NM:SYWTBAS?: Dancing With The Stars
Feb. 3rd, 2009 07:53 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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xp_logsThe survivors make their way into the next stage, only to find themselves in the most game of DDR yet.
The remaining mutants dropped down onto an outsized three-by-three checkerboarded plane floating in a seemingly infinite starfield. Holographic galaxies and outrageously colored planets swirled in the dark around them, while a glance downward revealed that each square on the board was actually a full-size gaming platform, patterned on Dance Dance Revolution's standard nine-square controls.
Another projection shimmered into view overhead, a viewscreen framing a wide swath of the fantastic star ways. Seven bright green vertical stripes glowed on the screen, each one tagged with a codename that one of the remaining contenders had given at the entrance of the arcade. It was a familiar sight to the gamers in the group: health meters.
A moment later, a small, super-deformed character popped into sight just below the lines. The cheerfully beaming chibi had shockingly orange hair and was in a white suit and bell bottoms, a polka-dot bowtie, and platforms. He waved one gloved, three-fingered hand at the captives. The character was silent, but the balloon font that dropped into place over his head couldn't be missed.
"Welcome to Dancing With The Stars, Murderworld edition!"
A dance pad identical to the ones the mutants stood on rose up beneath the smiling avatar's feet as the text began to scroll up along the screen.
"Dance your way to success by hitting the correct arrow buttons in rhythm to the music!" An inanely cheerful tune began playing prompting the cartoon on the screen to dance, stomping his feet down onto each button as it lit up. "If you can beat me, you win it all! But be careful! If you can't keep up, you'll get zapped!" The chibi's foot came down a second too late, missing the lit button. An animated lightning bolt shot up his foot, causing him to hop up and down in pain...right onto more wrong buttons, earning him two more zaps, draining his meter from green, to yellow, then to red. "Three zaps will drop you...literally." The platform fell out from under the cartoon's feet, leaving him hopping on one foot in mid-air for several moments before he realized what had happened. His lower lip trembled, his oversized eyes flooded with tears, and he flailed wildly in place for a moment before falling out of sight.
"Seven players and nine platforms means that you won't get a chance to make many mistakes. So be careful!"
A loud wooshing noise interrupted the music. A bright, white star streaked across the screen beneath the health meters, with the avatar holding on to the contrail for dear life.
"And watch out for shooting stars!" the text cautioned as both star and cartoon vanished off of the screen. "They'll try to carry you off"
The animated dance pad rose up again, just as a wormhole irised open at the top of the screen and dumped the woozy cartoon back into place. He shook it off, beamed and flashed the mutants a victory sign.
"Now LET'S DANCE!"
The stars dimmed and the platform lights began to pulse in time with the opening song.
***
"Thank god for Kyle," Angel said, bouncing on the ball of her toes as the arrows started to scroll. There was no way she wanted to do this for very long but damned if she was going to give the weirdos putting this together the satisfaction of having an easy out. She really hoped everyone who was eliminated was okay - this 'game' gave them no time to think! "Meggan, how're your fancy feet?"
She heard a breathy reply and that really didn't make her feel any better.
They hadn't been doing it for long but already Angel's bruised body was protesting the pace. 'Ieva's Polka' might have been one of the first ones up, meaning not as hard as everything that would follow, but it was still tricky. There was a reason Kyle won time and time again; besides his agility, anyway. Her one foot went down wrong, though thankfully still on the arrow, and she went down, managing to catch herself on another correct arrow before she used a pause to scramble her way up. "Oh god that was close."
Angel couldn't even answer the asked "Are you okay?" because she was moving faster now and breathing itself was hard enough, forget about talking. When her foot slipped again, she did land on the wrong arrow and her shriek of pain was drowned by the blaring music. Her fine hair floated around her head from the charge as she hopped back onto the right arrow, cursing under her breath, eyes wide enough that the whites were huge.
Meggan wasn't doing much better from what Angel could see. They were both exhausted and the fright that had them charged for the rest of the 'adventures' had gone from adrenaline to just a dragging weight. And in a dance competition it was something that was going to ultimately prove their undoing.
By the time that Angel's health was down to almost nothing, she'd lost count of the 'tiny' little shocks she was getting. Hair that was charged with electricity floated around her face and got in her eyes and mouth - yet another distraction. And it was spitting out a mouthful of hair that got the best of her.
The last shock rocketed up her skin and when her health bar plummeted to '0', it wasn't the only thing to drop.
One minute the floor was there, the next it was gone. Angel screamed as gravity took hold and despite knowing that it was not going to do any good, she flamed and rocketed towards the ceiling. "Angel!" Meggan yelled, lunging towards her foot. It startled her and she dropped the fire, hoping to aim for the side of the hole, when a steel like rope whipped out from the black abyss beneath them. The other girl had seen them and had abandoned the game in order to try and get between Angel and the ropes but it had put her in the negatives as well.
The thick cable wrapped around Angel's ankle even as she twisted sideways as she fell while another one latched onto Meggan's wrist and with one sharp yank both girls were pulled from view.
***
There were reasons she never played this stupid game; namely the reasons she'd given Bishop the night they went out to the Jazz House: 6'4" white girls do not possess much of the talent known as 'rhythm'. Lil grunted her frustration as she struggled to keep up with the flashing lights and arrows. "I swear to fucking God I'm going to break this machine," she cursed under her breath then risked lifting her head for half a second to glance at Callie. "How you doing, kid?"
Callie's concentration was firmly on the screen telling them which pad to jump on. Thankfully, she had quickly discovered, this wasn't real dancing. As long as she was able to follow the arrows and move her feet she would be fine. Right. Left. Up. Up. Down. "I'm fine," she finally replied to Lil when she found a chance. "How's yours?"
The giantess grumbled again and gave her head a quick shake. Things were not going well. Her timing was off, her feet were too big and the whole contest was just ridiculous. "Games were not meant to be played with your feet," Lil growled, just barely keeping up with the machine. "I really don't like this damn thing. It's stupid and pointless and I don't understand what the big craze over it is."
"I-I don't know," Callie panted, pushing hair off her face and out of her eyes. This game, this machine, was the antithesis of fun. Apart from having to play it now, she had no idea why anyone would want to. There were much better things to do than follow blinking arrows, like go outside and play in the snow. Still, some part of her found the repetitive movement very soothing, almost zen like state. "All we need to do is follow the directions and we'll be fine."
"I ever tell you I don't do well with directions?" Lil said through her teeth. Her ponytail had fallen and golden curls now spilled loosely over her shoulder and around her face, making the already frustrating game even more rage-inducing. Catseye was lost - probably dead - and her patience had been worn incredibly thin by that little brat they'd had to cut loose after the jungle nightmare... Lil wasn't sure how much more she could but she certainly wasn't about to leave Callie alone if she could help it. "God, I hate this fucking game."
"We only have two more levels left!" Callie's feet were moving frantically, trying to keep time and hit her marks. How did those kids at the mall do it? And they made it look so easy. But she couldn't give up, she wouldn't. Not when they were so close. "Lil, I know you can do it. Just take a deep breath. We have to concentrate. You saved me from the squid, you can totally beat this stupid game."
The blonde growled again then yelped at the machine zapped her for the second time. "Fuck!" Lil cursed and stomped down harder on the next series. There wasn't any pain but the jolt was enough to be plenty annoying and distracting. "Mice I can ignore. Squids I can hit, I can punch and stab and fight. This stupid thing is a fucking piece of metal with wires and lights and I want to tear it apart." She hated technology, especially technology that fought back.
Callie hated to admit it, but she shared the Amazon's feelings. Almost to the T. Sans the cursing that is. She stole a quick glance at her remaining teammate. "You alright there," she asked. She had been shocked once, at the beginning of play, and it definitely wasn't the most comfortable feeling in the world to be jolted like that.
"Fine." Lil wasn't fine in the least, but she wasn't about to admit that to the student. The giantess was pissed and growing angrier. At herself, at the game, at the whole situation and she knew she had to control it or she was going to earn her third zap. "Focus on your game. Don't worry about me," she ordered, clenching her jaw tightly.
The pink girl nodded. It was the only thing she could do really. Not being able to help was hard, so instead she tried to focus on the game in front of her. "I think the song's almost done," she exclaimed excitedly. That feeling of jubilation quickly faded away as the screen filled with a long stream of arrows. She was gonna have to practically fly if she was gonna get through them all. "Um, nevermind."
Just barely suppressing the urge to punch the display in front of her, Lil let out a long hiss of curses in both English and French. "New rule, Callie: Don't say anything is almost over, got it?" It was a universal constant - say one thing with a touch of hope and the opposite was bound to happen. Especially in this screwed up little world they were captive in.
"Got it!" No more commenting on the end, Callie could do that. Especially since she was about to collapse from the energy she was expending. All she wanted was for it to stop. "I am never playing another video game ever again."
Lil's head bobbed in agreement as she battled with the blinking lights. "At least none I have to play with my feet. Shooters aren't bad, thou-FUCK!" She cursed as a third jolt shot up her leg and she had just enough time to see her health meter drop before the dance pad did the same thing. Desperately, the giantess clawed at the console, searching for any sort of purchase to hold on to but it was useless. The flat metal gave her nothing and with a long stream of expletives, Lil tumbled down into the abyss.
Callie watched helplessly as Lil fell out of view, calling out after the older woman. She knew there was nothing she could do to help, Lil was gone. She was the only one of their group left. It was a horrible feeling, knowing that she'd have to go at the rest of this alone. But that feeling was nothing compared with the giant shock to her system the game gave her when she missed a move. It was dance or be swallowed by the darkness, where who knows what would happen. Out of the two, she chose to dance.
***
"What the hell is this?!" Arthur screamed to his nearest teammate. He'd seen kids playing something that looked like this at the mall when he was taking his kids shopping before, but this was something else. "Hey! Hey, guys, I don't know what to do! The text moved too fast, ya gotta help me!" The older man reached for his flask, he was surrounded by teenagers and was likely to die in the next ten minutes- he had no intention of meeting his maker sober.
She didn't really know how to do this, but how hard could it be? She had to keep thinking that way to get through. Follow the directions. Follow the colors. Tat bounced, squinting with concentration. "Step... on... the arrow... as it scrolls to the bottom-" She hoped that made sense, but she was stuck on trying to get her own steps even sort of correct. Just don't fail.
The last time Julian had played this game, he'd been in Junior High. Even though he was out of practice he could at least keep up with the ever increasing pace of the game. Every so often he'd miss an arrow and watch his health bar drop just a little more- which of course induced a jolt of electricity. Those quick shocks led to other, smaller shocks from other, smaller mistakes and misses. Through it all, the fact that none of them would be there if it hadn't been for his stupid flash game fixation kept gnawing at him. 'If I get out of this, I'll never touch another flash game.'
He was hurting, his health bar was dropping fast and they were only a few moments into the game. Having spent the majority of his life smoking and boozing, at nearly forty-four Arthur wasn't exactly the pinnacle good health. His eyes left the screen for a second to study his health bar, which didn't have much to go before it was gone. "Ah to hell with it," he stopped dancing and took out his flask through the pain from the electrical shocks. He took a big swig from the metal container, draining the remainder and felt the small arc of energy dance off his bottom lip. Suddenly the pain was gone. He tossed the container to the side and watched it fall into the abyss for a moment before he looked back up at the screen. His avatar was sobbing as a giant star came zooming up behind it at a steady pace, 'Wait- didn't that Arcade guy say something about shooting-' Before he could complete the thought something very bright rammed into him from behind, forcing him forward into the pit. Arthur screamed as he tumbled forward, catching brief glimpses of the other platforms and their struggling occupants.
She couldn't react. She couldn't, because if she did she'd lose her concentration, and if she did-
It wasn't an option. She could feel the shocks, could feel the hurt, but she was ignoring it. Ignoring all of it, until-
What? No more arrows. No more anything. It-
"It's over?" She looked around, and Arthur- the stranger that they'd been through all of it with, who Tat had unabashedly thought was a burden - was gone.
The remaining mutants dropped down onto an outsized three-by-three checkerboarded plane floating in a seemingly infinite starfield. Holographic galaxies and outrageously colored planets swirled in the dark around them, while a glance downward revealed that each square on the board was actually a full-size gaming platform, patterned on Dance Dance Revolution's standard nine-square controls.
Another projection shimmered into view overhead, a viewscreen framing a wide swath of the fantastic star ways. Seven bright green vertical stripes glowed on the screen, each one tagged with a codename that one of the remaining contenders had given at the entrance of the arcade. It was a familiar sight to the gamers in the group: health meters.
A moment later, a small, super-deformed character popped into sight just below the lines. The cheerfully beaming chibi had shockingly orange hair and was in a white suit and bell bottoms, a polka-dot bowtie, and platforms. He waved one gloved, three-fingered hand at the captives. The character was silent, but the balloon font that dropped into place over his head couldn't be missed.
"Welcome to Dancing With The Stars, Murderworld edition!"
A dance pad identical to the ones the mutants stood on rose up beneath the smiling avatar's feet as the text began to scroll up along the screen.
"Dance your way to success by hitting the correct arrow buttons in rhythm to the music!" An inanely cheerful tune began playing prompting the cartoon on the screen to dance, stomping his feet down onto each button as it lit up. "If you can beat me, you win it all! But be careful! If you can't keep up, you'll get zapped!" The chibi's foot came down a second too late, missing the lit button. An animated lightning bolt shot up his foot, causing him to hop up and down in pain...right onto more wrong buttons, earning him two more zaps, draining his meter from green, to yellow, then to red. "Three zaps will drop you...literally." The platform fell out from under the cartoon's feet, leaving him hopping on one foot in mid-air for several moments before he realized what had happened. His lower lip trembled, his oversized eyes flooded with tears, and he flailed wildly in place for a moment before falling out of sight.
"Seven players and nine platforms means that you won't get a chance to make many mistakes. So be careful!"
A loud wooshing noise interrupted the music. A bright, white star streaked across the screen beneath the health meters, with the avatar holding on to the contrail for dear life.
"And watch out for shooting stars!" the text cautioned as both star and cartoon vanished off of the screen. "They'll try to carry you off"
The animated dance pad rose up again, just as a wormhole irised open at the top of the screen and dumped the woozy cartoon back into place. He shook it off, beamed and flashed the mutants a victory sign.
"Now LET'S DANCE!"
The stars dimmed and the platform lights began to pulse in time with the opening song.
***
"Thank god for Kyle," Angel said, bouncing on the ball of her toes as the arrows started to scroll. There was no way she wanted to do this for very long but damned if she was going to give the weirdos putting this together the satisfaction of having an easy out. She really hoped everyone who was eliminated was okay - this 'game' gave them no time to think! "Meggan, how're your fancy feet?"
She heard a breathy reply and that really didn't make her feel any better.
They hadn't been doing it for long but already Angel's bruised body was protesting the pace. 'Ieva's Polka' might have been one of the first ones up, meaning not as hard as everything that would follow, but it was still tricky. There was a reason Kyle won time and time again; besides his agility, anyway. Her one foot went down wrong, though thankfully still on the arrow, and she went down, managing to catch herself on another correct arrow before she used a pause to scramble her way up. "Oh god that was close."
Angel couldn't even answer the asked "Are you okay?" because she was moving faster now and breathing itself was hard enough, forget about talking. When her foot slipped again, she did land on the wrong arrow and her shriek of pain was drowned by the blaring music. Her fine hair floated around her head from the charge as she hopped back onto the right arrow, cursing under her breath, eyes wide enough that the whites were huge.
Meggan wasn't doing much better from what Angel could see. They were both exhausted and the fright that had them charged for the rest of the 'adventures' had gone from adrenaline to just a dragging weight. And in a dance competition it was something that was going to ultimately prove their undoing.
By the time that Angel's health was down to almost nothing, she'd lost count of the 'tiny' little shocks she was getting. Hair that was charged with electricity floated around her face and got in her eyes and mouth - yet another distraction. And it was spitting out a mouthful of hair that got the best of her.
The last shock rocketed up her skin and when her health bar plummeted to '0', it wasn't the only thing to drop.
One minute the floor was there, the next it was gone. Angel screamed as gravity took hold and despite knowing that it was not going to do any good, she flamed and rocketed towards the ceiling. "Angel!" Meggan yelled, lunging towards her foot. It startled her and she dropped the fire, hoping to aim for the side of the hole, when a steel like rope whipped out from the black abyss beneath them. The other girl had seen them and had abandoned the game in order to try and get between Angel and the ropes but it had put her in the negatives as well.
The thick cable wrapped around Angel's ankle even as she twisted sideways as she fell while another one latched onto Meggan's wrist and with one sharp yank both girls were pulled from view.
***
There were reasons she never played this stupid game; namely the reasons she'd given Bishop the night they went out to the Jazz House: 6'4" white girls do not possess much of the talent known as 'rhythm'. Lil grunted her frustration as she struggled to keep up with the flashing lights and arrows. "I swear to fucking God I'm going to break this machine," she cursed under her breath then risked lifting her head for half a second to glance at Callie. "How you doing, kid?"
Callie's concentration was firmly on the screen telling them which pad to jump on. Thankfully, she had quickly discovered, this wasn't real dancing. As long as she was able to follow the arrows and move her feet she would be fine. Right. Left. Up. Up. Down. "I'm fine," she finally replied to Lil when she found a chance. "How's yours?"
The giantess grumbled again and gave her head a quick shake. Things were not going well. Her timing was off, her feet were too big and the whole contest was just ridiculous. "Games were not meant to be played with your feet," Lil growled, just barely keeping up with the machine. "I really don't like this damn thing. It's stupid and pointless and I don't understand what the big craze over it is."
"I-I don't know," Callie panted, pushing hair off her face and out of her eyes. This game, this machine, was the antithesis of fun. Apart from having to play it now, she had no idea why anyone would want to. There were much better things to do than follow blinking arrows, like go outside and play in the snow. Still, some part of her found the repetitive movement very soothing, almost zen like state. "All we need to do is follow the directions and we'll be fine."
"I ever tell you I don't do well with directions?" Lil said through her teeth. Her ponytail had fallen and golden curls now spilled loosely over her shoulder and around her face, making the already frustrating game even more rage-inducing. Catseye was lost - probably dead - and her patience had been worn incredibly thin by that little brat they'd had to cut loose after the jungle nightmare... Lil wasn't sure how much more she could but she certainly wasn't about to leave Callie alone if she could help it. "God, I hate this fucking game."
"We only have two more levels left!" Callie's feet were moving frantically, trying to keep time and hit her marks. How did those kids at the mall do it? And they made it look so easy. But she couldn't give up, she wouldn't. Not when they were so close. "Lil, I know you can do it. Just take a deep breath. We have to concentrate. You saved me from the squid, you can totally beat this stupid game."
The blonde growled again then yelped at the machine zapped her for the second time. "Fuck!" Lil cursed and stomped down harder on the next series. There wasn't any pain but the jolt was enough to be plenty annoying and distracting. "Mice I can ignore. Squids I can hit, I can punch and stab and fight. This stupid thing is a fucking piece of metal with wires and lights and I want to tear it apart." She hated technology, especially technology that fought back.
Callie hated to admit it, but she shared the Amazon's feelings. Almost to the T. Sans the cursing that is. She stole a quick glance at her remaining teammate. "You alright there," she asked. She had been shocked once, at the beginning of play, and it definitely wasn't the most comfortable feeling in the world to be jolted like that.
"Fine." Lil wasn't fine in the least, but she wasn't about to admit that to the student. The giantess was pissed and growing angrier. At herself, at the game, at the whole situation and she knew she had to control it or she was going to earn her third zap. "Focus on your game. Don't worry about me," she ordered, clenching her jaw tightly.
The pink girl nodded. It was the only thing she could do really. Not being able to help was hard, so instead she tried to focus on the game in front of her. "I think the song's almost done," she exclaimed excitedly. That feeling of jubilation quickly faded away as the screen filled with a long stream of arrows. She was gonna have to practically fly if she was gonna get through them all. "Um, nevermind."
Just barely suppressing the urge to punch the display in front of her, Lil let out a long hiss of curses in both English and French. "New rule, Callie: Don't say anything is almost over, got it?" It was a universal constant - say one thing with a touch of hope and the opposite was bound to happen. Especially in this screwed up little world they were captive in.
"Got it!" No more commenting on the end, Callie could do that. Especially since she was about to collapse from the energy she was expending. All she wanted was for it to stop. "I am never playing another video game ever again."
Lil's head bobbed in agreement as she battled with the blinking lights. "At least none I have to play with my feet. Shooters aren't bad, thou-FUCK!" She cursed as a third jolt shot up her leg and she had just enough time to see her health meter drop before the dance pad did the same thing. Desperately, the giantess clawed at the console, searching for any sort of purchase to hold on to but it was useless. The flat metal gave her nothing and with a long stream of expletives, Lil tumbled down into the abyss.
Callie watched helplessly as Lil fell out of view, calling out after the older woman. She knew there was nothing she could do to help, Lil was gone. She was the only one of their group left. It was a horrible feeling, knowing that she'd have to go at the rest of this alone. But that feeling was nothing compared with the giant shock to her system the game gave her when she missed a move. It was dance or be swallowed by the darkness, where who knows what would happen. Out of the two, she chose to dance.
***
"What the hell is this?!" Arthur screamed to his nearest teammate. He'd seen kids playing something that looked like this at the mall when he was taking his kids shopping before, but this was something else. "Hey! Hey, guys, I don't know what to do! The text moved too fast, ya gotta help me!" The older man reached for his flask, he was surrounded by teenagers and was likely to die in the next ten minutes- he had no intention of meeting his maker sober.
She didn't really know how to do this, but how hard could it be? She had to keep thinking that way to get through. Follow the directions. Follow the colors. Tat bounced, squinting with concentration. "Step... on... the arrow... as it scrolls to the bottom-" She hoped that made sense, but she was stuck on trying to get her own steps even sort of correct. Just don't fail.
The last time Julian had played this game, he'd been in Junior High. Even though he was out of practice he could at least keep up with the ever increasing pace of the game. Every so often he'd miss an arrow and watch his health bar drop just a little more- which of course induced a jolt of electricity. Those quick shocks led to other, smaller shocks from other, smaller mistakes and misses. Through it all, the fact that none of them would be there if it hadn't been for his stupid flash game fixation kept gnawing at him. 'If I get out of this, I'll never touch another flash game.'
He was hurting, his health bar was dropping fast and they were only a few moments into the game. Having spent the majority of his life smoking and boozing, at nearly forty-four Arthur wasn't exactly the pinnacle good health. His eyes left the screen for a second to study his health bar, which didn't have much to go before it was gone. "Ah to hell with it," he stopped dancing and took out his flask through the pain from the electrical shocks. He took a big swig from the metal container, draining the remainder and felt the small arc of energy dance off his bottom lip. Suddenly the pain was gone. He tossed the container to the side and watched it fall into the abyss for a moment before he looked back up at the screen. His avatar was sobbing as a giant star came zooming up behind it at a steady pace, 'Wait- didn't that Arcade guy say something about shooting-' Before he could complete the thought something very bright rammed into him from behind, forcing him forward into the pit. Arthur screamed as he tumbled forward, catching brief glimpses of the other platforms and their struggling occupants.
She couldn't react. She couldn't, because if she did she'd lose her concentration, and if she did-
It wasn't an option. She could feel the shocks, could feel the hurt, but she was ignoring it. Ignoring all of it, until-
What? No more arrows. No more anything. It-
"It's over?" She looked around, and Arthur- the stranger that they'd been through all of it with, who Tat had unabashedly thought was a burden - was gone.
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