge or insight about her surroundings than she had before—the mouth of what looked like a forest, wide and menacing, sat just behind them, and an assortment of branches and thick foliage removed any passing fancy about turning around and walking the other direction. Shaking her head, she turned her gaze back around towards the entrance, but her progress was halted immediately upon seeing a message float ominously in the area. Glancing at the courier beside her, it was obvious that he had seen the same thing.

“Sophia has joined the party…” the priestess muttered, bewilderment hidden in her voice until her eyes widened upon realization. She narrowed it into a glare, however, when she looked upon Kaden. “Totally not fair. Why am I entering your party?”

“Hey, I didn’t make the rules,” the blonde smirked. “Maybe if you had gotten here a little earlier…”

Sophia hid a smile and waved him off. “So you say. One of these days, I’ll be the main character, and you can be the insignificant little healer.”

“Okay, in my defense, there’s a reason why you always play the healer role,” Kaden suggested. “Somehow, I think I would…fall short in comparison.”

“I didn’t say you had to be good at it,” Sophia could no longer hold back her joyful expression.

Kaden opened his mouth to reply, but he was cut off by loud music. It was the sort of jovial tune that always accompanied such carnivals, although there was something strangely…off-putting about it, though the healer couldn’t put a finger on it. Maybe it was slightly out of tune, or perhaps there was a consistent note in the song that was a little off. Her musical analysis was put on hold, however, as a large pole seemed to just sprout out of the ground, stretching far into the night sky. As it rose, it seemed to emit a strange whistling sound, likely to represent the growth of the object itself. A few seconds of silence ensued, and made its stay until Kaden opened his mouth to speak once more. Almost as if the pole noticed an opportunity to cut him off, another bar extended perpendicular from it, only this one was colored like a candy cane, with a red and white stripe spiraling around it.

“…what…” Kaden stopped himself, looking around for more things that could possibly impede further speech. Satisfied with what he saw—nothing—he continued. “What the hell—”

“Oh, so sorry,” a voice pierced the air, much to the apparent chagrin to the courier. No other body was around to match the voice, however. Regardless, it kept talking. “You have to be this tall to proceed further into Kill Town.”

“This tall?” Sophia frowned, looking straight up at the bar. “You have to be kidding me! Nobody’s this tall!”

“Mmmm…good point,” the invisible man said. “However, I can’t change the rules for you. That wouldn’t be fair.”

Sophia’s eyes darted back and forth, examining the inside of the park. It seemed empty for the most part, at least from where she stood, although there were a few people walking around inside. She scanned their statures—some seemed tall, others not so much, but none of them were giants. “What about the people inside? You had no trouble letting them through.”

“You make a good point, my good woman,” the voice agreed. “Very well. I suppose I could allow an exception. Just. This. Once.”

Upon the completion of the man’s sentence, the pole shrunk back into the ground, leaving no trace of its existence.

“How gracious,” Kaden rolled his eyes. Turning to Sophia, he tapped her on the shoulder. “Hey, come on, let’s do some more exploring.”

“…none of that bothered you?” Sophia raised an eyebrow.

“It does. You don’t just see…that every day,” the courier shrugged. “But we won’t know anything until we get inside and look around, right? And besides, I’m the party leader. You’re supposed to follow me, remember?”

“Oh, you jerk,” the priestess grinned and punched him lightly in the arm. She reached out her hand and wrapped her right arm around his left. “Fine, ‘party leader,’ lead the way.”

[James]

A brightly-toned musical montage tangled with the sounds of canned laughter and cheers lightening the mood of where ever it was the preteen had been thrown into, its noises far too repetitive to be considered realistic. Still an unstable heap- Wolf put pressure down through his arms to lift him from the oddly comforting ground beneath him, looking up into a well lit sign clearly depicting where he was...

"Ke-I'll Town?" he had never heard of such a place, never mind the way you would pronounce it. Wolfgang stood wearily and observed beyond the gate entrance at what appeared to be a large building at the forefront of the park, behind that there appeared to be rides of some kind.

It wasn't that prospects of a carnival that had the child hesitating at the multicolored tents set up across the grounds- it was those clowns. He could hear the chatter of his own teeth as somewhere in the park he heard the ominous honk of a particular red rubber nose calling out to him on the painted face of some creepy man with a joyous disposition. Quite pleased with his progress so close to the carnival he began to inch away carefully from the gate, unsure of where he could go just so long as it wasn't in that general direction.

"Ah ah ah," a voice sounding as though it came from all around echoed in response to the little boy's cowardice. "Where do you think you're going? the party is the other way." at that the iron bars slid open to allow admission.

"B-but... there's clowns in there." Wolf could feel his lower lip begin to quiver at the thought of being shot in the face with a dandelion or some other flower of evil.

The voice responded with an annoyed grumble, firing back with an intensified distaste. "Two options. Get pwned out there or get in the game."

Almost instantly tears formed in the pits of the child's eyes. "What's a pwned? I'll get it if you don't make me have to go in there."

To some effect there was a muffled yell of irritation that gave a degree of feedback from where ever the voice had been broadcasting, the best guess would've been that all the technology in the world couldn't properly translate the noise. With little notice, a shovel materialized behind the boy and with one swoop had knocked him clear past the gates and into the park.

Wolf peeled his teary-eyed expression off the floor, scanning the new surroundings intently for even the slightest sign of the chicken juggling or really big shoes. To his surprise an arcade blared sirens and lights maliciously from inside a dark tent where the fully lit screens glorified some story about each fighter from its game, another where the simulated handguns rested in holsters ready to do battle with hordes of zombies. No- there was no time for that, not here... this was clown country.

[Belle Hibiki]

Once - just once - Belle would have liked to be taken somewhere without being knocked unconscious. It would have made a nice change of pace, if nothing else.

The last time he had fought himself out of a drug-induced coma had been in Central City, and the experience had not improved. He was partially aware of things happening around him, movement flitting to and fro, and felt the occasional prick against his skin as something was inserted. He tried to move, but his body refused to obey. His arms and legs felt like they were made out of katchin, only without the nigh-indestructibility.

A shadow passed over Belle's head. "Fuck you," he slurred between numb lips.

"Not yet, pardner."

Belle slipped into darkness once more. The next time he woke up, the deadened weight that had infected his body was gone.

Judging by the feeling and the smell of whatever was under him, Belle was lying facedown on dry, packed earth. He opened his eyes and looked around. Everything was bright and swirling, and he realized a second later that the drugs, whatever they had, had not completely worn off. His stomach gave a lurch and he closed his eyes, fighting down the sudden urge to vomit.

The sickness gradually passed. He hazarded another look around, winced at the brightness, then opened his eyes completely.

The spinning lights, as it turned out, were not a symptom of his drugged state. A brightly colored Ferris wheel spun lazily overhead, its many-hued bulbs glowingly brightly as they traced spirals against the night sky.

Belle grimaced and he pushed himself to his feet. His hand went to his neck; the wound from before was gone. His lips were dry and his mouth tasted like grit. Just how long had he been under, anyway?

"Tch." He rolled his tongue around in his mouth and spat. He'd been careless.

The carnival reminded him very much of the one hosted by the traveling band he and Sayana had visited months before. Although that particular incident had eventually ended in a hostage standoff, his memories of the carnival itself had been mostly terror-free, if not outright tolerable.

He could tell that the same probably wasn't going to be true of wherever he was now. A large gleaming sign loomed over the park, built so high that it seemed to loom over the grounds like a giant. Belle thought he recognized a 't', an 'o', and the squiggly shape of a 'w' in the second word, but he couldn't tell what the last letter was, and the first word mystified him completely.

Light blipped and bells dinged. A carousel spun around its axis a ways down one of the lanes that branched off from the Ferris wheel. Aside from himself, the park looked completely deserted.

Which left the burning question of what the Hell he was doing here.

Belle mentally replayed the brief conversation he had had with 'Wess' as he started staggering down one of the lanes. He could only assume that the carnival was part of the 'game' that the gunslinging cowboy-hat-wearing robot had mentioned, or was at least a staging area for it. Whoever was behind his abduction would not have gone through so much effort just to get him to come to a stupid carnival.

A ticket machine chimed as he passed by. "Welcome to the circus of values!"

Belle shuddered.

~+~+~+~+~

As Belle ventured deeper into the carnival, he discovered quickly that he was not - as he had previously suspected - alone.

Men and women could be seen flitting to and fro between tents, and several more stood behind counters or alongside games, smiling hopefully at Belle, as if they somehow expected that doing so would convince him to come and play.

Shyeah, he thought, mimicing Sayana's tone. Right.

Still, it wasn't as if he could wander aimlessly forever, and he didn't have a lot of options. Belle had considered just taking off and trying to find his own way back to Coast City, but he guessed that running from the game would just inspire further assaults from whatever dickhead was behind the abduction. Better to let the game, whatever it turned out to be, play out until the boss showed himself.

And then...

Belle settled on a likely looking prospect, setting aside his internal debate over what would be the best way to kick a man in the balls without permanently damaging him, and quickened his pace. A slightly lost looking young man with short black hair had turned into Belle's lane and was staring around with the same kind of bemused confusion Belle himself had felt only a few minutes ago.

Belle approached him. On closer inspection, the guy looked a few years younger than Belle was, and was pretty stringy to boot. He was entirely too delicate to have been in many fights, and Belle suddenly wondered if he might have made a mistake; the mastermind behind the carnival, whoever he/she/it was, was claimed to have been recruiting strong fighters, and the man in front of him didn't look very strong at all. "Uh," Belle started in, paused, and then decided to take the direct route: "You get kidnapped, too?"

The man blinked, looking up at Belle. He opened his mouth... "Yeah," an entirely female voice exclaimed. "Is that what happened to you, too?"

Belle started and stepped back. "Holy shit!"

"What?!" The man-who-was-apparently-a-girl jumped and looked behind her, then back at him, dark eyes wide. "Are you - ... Did you see robots?"

Belle pointed at her. "You're a GIRL?"

Belle had automatically assumed that anyone as frail looking as the girl in front of him would not pose much of a threat. As he ducked the flying park bench she hurled at him, however, he decided that he'd been wrong. "What the Hell is your problem?!" he demanded. "I was just asking a question!"

"Eat shit, Ginger!" she snarled, going for the trashcan next.

"Ginger?!" Belle jumped easily over the bin-turned-projectile, but slipped as his foot came down on a sticky spill of cotton candy and soda.

To Hell with this.

Falling to all fours, he scooted like a monkey across the fairgrounds, beating a hasty retreat behind a nearby tent as the girl started going for a table. He didn't like running from a fight, but he liked fighting girls even less - even if they did look like guys.

Belle cut through a few more deserted tents to emerge in a relatively unoccupied alley, grumbling to himself about camouflage. Only two other people were in sight, a man and a woman, both blonds. Belle passed them over, then froze in mid-stride. "Wait a second," he said, turning. "Kaden?"

The courier froze, then turned to look. "Belle?" he asked tentatively, as if hoping Belle was a hallucination.

Belle could kind of understand why. The last time they had met, things hadn't gone over so well. Truth be told, Belle didn't know how he felt about the courier. He didn't hate him, but the thought of what Kaden had almost done still made his hands curl into fists.

Moving his eyes off of Kaden, he blinked. "Oh, and..." He searched for the name. "Soapy, right?"

"Sophia," Kaden corrected, reddening just a touch.

"Oh, right. Sophia-san. What's up?"

The woman seemed ot take a few seconds to remember, looking at him in confusion. Then it clicked. "Oh. Oh! Right. The guy who groped Sage?"

"What the - HEY!" This time it was Belle's turn to blush. "Is that really the only thing that stands out about me?!"

"Don't take it personally. It was the only time she met you, right?" Kaden pointed out diplomatically.

Belle growled between gritted teeth, then realized something: "So you guys get kidnapped by robots, too?"

The blonds exchanged looks. "Yeah. You too?" Kaden asked.

Belle folded his arms. "Yup. They said it was for some sort of game - or something like that - for the strongest people around. I said no, but they weren't really taking it for an answer. Kind of reminds me of Dante's Abyss."

Sophia nodded. Kaden raised an eyebrow. "You said no to a competition?" the courier asked, sounding surprised.

"Don't get any funny ideas," Belle warned him, bristling. "It's not like I've gone soft or anything! I just have shit to do. Anyway." He looked off. "I'm thinking we should stick together, at least until, you know, the game guy shows himself. Don't worry, though," he assured Kaden. "I promise I won't get in the way of you and your girlfriend."

"Uh, Belle? Sophia's not my girlfriend."

"Shyeah," Belle echoed his thoughts from earlier and turned toward the carnival. "Right."

[Orion]

Orion awoke with a thudding pain at the base of his skull. It blocked out all memories and any other thoughts for that split moment when he came to, it was so acute and distracting. The saiyan roughly rubbed the pounding before a coherent string of logic filtered through his mind. A gang of robots descended on him, he recalled, and he proceeded by making a mockery of their aiming, most probably computer guided too. Then he fell like a meteor into their centre, exploding a Shockwave and tossing them to the ground. That was the last thing he remembered ...

... and now he was in a carnival?

At the least, that's what he thought they were called. Saiyans didn't delight themselves with meaningless rides when they could zip around the skies at Mach 1 without the assistance of a rotating mechanism. He had a vague memory of encountering a human squadron years ago who talked about a bustling entertainment venue filled with rigged games, over-salted, deep fried foods and "rides", as he called them, that suddenly shocked the adrenaline loose from sudden bursts of speed, be they horizontal or vertical. It all sounded so pedestrian and foolhardy to Orion, but now here he was, watching the entire scenario unfold as he slowly raised and lowered.

Wait, where was he?

He came to his senses. Orion was strapped inside a small metal domicile big enough only for him and maybe a few other people. It was attached to a huge turning wheel that moved at a snail's pace. At it's peak it provided a fantastic tactical vantage point, but Orion was on the cycle down towards the ground. He had no idea what the purpose of this massive contraption was; perhaps it was a way to drown him? Was there an expanse of water waiting to asphyxiate him when he touched the bottom, halting movement until he sucked in naught but liquid?

"Hello, friend!"

"What the hell?!" Orion almost jumped out of his skin. Sitting right next to him, gone completely unnoticed until now, was a robot. The one eyed saiyan's instincts declared that it was a member of the team that hunted him down in Heaven and incapacitated him, but something was different. His body type didn't match that of a artificially constructed warrior; it was rather spindly and comical, with arms and legs designed out of proportion with the rest of its body. Its eyes were no longer red but a shade of calming blue, however a spongy fake nose that was situated on the centre of its face was. It had a permanent toothy grin painted on, and the teeth shone when it spoke. The rest of its get-up was equally absurd; Orion mused that the robot must have fallen into a clothing refuse bin. Rainbow suspenders? A bright orange bow-tie? What kind of fashion sense was this?

And the hairstyle! Two neon pink tufts of hair sprung from either side of its rectangular head like thick sprigs of strangely coloured parsley. A minuscule green hat with white polka dots sat redundantly on the top of his steel skull. It was so small it didn't even provide shade.

"Oh, no!" Orion exclaimed, becoming instantly edgy. "It's happened, hasn't it?!"

"What has happened, friend?"

"That ugly ogre! He worked out I wasn't supposed to be in Heaven! Then he sent his goon squad to knock me out and drag me down to Hell!"

The robot chuckled lightheartedly, its cheesy grin illuminating. "You're not in Hell, friend! Why, a person as handsome and fun as you would never burn for all eternity! Trust me, we're good friends!"

Was he doomed to wait out the end of time in a tiny steel room, enduring the excruciatingly inane chatter of a cheery automaton?

"Shit, this is some sort of ironic punishment, right?" Orion theorised. "Since I'm such a loner and I'm so harsh with people? Now I'm stuck with the most agreeable, asinine conversation for the remainder of time?"

"Why, don't be silly, friend!"

"And what's with this pathetic little shackle?" he continued to rage, pointing to the belt affixed over his waist. "Surely this can't hold me! Does something worse happen if I break free?"

"Oh, no! You don't want to take off your belt!" the clown robot warned pleasantly. "It keeps you safe and sound! If you take it off, you might fall out and hurt yourself!"

Orion sighed, exasperated. His hellish torment was only just beginning, too, he thought. The rest of time ...

"Friend, you seem a little tense!" the robot observed perkily. "Perhaps you'd like a ... balloon animal?"

The robot extended a cylindrical finger. Orion could hear a form of air compression taking place inside the robot, funneling air into a gradually inflating balloon. It grew longer and thicker until the clown machine ripped it free of its digit and began its work. Its arms flailed around in a whirlwind of movement, some of which Orion didn't keep track of. In a split second it was over and the robot displayed its creation in its open hand.

"It's a puppy!" it exclaimed sappily.

"Holy shit!" Orion roared. "All of eternity!"

"The puppy didn't cheer you up? Well, I have a sure-fire way of fixing your blues!" The entertainment droid leaned forward, revealing a small daffodil attached to its chest. "Smell this! You'll feel much better!"

"Oh no, you can't trick me, you sparking scrap heap!" the saiyan bellowed. "There's probably some sort of airborne toxin or nerve agent about to spray when I lean in, right?"

The robot tsked. "Still cranky, I see! Maybe we need to have a play fight!" A stream of clear, odourless fluid secreted from the fake flower and splashed right onto Orion's face.

He was mortified. What did he just squirt onto him? Some sort of infernal, searing water that would scar his skin and leave him scorched? Did it seep into his pores, converting his organs into liquid mush?

"Argh! I can't take this anymore!" Orion screamed. "I don't care what happens when I take off his belt, it's got to be better than being in a fucking prison with you!" He pointed an accusatory finger at his metal torturer.

"I'm sorry, friend! Some people don't appreciate my flower joke. Perhaps another balloon animal!"

An ear splitting crash resonated from the ferris wheel cart. The clown robot erupted from the metal wall like a bullet from a gun and slapped into the earth. A firm indentation of Orion's fist was evident on its cheek.

"How about ... a ... " the robot gurgled as it malfunctioned. Its voice cut off and blue lit eyes burned out.

Orion was quick to follow the ejected clown machine, leaping through the torn hull and shaking the earth as he landed. He gave the broken droid a spiteful glance, witnessing a line of oil trickling from its face. Good riddance.

"Attention, everyone," a voice abruptly boomed, although from where Orion couldn't fathom, "please refrain from damaging the carnival's property and staff. There will be severe penalties if this behaviour persists. Thank you." At the signing off of the announcement, a swarm of locust-like robots flew to the damaged ferris wheel unit, crawling over the hole and repairing it in moments before noisily buzzing away again.

Orion was perplexed. So he wasn't in Hell? Was he in a real carnival, then? He looked up; his halo was still occupying that place over his head, so he wasn't alive again. Was this another deal like Dante's Abyss? Did Damon set up another adrenaline pumping adventure for him? He relished the thought.

"Hello!"

Still reeling from his predicament, Orion spun about to a holographic emitter projecting an image of a female woman. Her long, brown hair hung over her shoulders and framed her beauty quite well, he thought. Donning a figure hugging navy suit, she smiled sweetly.

"An AI program?" Orion questioned.

"Got it in one!" she stated with strange excitement. "And you must be Orion!"

He nodded. "Did Damon Dukes make you?"

"Oh no, he's not associated with the Gamer at all," she informed. "It was on his show that we saw your amazing potential, however. That fight with Hollywood was rigged! We saw the whole thing!"

"Hmph," Orion groaned, trying not to think about his one sided loss. "So what is this place?"

"It's a carnival!" Mixie declared. "There will be some very exciting games coming up soon, the likes of which I'm sure a superpowered warrior such as yourself will love! For the meantime, though, why not enjoy the facilities provided to you here? You've already experienced the ferris wheel. You should try your hand at some of the sideshow games here! They'll help you warm up for the big events!"

Why not, he thought? Inducted into another mystery tournament by a shady individual, Orion realised that any length of time could pass before he heard anything authoritative on his position here. Besides, perhaps the games would at least be a challenge. He heard they were fixed, but maybe he could unfix them.

"If you say so," Orion returned, leaving Mixie to herself without a goodbye. When the artificial intelligence realised the saiyan's departure, she wished him luck and dissolved back into the holo-emitter.

The carnival was stacked to the brim with people. Humans, it seemed. Somehow, for some reason totally escaping him, they were all immensely enjoying themselves. Lovers walked hand in hand while sharing a wispy pink cloud on a stick. Children skipped merrily within the confines of their parents' sight. Hordes of teenagers stood uncomfortably in line just to procure a seat on a mechanical device that spun them around in ever faster circles. Humanity always baffled him.

His introspection was shattered when he caught the sound of a tinny ding. He looked to the source. A young human male, wearing a baseball cap backwards, operated a woefully pathetic rifle at one of the gaming stalls. As Orion approached, he watched the youth fire off small pellets at several rows of moving targets. Each line of rusted ducks and other crudely represented animals that humans frequently hunted slid independently of each other in a curious attempt to confuse the shooter. The effect was working for this teenager, who only managed to fell three ducks and a moose's antler.

"Better luck next time!" the robotic attendant encouraged. The male began to slink away in defeat, but on noticing Orion approach the booth, was suddenly captivated. His peculiar attire and eye patch hooked his attention, but what really interested him was when the mystery cyclops requested twenty bullets to play the game himself.

"Huh!" he scoffed churlishly. "I could only hit three of them, and a one eyed man thinks he can do better than that?"

"Silence, you little cretin," Orion seethed. "Let me show you how a real marksman operates." He signalled to the booth operator, lining his eye with the rifle's sights. "Begin the challenge."

As before, flimsy scaled replicas of earthling fauna strolled through on separate lanes, journeying in separate directions to confuse the shooter's aim. Orion's experience wouldn't allow his vision, even reduced as it was, to succumb to such paltry parlor tricks. The barrel of his rifle moved rigidly from side to side, aligning with the sloppily painted bullseyes before propelling a single slug into each pretend animal. The cap wearing teen stared on in astonishment as Orion picked off every last objective.

"Congratulations, sir!" the droid operator announced, handing the saiyan a stuffed bear half the height of him. "You are an excellent sharpshooter!"

Orion pushed the plush novelty into the youth's arms, nearly knocking him to the ground. "So you remember how easy it was for someone with a disability."

He strutted away, pleased with his victory over the human. A child, perhaps, but still a human. It dawned on him that opportunities such as that could be found almost anywhere in this section of the carnival. He took a swift survey of the plethora of games stations available to him. So many chances to prove his saiyan superiority.

Another human teenager was standing at a games booth, a female similar to his age cheering him on to win. A devious smirk formed on Orion's lips.

Perfect.

[Ander]

The first automatic response of Ander’s body was to take a deep, delicious breath as his eyes sharply snapped open. The next was for it to contort in a cruelly delayed reaction of pain. He lay on his back, in the dirt… somewhere… the thief groggily flipped over onto his side, churning his legs sluggishly. He managed to get a palm to the ground, and pushed himself up into an awkward reclining position. His other hand followed to support, and he looked around as he rose unsteadily to his feet. Bright, flashing lights filled his line of vision, and corny carnie music flooded his ears. Smells of sticky sugar and greasy fried foods wafted into his nostrils, disgusting him; he hated junk food. Didn’t these people know not to put garbage into their bodies? From his vantage point, he saw a large building to his left that greatly resembled a hotel, and to his right, a slew of rides operating without passengers. Farther beyond the rides, he faintly distinguished the beginnings of a water park. He quickly resolved to stay away from there. Not only would the water likely be cold — he hated the cold — but he wasn’t a good swimmer. Sure, he had managed to keep himself afloat when he fell into the cabana pool that one time, but that was only for a few seconds and the edge was right within his reach. The Anati breakballers didn’t hate the Water Field for nothing…

What the hell… is this…? he wondered warily. Why am I here?

A swell of panic filled his stomach as the word ‘kidnapped’ sprung horrifyingly to the forefront of his mind.

No… no… not again… not again… the thief’s mind raced as he fought to swallow the lump choking up in his throat. He frantically grabbed his wrists one by one, as if to assure himself that no shackles bound them. The scared little boy from that dark prison cell was dangerously close to emerging…

And then, it was as if he remembered he stood in a public setting. His eyes darted this way and that, scanning to see if anybody noticed him. The theme park, or carnival, or whatever it was, seemed relatively empty, striking the thief as odd; weren’t there usually more people at these things? Ander inhaled and exhaled heavily, calming himself down. It wouldn’t be good if anyone saw him freaking out, especially since he was as of yet uncertain to his exact predicament.

Ander placed a hand on his hip, resuming the cool façade he so comfortably hid behind. Somehow, the situation seemed ironically similar to what Sage had related to him back at the restaurant, about how she’d been kidnapped to participate in those things called Friend or Foe and Dante’s Abyss…

Sage!

He swiveled around in a 360-degree motion, finding no trace of his blue-haired companion. Did the robot get her too, or was she still lying in a ditch on the side of the freeway? The dune dweller clenched his jaw tightly; if anything happened to her, it would be his fault for putting her in that situation to begin with. He’d only known her for a few days, but he didn’t take well to the thought of having somebody else’s coffin resting on his conscience. The thief sighed, no point in thinking about it now. Wherever he was, he had no way of finding out the poor girl’s fate, and highly doubted he would find any means to do something about it anyway. Best to analyze his current situation and see what he could make of it.

Ander turned around, seeing a gate barring him from exiting. Beyond the gate, however, he oddly couldn’t see a whole lot. It was as if somebody took a universal lens and adjusted the world outside the theme park so it looked out of focus. He stepped up to the green metal bars, and, not expecting much, gave them a tug. Nothing. He let the ki flow through his fingertips to try and manipulate them with his binding; again, nothing. With little option left to him, Ander resigned himself to wander the carnival. The thief spun around again, and emitted a small cry of surprise as he met face-to-face with a slender, beautiful brunette.

“Whoa! Lady, don’t sneak up on me like that,” Ander breathed, his nerves settling once again.

“I’m sorry, did I scare you?” she asked sweetly.

“No,” Ander replied, a little too quickly, his mind smoothly generating an excuse. “But you see, I’ve got lightning quick reflexes, and I might have hurt you before I knew who you were, so, I’m only thinking of your welfare here.”

Truth be told, it bothered him how easily she had gotten close to him, without him even knowing. That almost never happened. A thief’s survival relied contingently on his ability to move about unseen and detect impending danger.

“Well thank you for your consideration sir,” she giggled. “My name is Mixie. I noticed you were trying to leave the park.”

“Yeah,” the thief said, jerking his thumb towards the gate. “I think there was a mistake or something. I really don’t want to be here, so if you could just unlock this thing, I’d really appreciate it. I have somewhere to be.”

“Oh I’m afraid that’s not possible, sir,” Mixie said with a smile. “The carnival isn’t over yet. All of our guests are free to leave when the carnival is over.”

“But I don’t want to be in the carnival,” Ander reiterated.

She placed a comforting hand on his shoulder, a gesture he did not miss. “I understand, but enjoy yourself while you’re here. There are rides and games and all sorts of fun things to do! You might even see a friend or two.”

I don’t have any friends.

“Thanks,” Ander said warily. His eyes followed the movement of her arm as she withdrew it. “Mixie, is it? And you are… some kind of… employee of the park perhaps?”

“Yes,” the brunette confirmed happily. “I will be more than happy to guide and assist you throughout the duration of Kill Town.”

“Uh-huh,” he mused. Because that name doesn’t sound threatening at all. “So, if perchance I was to need your assistance, how might I get a hold of you?”

“All you have to do is call my name, and I’ll be there just like that,” Mixie explained with a snap of her fingers.

“Okay, well, I think I will just have myself a look around then,” Ander smiled. He waited for her to walk away, his sense of caution refusing to let him turn his back first.

“See you around, Ander,” Mixie winked, somewhat suggestively, and then she turned and sauntered off.

He couldn’t help but watch her as she went, his eyes straying to the pleasant curves of her skin-tight, navy blue leather suit. Oldest trick in the book, he knew; attracting flies with honey and whatnot. Ander should know; he used it himself. The thief would be damned to see it get played against him. Still, the situation didn’t feel right. For one thing, she knew his name, without ever possessing a reason why she should, and that struck a strong chord of inner uneasiness.

Ander waited until he lost sight of Mixie before moving about to explore the park. Come to think of it, he’d only ever been to one of these types of things once, and that was to develop his crafting of pickpocketing under the tutelage of Judas. Although he doubted he’d ever feel comfortable enough to relax in such an atmosphere, he could try to have a little fun at least. After all, he was still a relatively young man, and slightly immature at times. You only got to be young once.

He strolled along the empty pathways, amazed at the lack of populace. He saw workers dutifully manning their posts, but no other customers. The fighter lingered on the possibility of him as its only patron. Somehow, though, that didn’t make a whole lot of sense, and sounded a little narcissistic. Some small part of him hoped he would eventually find Sage. Along his little jaunt, he came across a mirror. Nothing out of the ordinary, but he gave it a double take when he saw that his face was perfectly healed; not a scratch, bruise, or bump in sight, as if his fight with Belle so shortly ago never even happened. His features reflected back at him, smooth and perfectly unmarred, broken only by his meticulously kept soul patch and stubble. This place just got weirder and weirder. He shrugged it off for the moment and strolled past the hotel, eventually stumbling upon a section filled with games, the obviously rigged kind that easily parted fools from their money.

“Step right up, step right up! Knock the bottles down, win a prize! You there! You look like a competent individual! How about you give it a shot, huh? I’ll even let you play the game for free,” a game attendant called over.

Ander waved him off. “No thanks.”

“Oh-ho, a girly man is it? Can’t knock over a few harmless, stationary bottles? That’s probably for the best, son. These games aren’t for the weak,” the game attendant admonished.

The thief stopped dead in his tracks. “Excuse me?”

“Nothing to be ashamed of, son, I’m sure you’re great at knitting or baking,” the gentleman shrugged.

Ander let out a dry, nonchalant laugh. He cocked his head, sniffed, and strutted over towards the colorfully adorned booth. “I could knock those over with both eyes closed and one arm tied behind my back,” he grinned smugly. I am not weak!

“Well then why don’t you step up and prove it?” the attendant smiled, tossing a faded softball up and down in one hand.

Ander’s smile never faded as his fingers whipped out, grabbing the softball in mid-catch without him so much as breaking eye contact. “All right, I think I will.”

The game attendant stepped back and folded his arms. “Just stay behind the counter, give it your best throw. If you knock all three bottles down, you get one of our fabulous stuffed animals.”

I’ll settle for wiping that smirk off your face… jerk…

The thief, despite his earlier claims, kept both eyes open and his free arm available for the wind-up. He steadied his body, reared his arm back and threw the softball as hard as he could. It sailed right by the stack of metal milk bottles, not even nicking a single one. Before the attendant could make a snarky comment about the poorly aimed toss, Ander coolly reeled on him, gesturing his fingers for a second try. “That was a practice throw. Lemme see another one.”

He stooped over and grabbed another one out of a bucket, tossing it deftly towards the thief. “No worries, son, I’ve got all day.”

[Kaden]

Teaming up didn’t sound like a bad idea at all. Things were crazy enough that sticking together with other people would, at the very least, probably keep someone from panicking too much. As sound as that logic seemed, the courier couldn’t deny that he was somewhat apprehensive about teaming up with Belle so quickly after having tried to deny him his wish. While the red-haired hybrid seemed willing to put that aside, Kaden was pretty sure he wasn’t exactly over it.

“Well, anyway…” the courier stalled. He definitely didn’t peg Belle as someone who would put retribution over… whatever their situation was. “I guess palling around for a while wouldn’t be a bad idea,” Kaden replied to Belle with a smile.

What happened next, in retrospect, shouldn’t have come as any real surprise to Kaden, but surprised he was. Another word bubble popped into his field of vision, forcing him to recoil backwards, dragging Sophia, who still held his arm snuggly in hers, with him. After a second, though, their surprised faded.

Belle has joined the party!

“Again with this…” Kaden shook his head.

“Now now, we can’t the fearless leader complaining, can we?” Sophia teased.

“Right… fearless. That’s me.”

“Waitaminute! What the hell was that?!” Belle pointed at the fading word bubble. “I saw my name on it!”

“You joined the party,” Sophia told him.

“What party?”

“Our party.”

“This is a party? I thought parties were supposed to have cake and music and stuff.” Belle’s head swiveled from side to side, as if expecting to find a previously hidden cache of delicious cake.

“Ooooo… cake is a good idea,” Sophia agreed, giving Kaden’s arm a quick tug.”

“Cake?” the courier asked, running his free hand through his hair. “I don’t think they have cake at carnivals. “

“That doesn’t mean we can’t look for some.”

It was an admittedly good response. The plan was to look around anyway, and there wasn’t any real reason they couldn’t add “cake” to their fairly open schedule. When the courier had no real response, he shrugged and was about to start heading off in a random direction when another word bubble caused him to stop. Unlike the previous one, though, this one did little to obstruct his view, staying in the bottom right-hand corner of his eyesight. Slowly, text began to fill in the bubble.

Kaden – HP 565/565
Soapy – HP 580/580
Ginger – HP 1920/1920

“Wait what?!” Kaden turned an accusing eye from the word bubble to the girl on his arm. “Why do you have more… uh… HP than me?!”

“Why am I ‘Soapy’?” the priestess turned her head towards Belle. “He told you my name.”

“So that last one’s me?” Belle asked, pointing to the last name on the list. “That’s not my name.”

With no real explanation to offer, Kaden was about to suggest they move on when, but text continued to slowly fill in the bubble. All three of them waited, watching as more numbers filled themselves in. Fortunately, it didn’t take too much of their time… not that they really had anywhere to be.

Kaden – HP 565/565 MP 4525/4525
Soapy – HP 580/580 MP 1940/1940
Ginger – HP 1920/1920 MP 50/50

“Now that’s more like it,” Kaden said with a nod. “Should we go look for some cake?”

[Victoria]

“Ngh,” Victoria groaned and moved her head to one side. Water lapped against her cheek, and droplets pelted her body. She opened her eyes, and stared at the blurry world. She blinked a couple times so that she could finally focus on her surroundings. “Where the fuck am I?” she muttered, and held a hand to her brow. Her hands were wet, and her face. Her pink hair floated in the five inches of water she lay in. She splashed a hand down, and then pushed herself up so that she was sitting. She looked around again, finally noticing the flashing lights not too far away. She looked behind her, and realized that she was sitting in a shallow pool, which stretched out into a sort of water park.

Victoria stood up and wiped at the water on her legs. It dripped from her drenched hair, and dribbled down her thighs. “Couldn’t they have put me somewhere dry?” she asked aloud, but no one else was there.

She trudged through the water, splashing it against her laced boots, and held at her wet arms. She felt a chill coming, but could do nothing about it. She stepped out of the water and shook her legs; droplets splattered the ground and left little puddles where she stood. I wish I knew where why I’m here, or where ‘here’ is. She looked around again, seeing a large wheel and other large contraptions. She could hear squeals of joy, or pain, coming from the lit up sector.

Victoria patted her vest, and felt the object Jeremy had left with her, she smiled at his gesture. The cell phone was not damaged, surprisingly. She pushed the buttons on it, and the little screen glowed with life. She looked through the numbers that would connect to people she knew, and attempted to dial Jeremy. The screen suddenly flashed with a yellow smiley face, only it wasn’t smiling. No connection? She tried again, but it failed once more. Great, just great. She put the phone back into her pocket and zipped it shut.

“No robots? No goons? What kind of joke is this?” she shouted angrily to the heavens. “If you’re going to kidnap me, at least tell me what the fuck is going on?” Victoria clenched her fists, and then fell over. A funnel of water splashed into her, completely soaking her body from head to toe. She coughed and shivered from the cold liquid. She looked behind her and saw that she was not out of the water park, simply standing in another field of it that randomly shot out water in random intervals. She clambered to her knees and held her hands above her head before being assaulted again by the water.

[Piper Juunanagou]

Time to rise and shine, sweetheart…

With a loud, melodramatic gasp, Piper Juunanagou erupted back into the realm of consciousness. Before the thought of sitting up off the ground even made it into the forefront of her thoughts, the woman’s gloved hand shot straight to the empty holster strapped to her belt.

Do not like. Piper thought as lifted her head off the ground and noted that she was wearing what looked like a new uniform. More unsettling than that (after all, anyone could have access to your standard military fatigues) was the new jacket Piper was wearing, which bore all the correct rank, squadron, and Sentinel insignias. The only way someone would have access to the uniform design would be if they’d stolen one, acquired one illegally, or been stalking the organization. All three of the possibilities were equally troubling, especially given the fact that the woman was now realizing that she was in the middle of a small circular tent.

“Just great,” Piper muttered to no one in particular as she rose up off her haunches and up to a vertical position. Glancing back down at her figure, the woman rolled her shoulders and arms back and allowed her jacket to slide off. Pulling her left hand forward, she grabbed the coat with her right hand and draped it over her shoulder. It wasn’t the proper means to carry her uniform coat, but she figured she could get away with it based on the situation at hand.

“Hello there,” the blond whispered as she reached down and loosely wrapped her fingers around a small plastic device on her belt. Although she had never actually seen one in real life, the woman could see that it was supposed to be a mildly archaic pager device—like the one that doctors carried around on television shows. Last she had checked, she hadn’t bothered to invest in one seeing as how they lacked much practical purpose outside of TV dramas.

“What the hell am I doing here?” Piper quipped as she removed her hand from the pager. Obviously she had been the victim of some robotic gangbangers, or else she’d probably be in a dumpster somewhere. But who the hell goes through the trouble of kidnapping someone just to give them new clothes and a pager? Furthermore, who is it that leaves said someone in a red and white tent?

I should have just stuck to the desk work… The woman mused as her hands slid into her waist pockets. Shifting the contents of her pockets with her fingers, she noted that she had the same items as before—id tag, some gum, backup case of pills, and her cell phone…

My cell phone! With a relieved sigh, the woman’s left hand emerged from her undersized pocket, cell phone in tow. Glancing down at the trusty device, Piper slid the front plate up and dialed the number for her headquarters’ liaison. Much to the woman’s mounting frustration, all she received for her efforts was a little box on the screen that indicated she didn’t have the service to place the call.

“What good are you?” Piper asked with a frown as she slid the phone shut and stuffed it back into her pocket. Unsure of where she was or why she was here, the soldier shrugged her shoulders and stepped toward what looked to be the tent flap. At this point, she was all out of ideas and figured she’d be in shackles right now if she was supposed to be some type of wacko’s prisoner.

Reaching out with a glove hand, Piper slowly slid her fingertips through what seemed to be a seam. With a mild degree of apprehension, the Sentinel threw open the tent flap and immediately stepped back into the tent and assumed a defensive stance. Aside from some really grating carnival music, nothing emerged through the open flap.

“Please don’t be what I think you are,” the woman groaned. On the list of places that made the woman the most uncomfortable, circuses and carnivals shared a spot near the top of the list. It was all those damned creeps and mutants they allowed to roam around. And the food…the mere thought of having to live off anything sold at a carnival made the woman cringe. Nevertheless, after a few more seconds of glaring at the exit, Piper gathered her wits and proceeded to poke her head outside the small tent.

All at once, the woman’s nose was bombarded by the stench of carnival food—funnel cakes, cotton candy, corn dogs, deep-fried Oreos, and a myriad of other deep-fried foodstuffs that not even an expert gourmet could decipher. Staving down the urge to vomit as the horrifying malodors overwhelmed her; Piper slapped a hand over her mouth and took her first few steps out of the small striped tent. When she came to a stop a few feet away from the tent, she was taken aback when it suddenly and abruptly collapsed into a small striped disc.

“Where the hell am I?” Piper croaked as she clenched her hand over her nostrils in an effort to combat the continued assault on her olfactory system. Moving further away from what had once been her tent, the woman made her way down a tiny corridor between two large big tops before she emerged onto a dirt walkway. Along both sides of the crude path was a mixture of tents and wooden stands.

Unsure of how to get out of this smelly hellhole or how to find out who had sent the robots to kidnap her, Piper calmly approached one of the stands. Leaning over the poorly varnished wooden counter, the soldier propped herself up on her elbows, plopped her chin into her palms, and watched as the man inside turned to face her. Although she should have been slightly prepared for it given her situation, Piper nevertheless let out an instinctive gasp when she noticed that the ‘man’ was actually a very shoddy-looking robot in some comically oversized clothes. The unsettling fact, however, was that the robot had the most poorly designed facial features ever—his mouth was a permanent grin complete with dimples and the creepiest pair of metal, robot eyes she’d ever seen.

“Why hello there!” The robotic stand operator decreed—his voice projecting from somewhere other than behind his giant smile. As he walked toward Piper, the ‘man’s’ eyes rolled left and right, seemingly as an indicator that they were supposed to be decorative and not unsettling and panic-inducing. “Are you here to play my splendid little game? All you have to do is knock the target over!” The automaton boasted as he gestured with his dull, metallic limbs toward the three large targets attached to metal rods and mounted across a long table against the back wall of the stand. Squinting and leaning a little further toward the edge of the counter, Piper noticed that all three of the bottles were—quite blatantly, mind you—fashioned together with very thing metal bars.

“Your game is rigged,” Piper remarked, gesturing toward the middle bull’s-eye. “They’re essentially bolted together and to that table…it’d be impossible for someone to knock them down,” she added as the robot’s head pivoted back to face her.

“Nothing is impossible, my dear lady!” The robot boomed, his overwhelmingly cheer voice giving Piper an indication that he hadn’t listened to (or perhaps understood) a word she had just said. “Why don’t you give it a shot? Your first ball is on the house!” The machine decreed as a previously unnoticed hatch on his chest popped open to reveal a stack of pristine baseballs. Reaching into the open cavity, the robot retrieved a ball and plopped it on the counter in front of the mortified soldier.

“Do I have to?” Piper asked with a groan as she stood up away from the counter and called the baseball into her left hand. Tossing the ball up and down a few times, the medic turned to see that the robot was still staring at her with its permanently cheery features. Apparently it wasn’t programmed to answer that question either…

“Fine,” the Sentinel remarked as she turned her attention to the central stack of bottles. Although she’d never played baseball and thought that softball was strictly for lesbians and overweight girls, Piper was nonetheless able to hurl the ball in a perfectly straight line and hit the dead center of the middle target. Upon impact, the target simply shuddered a little bit and the ball, upon falling onto the table, rolled backwards and onto the floor. “Are you kidding me?” Piper shouted as she ran a hand through her unkempt hair in an effort to calm herself.

“Now, now, Miss,” the stand operated remarked cheerfully. “Don’t be a poor sportsman, ere, sportsperson!” The quip was the last thing the robot was able to say before Piper’s gloved fist erupted through his comically oversized grin.

“I hate this place,” the soldier growl as she yanked her hand back out through the twisted steel. Shaking her hand to help dissipate the pain, the woman turned around and began to walk down the path.

“Come back and play anytime!” The stand operator shouted—his voice garbled and warped but nonetheless booming and irksome. Clenching her eyes shut and gritting her teeth, Piper shook her head as some very terrible ideas began to form in the back of her mind. Continuing on her way, the woman fished a hand into one of her pockets and retrieved the small plastic case with her medication. Before returning the case, the soldier flicked the lid open with her thumb and popped a pair of pills into her mouth as if they were breath mints.

“Perhaps if I can just find a working phone…” Piper muttered to herself as her eyes darted to and fro in an effort to detect anything out of the ordinary. Unfortunately, the majority of what she saw was just more stands and giant tents—all of which looked to be staffed by the most diverse collection of robots she’d seen outside of a science-fiction movie.

Ring-a-ling! Ring-a-ling!

“That’s a really irritating ringtone,” Piper spoke aloud as she turned to see a clown robot standing next to her with an archaic, oversized cell phone in his outstretched hand.

“It’s for you, Ma’am!” The robot said in a voice that sounded right out of a fifty-year-old cartoon. Arching an eyebrow, the Sentinel reached out and gingerly accepted the outdated piece of equipment from the robot, prompting him to bow and scurry off to who knows where. Lifting the phone up to the side of her head, Piper calmly cleared her throat before speaking to whoever was on the other line.

“Piper Juunanagou speaking…who is this?” The woman asked as she glanced around to make sure someone wasn’t standing nearby in a bulky trench coat.

“My name is Gamer,” the person on the other end of the line answered after a momentary silence. From the speaker’s pitch and the nasally accent of his voice, Piper felt herself inclined to believe she was probably being addressed by someone younger than herself. “How are you enjoying yourself in my little world, Sergeant Juunanagou?”

“Where the hell am I?” Piper demanded as it dawned upon her that she was talking to the person behind her kidnapping. “Actually...why don’t you just tell me where the hell you are?” The thoroughly irritated Sentinel barked as she began to scope out the roofs of the nearby shacks and tents.

“What makes you think I’m lurking in the shadows, Piper?” The man-child on the other end of the line declared in a haughty, almost self-righteous tone. “Trust me, I’m not going to endanger myself by exposing myself to an unbalanced, over-medicated soldier,” he added with a chuckle as Piper’s grip on the phone began to tighten. “But don’t fret, you’ll be able to put all that frustration and self-loathing to the test in no time, Sarge,” Gamer replied with yet another long-winded bout of cackles.

“Screw you!” Piper screamed into the phone as she pulled it away from her face and crushed the midsection with a squeeze her gloved fist. Scowling heavily, the woman opened her hand and watched the pieces of the broken phone careen down to the walkway.

“Piper?” The oddly familiar voice pulled the woman out of her miniature tantrum. Glancing to her left, the soldier found herself staring at Kaden, Sophia, and a man with spiked red hair. Before Piper could open her mouth to talk, a translucent bubble popped up in the bottom left-hand corner of her field of vision.

“‘Piper has joined your party’?” The woman read aloud as she turned to face the others. As she moved her gaze, the first word bubble was replaced by another one that listed Kaden’s name and two strange nicknames followed by some numbers and abbreviations that Piper didn’t understand. “What is going on around her?” She inquired a fourth name popped up below the other three.

[I]Sarge – HP 1050/1050 MP 1050/1050

“Well I guess that’s me,” the solider remarked, punctuating the remark with a roll of her eyes. “I don’t even know what that’s supposed to mean,” she added as she turned her attention away from the bizarre text and over to the group she’d encountered.

“Nice to see you all but could someone please tell me what’s going on around here?” Piper asked as she walked over to the trio of fellow carnival ‘guests.’

[Sage]

The first thought was that the beds in the hostel were so uncomfortable. Second and third kind of smushed together, but there was something about her not technically living there or anywhere else. Then there was the sharp pain in her forehead as she tried to turn over.

A pair of bleary eyes snapped open, and Sage recoiled from the ground she was lying on, to see... asphalt beneath her. Shifting her weight, the azure haired addict sat up and rubbed the grit from her face. Had she really just passed out face-first onto tarmac?

She found herself having difficulty moving. Everything felt detached and heavy. The girl recalled being injected by an absolutely ridiculous robot, but she was still having trouble accepting that as reality. If it had happened, whatever was in that needle might explain her numbness, but it was just so... unlikely.

The war in her head was still raging, and a searing migraine relentlessly burned through her brain. Ironically, she had slept through the rest of her hangover, but it was replaced before she woke with the early symptoms of Valium withdrawal. At the moment, though, Sage, shaking and nauseous and holding her head in her hands, didn’t care.

Finally, the incessant theme park noise broke her concentra- theme park noise?

The girl looked up, wincing at the bright lights all around her. Everything was so goddamn lit up, and so goddamn loud! And up in front of her, in what to her seemed like thousand foot tall letters, a huge, glowing red sign spelled out ‘Kill Town’ in all capital letters.

Kill Town.

Sage flipped over onto her hands and knees, and she threw up. She had to admit, it made her feel a lot better, but at the same time, she was still in a place called Kill Town. With a groan of great exertion, she picked herself up off the blacktop and staggered backward for a moment before steadying herself. At least she didn’t fall into her own puke.

The girl emitted a strange combination of growl, moan, and whine, haphazardly running a hand through her sweat-thick hair as she trudged toward the exit. A pair of big, barred gates that blurred in and out of focus ahead of her. She’d just cut through them and leave. Sage was just in no condition for anymore adventures.

Getting from... wherever she was, to the gates, however, turned out to be quite the adventure itself. The girl’s staggering, meandering path moved forward in an agonizing slow motion as she wavered this way and that, all the while, her swimming head pulsed with pure agony. Finally, she overcorrected and tripped, falling face-first on the pavement, where she remained for a moment, too tired and too scared to get up, for fear that she’d just attack the ground with her face a second time.

I am not staying in a place called ‘Kill Town’ if I can’t even fucking walk, Sage urged to herself, and finally she pushed herself back up to her feet, and continued her arduous trek to the gates.

The watery haired girl finally arrived, and reached out to try the bars that blocked her path, only to find that the gate was locked, as she suspected. With a shrug, she encased one of her hands with her chillrend technique, and took a wide swipe at the bars.

The girl gasped in shock and pain as her incredibly strong, sharp claws shattered like glass against the bars, with a reverberating clang! The noise and sudden, shooting pain in her arm was enough to topple the girl over backwards, and she clasped her hands over her ears and clenched her eyes shut to make the ringing go away.

Finally, she climbed to her feet - again - and staggered back toward the carnival. It looked like she wasn’t going anywhere. Cradling the arm that had struck the bars, the incredibly uncomfortable addict shuffled onward, despite her entire body and mind telling her to just find a quiet corner to hide in.

Lights and bells and whistles assaulted her on all sides, and shouts and hoots and hollers persisted, all causing a cascade of wincing and shivers to beset poor Sage, who found herself wandering into the section reserved for carnival games. As if she was trying to get closer to the noise and flashing lights that kept threatening to set her brain on fire.

“Come on! Toss three rings onto the post and win the grand prize!” one shouted.

“All you gotta do is fill the balloon till it bursts! First one wins!” bellowed another.

“Hey you!”

“Step right up!”

“Come on down, miss!”

“Hey, you with the blue hair!”

“What?!” Sage whirled on one of the carnival workers. A burly man who was waving frantically for her attention. He grinned, gesturing to his game. Skee-ball. She narrowed her eyes and made to keep going, when the man shouted again, and again Sage cringed at the noise.

“Come on, play a while. First round’s on me.”

“I don’t want to play your game.”

“Oh, come on. It’s a free ball, just try your luck.”

“I told you I don’t want to play! Are you-” the girl cut herself off. She wanted to insult him, but no matter how shitty she felt, she was still Sage.

“I am sorry, please repeat the question.”

“What?”

“I am sorry, please repeat the question.”

“What question?” Sage growled. “What’s wrong with you?!”

“Self-diagnosis reveals no critical issues. I am currently operating on 92.3 per cent efficiency and will not require scheduled maintenance for approximately three weeks.”

“...What?!” the girl looked at the man like he was a crazy person. “Are... you a machine?”

“Yes, ma’am,” he - it - replied. “So, how’s about it? Throw the ball, win a prize!”

“I told you, no, please just leave-”

“Oh, come on. Just try it one time. Nobody’s keeping you!”

Sage closed her eyes and trembled with something wholly unlike fear. “You... you are a robot, right?”

“Yes, ma’a-”

The girl threw out a palm toward the machine, and the ground in front of her erupted as spears of ice burst from the ground as a miniature glacier, lancing forward one after the other and jutting out into the sky. The spears kept erupting closer and closer, until they tore through the skee-ball tent - and the carnival worker - with a thunderous crash. Wood and fabric and steel was rent and broken, and the burly man-robot disappeared amidst the shimmering spikes. All that remained was a about twenty feet of spiny glacier, like a giant hedgehog made of ice half-buried in the ground.

The other games fell silent, too, and the girl continued ahead, enjoying the reprieve she had given herself. So much, in fact, that she walked right past someone who had been standing there, staring at her, frozen in step, with a softball in hand, cocked over his head, as if he had been making to throw it.

Instead, he dropped the ball, and broke into a run after her.

“Sage!!” he shouted. The girl rigidly ignored him, and kept walking, but the man was persistent. He came after her and clapped his hand on her shoulder.

“What?!” she roared, whirling around, a freshly-formed claw raised to plunge through the face of- “A-Ander??”

The two of them merely stared at each other for a moment, as the dark haired one tried to put more than the couple of inches between his eyes and the spikes aimed for them. The claw retreated, evaporating into nothing, and Sage reeled forward, right into the arms of the quick-thinking athlete.

“I’m sorry!” the girl suddenly exclaimed, bursting into tears and burying her face in his chest. Ander found himself unsure of what to do, and so, he awkwardly held the girl until she stopped crying. Finally, Sage revealed a pair of wild, fiery rose eyes - an impossibly sharp contrast to the gentle, sad eyes Ander was used to seeing. “I... I don’t know what’s going on. My... head hurts so much, and I can’t see properly, and I’m shaking, and-”

“Relax, Sage,” the nomad interrupted. “Were you injected with something?”

“Y-Yeah, I-” the girl squinted, and suddenly glared up at him. After a moment, perhaps in reaction to his confused expression, her eyes softened. “I think so. I’m not... really sure. I woke up in the car, and... I thought you might be dead.”

“Heh, well, uh...” Ander replied. “I’m... not,” smooth. “Anyway, I was injected, too. It’s... some kind of drug. Knocked me out. Maybe it’s just... messing with you more than it did to me. Some drugs don’t mix with alcohol-”

Like Valium, Sage thought.

“What?”

Oh, fuck, Sage unwittingly projected a second time. “Uh... nothing. I don’t know what it is. It could be whatever was in that syringe, or it could...” Sage furrowed her eyebrows and rubbed her forehead. “...Be something else. I feel worse than I did when I woke up in the car.”

“Something else? Like what?” the nomad persisted. He always persisted.

When was the last time I even had a hit? she wondered, mercifully keeping her thoughts in her head. She groaned. Sage would have given anything for just one bloody pill. “...Nevermind.”

“Something else, like Valium?” Ander persisted.

“Yes, something like Valium. It k-keeps me normal.”

“Normal? How’s that? Neurotic and depressed?”

“I- you don’t under- how could you even- s-screw you, Ander!” Sage growled, pushing away from him, and then started bawling again. “I-I-I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it.”

[Juno]

Clowns didn’t often make good conversationalists; Oscar was no exception. As he’d said so aptly, he was a very good listener—but that was as far as his skills stretched. The onyx-haired Saiyan could barely listen as he clumsily handled the task of describing this place—‘Kill Town.’ He was aware of this defect, however, and quickly shut his mouth and went for a different, more desirable option.

Juno continued to eat the extra salty popcorn as Oscar flitted away into the back room of the stall; his eyes glanced at the emerald green curtain, awaiting the clown’s return, but for a while, there wasn’t any sign of him.

“Here ya go!” Oscar said, rather eloquently, a few minutes later when he finally burst forth from the curtain. He held in his hand a sheet of paper folded into three parts, and slid it across the table to the fortuneteller as Juno traded him an empty popcorn container, which Oscar quickly filled, and slid back across the counter.

The future-seer thanked the carnie as he turned to walk away, sticking the box of popcorn underneath his shoulder, and opened the brochure. He smiled at its contents—a map of this horrific arena, from one end—the entrance/exit, which had a slightly eerie ‘Forbidden’ stamp upon it, to the very back, where Juno had found himself upon waking up. He resolved to use this map if he needed it, but for the moment, he wanted to explore blindly, so he slipped it in the inside pocket of his coat and resumed munching on his popcorn.

His feet trotted lazily through the dirt that made the carnival’s paths, and his neck twisted this way and that, looking at the many different lights and signs that were plastered above different booths and rides. More people were also walking around the carnival—he was no longer a citizen in a small town, as it were. Though the numbers still weren’t all that high, he was pretty sure that there were definitely more people than when he’d arrived.

Across the way, Juno spotted a game booth that looked promising—a batting cage. If there was one thing about him that was human, it would probably be his love for baseball; though he’d never actually been to a game, he had watched it on TV plenty of times, and when he’d had nothing else to do, had simply practiced his technique with a baseball bat… sometimes on the heads of insolent thugs. Nevertheless, he marched over to the booth and the clown at its head smiled broadly, opening the gate without even asking for compensation. His mind raced again—why didn’t anyone in this carnival accept money?

This was a very strange carnival.

“Alright, kids,” he whispered to himself, picking up the baseball bat as a few people in line leaned over the railing to get a better view, “Watch and learn.”

“Uh, sir…”

Juno turned on his heel, almost swinging the bat into the man’s head. “What?”

“Don’t you want to wear a helmet?” the guy in line asked, pointing to a few helmets sitting on a nearby table, “After all, a stray swing and you could get a really bad head injury.” Juno pretended, for a moment, as if he was considering the man’s suggestion, and then looked back to the disbeliever confidently.

“There won’t be any stray shots,” he assured him.

“Whatever you say, buddy,” the guy sighed.

Mental note: whack that guy in the skull with the baseball bat after showing what a farce this whole thing was. That thought out of the way, he turned back to the shooter, and nodded to the clown operating the thing. He saw the ball before it even shot out—his eyes glossed over, and inside the realm of his Foresight, he watched the path of the ball and then blinked, just as the thing shot out. He lined up his swing and knocked it back, sending the object flying over the batting cage and ‘out of the park,’ for lack of a better analogy. He glanced, through his peripherals, at the onlookers—the safety-obsessed guy’s jaw had dropped a few inches. Juno, however, simply smirked, nodding for the clown to shoot again.

WHACK—another home run. A couple of people emitted exclamatory expressions from behind him, and he turned, nodding his head and then taking a brief bow. He chuckled to himself—he probably looked pretty arrogant, but why the hell should he care? He stood up again, smiling to the crowd and turning back to the cage just in time to see the baseball before it whacked him in the forehead, knocking him off his feet.

He landed on his back, in the dirt, and quickly clutched his forehead, the throbbing becoming unbearable. He rolled onto his stomach and the slowly pushed himself off the ground—he didn’t want to strain himself, and he was afraid that a smack in the head might’ve been enough to make his sickness reappear. He stood up cautiously, rocking back and forth where he stood and catching his balance, his ears deafened to the laughter that now came from the line. He took his embarrassing walk of shame out of the batting cages and slowly slumped onto a nearby bench.

The clown operator of the batting cage walked over with a very sad clown look on his face, handing the half-Saiyan his half-empty box of popcorn. Juno thanked him weakly, and the clown smiled, waddling away.

He popped a couple of kernels of popcorn into his mouth and then scanned the surroundings—now, with a throbbing headache, he felt as if there was little to do but ponder the situation he’d been thrown into. He was at a carnival, possibly in some evil mastermind’s thrall, and now, he had hurt himself. What the hell else could possibly go wrong, here?

“Feeling blue?”

Juno jumped, falling off the bench and recoiling a bit before gazing up at the brown-haired woman who had magically appeared on the seat next to him. “Sorry,” she said, leaning over, “did I scare you? I didn’t mean to. I’m Mixie.”

The fortuneteller hesitated. “…Hello, Mixie.”

“I’m going to be your guide for the duration of Kill Town,” she introduced with an attractive smile, “I’m here talking to you because playing solo isn’t a wise idea in a game like this. You need a well-rounded party to keep yourself on your game.” Her smile broadened, but suddenly, even Juno’s faux-happiness had faded as he stood up and brushed himself off, honestly not really comprehending anything she’d said—playing solo? A ‘well-rounded party’? What the heck was that supposed to even mean? “Your options are limitless, though. One party’s already shaping up quite nicely—they’ve got an offense mage, a healer mage, and a warrior.”

Juno quirked an eyebrow. What was she talking about?

“Hmmm,” she muttered, surveying him, “You’re a rogue, yourself, I’d say, with a couple of special skills to assist with backstabs and the like. ‘Know your enemy.’ Good policy for a class like you. You’d be a good asset to Kaden’s team, statistics wise—”

“Kaden?” Juno thought out loud. He cringed—he didn’t much mind the blonde courier, but their personalities weren’t exactly the best match, and if he was here, then things just got a lot more complex. However, this did answer a question—other warriors were here, and he could be almost certain that they were kidnapped just as he was.

“Yes,” Mixie continued, “Kaden, Sophia, and Belle Hibiki—oh, and looks like someone new just popped in. Juunanagou, I think.”

Juno took a step back, faltering, “…Sophia?”

Mixie smiled. “Have fun!” she said, and suddenly stood from the bench, turning on her heel and disappearing in mid-step. Juno smiled, his spirits lifted. He would admit that his attraction to Sophia had faded—not that he didn’t still think she was hot—but more than that, she was a friend, even if only one that he’d made under pressure. He wouldn’t search out the carnival for her and Kaden, as he knew that they’d meet up eventually. He was happy, though, because now he did have someone he was familiar with in this game. Kaden being here was a blessing in disguise, as well, he knew; he wasn’t familiar with the other name, and though he’d met Piper, she wasn’t in the forefront of his mind.

One question was answered—are there others like me here, or am I a special case? Still, though, more questions lingered. The most prominent one: what the hell is going on? He was content to wait, though—at least for a little while. If what Mixie said was true, there were others here, and the ebony-haired Saiyan was almost certain that they were being collected, once again, for a game of life or death. He just had to figure out what kind of game of life or death, and mold himself to it. He was usually pretty good at games. Friend or Foe had been a first experience—losing so badly, not even getting to the top five—and he wasn’t about to repeat it.

No. If this was a game, he was going to win it.

In the mean time, he thought, he might as well entertain himself with some target practice—nothing too ‘fun’ like the batting cages, but there were definitely some rather large archery bull’s eyes that he could see through the chain link fence of the batting cage. He smirked, and thought of what Mixie had said—time to put his rogue skills into action, he thought, and quickly tossed his popcorn to the side and blasted the lock on the nearby door with a spark of ki.

He smiled, and before long, he’d set up one of the bull’s eyes and had backed up a good twenty feet or so. He lowered himself into a battle-stance; it’d been a while since he’d had to use one, but he still slipped into it like a charm, thrusting one of his palms out and holding the other safely near his chest, for blocking. He spread his legs and bent his front knee, stretching forward.

A small orb of ki began to kindle in his palm. He sighed; he had expected it to take a few seconds for his energy to start flowing, and after a short hiatus, a violet orb appeared cupped inside his fingers. He stared at the target, letting his eyes squint with focus, and then wound up and tossed the miniscule orb at the red-and-white circles. The ball of ki flew quickly toward its mark, not hitting the center but getting close enough that Juno was satisfied. “Not bad,” he said to himself, “But you’ve got more tricks up your sleeve.”

He smiled broadly, this time cupping his hands and letting a larger violet orb materialize between his fingers. “Come on,” he whispered, feeling the sweat begin to form on his brow. He had to get back into shape—his vacation, and the sickness, had sapped a lot of his energy, and now he struggled to do basic moves.

He thrust his arms out in front of him, releasing a Pop of ki from the orb he’d formulated. The continuous beam burst forth from the sphere in his hands, rushing toward the target as if it was a beautiful, razor sharp, violet sphere. It collided with the target head on and in the center, ripping the wooden circle to shreds right before his eyes. The beam dissipated as it collided with the target, and Juno dropped to his knees, breathing heavily. Impromptu training, perhaps, wasn’t the best of ideas. He looked up at the shattered bull’s eye, and grinned mischievously as smoke wafted off the pieces.

“Heh,” he chuckled quietly, “That counts, right?”

Gradually, he stood up again, and satisfied with his target practice, he slipped back through the gate and out into the thick of the carnival, which was steadily becoming more and more crowded. People walked past in lines, this way, and that, some looking slightly familiar, but then he could never be sure, there were blondes, there were red jackets, there were blue pigtails—

Blue pigtails? That was a unique trail. He did a double take, hoping to confirm his thoughts, and she glanced back at the crowd, revealing her coral eyes stained with tears. The blue hair he might’ve been able to shrug off as a coincidence, maybe, but with a face like that, there was no mistake her—Sage.

Juno pushed through the crowd over to the game booth where Sage was standing, talking to another guy and wiping her face. The half-Saiyan stayed at a distance for a second, watching what was going on. She backed up from the guy, and Juno could tell that something had just occurred that had upset her—he quirked his eyebrow, watching carefully, staying behind people and making sure that he blended in the crowd while he observed Sage and her friend.

“I-I-I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it,” Sage apologized for an unheard insult. The black-haired kid watched carefully, observing their interactions, and then carefully began to step out of the crowd. He walked closer to the pair, standing behind the quarter-Saiyan, glancing at her, attempting not to be noticeable. Her friend stayed silent for a moment, biting his lip, as Juno looked her up and down, smiling at her nice black dress. She was pretty—she had been as long as he’d known her.

“Hey,” the black-haired guy talking to Sage called, noticing him, “Is there a problem?” He shrugged off his conversation with Sage briefly after noticing the intrusion, taking a few confident steps past the girl and towards the newcomer. She glanced over her shoulder, tears still hanging in her eyelids. Her coral eyes widened as she caught the face of the eavesdropper—Juno smiled on the inside, keeping a stoic exterior expression.

“J-Juno?” she mustered, turning halfway to face him.

“Wait, you know this guy, too?” her companion said, glancing back at her.

“Hey, Sage,” Juno smiled, a bit shyly. Admittedly, his attraction hadn’t quite faded for the cyan-haired girl. But then, she hadn’t decided to attach herself to arrogant blond couriers.

He was forced to admit, though, that the potential for romance was just not in the cards, as Sage forced a smile, and then nodded to her friend. She was way too shy—she hadn’t even accepted his damsel-in-distress advances in Friend or Foe, which usually worked like a charm. So, he didn’t think that it would be a good idea to pursue said fantasies. He could dream, though, couldn’t he? Ah, the prettiest were always unattainable.

“Ander,” the black-haired man said, crossing his arms and looking Juno up and down. “Your name’s Juno?” he asked, and the fortuneteller turned his smile to the other man.

“Yeah,” he nodded, “I’m Juno.” He stuck his hand out politely for the human to shake, and Ander looked down at the hand, contemplating. It took a moment, but Ander hesitantly offered his hand, and shook Juno’s firmly. It was a semblance of trust—however false—that they’d formed, just then, and to be honest, Juno felt more comfortable knowing people here than he felt sitting on a bench alone. “So,” the black-haired half-Saiyan smiled, “You guys want to play some games?” He chuckled, gesturing to the ball game Ander had previously failed completely at.

Ander cracked a wide grin, attempting as much as he could to portray a friendly persona, at least at this stage. Juno, however, was watching for something else, and didn’t move until it came—a quick, small upward curve of Sage’s lips before she reached up once again to wipe her eyes. The young halfling, however, wasn’t weeping at all—in fact, he was quite contented that he’d found an old friend and another person to hold conversation with, even if Sage wasn’t all that much of a conversationalist. Ander headed over to the booth and grabbed a ball, taking a few minutes to aim, while Juno took the opportune moment to get in a few words with Sage.

“So, how’ve you been?” he asked casually.

“Uh,” Sage stuttered, shy as always, “O-okay, I g-guess.”

“Did you get kidnapped by freaky robots too?” the half-Saiyan asked.

“Y-yes,” Sage revealed simply, and for a moment, Juno’s thoughts left her and went back to the situation at hand. His conversation with Mixie had already pretty much confirmed his suspicions, but now he had firsthand testimony. He shot a quick smile at Sage and walked up to the booth to watch Ander’s throw, content to get in as much fun as possible while they still had the chance, because he knew they didn’t have long.

The game was about to begin.

[Kazuya]

The mattress was harder than she remembered. In fact, it was a little crumbly. Her fingers dug into…dirt? Kazuya’s eyes snapped open, vision coming quickly as she assessed her surroundings. This definitely wasn’t the small room Gabriel had given her. The blanket slid to the ground as she crawled to her knees. She was outside, the sun was high in the sky, hidden by bright, white fluffy clouds. There was music in the background, and a clusterfuck of voices fighting for dominance. Where in the hell was she?

She padded barefoot though the ankle-deep grass towards the noise, her eyes darting from one side to the other in hopes of trying to assess her location. Everything looked generic, like some random carnival in the middle of the woods. There was people, and booths, and paths, but all the ambience seemed so…artificial. Something wasn’t quite right.

Passing a few workers as she moved through the booths of games and attractions, she couldn’t help but feel that this had to be some kind of dream. Yeah, that made sense. She was at a carnival in her dreams, and when she woke up, she’d be in that wonderful bed, snuggled beneath that heavenly blanket surrounded by perpetual darkness until Gabriel came to unlock the door. Her thoughts devoured her attention until she slammed into a half wall, losing her balance and flipping over the top and into the grass on the other side. She landed in a crumpled heap, the boxers she wore to bed riding up her ass and the big white tee twisted around her slim form. The next time she talked to Gabriel, she’d have to discuss other clothing options with him, because this simply wasn’t going to work.

She let gravity do its thing and fell the rest of the way over onto her back, until she was left staring up at the white sunless sky.

[Alura]

The royal lizard-girl already stood out way more then she wanted to, but the new clothing that she had been changed into didn't help matters any. She strolled out of the small alleyway she had woke up in and glanced around the arcade area of the carnival. Typically she wore a tank top and pants, with a hoody to cover her face from the human crowds; but after her recent adventure the attire had changed.

"Nice costume, sweety," a woman said as she walked by the reptilian, giving her a friendly smile. Alura was surprised to get such a nice reception by a human, though after a thought she wasn't sure the woman was a human at all. Regardless, the girl looked down at her tall body, adorned with the pirate jacket over a black shirt, some ripped pants, and a nice big pirate captain's hat atop her gold-plated skull.

At first Alura thought it had all been a dream. A normal reaction, she imagined. After all, it had been a normal day on Namek when she was kidnapped and woke up in this carnival. After that, she had been swept into a nightmarish reality that saw her almost swallowed by with a pirate vessel. For all intents and purposes, she should have been dead. But luck had saved her. Luck had gotten her out of a stormy ship battle, and put her right back in the carnival.

"From one prison to another," she commented to herself as she strolled down the arcade booths. She thought about the families enjoying the various games, such as the baseball throw or the drunking booth. How many were real? Was any of it real? Maybe she was the only real person in the entire carnival.

That theory was shot the second Alura saw a familiar face in front of her, apparently also trying to shake an experience out of his mind. Once the human Juno recognized the lizard-woman, he nodded his head at her and walked near her. "Hey. Nice outfit," he greeted, "I guess we made it."

"Guess so," Alura said, disinterested as she turned away from him. As happy as she was that the boy wasn't killed by the monster that attacked them out in the open, it didn't really make her feel better to know that it was true. Juno being there proved that she wasn't dreaming. She was really there, in a virtual carnival, and she had absolutely no hope or escaping.

"You okay?" Juno asked, "I would have thought you'd be happy to see me."

The scaly face of Alura turned around to face the human. He meant well, really did. She knew it, too. But for some reason she just had enough; her face snarled and she spat at him angrily: "I don't even know you, human."

Before he could answer, she teleported away.

"Stupid," she said to herself, angry at her own grumpiness. She was happy to see she could teleport again, but the bitterness in her mouth after she had just spat out at the only friend she had made was too sour to let her enjoy herself. The girl walked through the shopping area of the carnival, thinking about the things she and Juno had experienced together; that was one friendship she wouldn't get back. "...Stupid."

The reptilian stopped as she noticed a sign on the way towards the ride area. Fortune Teller. The girl glanced around to see if anyone was looking at her, as if wanting to avoid being judged for considering the foolish fortune teller, and then entered the small tent.

The fortune teller at the Freakz circus Alura had originated from had hated aliens, so she didn't really interact with him much. This one, however, was significantly older and didn't appear to be bothered by Alura's foreign features. "Come in, my child," she beckoned from her table, where she had been drawing tarot cards.

"You arn't real," Alura accused, "You're just a program."

"Real is such a broad term," the old woman countered cheerfully, "I am sitting here, talking to you. You can see me. You hear my voice. If that does not make me real, then what does?" Alura tried to come up with a counter to that argued, but couldn't. "Sit," the woman directed gently.

The reptilian woman took a seat in front of the old fortune teller. "Are you going to tell me my future?"

"I would," the woman said, "If I could. But I don't know what your future holds. I'm just an old woman with years of wisdom and experience... knowledge about the world you're in, and the world you come from."

Alura frowned a bit, not quite believing the old hag-looking human. "What good are you if you can't tell the future? What do you know about me?"

"Alura," the woman said gently, looking up from her tarot cards. For the first time, Alura noticed the cold darkness in the eyes of the otherwise sweet-looking female. The eyes seemed to flash white for a brief moment, then back. It continued to shuffle colors, as if she was channeling images into her head. "Show performer. Freak. No, Freakz. A circus like this one. Then a runaway. Fugitive. Dirty alien, they called you. Then a monk. A warrior monk. Protector of the namekians. Heir of Reptilia. A princess who doesn't want her throne. A royal heir with an obligation to her people."

There was a silence as the woman's eyes returned to normal. Alura was shocked by the human's knowledge of her. "How do you know that?" Alura asked. "How?" No answer. "Tell me. Have robots been spying on me?! Do you a file on me? Is that 'Gamer' in your head? Answer me!"

No answer. The fortune teller smiled politely. "I'm sorry, darling. All I do...is offer wisdom. What you do with it while you are here is up to you."

"I don't even belong here!" The reptilian screeched out at the calm old bat. "I'm not a fighter! I'm just a teenager from a circus, wearing freakin' pirate clothes! I'm a nobody! I wasn't meant to be here!"

The woman rather calmly pointed to her tarot cards. She knowingly pulled the top card from the deck and turned it over, setting it in front of her. Fate. "You are not here in Kill Town by accident, Alura," the programmed fortune teller said. "Don't doubt your purpose. You are meant to be here. You are here because you have a job to do...you have a role to fulfill."

"What role? What job?" The frustrated alien-teen asked, irritated. "Why am I here?"

The stoic, wrinkled old woman just smiled again. That annoying human smile. "When it faces you, you'll know it."

Both angry and frustrated by the lack of answers she was getting, Alura turned for the door of the tent. "Fuck you and your fate," she spat as she walked for the door, tired of being fed a lot of riddled bullshit. Before the woman could call the lizard-girl back, she teleported away in mid-step.

One step she was in the fortune tellers tent. The next step, she was walking past the merry-go-round, teleporting into the scene out of nowhere, like nothing had happened.

[Piper Juunanagou]

One moment Piper was manhandling an army of undead corpses, and the next, she was back in the fantastic realm of Gamer’s carnival. Once the initial confusion wore off, the soldier was quick to locate the nearest reflective surface. In this case, it was a small puddle on the side of the pathway that had enough clear water to let her see that she was no longer a brunette.

“Splendid,” the Sentinel muttered beneath her breath as she reached up and grabbed a handful of her messy blonde hair. Glancing down at her clothes, Piper grinned upon realizing that she was wearing the same outfit she had been prior to her trip to the zombie-infested city. “Much better,” she remarked out loud as she reached into her back pocket and yanked out her beret. Plopping the army green hat over her unkempt hair, the woman patted it down so it wouldn’t slid off, and then she began to make her way down the paved walkway.

“I wonder if that rodent was a prisoner or just some really good programming,” Piper asked herself as she passed a series of robot-operated convenience stands. Each time she made eye contact with one of the chipper, bright-eyed robots they would try their damnedest to coerce the woman into playing their game, whether it was hitting a target, tossing a ball through a hoop, or another in a seemingly unending supply of rigged carnival games.

As Piper continued to casually trek across the paved walkway, the numerous stands and small tents gave way to larger tents and theme-park rides. The first notable rides that the woman passed were the toddler and juvenile rides: The spinning teacups, the kiddy coaster, the parasols, and something where the kids would sit in giant kangaroos and be bounced up and down across a track. The large tents that coincided with the kid rides housed numerous jungle gyms, ball pits, and inflatable bouncy castles of all assorted sizes and shapes. Furthermore, the entire pre-teen nirvana was capped off by the numerous stands selling all sorts of tooth-destroying candy that were peppered throughout the area. Despite all the effort put into the area, there were absolutely no children running around frantically dashing about.

If Piper had been about twenty years younger, she probably would be in heaven right now. Instead, she simply found herself walking a little bit faster as she started to note the larger, more adult rides that were looming ahead of her. After power walking a couple dozen more yards, the woman passed a sign that indicated she was entering the rides section of the carnival, and much to her amusement, the rides were not limited to the normal assortment of rundown machines one would normally expect to find at a local fairground.

Roller coasters of all shapes and sizes filled the area almost to bursting, and between the giant goliath’s of steel (or wood), there stood just about every single amusement park ride that Piper had encountered as a child. There was everything from the Pirate Ship to the most terrifying pitfall ride she’d ever witnessed and then all things that fell between the two extremes. To the woman’s far left, she saw the giant mountains that were actually the log flume ride that served as the centerpiece of the neighboring water park. Despite knowing that this was all part of a simulation, Piper couldn’t help but be enamored by the enormity and diversity of the place. With wide eyes and her jaw still hanging open, Piper took her first few steps into the amusement park. Almost immediately, she was greeted by one of the numerous robots that helped operate the virtual reality carnival.

“Welcome to the ‘rides’ section of our illustrious carnival, my lady,” the robot said—his tone and demeanor far less grating than his coworkers. “Would you like to purchase a ride ticket?” He inquired, prompting Piper to furrow her brow at the short, bipedal machine.

“I wasn’t given any actual money,” the soldier muttered as she reached into her pocket and pulled out a handful of the ‘monies’ she’d been awarded for not dying in the zombie city. “Just this crap,” she remarked as she extended the handful of sprockets, gears, and other assorted crap toward the robot. “Am I supposed to turn this junk into cash or something?” Tilting his head, the robot seemed to take a moment or two to ponder the situation before he let out a mildly terrifying chuckle.

“My dear lady, what you have there is for purchasing special prizes over in the concession region,” the mechanical humanoid remarked as he placed a hand on Piper’s shoulder and seemed to look at her like she was somehow mentally challenged for not knowing what to do with her ‘prize monies.’ “A ride ticket costs nothing but a smile and a warm disposition!” He decreed as he gradually began to revert back to the unsettling and somewhat unnerving personality that the other models had displayed.

“Oh, I have that…” Piper muttered with forced happiness as she smiled with her teeth for the robot. Clapping his metal hands together, the robot reached up for his right ear, and with an almost jarring ping, a ticket slid halway out of the attendant’s head. Still smiling as if he hadn’t been bothered by the whirling machines in his skull, the robot snatched the ticket out of his head and handed it over to Piper, who was by this point vowing off any future interaction with robots.

“…Thank you,” the soldier muttered as she snatched the ticket out of the robot’s oversized, mitten-shaped hand. “See you later!” She added with mock enthusiasm as she spun around and began to jog toward the nearest attraction. When she reached the front of the line at the large building simply labeled ‘The Alien Invasion!!1’, Piper—against all better judgment—glanced over her shoulder and saw that the robot was still staring at her from the entrance to the amusement park.

Gamer should have really just kidnapped some people to serve as the staff here… Piper remarked internally as she turned and stepped over the threshold into the large, warehouse-shaped structure that housed the attraction. After a few feet, she was forced to step through a black curtain, and on the other side, all of the hall’s surfaces had been painted and designed to look like the inside of a spaceship. The only objects that were out of place were the wooden signs that had displayed the various warnings and hazards that the attraction contained and the dangers they posed for the elderly, pregnant, and anyone else with poor constitutions.

Seeing as how she wasn’t elderly, suffering from heart problems, or pregnant (as far as she knew), Piper continued to stroll down the winding hallway until she came to what she guessed was supposed to simulate the bridge. For the most part, it was accurate to the limited exposure to space-faring vessels she’d had during her initial training with the military; however, there was one major difference. Instead of a large view screen along the far wall, the set dropped off and was replaced by the track that housed the mobile carts designed to carry the carnival patron through the attraction.

“Hello, Cadet Juunanagou, are you ready to brave the final frontier and help secure our world from the alien menace?” A robotic voice asked from a nearby comm. panel. Although she wasn’t aware of whether or not she should interact with the set, Piper nonetheless reached over and pressed the button on the elaborate machine before she issued her response.

“You bet’cha,” the Sentinel shot back in an accent eerily reminiscent of a hockey mom. “What’d I do?” She asked after a slight pause.

“Just put on the gauntlet, Cadet,” the voice replied as a metal gauntlet attached to a harness suddenly dropped in from the ceiling. “You’re going to need it if you intend to fight those dastardly alien invaders!” With a raised eyebrow, Piper reached up and unhooked the heavy steel glove and took a quick moment to revel in how authentic it looked. In fact, the woman would be surprised if something similar to the high-tech gauntlet wasn’t lying around in the Sentinel’s science building.

Although she was opposed to the idea, Piper was forced to remove one of her gloves to make room for the strange piece of equipment. Stuffing the leather glove into her pocket, the blond slowly slid the gauntlet over her hand. Once she had it on the whole way, the several metal rods inside the device tightened until it was snug against her flesh. Despite how cold it had felt when she had held it a few moments earlier, the gauntlet actually felt warm against her skin.

“When you are ready, Cadet, please board the shuttle for takeoff,” the robotic voice spoke as a large, two-seat vehicle emerged from the darkness at the back of the room and whirled forward to the end of the queue. Quite amused at the quality of the simulator, Piper took one last glance at the silver gauntlet and began to march toward the ‘shuttle.’ Although there was no one there to educate her in proper seat etiquette, the woman was nonetheless intelligent enough to know how to operate her seatbelt and the pull-down bar. The moment that the bar clicked into place against the woman’s waist, the vehicle began to slowly lurch forward.

“Officer!” Piper shouted as she turned to face the boarding platform that was beginning to disappear behind her shuttle. “How do I work this?” She asked as she lifted the gauntlet and wagged it toward the bridge of the ship. Instead of a response from the dapper robotic voice, a glass disc imbedded slightly into the palm of the glove began to glow red. At the same time, Piper suddenly felt the strangest sensation of warmth flush over her body. Glancing down at the screen at the front of the makeshift shuttle, the woman saw a quaint animation displaying a stick figure wearing a similar glove. A caption below the animation read ‘Remember to focus your ki!” The next frame showed a very happy stick figure shooting a giant beam of light out of the glove.

“Really?” The Sentinel chuckled as the wall in front of the vehicle opened up to reveal a star-filled room. The track was designed so that it looked like Piper and her space shuttle were flying through the cosmos, but it was easy enough for the soldier to see that the floor was never more than two feet below her.

“Die, stupid earthling!” The screeching voice was accompanied by a giant, cardboard alien popping out from a nearby wall. For a moment, nothing happened, and then the tip of the alien’s gun—what looked to be no more than a laser pointer—flashed red. An instant later, Piper was jolted with a small burst of electricity and her entire shuttle shuddered violently on the track.

“Painful, much?” Piper shouted to no one in particular as she clenched her bare hand against the safety rail. A moment later, another alien popped out from the wall and repeated a similar insult. This time, however, the woman threw out her gauntleted fist toward the cardboard alien. Unfortunately, absolutely nothing happened and Piper was hit by an even stronger jolt of electricity a few moments later.

“What the hell am I supposed to do!” The Sentinel screamed as the same caption popped up on her shuttle’s screen. “‘Remember to focus your ki’ … what does that even mean?” The woman muttered as she glanced down at the palm of the gauntlet. ‘Ki’ was supposed to be life energy or something fancy and philosophical like that. Piper knew it was also something people could manifest as a destructive force. After all, it was what Kaden tossed around like snowballs but as far as Piper knew, she wasn’t capable of such feats.

Well I guess this is a simulator within a simulator, so who the hell knows what’s plausible and what isn’t? With that thought in her head, Piper sucked in a deep breath of air and tried to focus her mind. Several yards ahead of her shuttle, the soldier heard one of the cardboard aliens pop out and issue another demeaning insult, but she ignored it as she clenched her eyes shut and tried to ‘focus her ki.’ As ludicrous a notion as it seemed to her, Piper suddenly felt the same warm sensation she had upon her shuttle’s takeoff. This time, however, it was accompanied by a much more visible reaction from the glove.

“This better work,” the woman muttered as she focused on the glove. With an audible humming noise, the glass-like plate began to scintillate and glow with a deep red light. Up ahead, the alien was preparing to fire upon Piper’s spaceship, but before it had the chance, the smiling woman threw her hand out.

In that instant, she felt the heat within her body surge as a beam of red light erupted through the glove’s lens. Before the alien could pull the trigger, he was utterly obliterated by Piper’s ki blast.

“Fuck yea!” Piper screamed triumphantly as she pumped her gloved fist in the air. Unfortunately for the woman, her celebration was cut short by the arrival of a massive armada of gun-totting cardboard aliens. Despite the odds being stacked against her, the Sentinel could do little more than grin as she flexed her metal-encased fingers.

[Victoria]

Victoria shifted on the bench, and hunched forward. She cradled her cell phone in her hands, going through the various options and trying to fully understand the new technology. She pushed the buttons, fully engrossed in the process, and absent-mindedly began to chew on the nails of her other hand. “What’s this?” she mumbled to herself and opened the picture folder. Inside was an assortment of images, mostly abstract, she scrolled through them one by one. A picture of Jeremy appeared on the screen; he held his thumb up and smiled with a wink, something she had never seen him do before. She kept going through the pictures, finding more of her superior, which she found somewhat odd. “I suppose he wants me to have these to remember him by?” she said to herself. “I hate to say it,” she looked at the last picture, a close up of his face showing bristled cheeks and cool eyes, “I kind of miss you.”

Water splashed into Vicky’s face, and she stood up flustered. She wiped at the liquid, and looked around frantically. “Pwned, sucker.” A small child ran away, water gun in hand, and laughing. She stared in awe, not exactly sure what had just happened.

“Was that kid real? Or another falsity?” she asked no one in particular.

She slipped her phone into her pocket and pulled a strand of hair behind her ear and away from her face. She finally took notice of her surroundings. She was standing in what appeared to be a section of Kill Town that had many large contraptions, people were on them and either screaming or yelling in excitement. She looked up at the large wheel; she had first seen when she had arrived here. It was a lot bigger than she had thought.

“Hey, watch out,” a man slammed into her, and looked back in disgust.

“Is everyone here a jerk or something?” she asked, looking towards the sky. So far, real or not, the attending civilians had been more annoying than she would have anticipated. Given the atmosphere, she had hoped to have some fun here. Victoria hugged her torso, looking around for someone, anyone that looked familiar.

“Perhaps Piper, yeah, she didn’t seem all bad.” She said, beginning to walk away from the bench, recalling the ending of their strange event.

The zombies had been obliterated, taken down by their power and skills. She did not doubt that Gamer was behind it, considering that almost instantly after defeating the hordes they had miraculously been teleported from the death and decay and into the fun, bright, world of the Carnival. They were no longer a team, but Vic knew Piper, in one way or another. They had traded blows, fought nearly to the death, and when all seemed lost the blonde had bandaged her up and apologized. She would not have left a note, told me her name, if it didn’t mean something. Unfortunately Victoria had no clue about any of it. The idea of a friendship had always been far from her mind, which was almost always filled with combat tactics and anger. A target was a target, and that was why friendships couldn’t be maintained. It wouldn’t do her any good to make a friend, and have the possibility of them being a target the next day. However, this idea of friendship has since been on her mind, first Joal, and now Piper.

“Can I, really, maintain my life and destiny while forming the bonds that I deserve to have?” she turned to a robot maintaining one of the rides; he looked back at her blankly.

“Jump in, partake in excitement!” the robot exclaimed, raising his arms, and waving at her.

“So you think that I should do both, juggle a life that I thought I couldn’t have?” she asked, approaching the mechanical being and leaning on his booth.

“Why not experience the wonders? Don’t be afraid to fly high, when the stimulation that ensues outweighs the fear!” he replied, his bright eyes beaming. Victoria looked up from the booth, and noticed that the ride next to it was a massive slingshot.

“Oh, you mean the ride, don’t you?” she said, her cheeks reddening.

“Ride for free!” he replied, motioning again to the apparatus.

“You have no idea what I’m saying, do you?” she asked, staring at the robot bemused.

“Jump in, partake in excitement!” he repeated, and motioned at her eagerly.

“Shit,” she remarked, and turned away. “I don’t want to be here, this is stupid.” She spat, and marched further in. People milled about, some could be real, but most were not.

She had thought that out of all of this, someone had agreed with her, and imparted upon her their advice. All she had done was make a fool out of herself, and gained nothing. Her frustrations boiled, knowing that she was in this alone, and without The Company to back her up. Those fuckers gave me up, just like that. her anger from being captured resurfaced, knowing that Jeremy had done nothing to prevent this. His words meant nothing, he had a poor excuse, What kind of fatherly figure is he? she wondered in resentment.

Victoria slammed into someone, and stumbled backwards nearly falling on her ass. “What the fuck,” she cried, “watch where the hell you’re going!” she looked at the culprit. Vic was immediately taken aback, and closed her mouth abruptly. A woman looked back at her, white eyed and blue skinned. She had never seen someone so...

“What’re you staring at?” the girl hissed back, face furrowed.

“I-sorry,” she stuttered and moved aside. “I didn’t realize.” She looked away timidly.

“Realize what? That you bumped into me? Or that I’m not human?” she sneered.

“Well, to be honest,” Vicky looked up, abashed. “That you’re an alien.” She shrugged awkwardly. “It’s nothing personal, just,” she grasped for the words. I don’t need this right now, shit. She just made random noises and gestures, obviously growing uncomfortable.

[Piper Juunanagou]

Five minutes after departing from the bridge of the attraction’s command center, Piper found herself rounding a final corner and entering back into the same area. With a grin on her face, the soldier looked down at the small screen on the vehicle’s dashboard and noted that her ruthless and nearly flawless genocide of the alien invaders had surpassed the attraction’s former high score—the one set by Gamer.

“I can see this guy’s inept in more ways than one,” Piper chuckled as the safety bar slowly began to rise up off her lap and into an upright position. Reaching down to her hip, the woman unbuckled her seatbelt and rose up out of the uncomfortable plastic seat. “Splendid!” She declared to a nonexistent audience as she placed her hands on the small of her back and stretched out her back to help alleviate the residual discomfort.

“Welcome back, Cadet Juunanagou!” It was the same robotic voice as before, but this time it was coming from a different communication’s panel. “You set a new high score! The world is proud to have marines like you fighting the good fight, Cadet,” the potentially automated voice added enthusiastically as Piper stepped out of the car and onto the boarding platform.

“Do I just follow this queue?” The woman asked after depressing the button on the panel. Despite the fact that she was alone, Piper nonetheless gestured toward the rope-lined walkway that led up to a set of large, circular metal doors.

“Now if you’ll simply return the gauntlet to its rightful harness, I’ll open up the escape hatch for you, Cadet,” the voice replied as a leather harness dropped down from the ceiling. For a moment, the Sentinel simply stared at the dangling series of straps and buckles, and then a smile slowly began to creep across her pallid countenance. Extending her gauntleted hand toward the exit door, Piper sucked in a deep gulp of air and gradually breathed it out as she focused on tapping into her ki.

“There we go,” the woman muttered as the palm of the glove began to shimmer once again. A beat later, an erratic burst of energy erupted from the soldier’s gauntleted fist and slammed into the metal doors. With no real reinforcements in place, the prop doors blew apart down the middle as the numerous pneumatic components that operated the door broke apart and began to hiss violently.

“Cadet Juunanagou, you are stealing Star Fleet property! Cease and desist immediately, or we will be forc—”

“Shut up,” Piper interrupted as she swung her hand around and blew apart the communication’s panel. Turning toward the ruptured door, the blond flexed her metal-coated fingers and smirked as she ducked under the gaping hole in the exit. A few yards ahead, there was a giant black curtain quite similar to the one she had passed through on her way into the boarding area.

“Cease and desist!” The two voices were very similar in tone to the panel Piper had destroyed moment’s earlier, but this time, they were actual robots with actual electrified billy clubs. Turning around, the woman frowned heavily as she leveled her newfound toy with the first of the two robot law enforcers. A beat later, Piper twitched as a bolt of energy leapt from her palm and slammed into the robot’s helmeted cranium. The machine’s head snapped back as electrical sparks and shards of glass and steel erupted from the impact site.

Moving her aim to the other advancing robot, the Sentinel gritted her teeth and narrowed her gaze as her gauntleted palm began to shimmer. Then—without much forewarning—Piper lost her strength and her arm fell limp at her side. Despite her tenacity a few second’s earlier, the woman was now gripped with a strange weakness. The dull throbbing felt like the muscle ache one experienced the day after working out a little too hard.

“Shit,” Piper groaned as she looked down at the stolen device. Had exiting the attraction somehow caused the gauntlet to require more of her ki to function?

“Cease and desist!” The remaining robotic policemen shouted as it lunged forward with its billy club hoisted above its head. Staggering backwards, Piper’s eyes widened as the electrified weapon passed just inches in front of her face. Although she knew she could probably handle the machine, the woman opted to go the less strenuous avenue, and after shoving the robot off balance, she pivoted on her heels and sprinted toward the exit curtain. Throwing her hands out in front of her, Piper shoved the heavy curtain aside and erupted out of the poorly lit building into the artificial sunlight of the carnival.

“Well that was unpleasant,” the Sentinel whispered between gasps for air as she found herself a little more winded than she would have liked given she’d only sprinted a couple yards at best. Nevertheless, she still felt a sense of delight in having triumphed over yet another of Gamer’s inept machines.

“Cease and desist!”

“Should have been able to call that one,” Piper groaned as she turned and watched as the robotic law enforcer came smashing through the heavy curtain and continued its beeline toward the rather exasperated woman. Clenching her fists, the soldier was prepared to combat the robot when she heard a rasping, reptilian voice bark a command her way.

“Duck!” The unknown arrival shouted, and with no real reason not to comply, Piper dropped down into a crouched position. A beat later, a sphere of violet energy zipped over the soldier’s head and slammed into the gut of the advancing robot. The orb erupted on contact—separating the two halves of the machine and scattering its charred, twisted insides in an impressively wide radius around its ruined corpse.

“…Super effective,” Piper whispered to herself as she rose up out of her crouch and turned to see that she had been spared from robot combat by Szar—the very same changeling she’d spent an entire drug-ridden SUV ride with so long ago. “Szar?” Piper asked as she took a step toward the armor-plated alien.

“Hello, Piper,” Szar remarked in a hoarse tone as he glanced around the woman at the broken robot. “I suppose that will teach our dear friend not to assail a woman, eh?” He added before punctuating his remark with a gruff chuckle.

“Didn’t you die?” The woman asked—ignoring the changeling’s awkward attempt at humor. “You were blown up by a rocket launcher after we tried to escape from that woman,” Piper added as a frown spread across the changeling’s reptilian features.

“I got teleported by that explosion,” Szar responded as he suddenly turned his gaze to the ground. “A few months after that, I threw myself in front of an attack intended for someone I had just met, and you know what, Piper? They sent me to hell,” he remarked as he dug the toe of his boot into the pavement.

… More zombies? The thought caused Piper’s right eye to twitch, but she was quick to slap a hand over it right before Szar lifted his gaze up to once again met hers.

“You okay?” He asked as he furrowed his brow at the woman’s odd behavior.

“Y-yea,” Piper answered quickly as she lowered her gauntleted hand away from her face. “That was just a touching story, Szar.”

“Bullshit is what it is,” the changeling rasped as he crossed his arms over his small chest. “You know how fun hell is? Do you?”

“I’m sorry,” Piper mumbled as she turned her eyes away from Szar’s rage-filled gaze. After a couple of beats, she looked back and flashed the shorter combatant a smile. “Do you want to ride the Ferris wheel?”

“Fuck yes.”

[Kaden]

For several reasons – only a handful of which he was truly aware of – Kaden felt utterly drained. He was still staring down at the corpse of the long-haired saiyan when his view had become obstructed by a portal that tore open the air in front of him. The courier spent a good while simply staring at the swirling portal of bright orange energy. He really didn’t want to move, but he also figured he really wouldn’t get much of a choice in the matter.

If what “Gamer” had been telling them was even remotely true, they were all inside a computer… or something? The idea that something so outlandish could happen – again – did not seem nearly as far-fetched as Kaden’s sanity would like it to be. He figured out of three things would happen when stepped into the portal: he’d be taken to another fight-to-the-death, he’d be taken back to that bizarre carnival-cum-staging area, or he’d be killed. If they really were there for someone else’s amusement, having them killed in some death-portal didn’t seem particularly likely. Of course, trying to apply any kind of logic to that scenario didn’t seem like the best use of his time.

“Nothing to it, but to do it,” Kaden told himself. Though his voice hardly carried the tone of confidence he was hoping for.

Stepping through the portal was a fairly anticlimactic affair. It took the courier all of two steps to go from a massive parking-garage-battlefield to the middle of a carnival. Looking around, he was at least glad that he didn’t seem to be dead. Not having any idea where he was, or what could possibly happen next, though, put a damper on his mood. There was, of course, dealing with the fact that he had just elected to kill someone. That definitely didn’t sit well with him.

Casting his eyes about for a second time, Kaden decided he needed to sit down for a few minutes and at least get a handle on the turmoil that was quickly growing within him. Outside of the life-or-death situation he had been in, all he had was time to think about what he had done and that was not what he needed to be focusing on if he had any hope of surviving the game. And he’d like to survive.

Settling on a nearby bench, the courier dropped himself down with a long sigh. The buzzing and blaring of various circus rides and attractions actually made it quite difficult for the courier to concentrate on anything. At first it proved irritating, as his mind, frustrating as it was, would immediately turn to consider whatever sound effect had just invaded his thought process. He was seconds away from just jamming his fingers in his ears and humming when an actual voice hit his ears.

“Something wrong?”

Turning his head sideways, Kaden caught sight of the uninvited guest. Uninvited, however, did not mean unwelcome. His eyes slowly traveled up and down the woman’s frame before meeting hers – the courier momentarily wondered whether such an action would offend the woman, but decided that anyone wearing skin-tight leather with a figure like hers deserved what they got, so to speak. She wore a rather disarming smile and leaned towards the courier once she realized that she had the blonde’s attention.

“Perfect,” Kaden muttered to himself at the thought of another distraction.

“Why thank you,” the woman beamed. “A girl does have to look her best.”

“Fair enough,” the courier conceded after looking her up and down once more. “Was there… something you needed?”

“Nope,” she answered with a smile and a flick of her long brunette hair. “But I bet there’s something I can... help you with.” The pause in her voice, and suggestive tone, were very playful and very shallow.

“And what might that be?” Kaden replied, trying not to sound as annoyed as her intrusion actually made him.

“Well, for starters, I’m Mixie.”

“Kaden,” the courier

“Oh I know who you are. That’s why I’m here.”

“Riiiiiight. Of course you know who I am. That’s completely reasonable and not at all creepy,” Kaden ran a hand through his hair before standing up and turning to leave.

“I’m sure you have some questions about Kill Town. I’d be happy to answer them~!” She almost sang the words.

A thought occurred to Kaden as he stopped himself from leaving. His head swiveled about the carnival before he turned to face the girl. Once again he looked her up and down, but that time, his eyes were glowing with energy. He frowned at his initial finding, but shrugged and let the light fade from his irises. He considered the finding for a moment before speaking.

“You’re not real,” were the words he finally settled on.

“Wha- what?” Folding her arms under her chest, the girl half-turned from him in a huff. “Well that’s just rude.”

“Huh. Ok. Let me rephrase, then. You’re not real person stuck here the same way I am.”

“You caught me,” Mixie turned back to the courier, the feigned offense gone. “I’m just here to help the players of Kill Town. Answers questions, give directions, that sort of thing.”

That he had been able to see the ki of just about everyone but Mixie had been a pretty dead give-away, but he hadn’t expected her to be there to actually help him and the others stuck in Gamer’s game. The idea that there would be anything in the game that wasn’t there to accost its players was not something that the courier would have guessed. Still, he supposed it wouldn’t be very fun to watch if everything was always trying to kill everyone.

“Alrighty, then, Mixie. What the hell was with that portal? And having to fight some random saiyan?”

“Well that was your event,” the woman replied, as though such a thing should have been obvious. “And it looks like you did pretty well.” At that, she pointed to Kaden’s waist.

Following her extended finger, the courier reached down and pulled the pager-like device free from the waist of his jeans. It was fairly unremarkable save for a small screen on its broadest side. It listed Kaden’s name and right under it displayed “Monies: 40” and below that was a scrolling marquee of text. Apparently he had tied for first in an event called “Doppelganger.” Most of that information made absolutely no sense to the courier.

“Alright… what are monies?” the courier started off with.

“You use monies to purchase badges and other helpful items that will help you win the game,” Mixie explained. “You can purchase everything from badges, which you need the most of to win, to items that let you steal things from other players. There’s also a mystery capsule which could be just about anything.” She giggled, as though excited by the prospect of what the mystery capsule could offer.

“Ok. So I buy stuff with them. Why do I have 40?”

“You get 40 monies for taking first place in an event. Like I said, your reward is based on your performance. So you’ll be fine as long as you know can… perform.” She flashed the courier an impish smile. “Will that be a problem?”

“Ha! Yeah, well, I haven’t had any complaints so far,” Kaden replied off-handedly. His mind was far more interested in processing the information he had received. “Actually, where am I?”

“You’re in the carnival. Didn’t you read anything?”

“Come again now? What am I supposed to read?” Kaden cocked an eyebrow at the artificial woman.

“The brochure. It explains everything.”

“I… didn’t get one. I don’t suppose you’d have an extra?”

Mixie seemed to consider the question for a second. Grabbing at the zipper of her leather jump-suit, which ran down the middle of the outfit, she unzipped it halfway down her chest, reach… in, and retrieved a pamphlet. With a smile, as though she had just reached into a pocket, she handed it over to the courier. Kaden simple laughed and took the piece of paper.

“Thanks, Mixie. I’m, uh, gonna go have a look around.”

“Have fun now. And if you need anything else, just give me a call.”

As Mixie vanished, quite literally, Kaden shook the encounter from his head and looked to the piece of paper in his hands. He had stepped out of his portal into the… amusement park section of the carnival. As far as the courier could tell, he needed to cross through it to get to the store. If he needed to spend monies to win the game he was stuck in, he might as well get started sooner rather than later. As he started walking, something pulled at the back of his mind.

Somewhere not very far away someone was… using ki, maybe? Admittedly, the courier still hadn’t figured out what the different sensations provided by his sixth sense actually meant. Deciding that a short detour was acceptable, he headed off in the direction of the energy he felt. He absolutely never would have guessed who would he would run across.

“Piper?” the courier waved as the medic turned at the sound of her name. “Glad to see you’re alright. Who’s your fr—“ Though Piper’s frame had hardly been enough to conceal the alien standing behind her, it didn’t hit Kaden until it stepped fully into view. “Holy shit! Szar?”

“Kaden?” the changeling asked after a moment of consideration. “It’s… been a while.”

“No kidding. I haven’t seen you since all that Kai Demolic nonsense. How’ve you been?”

“Dead,” the changeling replied with a sad shrug.

“Ouch. Sorry to hear that.” As it had been with Sophia during Dante’s Abyss, it was more than a little awkward talking to someone who was… dead. “So what brings you here?”

“Psychopath with an army of robots and a god complex, mostly.”

That was an interesting thought. Kaden hadn’t considered that Gamer’s robots would be able to retrieve people from the dead. Admittedly, Damon Dukes had been able to do it, and he had no idea what kind of resources or influence that had taken. Couple that with the fact that he knew nearly nothing about Gamer and it seemed as reasonable as anything else that was going on. Kaden was going to vocalize as much when his eyes fell upon the glove covering Piper’s hand.

“That’s quite the fashion statement you’re making there, Piper.”

“What can I say? I just have good fashion sense.”

“I can see that,” the courier smiled and let his eyes drift pointedly up to the beret on her head.

“Hey now, you have a problem with my hat?” She pointed a metal-clad finger at the courier in mock accusation before looking him up and down. “Besides, what do you know about fashion?”

“Two things,” the courier replied simply. “First, that leather never goes out of style.” Kaden tugged at the edge of his jacket. “And second, black is very slimming.”

“You humans wear way too much clothing,” Szar commented.

“I suppose we should all just walk around naked?” Piper asked.

“It would be nice not to have to spend money on clothes…” Kaden found himself thinking out loud. He decided not to vocalize the more obvious benefits of such a scenario. “Anyway, what’re you two up to?”

“Ferris wheel,” Szar replied, pointing to the ride off in the distance. “You want to join us?”

A long, drawn-out ride that slowly took people higher and higher into the air inside of a shaky, unstable bench with no reasonable method of keeping them fastened in. Yeah. Sounded like a wonderful time. Verbalizing none of that, Kaden pretended to think for a moment.

“I think I’ll pass, but you kids have fun. I can wait outside the ride for you to finish. That sounds way better than just wandering around on my own.” Kaden continued with a gesture in the direction of the ferris wheel. “Shall we?”

[Alura]

The lizard girl had calmed down for the most part, keeping her clawed hands in the warmth of the pirate jacket that was draped across her body. She didn't like how the shirt underneath the open jacket allowed her tight belly to be shown, though now wasn't the time to argue with Gamer's choice of attire for the wanna-be pirate.

She was allowing herself to be soaked up in the spectacle that was the 'telekinetic man.' He was showing off for a crowd of families, causing baseballs to float around his head as if he was juggling without physically touching them. Alura recalled a similar act at the Freakz Circus she was attached to, but that was totally fake. This guy seemed to be the real deal, or as real as you could be in an artificial world.

Now relaxed, the scaly woman turned to explore the carnival, fully intending on being alone as long as possible. Once she got out of the crowd that was watching the old telekinetic, a figure slammed into her side. The push didn't seem like an accident, more like someone coming up and deliberately shoving her; the first thought was Juno, mad about her outburst, but when she turned she found an entirely different human glaring at her. "What the fuck!" The pink-haired girl shouted, "Watch where the fuck you're going!"

It was then that the pale human got a look at the person she collided with, pausing to gaze up at the tall figure. At first, Alura felt her anger return from earlier, but she did her best to keep her demeanor calm and cool, just like they taught her at the temple. "What?" She asked as the human studied her, seemingly in awe. "What're you staring at?" Her voice was a hiss, so it probably came across as aggressive to someone who didn't know the vocal pattern of Alura's species

"I...sorry," the shorter figure said shyly. "I didn't realize..." She quickly turned towards the nearest gate, peering across it at the merry-go-round. Alura could tell the apology was genuine, but she also felt like the girl was intimidated, something that the reptilian was not quite used to when it came to human reactions of her appearance.

"Realize what?" Alura asked curiously. "That you bumped into me? Or that I'm not human?"

Nobody seemed to notice the minor confrontation, as the artificial spectators continued to enjoy the carnival around the two females. "To be honest..." the stranger said softly, turning to peer up into the glowing eyes of Alura. "That you're an alien. It's nothing personal, but..." The comment angered the reptilian, of course, but she couldn't help but feel like the human wasn't totally comfortable either.

Her first instinct was to lash out at the racist. She had taken enough shit in her life because of her species, and hadn't done anything about it; those days were over, especially in the current mood she was in. Rather then burst out in anger, she felt for the smaller girl, and instead just backed up. Without anything to say to the clearly distraught human, Alura turned and began to just walk away, leaving it at that.

"Wait!" Came a whimper behind her, though the heir of Reptilian just ignored it, continuing her walk away, towards a random ride just across the area. Before she could be comfortable with the distance, a small hand wrapped around her slender arm, squeezing at the scales around the foreign tissue. "Please, don't go..."

Alura probably should have been more sympathetic towards the female, who was going through the same exact ordeal that she was going through; stuck in a virtual world with no obvious escape path. Both of them were doomed to battle random enemies until eventually they were killed off for the amusement of some rich kid. But rather then show compassion, the angry alien found herself twirling around, the free arm up and preparing to elbow that annoying little pink-haired tart. "Don't touch me!"

Her elbow found nothing. Alura's eyes made contact with nothing. It took a moment for her to realize that the fleshy creature had ducked with surprising quickness, now bent down under Alura with one leg tucked and the other spread to the side. The female lept up to her feet and a brought a noticeably weak punch towards the scaly face of the lizard-girl, giving Alura plenty of time to side-step and catch the jab, bringing her own fist against the cushy chest of her opponent, hooking her three times with one hand before realizing the grip and shoving the girl backwards.

"I am not in the mood to listen to your feelings, human!" Alura hissed at the intruder angrily. She had backed into an offensive stance, both of her claws out towards the pink-maned wonder. "You're fast, but you arn't faster then me. Trust me."

The girl didn't change positions. She didn't back into a fighting stance, nor did she attempt to look threatening at all. Many of the visitors of the carnival had noticed the conflict, so onlookers had started to emerge. "My name is Victoria," the female said calmly, though she clearly still standing on shaky legs. "I don't want to fight. I just want...I don't know any aliens. I don't want you to think that I'm like...whatever humans did to make you hate us so much."

Alura was impressed, but enough to calm down. She had enough emotions to deal with, and this human, despite clearly not having earned any of this aggression, had bumped into the wrong alien at the wrong time. "I don't have anything to say to the likes of you!" She shouted as she lunged forward, the speed bringing her to Victoria quickly. Two jabs shot out at the girl, one on either side, but they were both easily dodged. Vicky had brought up her hands, seemingly to block the hook that Alura threw next, but it quickly evidence that they were just conduits for an electric jolt the reptilian felt on her thick skin. Alura spun around, a roundhouse kick coming at the girl's head, but it was caught with surprising strength from such a small figure. Taking advantage of the position, holding the foot of her attack higher above the body, Victoria kicked the other foot out from under Alura and brought her to her back.

With the pink-haired girl standing above her, a slender calf in her palms, Alura tried to squirm away. She was unable to over-power Victoria in her current position on the ground. "I just want to talk," the human promised. "What's your name?"

She didn't get an answer initially. The female snarled up at her opponent, the human's kindness irritating her. "Get bent!" The warrior monk insulted in uncharacteristic anger. She brought her other foot up and kicked Vicky right in the forehead, knocking her backwards. Kicking her feet and landing back in a standing position, Alura wasted no time getting into an offensive position. Vicky managed to recover quick enough to dodge the boxing-style jab, but her own punch was countered, allowing Alura to flip the girl over her shoulder and slam her into the pavement, in front of the crowd of onlookers who had gathered to watch the catfight.

Alura's fist came up to brutalize the fallen girl, but before she could even consider bringing it down upon the cute-girly face, Victoria hands blasted a blue electric blast. "Haaaa!" Alura was blasted side-ways, barrell-rolling in mid-air and then disappearing all together before landing.

There were gasps in the crowd. Victoria stood up quickly, looking around for some sign of the reptilian girl. She had hardly used any juice in the attack, just enough to hopefully calm the frantically angry alien down. She had blasted her so hard she just...ceased to exist? There wasn't even ashed where she body should have landed. The girl looked down at her sparking fingertips, unsure of what to think.

Her thought process was interrupted when a thickening set of knuckles slammed into her jaw. Victoria was slide sideways, still on her feet for the moment. Relief and panic both filled her body as she saw Alura, still clearly mad and aggressive, teleporting frantically side to the side to throw Tori off. So what was it...teleportation!

"Wait!" The pink-haired girl shouted just as Alura appeared in front of her. She ducked a hook and grabbed the slender arm, squeezing it tight as she got behind Alura in a submission hold. "I'm sorry, okay?! I'm sorry that I pissed you off, but you're not the only one who's in this fucking situation, okay?!" She screamed in both an annoyed and frantic tone. "Just relax! Chill the fuck out!"

Alura did seem to relax for a moment, stuck in a submission hold with her arm in a tedious position. Panicking the girl might cause her to react wrong, twisting the arm in an unfortunate position. The scaly female looked upwards at the tall circular ride that humans called the Ferris Wheel. She looked back over her shoulder at the shorter human, who was hoping for some kind of positive answer.

Then they vanished, leaving a crowd with hushed whispers.

The two appeared at the top of the ferris wheel, sprawling into the empty, rocky cart. Alura was quick to snatch the side of the cart, hanging on tight as it began to balance out. Victoria, on the other side, was busy getting used to her first trip through teleportation. "Where are we?" She asked quickly, getting hold of the opposite side to balance out. "What did you do?"

Alura took her time getting into a comfortable seat. Her heart seemed to relax, her breathing was steady. The irrational anger that had fueled her temper tantrum was starting to be shifted to the side. "You wanted to talk," she said calmly, looking out at the view atop the giant wheel. "Talk."

There was a pause. Victoria had her own thoughts. Alura could only guess.

"What are you?" Vicky asked. "Who are you?"

The lanky female turned her head to the pink-haired human, who had shown surprising skill in combat and a lot of patience as she tried to calm the alien down. The light reflected on the gold plate atop the lizard's head, her eyes starting to glow a warm bluish tint. "My name's Alura," she said softly. "I'm...I'm a reptilian."

She had never introduced herself like that before. She had never had to explain to somebody who she was, what she was...where she came from. She never had that bond with someone that cared enough to know anything about her, much less a human who would go through a physical punishment just for a name.

Victoria smiled. The kind of smile that warmed the heart of the otherwise cold reptilian. The kind of smile that made Alura feel like at the end of the day, no matter how dire the situation was, everything would be okay.

"I'm sorry," Alura said. She didn't say it often.

It felt good this time.