[ti]private[/ti]Fruit or Dare

“Just do it.” Kazuki’s quite frankly amazed this is even up for debate. Since they met, Verai has wanted to snap him like a toothpick—which is the goal—but the moment he offers a free beating, he hesitates?

The guy fumbles with the desk ornament for a bit, before finally throwing the punch.

Despite bracing for it, Kazuki still feels the impact in his bones. He blinks, feels pain bloom on the side of his face and runs his tongue over his teeth. He spits a patter of blood on the floor.

“Bitch,” he chuckles, before the desk bursts open.

Long tendrils surge out from the fake wood, its drawers flying open, the gaps in the wood straining, splitting, cracking at the force of the tangible shadows.

WARNING: PLAYER AT ACK DETEC ED
DEFEN E P OTOC L TEST NO. 0 8

Kazuki leaps back. The triumph is momentary, killed when he fails to recognize the arms that emerge. There aren’t any markings or stone fragments to form a palm. It doesn’t form anything at all, remaining sludge-like and pouring indefinitely.

Sprigatito screams as the inky puddle expands, leaping quickly onto a chair.

SPOILER: Click to show

{cw flashing image}

Verai is the first to move, and he sees him snap up the cats and head for the exit. Kazuki has to vault over the desk and scramble to avoid touching the black ichor pouring over the floor, seeing something beginning to rise from the puddle.

When the door slams shut, his weight joins Verai in barricading it. The door pounds with whatever is screaming to be let out. When the other man asks him for an explanation with eyes narrowed, all he can offer is a bewildered and mildly pissed off look. “How the fuck should I know! I just- the first time I met the Professor, I found out she had this monster in her desk to protect her from player attacks. I figured triggering it there would help us get out.”

Well, now it seemed it would kill them. Fantastic.

He blinks, realizing the door has settled. He turns his head to press his ear against it, wondering if he’ll hear anything. He sees from the corner of his eyes something slipping out from under the door, past their feet.

“Ah, shit.”

The shadow stretches once again. It pours, rising off the floor in the middle of the strange room like water from a leaking pipe. From the top of it pops out two pointy ears.

HI THERE, TESTERS! IT IS I, MIMIQUEUE!

The creature that forms looks like a bastardized version of a Pikachu. Despite its strange looks, the quality of its model makes it seem deliberate. It smiles at them with its giant puppet head and floppy neck.

PLEASE DON’T GO. LOOK, I AM READY FOR TESTING AGAIN.

A new UI pops up in front of the players. It’s just a simple black input box, with a blinking cursor.

“What… are we supposed to do with this?” Kazuki squints. Poking the box brings up the keyboard input.

ANYTHING. WANT ME TO SPAWN A COPY OF AN ENTITY? START A MOCK BATTLE? I CAN DO ANYTHING.

Kazuki inputs: TELEPORT BACK TO SPAWN.

EXCEPT THAT. NO ONE LEAVES WHILE TESTING IS ONGOING.

“Well, damn.” Kazuki clicks his tongue, glancing up. The surface is so close, but this little bastard isn’t letting them touch it.

This causes MIMIQUEUE to panic, misinterpreting the look for disinterest.

LOOK.

The input box fills with the prompt: SPAWN 999 CHEESE WHEELS.

And from the sky comes, as you may guess, 999 WHOLEASS CHEESE WHEELS. They pile onto each other, tumbling for a moment, before their animation cuts and they are suspended in the air.

“Maybe.” Like Verai, Kazuki is looking up at the floating rain of cheese wheels. “That’s a lot of fucking cheese wheels.” He reaches up, grabbing one and trying to pull it down to—eat it, maybe. But the wheel of cheese refuses to budge, frozen in time and space.

“… Alright.” Kazuki looks over to the floppy doll making hopeful eyes at them. “What are we supposed to test exactly?”

ANYTHING! THE CHOICE IS YOURS.

Well, that’s helpful. “Seriously? No ideas? We don’t even know the commands.”

YOU ARE THE TESTERS. I BELIEVE IN YOU. WE CAN STAY HERE FOR AS LONG AS IT TAKES.

Kazuki scoffs. He pulls up the prompt and mutters to Verai beside him. “Yeah, no, that thing’s busted. Kill it.” A few error messages later, and a prompt is finally accepted.

SPAWN 999 SWORDS

Swords rain from above.

OH! A COLLISIONS TEST? EXCELLENT CHOICE!

The doll squeaks, hopping here and there as the swords come clattering all around it. All swords that fall over Kazuki and Verai freeze several feet above before colliding.

SPAWN 999 CARS

Error, object not found.

SPAWN 999 CARRIAGES

UM.

The doll is quashed underneath a prairie shooner.

Kazuki, looking immensely satisfied with this, waves away the prompt. “Alright, Ver. Time to prove your arms aren’t just for show.”

A tower of babel composed of cheese wheels, swords, and carriages looms over them. It just barely reaches the barrier above.

“Get climbing.” Kazuki leaps, grabbing hold of the first platform: a cluster of cheese wheels surrounded by an outer layer of swords.

Past them, the prairie shooner starts to rattle.

"There are options outside of murder, you know."

“But are they as efficient?” Kazuki happily argues back, swinging from cheese wheel to cheese wheel like some kind of cheese chimp. He’s getting all sorts of grazes, lacking Verai’s care when it comes to dodging the swords, and it doesn’t help that the assets aren’t even frozen properly. He nearly trips from a cheese wheel that actually wobbles.

They didn’t have time for this.

A tendril of oily black shoots out from under the shooner, reaching for Verai. Of course, it couldn’t be fucking easy.

“Duck!” Kazuki hisses, yanking the swords around him. He goes through three before finding one that actually moves, ripping it out of the air and flinging it at the tendril.

Verai struggles up to reach him, but by some miracle makes it by the sweet virtue of cheese and disobeying every rule in knife handling ever written. Kazuki grimaces, glancing over the edge they’ve climbed onto. It really isn’t much of a platform, composed of mostly swords after the carriage fell, and the next level above is a gap they can’t reach with their arms.

“Kids are into some fucked up shit these days,” Kazuki points out. The floor at the bottom of the tower has turned into a familiar puddle of black. “We need to double time. I think someone might be pissed, and I’ve got the feeling we won’t respawn where we want to if it gets us.”

He raises a brow at Verai’s hand. “Is your hand bleeding?” Oh, this was not the time for this shit.

He grabs the man by the collar, glaring at him as the platform under their feet trembles violently. “Get on top of me and grab the damn platform.”

“Squeamish, my ass. I just don’t want you holding us back by climbing with a shit hand,” Kazuki growls as he pulls him up by the waist, raising him until he can use his shoulders as a foothold. It’s unfortunate then that he can’t enjoy the view, since the tower is threatening to collapse under his feet and homicidal goop is about to kill him before he reaches the next platform.

A hand from above is extended right on time. He grabs it, leaping just as the sword platform collapses, leaving him to dangle, his life briefly and quite literally in Verai’s hand. He uses his other hand to grab the cheese, pulling his body up to the next level.

The tower shifts like waves. Mimiqueue’s remnants are spilling uncontrollably like a geyser of tears, flooding the lower ground and swallowing them into nothingness. The explosion causes the platform Verai and Kazuki are standing on to get launched skyward, Kazuki cursing loudly as he flails in the air, just barely managing to snag his hand on a tree root.

His other hand nabs Verai’s robes. “Shit,” he hisses, arms straining under the weight of his own body and the weight of the grown man. “SHIT!”

The unfathomable abyss of white is filled with a distorted howl.

"VER! HURRY UP!"