Nova lifts me back up to an unusual scene. Ashley, Zoe, and Ted, as well as Kevin and Ruth, who must have just gotten there, are all looking, perplexed, at the opposite wall of the now floorless room, where Charlotte is hanging on for dear life from a rope that definitely wasn’t there before.
Nova sees her, frowns, and then unceremoniously chucks me into the next room, where I crash into Ashley and knock her to the floor.
We’re face to face on the floor for a moment, blinking confusedly. Ashley frowns at me. “Do you mind?”
“Not at all,” I respond, smirking. Ashley pushes me off, rolling her eyes.
Then, Nova emerges, flying through the air in an almost cinematic way, Charlotte slung over one of his shoulders. He gracefully lands on the floor in front of me, drops Charlotte on her feet, and looks around. “That everyone?” he asks.
Zoe breathes a sigh of relief. “That was scary!” she says.
“What the hell happened?” Ashley asks, standing up. “I thought you guys were just going to look for Schneider then come back?”
Charlotte looks away from her, sheepishly. “Well, yeah, I kinda uh… blew up?”
“Blew up?” Ashley asks, frowning. “What do you mean?”
“I mean… literally, I… exploded into a fiery burst of flames,” she explains.
Nova shakes his head. “Charlotte…”
Charlotte scrunches her face up, bracing for impact.
“I don’t understand your powers at all,” Nova says. “We need to figure out what’s going on here. You don’t seem to control any one element… So what's the throughline here? First moving stone floors, then summoning bottles, and now explosions?”
“You always fixate on the weirdest things,” Ashley chides him. “What I wanna know is, why? Did it just happen completely at random?”
“Well… not exactly,” Charlotte admits. “I was getting really scared, because… I dunno. I don’t belong in a crowd of Republicans.”
“And that caused you to literally explode?” Ashley asks incredulously.
“Like a chemical reaction?” Ruth asks. “Or was the explosion a result of your emotions somehow affecting your powers?”
“Uh… I think more like the latter,” Charlotte says. “But don’t worry! I’m fine now, so it won’t happen again. I’m sorry!”
“Don’t feel bad,” I tell her. “We all share an equal blame of the embarrassment for this failure.”
“That’s supposed to make me not feel bad???” Charlotte questions, pouting.
“It’s my fault the most,” I say. “I really thought I could avenge my mom by taking him out. But I failed…”
“Yeah, ‘cuz he’s a robot,” Nova says matter-of-factly.
“Well, you can get revenge when we find him again,” Ashley says. “We don’t have time to sit around and mope. Let’s go.”
“Yeah, I guess,” I say. She’s right of course, but…
Are we even going to be able to beat him at all? Who knows what else he can do?
We may be out of our depth here.
But hey, if that’s the case, and we die here… at least we died fighting. Just like Mom.
“You coming?” Nova asks me.
I look around to notice everyone else has followed Ashley to trek back towards the front.
“Yeah, I’m coming,” I say. I fake a smile as I take Nova’s hand to follow the others.
Departing from the now deserted restaurant, the next destination along the path is some sort of stadium. That’s what I can only assume it is, anyway. It’s a hulking abomination of a building, a hovering disc of glass held into place by large metal pylons that connect it to the hovering complex.
“It kinda looks like a creature,” Charlotte observes.
“Really?” Kevin says.
“Yeah! Look, the windows on top look like eyes,” she explains, pointing. “And those metal... things could be arms. Like they’re trying to grab us!”
“Huh. Yeah, I kinda see it,” Kevin agrees.
“Let’s hope it doesn’t come alive,” I say. “That would not be out of the question at this point.”
Zoe shudders.
As we approach, we hear the cheers of the crowd interspersed with an announcer who seems to be describing some sort of fight, although it’s hard to make out details. Getting closer, we see that the inside of the building is packed with people.
“Great,” Ashley groans. “It’ll take forever to find him in this crowd.”
“We don’t even know if he’s here,” Kevin comments, daunted. “Are you sure we don’t want to check somewhere else first?”
“If we check somewhere else and he isn’t there, we’d just have to come back anyway,” Ashley reasons. “Let’s just get it over with.” Nobody offers any disagreements, so we head inside.
The inside looks almost like a carnival. Where you would expect to see concessions and ticket stands in a normal sports stadium, there are numerous stands, selling things that seem to range from sweets to alcohol and even illicit drugs. There’s a tent which I think might be a brothel, and another where I can catch a glimpse of slot machines. It’s a true Pleasure Island of all the vices of society.
“What the fuck?” Nova asks.
“This is the last thing I’d expect in a place like this,” Kevin observes.
“I’m not too shocked, honestly,” Anja says dramatically. “These people never live by their principles.”
“Well, I suppose we just need to find out what kind of degenerate this guy is deep down,” Ashley comments. “Let me think… Does he seem more like a cokehead, or a sex pest? …I’m gonna guess sex pest. Let’s start by checking out the prostitutes.”
“No ulterior motives to that, I’m sure,” Anja says, smirking slyly.
“We can’t just walk into a gentleman’s club!” Kevin protests. “We’re not of age! Except for Ted.”
“We’ve walked into one before!” Anja says.
“Uh, you’ve walked into one before,” Nova points out.
“You guys can go,” Zoe says dourly. “I’ll wait outside.”
“Actually, I think that I should go alone,” I say.
“Why?” Charlotte asks, frowning.
“These palaces play mental tricks on people,” I explain. “Fake versions of real people will appear, and you’ve talked in the past about areas and figures that can have a strong psychological effect on you. I think I’m the one among us who’s the least likely to be affected by carnal, sexual urges; therefore, it’s the safest for me to go investigate that area.”
“Makes sense to me,” Nova agrees.
“Awe man,” Anja protests. “I wanted to see some naked ladies!”
“Yeah, that’s the problem, Anja,” Ashley retorts.
Finding no further disagreement, I enter the tent alone.
I start to resent the practicality of this decision almost immediately. The scene that meets me is rather woeful. Women, in various states of undress, dancing for the entertainment of men, on poles, on stages, and in laps, or otherwise walking about to take orders or deliver drinks. As I walk around, I have to look carefully at the faces of each man, as they’re all wearing similar suits and it’s difficult to discern which one is Schneider from a behind glance. I notice that they seem to show a sense of anger and disgust, as if the women are repulsive to them, but they’re locked in a hypnotic trance nonetheless, unable to keep themselves from watching. The women, for their part, also look mostly rather indistinguishable. They’re mostly white, a majority being blonde, only a few who seem to be of East Asian descent, and their faces, in addition to plastered-on smiles brushing over a sense of passionless resignation, often show characteristics of having had plastic surgery done to them. I can’t help but think of the way that Anja and Nova make goo-goo eyes at each other- the dilation of the pupils, the reddening of the cheeks- and note that there seems to be no sign of any such energy, not even the strictly sexual energy of an appreciation of beauty. It makes me wonder why the men here are even here. Truly what some musical scholars might call a wonderful caricature of intimacy.
At any rate, I stomach the inhuman vulgarity of the situation just as long as it takes to check the place thoroughly, and none of the passionless faces are his.
I exit the tent to find, to my surprise, that most of the group is not there. Only Zoe and Kevin remain.
Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.
“Find him?” Kevin asks obliviously.
“No,” I say. “Where did everyone else go? I don’t remember us discussing splitting up.”
“Huh?” Zoe says, looking around. “Ashley? Anja? Nova? Even Ted is gone…”
“Charlotte’s missing too,” Kevin observes. “I didn’t hear anyone mention anything. Then again, it’s loud in here, so…”
“I thought that we’d know better than to split up after how poorly it went last time,” I say.
“It’s like we don’t learn anything!” Kevin jokes.
“What do we do, then?” Zoe asks.
My heart is starting to race, enough to where it begins aggravating my asthma. “I don’t know! I can’t see anything here! I don’t understand the deal with this whole place at all!”
“I’m sure they’re not far,” Kevin says quickly.
“Y-yeah! They’ll be back soon!” Zoe says, giving me an encouraging smile.
“That’s not much of a plan,” I say. “I don’t see any reason why they would simply leave without saying anything. Something must have happened to them.”
“W-well… um…” Zoe says, looking stumped.
I turn away, trying to hide my quickly mounting panic.
In my line of sight is an entrance to the stadium, where the sounds of cheering ring from, occasionally interspersed with a man’s voice announcing something…
“Come, follow me,” I say.
“Uh, I mean… uh, okay!” Kevin says. “I guess it wouldn’t hurt to look around a little.”
I ignore his words, and make my way into the stadium. Time to get to the bottom of this.
I get bored immediately after Ruth goes into the tent. I kinda wish I was the one to go in. But she’s also probably right that I could easily be brainwashed by the horny ladies in there.
“Hey Anja,” I say, “Remember da time we met Moloch and he brainwashed us with his Beyonce cosplay?”
“I don’t remember that at all,” a voice says. “Wait, who’s Moloch again?”
I turn my head to see that it’s Charlotte standing next to me, not Anja.
“Oh, you never met him,” I say. “Probably for the best. He’s a dick.”
“Do you smell that?” Charlotte says. “It smells sooo good?”
“Huh?” I say. I sniff the air, and get a waft of something deep-fried and greasy. “Probably from one of the stands.”
“It smells closer than that…” Charlotte says, her mouth watering. “Where is that…” she starts craning her head above the crowd.
I turn and look too. My eyes immediately see a flash of pink in the crowd. That’s, uh, what?
I push through the crowd a little bit to get a better look, and see that it belongs to a girl with dyed pink hair who’s holding a huge chunk of fried chicken or something on a stick. She’s also wearing what looks like a Pikachu hoodie… TAMASHII HIROKA? What the FUCK is SHE doing here?
The girl starts to speak to nobody. “Yo wassup Meowsters, this is Meowtastrophe, back with another episode of Six Nights At Schneider’s, let’s jump right into it! I was in the mood for something meaty, so I hit up some of these food stands before getting back on the grind! Hehe, grind.”
…Actually, I don’t think that Tamashii. Doesn’t sound like her. And I don’t think Tamashii has blue eyes…
“What’s your favorite fair food? Leave a comment down below! It really helps me with the algorithm!”
“Hey Anja, check this out!” I say, turning my head back to Anja to-
Wut? Where did she go? Actually, where did anyone go? I’ve been swallowed by the crowd…
“OOH OOH! ME ME ME!” Charlotte says, chasing after her and raising her hand. “MY FAVORITE IS DEEP FRIED OREOS!”
“Look at that chat, I found another player!” the pink-haired girl says, turning to Charlotte. “What’s your name?”
“I’m Charlotte!” Charlotte says. “Can I have some? I’m so hungry!”
“Hey, wait a sec!” I say, pushing my way towards the two girls. “Hi, by the way, I’m Nova, Charlotte’s friend.”
“Hey Nova!” the pink-haired girl greets. “I’m Meowtastrophe, but you can call me Jane. Wanna have some too, Nova?”
“Oh no, we gotta focus on our objective,” I say. “We’re looking for Schneider. Know where he might be?”
“Schneider is one of the rarest encounters,” Jane explains. “There’s even a rumor that on the sixth night, there’s a small chance you’ll run into Full Metal Schneider, which instantly ends your game and deletes your save file!”
“I don’t like the sound of that,” I say. “Er, how many ‘nights’ have we been here…?”
“Gimme! Gimme!” Charlotte says, reaching her hands out and grasping at the air.
“Er, we probably should feed her,” I concede. “Wouldn’t want her to explode again. Anyway, is there a way we can, like, grind encounters? I don’t wanna look through this whole fuckin’ place.”
“Well, you came to the right place!” Jane says. “I’m an expert glitch hunter, and I think I found an exploit that can be used to farm encounters!”
“Really? How?” I ask.
“I’ll tell you! But first, according to my YouTube analytics, only 16% of you are subscribed to my channel. Please make sure to follow, ring the bell for notifications, and leave a five stars rating, it really helps me out! Alright, back to the video!”
I scratch my head. What is this bitch talking about? YouTube hasn't even star ratings for a long ass time.
“You’re no fun,” I say, shoving Ashley’s shoulder lightly as Ruth enters the tent by herself.
“We’re not here for fun,” Ashley chides. “We’re here to find the bastard responsible for locking up my parents and making him pay.”
“I’m just teasing,” I say. “Although, if said bastard is in there, we may still get to see some tiiiiiddies… wouldn’t you like that?”
“I’m a married man, Anja,” Ted says, having dismounted from Zoe’s shoulder and approached us.
“I wasn’t asking you!” I snap back.
“Can’t we just- oof!” Ashley suddenly lurches forward as a man behind her in a well-dressed suit crashes into her with his shoulder.
The man looks disdainfully at us with gold-flecked, lizard-like eyes. It strikes me that I know him from somewhere…
“Watch where you’re going, asshole,” Ashley says in a low hiss.
“Watch where you’re standing,” he says snarkily before walking away.
“Jackass,” Ashley says, shaking her head.
“Of course he is!” I say as the realization hits. “That’s Senator Di Stefano!”
“Oh, him…” Ashley’s fists clench. “I saw his daughter… outside the capitol…”
“You did?” I ask stupidly.
And then, all of a sudden, Ashley charges off after him, pushing her way through the crowd.
“Uh… what?” I ask stupidly.
“No!” Ted calls out, chasing after her.
“Hey Nova, what-” I look to my right, only to see that Nova’s not there. Zoe and Kevin are waiting patiently by the mouth of the tent, apparently not having noticed anything. But Nova is gone. Feeling rather put out by this, I chase after Ashley myself.
Ashley’s crashing through the crowd like a wrecking ball, not caring who she hurts as she shoves aside well-dressed man and vendor alike. Ted follows closely behind in her broad wake.
Ashley catches him by a bar on the outer edge by the glass. She slashes at his ankles, causing him to fall on his face. Many of the day drinkers turn to watch with interest.
“Wot in tarnation is this about?” Ted demands of her.
“I’ll make him beg for mercy,” Ashley declares.
“He’s not our target,” Ted protests.
“Still a bastard,” Ashley growls. She kicks Senator Di Stefano onto his back and lifts a sword to his throat.
I watch with a strange sense of delight. Ashley’s finally giving up on this whole “responsible one” shtick. I wonder if she’s actually gonna do it…
“What is this accomplishing?” Ted asks.
“Destroying evil,” Ashley says simply.
“It’s a cognition,” Ted points out.
“We don’t know that,” Ashley counters. “Sometimes the real one’s consciousness is linked, too. Like at the church.”
“If it is real… Do you want murder on your conscience?” Ted asks seriously.
Ashley doesn’t respond. She stands there, standing over the Senator, for a very long time, simply staring at him.
Then, she sheaves her sword. “No,” she says. “Tommy, I think her name was… I don’t know a lot about her situation. It could only make things worse for her. And killing him now would only make him a martyr. There are too many variables… and if he isn’t real, then this is all pointless anyway.”
She blinks, as if she had just been daydreaming. “Where are the others?”
I sigh. “You ran off from them. Only to chicken out,” I say.
She turns to me sharply. “Well, what the fuck are you just standing around for, then?” she says. “Were you just going to watch me make a fool of myself?”
“Yeah, pretty much,” I say.
“What’s the fucking matter with you?” she chides. “What happened to ‘manage your emotions’ Anja?”
“I’m sorry, are you mad at me for not getting mad at you?” I ask, perplexed.
“Yes!” Ashley asserts. “That’s your fucking job!”
“Why is it my job?” I ask.
“Because…” Ashley growls, balling up her fists. “Never mind.”
“I’ve never seen you like this!” Ted chides. “What demon’s gotten into you?”
“Um, in the modern day, we call those ‘mental illnesses,’ Ted,” I snark.
“I have seen you like this, once,” Ashley observes. “Waaay back, in Pavia’s palace. Shit! The palace!”
“What about it?” I ask.
“It’s fucking with you!” she insists. “It’s making you act like a whiny little bitch again! It made me into some sort of violent psychopath! It… doesn’t seem to be affecting Ted, but it didn’t last time either!”
“Even if so, it only revealed our true selves,” I say.
“Speak for yourself!” she says. “Now come on. Let’s find out how to snap you out of it!”
I shake my head. “You don’t get it. I don’t think anyone does.”
Tears rolling down my face, I turn and run, past the bar and out the front doors. I heard a guttural roar of “ANJA!” from behind me, but I don’t turn back.
This encounter rate SUCKS! I thought we were going to have a boss fight, not a shiny hunt!
I enter the store again, a more upscale place than many of the casual bars in this level. It’s a refined place that sells good-quality wine and liquor, which is reflected by the store’s appearance, appearing more like a full-on STORE you would see in like, downtown Austin. According to Jane, because the store has a door, it’s much easier to de-load the chunk to have it reload with new rng than most of the other places here- all I need to do is leave, walk into the entryway of the bathroom outside a set of stairs to the stadium’s stands, and then turn around and walk back. Plus, the store’s prestigious nature gives it a higher rate of spawning more “high-level” encounters, which has to include Schneider.
I exit the bathroom for the twenty trillionth time to see Jane casually leaned against the wall, doing something on her phone.
“You gonna help out at all?” I ask.
“Yeah, of course!” she says. “I switched us over to a livestream for the grind sesh! Oooh, look at at that! Superchats are coming in!”
“Superchats won’t help my encounter rate,” I snark.
“Ooh! ‘MarisaKirsameSimp’ donated $20 and says, ‘tits or gtfo.’ Thanks for the donation!”
I feel a spike of anger. “Don’t sully the name of Marisa, you incel piece of shit,” I jab at her phone.
“Ooh! Shots fired!” Jane calls.
I trod back and slam the door of the wine shop open. If Schneider’s not in here this time, I’m gonna fuckin-
A woman is there this time. The cashier is handing her a bottle.
“Yes, this will do nicely,” the patron is saying. “$700 is not much for such a fine white wine as this. Perhaps I will save it for…”
She sees me, and after a short pause, drops the bottle, sending it crashing on the floor into a million shards of glass and droplets of wine.
The feeling’s mutual.
Her light brown face bares her teeth at me in anger.
I unthinkingly summon Mj?lnir to my hand…
“Ooh, did you find him?” Jane’s voice says behind me.
“No,” I say. “Just my mom…”
It appears at first to be a sports game of the grandest proportions. The stands are packed with cheering fans. Like in the concrete halls we came from, merchants walk to and fro. But it strikes me that I have no idea what sport is actually being played here.
In a sort of floating pod far above the field, I lay eyes on the man commentating. He’s a larger-than-life man with a large, white cowboy hat, brown sideburns, and a dusty business casual suit.
“...19 goes in for the dash!” he’s saying. “Will 23 hold on…?”
I climb further and further up the ramp, to the arena, surrounded by a tall, chain link fence. I am just thinking it somewhat resembles a professional wrestling arena when I finally get high enough to glimpse inside…
“WHOAH! It’s a full-on brawl, ladies and gents!” the crowd roars.
What I see makes me wish I was back inside the brothel. In the middle of a rocky pit littered with what looks like long-dead vegetation, a number of dirty, shirtless men in jeans are running from spot to spot, or else digging into the ground to form a sort of makeshift shelter out of gravel and debris. Each man has a number spray-painted onto his bare back, and on a jumbotron across the screen, two of the men, the aforementioned 19 and 23 are shown, fighting like animals over something that I can’t quite make out.
“What sport is this?” Kevin asks, frowning.
“It’s not a sport!” Zoe says, her voice crackling with newfound emotion. “It’s The Hunger Games!”
I find this to be a rather fitting allusion 19 graphically bludgeons 23 with his fists, leaving the latter to fall back, face bloody. He had been holding onto the object in contention; some sort of large, blue translucent chunk, which drops to the ground as he falls.
“AAAAND 19 HAS RETRIEVED THE ENERGY SOURCE FOR HIS SPONSORS!” the announcer calls. “GIVE IT UP FOR 19!”
The crowd roars, although there are a discernible amount of boos mixed in with the cheers.
19 snatches the ‘energy source’ and begins to hobble away as other men around begin to take note and beat their chests at him, clearly intending to make his catch theirs.
The jumbotron changes to an advertisement: “ Sponsored by Vermilion Oil. Bringing You The Luxuries Of Today Since 1896. ”