NOVEL SIMPLE Ch. 28: Jukebox Musical
Taking on challenges in the safe room turned out to be a pretty fun way to pass the time. Red reveled in being Sloan’s plaything to dominate. Alice, meanwhile, lent Sabrina some help again, as Jade requested She-Stud be the next perk that Sabrina made duplicates of. Sabrina wasn’t sure it would work, but sure enough, she and Jade now had a perk that enhanced the Living Dildo while they wore it.
Jade was unable to complete any exhibition challenges in the safe room, so she worked on advancing her subclass while her girlfriend masturbated in increasingly elaborate ways. She always had a knack for learning new skills quickly. Typically, she’d drop those skills as soon as she got good at them. With her undiagnosed ADHD magically treated, through, she could just keep her momentum going. She was already the furthest along in her subclass advancement by an unfair margin.
The day wound down. Sabrina emerged from the tub, feeling antsy and somehow over-rested. She found Alice and Red huddled and talking conspiratorially. When Alice turned to look at Sabrina, she was smirking.
“Who are we plotting against?” Sabrina asked playfully.
“The boss,” Alice answered.
Sabrina raised an eyebrow. Excitement bubbled up in her, but she kept a lid of uncertainty on it. “Are we ready for that?”
Alice looked to Red. Red said, “you’re way ahead of the typical timeline for it, but you’re level-fours- and strong level-fours at that. Fending off that war of attrition earlier was way tougher than this floor’s boss. It’s in the bag.”
Alice added, “we could either wait to do it on our next dive, or get it over with now for double the loot. It can be one last hoorah before we dip out of here.”
Sabrina was convinced. After letting the others in on the idea, they were, too. They wrapped things up in the safe room by having a small meal and gearing up.
Sabrina and Jade were amped to get to test their new Mythic items. Sabrina got the most kick-ass sword she could ever imagine. It was a one-handed great sword, with a blade as long as she was tall. Aesthetically, the blade looked to be made of a beautiful white opal, although she doubted it was made of anything so fragile. Despite its heft, it sang through the air with nimble grace as she swung it with ease. As a bonded item, it replaced her spear as her class weapon. Disturbingly, it did so by eating her spear.
Jade’s item seemed intrinsically related to Sabrina’s. Jade got a floating, elongated-starburst-shaped shield. Hers looked to be made of a magnificent black opal. When it wasn’t stored in its own specialized inventory slot, it orbited Jade, ready to get between her and anything that might harm her. It even had its own air-element spell. Jade could either shoot a gale-force wind out of her shield, or even condense the air into a bladed projectile. There was a cooldown of a few minutes, but it didn’t draw on her own mana.
Oddly, Alice was more thrilled about one of her Uncommon items than Jade and Sabrina were about their Mythic’s. It was simply a levitating speaker that synced to her menu system to play music. Somehow her interface ripped all of the songs she had on Spotify, despite the fact she didn’t even have them downloaded. Supposedly, it could even provide small buffs to the party and intimidation-debuffs to enemies based on how well the songs worked as a soundtrack for different battles.
With a half-hour on the clock, the party rocked up to the boss gate. To its wing of the mall, the area was exactly where a big department store like Macy’s or JCPenny would be. The gate was one of the simple roll-down gates that blocked many of the stores. Behind it, was pure darkness, which shouldn’t have even been possible with the party’s sensation levels.
Sabrina did the honors, swinging her sword down on the gate to slice it apart like paper. The ends of the split metal faintly glowed red— as if they had been cut with a thermal lance. The party ventured into the impenetrable darkness. When they reached a point where even the way back was obscured, a rectangle of light appeared in the distance. Then one after another a series of them lit, approaching from afar.
From a distance so far that there was a horizon, the fluorescent lights brought to life a barren environment of linoleum tiles and paneled ceilings, broken up only by pillars. Sabrina couldn’t help but give into the illusion that the approaching of the light was speeding up as the got near, and she braced herself as if it would hit her. Her unease boiled over when the light reached overhead and she found herself making eye-contact with a brass face staring down at her.
It was a twelve-foot-tall brass statue of a woman. It was eerily slim for its height, as thin as Jade but stretched to towering proportions. For the fraction of a second that Sabrina could have fooled herself into hoping it was just a statue, the all-too-organic eyes locked on her made that impossible.
>Now playing: My Art — Le Tigre
Stillness shattered. An insectile metal arm whistled through the air at Sabrina. The very instant when it should have collided with her, she no longer occupied that space. Just behind where the statue’s target previously stood, an opalescent shield halted its momentum. The collision caused a ringing of church bells to reverberate through the seemingly infinite room.
Sloan’s hammer on its knee made it ring even louder. Sabrina’s stab at its ass followed, playing a higher note. All around them, Alice wove her perches between pillars, then slingshot herself to the next set to weave more. The fact that the statue could reach the ceiling of this room was not ideal for Alice’s safety, but she’d gladly improvise.
Sloan took a kick square in the chest. Her skates kept her from getting flung away, but that only made the force like a head-on car crash. On the upside, that kept her in position to retaliate with another gong-ringing hit.
The boss changed up its tactics. After taking the hit from Sloan, it stood straight up and then fell backwards. Sabrina had to teleport again out of the way, and watched its fall, worried by the puzzling move. It’s nauseatingly long arms extended out and became the new pivot point from a backwards cartwheel. It followed its cartwheel with another and another, perpetually flipping backwards and picking up speed as it rolled.
Its path looped around and then and it came barreling back towards the party. Alice’s tendril nets were torn through like tissue as it approached. Sabrina was perplexed. The tumbling statue was menacing, but was telegraphed way ahead of time. Did the statue expect her to make an appointment to get her shit rocked later?
Sabrina darted to one side of the telegraphed path while Sloan and Jade went to the other. Right as the barreling cartwheel reached where she had just been, though, its momentum stopped dead. As its hands hit the floor, instead of swinging into a flip, its elbows and knees bent backwards into a crabwalk-stance, and the arm nearest to Sabrina lifted and straightened to punch Sabrina in the ribs. The hit sent her careening through the air until she crashed into a pillar. This dirty move worked, but not without a cost. The boss briefly writhed in pain, as the damage it did to Sabrina was reflected back on itself. It would be a while before Sabrina could use that spell again, but it was worth it.
It was like getting hit by an I-beam, fired from a railgun. It certainly broke some bones, but Sabrina couldn’t worry about that right now. Right now, the statue was ripping up a chunk of stone from the floor and hurling it straight for her.
Another teleport— this one to the safety of Jade’s shield. She promptly drank some sweet medicine from her girlfriend’s breast, thanked her with a quick kiss, and went right back to work. She shot through the air for a blitz attack straight into the statue’s face. It swatted at her like she was a mosquito, but again, she vanished.
The compounding stimulation of the teleportation went over the edge with this jump. From a safe distance, she submitted to the spasms of her orgasm. Jade did the same, as the Living Dildo attached to her spurted out gooey ropes of cum. Sabrina watched as the statue’s eyes pointed to the cum and Jade’s dick, then panned over to give Sabrina side-eye.
“Fuck,” Sabrina screamed internally.
The statue crawled with the disgusting grace of spider to Jade and then sat on one knee in front of her. It swung one arm down at her like a hammer, which Jade’s shield intercepted perfectly. With her shield over her head, the statue calmly extended its other arm, with its thumb and middle finger locked together like a string bow. Once its oversized hand was under Jade’s legs, unleashed history’s strongest flick directly onto Jade and Sabrina’s shared balls.
Jade and Sabrina both collapsed in agony. Sabrina was momentarily blind and deaf with pain. When she regained her vision, the statue was on top of her, with both hands around her neck. It lifted her into the air, and she was helpless to save herself.
But then—
>Now playing: I Threw Glass at My Friend’s Eyes and Now I’m on Probation — Destroy Boys
The world vibrated as the statue took a rapid volley of Alice’s cannonballs to the face. Immediately following the cannonballs was Alice herself, moving just as fast. She whizzed right past, with her tendrils latching onto the statues head and taking it with her. It slammed headfirst into the pillar, at which point Alice swung around set pillar and flitted back into her network of webs.
The statue was dazed and taped to a pillar. Sloan took advantage, hammering its back repeatedly and flattening parts of it out like a blacksmith. Finally it ripped off its slimy trap and stumbled backwards. It was reverberating constantly, and in a full-fledged rage. It summersaulted backwards and away from the party. Once it was far enough away, it landed with its arms outstretched like a gymnast.
It then clapped its hands together, sending out a wave through the floor. Where the wave passed the tile bent upwards and lava erupted straight up into the ceiling. The party all ran to evade the wave, narrowly ducking into the corners where it bounced off of itself and made small pockets of safety. The pillars of lava stood for two seconds, and then vanished. The problem was that they punched back up through seemingly random tiles in some rapid pattern.
The faint glow that the tiles gave for a quarter of a second before erupting was the only thing keeping the party alive. The girls were united as the only path to avoid lava pincered them together. Why became clear, when the statue summersaulted towards their small pocket surrounded by lava.
Precisely when the statue was coming down on them was the moment the lava vanished. Everybody dodged away, but it was way too close. It didn’t pull its crab-walk stunt again. It simply rolled past until it got to about the same distance away as last time, and repeated its gymnastic landing. It brought its hands together to clap, this time twice. The two waves made for more short-lived corners of safety, but the pattern was harder to predict. One could run away from the wave, only to have another come from the opposite direction.
When the wave had finished devastating the tiles, and the rhythmic pumping of lava all around them began again, something clicked. As they all scrambled away from the glowing tiles, the pattern slowed. It was inexplicable, at first, until Sabrina noticed that the song was at a lull. When the song got faster, so did the lava. It was dancing to the beat.
Sabrina looked at Alice and saw that Alice had come to the same realization. Then she watched a smile grow as they both had the same idea. “We can dance if you want to, motherfucker.” It was simple. All they’d need to do was play a song they all knew, that could never turn against them.
>Now playing: Come On Eileen — Dexys Midnight Runners
It was perfect. No longer were they on the back-foot, panicking. Now, they were in control and having fun. They sidestepped and shimmied to safety right on cue without looking to see which tiles glowed. When they converged, it wasn’t simply the boss squeezing them into a hit-box— it was to come together and sing.
It rolled towards the girls, but they paid it no mind. They simply kept up their dance. Sabrina held Jade to lead her in a sloppily improvised ballroom dance. Right on cue for the drawn out “Eileen I’ll hum this tune forever,” she dipped Jade forward. That put her shield precisely where it needed to be as the boss careened onto them.
The boss stumbled on the obstacle. When Sabrina gave Jade a twirl, the stumble turned into a slip. Just as Alice and Sloan danced away, it crash-landed flat on its face. It was surrounded before “pretty red dress.” The girls didn’t strike immediately. They instead waited until the time was right.
Confused, the boss raised an arm. Just off-beat, it swatted for Jade, but with a “come on, Eileen, too loo rye ay,” she sidestepped away. Then it tried for Sloan, but she did the same. It tried to get its timing right, but the rhythm was speeding up on it. Then the beat tightened to a fever pitch and it was being berated on all sides by very festive attacks. It was dead in seconds.
The girls cheered and celebrated and hugged. The loot included ten gold bars and a hundred of each kind of jelly. It also dropped a copper heart and copper hand. They felt cheated that it wasn’t two of each, but maybe it was only meant to drop one of those.
Completing their quest only had one reward:
>Passage to floor 2 granted.
As Sabrina read the reward, the floor ahead parted, clearing way for a rectangular opening. Within, an escalator led down a dark path. It was a stairway to mystery and treasures beyond her imagination.
This led to some debate. Sunset was any minute now, and the wise move was to quit while they were ahead. Then again, what fun was there in that? After all— what harm could it do to just take a little peak before leaving?
Jade was on the escalator before she could even finish suggesting it. Sabrina urgently followed, and the others joined with resigned laughter. It was a long escalator, through total darkness. Sabrina could swear it felt like five whole minutes. Only the ones at Universal Studios compared.
Finally, though, they touched down in a bare concrete room. It looked like the back stairwell in a corporate building. There was even a ‘no smoking’ sign on one wall. Sloan looked at this, huffed, and pulled a blunt and a lighter from her inventory.
“You’ve had that this whole time?” Alice asked.
“Well I didn’t loot it,” Sloan answered rhetorically.
“Can I have some?” Alice wished aloud. Sloan shrugged at this and passed it over.
Jade pushed open the door out of the stairwell. She stepped onto a brown carpet with interlocking diamond patterns. To the left and right was a long hallway, lined with locked doors. Shaded lamps adorned the walls halfway between each door. It was… a hotel. Kind of a fancy one, too. They all stood in the hallway, inspecting their new environment.
“No what I was expecting,” Sloan choked out, holding back smoke.
“Me, nei…” Sabrina started, before her attention was pulled to behind Jade. Everybody’s attention shot there. Where only a moment ago was nothing, now stood a man. He had long flowing blond hair and milky white skin. He wore black leather pants and a white open-chested blouse, straight out of a romance novel. Under it, he was completely hairless, and the skinny twink body that Sabrina preferred when she thought she was bi. He leaned casually against the walls, looking over his pointed finger nails.
He chuckled through a fanged smile. “You must be my tenants. My humblest apologies for not putting the place together, but you arrived far sooner than I had anticipated.”
Jade took a step back, nervously joking, “Are you supposed to be Jarreth or something?”
The man looked at Jade with the dead eyes of a shark. “Please! David Bowie wishes he could be me.” Without another second passing, he grabbed Jade by her hair and threw swung her against the wall as though he was casually killing a snake.
When he dropped her, she slumped down limp. Her unconscious form was striped with purple bruises and her eyes swollen shut. Sabrina’s blood ran cold. She looked up to the monster who so callously did that to the woman who made the sun shine down from the sky.
Every spark of mana Sabrina had was channeled at once. She roared only two words, “Save Jade!” Then, like a lightning strike, she burst into a blitz attack with everything she had. She sank her blade to the hilt into the man’s chest. He looked… offended. She saw in his eyes that she was just a thing to him, and that the greatest sin of all was for things to not submit.
She knew on some level where this was going before it started. If she hadn’t, she wouldn’t have poured most of her mana into her retaliation spell. Seeing that look in his eyes, though, her sheepish final thought was, “I don’t want to go.”
The man gave her a backhand-slap that broke the sound-barrier. From the point where her ribs met and up, all that was left of her was a pink mist.
>You have d̷̢͍͌̒̇į̰̜̩̟̞ͭ͐́ͫ̓ͮ̊̈͟͝e̢̮̝̺͈̬͈̯̳͐ͯ̋̈͑͌͐ͩ͗d̷̡̛̛̛̘̭̞̼̩̪̣͍͊ͫ̊ͧͣ̅͜ͅ
>Now playing: Lithonia — Childish Gambino