#chapter 3 end

Raketsu Hachimitsu is dragged off to meet his doom… For a moment all is in darkness. But soon, light surrounding Raketsu snap on, revealing his location. A large empty room, with what look to be spotlights attached to the ceiling. There were a lot more than he was used to… he wasn’t understanding exactly what was going on here.

In an instant, the lights all snapped on, and he covered his eyes quickly. It was too bright… but what were all these colors? They weren’t typical spotlights, more like stage lights. Blues, greens, reds, pinks, all sorts of colors. And just as quickly, something else occured.

From the floor surrounding him, panels opened up, and out popped what seemed to be endless cardboard cutouts of people. All dressed for the club, and posed mid-dance. Being in the middle of such a sudden and huge crowd unsettled him, was this supposed to be some sort of fake night club? But all that was missing was the--

Music.

Just as everything before had come without warning, so did the loud, overly obnoxious thumping beat of some hip club dance music. Raketsu felt an incredible pain shoot through his head, and clasped his hands over his ears.

“SHUT IT OFF!!” He tried to yell, but he couldn’t ever hear his own yelling over the music. The fake clubbers began to dance, the cutouts shimmying about the dance floor, and Raketsu began to panic.

This was just cruel, he thought. Was he just supposed to stand there and cringe to death? That was when he felt a sharp pain in his back. He yelped and stepped away, trying to look back and see what had happened. All he saw was the sea of dancers, but he could feel something warm and wet on his back. Then he felt a sharp pain in his side. He jumped away, almost catching a glimpse of something glistening in the crowd. He looked down to see blood staining his shirt. He was getting stabbed… wasn’t he? That’s when he saw something dangerous coming at him from the front. He moved away ust in time, but could see that a cardboard hand had reached out from the crowd, with a knife taped to the hand.

There was a scratch to his arm that he couldn’t react to in time, and he saw that it was from a dancer with a broken bottle. The dancers were attacking him! And he could barely defend himself… because his hands were glued to the sides of his head, unable to stand the music. In his panic he tried to push through the crowd, in an attempt to find some sort of exit out. Anything, anywhere he could escape from the pain and the sound. The deeper he went, the thicker the crowd became, and the more dancers seemed to have it out for him. Every corner lead to another attack, and when he’d stumble away from one blow, he’d trip into the blade of another. Dizzy, hurting, scared, and disoriented, Raketsu had no idea where he was running, and he was breathing faster and faster. He started to run, but that only weakened him more, and the wounds kept piling on. Eventually… eventually he would…

[art credit: keri! thank you!]

He began to notice that everything began to sound… quieter… like he was slowly being lowered under water. All sound faded away into a dull hum. It felt almost relieving… and then Raketsu fell to the floor. A long streak of blood trailed behind him showing the long tangled path he took trying to escape from this prison. He bled so much that in the end, he ran out.

....

The monitor fades to black and the mascots stand silently in front of the crowd. After a moment, Modelkuma speaks.

"... Quite exhilarating, huh?.... Well done everyone!... Go ahead and enjoy your free time now... While you still can!..."

Wallace stood up with a sigh, and stretched a bit. Sitting on pews is nasty. “This is the part where I tell you guys to stop. But uh, there’s a problem.”

“You see. I have a hunch. I think one you guys are pullin’ the strings. I’ve never seen the town act so wacko ‘til you all showed up. I ain’t never lost my fuckin’ body before this. I dunno who it is, or how the fuck they’re doin’ it. But it’s bad.”

“What I’m saying is, the only way out is to probably kill whoever the fuck pulled this shit. Probably. Don’t get this shit wrong. I swear to fucking God.”