Rising Shards

Diast winced as we tried to pick where to start, clearly hoping we could lose the nightmare inducing forced-grin-hypnotized Caya.

“Do you know how to play card games?” I asked.

“Some,” Diast said. “The last time I was playing it was against Ms. Letoh, don’t ever play against her, she’s really, really good. You remember that, Caya? Er, I dunno if you can remember things while you’re…all…”

“All my memories are of Chumblerosa and what a great place to gamble this is.” Caya said.

“I…really hope that’s not permanent.” Diast said. “Let’s maybe just do slots, we’re right by them.”

Amara gave us each one token. “That’s how you start, with one. Now can you turn one into many? We shall see. Chumbler was able to turn a metaphorical single token into metaphorical many tokens with this fantastic establishment.”

KJ nodded, and kept nodding, which looked like it hurt.

“If you grow hungry,” Caya said. “I recommend Blegs Spicy Honeyjack Barbecue Brothers Blend Wings, which are sold exclusively here at Chumblerosa.”

“I’ve never used a slot machine before,” Oka said.

“I had to once with Chumbler,” I said. “Here, I can show you…” I went to sit at the nearest open seat, which was taken by a big, mean looking Sharai. “Oh, excuse me.”

“You don’t have to say excuse me; these guys are literally evil.” Marmalade said.

Marmalade wasn’t wrong, and her saying that gave me enough pause to remember a recent encounter with Chumbler as I looked at three nearby open slot machines.

Chumbler had tried to bring me back to the dingy secret basement version of her casino to try slot machines again. I stalled her citing the dust in the staircase down making me sneeze too much, but I was worried she was catching on to my fake sneezes.

“You sure like these, huh?” I said in a desperate moment of trying to come up with anything to say to fill time before my self-imposed “minimum amount of time before leaving a hangout to not seem rude” ran out.

“Oh, most definitely. Once I’m gambling, nothing else matters. I get tunnel vision, but with gambling.” Chumbler had told me.

I thought of that tunnel vision with my next suggestion. “Say, I’m not sure I’d be able to give the best tutorial of these slot machines after all,” I said. “Caya, Amara, KJ? Could you explain to us how these machines work?”

“Of course,” Caya said. “No staff at Chumblerosa can ever turn down a chance to do gambling.”

Caya, Amara, and KJ each sat down at a machine.

“First, you insert a token,” Caya said, plunking a coin in the machine. “Then, you pull the lever.”

Amara and KJ mirrored her actions. They each won a few more tokens.

“And then…” Caya said, inserting another coin and pulling the lever again. “And then you…”

I tapped Dr. Diast’s shoulder and nodded towards the stages. While Caya, Amara, and KJ were distracted by the gamble, we cautiously stepped away.

“I can’t believe it was that easy to trick them,” Marmalade said.

“Good thinking, bud,” Diast said.

“I figured if they all basically have Chumbler brain right now that trying to think like Chumbler is the best way to deal with that.” I said.

“Where do you think Kalei and the others are in this mess?” Oka asked. “You don’t think they’re all down here hypnotized as well?”

“It’s possible,” Diast said. “Let’s focus on stopping this hypnosis for now.”

We reached a machine that took tickets to let people into the concert area. A sign hastily taped to it read, “NO TOKENS = NO TICKET = NO CONCERT CLOSE AND PERSONAL TIME.”

As we approached the stages, I noticed our group was one short.

“Hey, did we lose Z.O.K.? Where’d she go?” I asked.

“I wasn’t going to say anything because she creeped me out, but she didn’t come with us when we changed into the suits,” Marmalade said. “So she’s still upstairs somewhere.”

“So add her to the list of kids we have to wrangle at some point here,” Diast sighed. “For now…let’s…figure out this thing.”

“Maybe we should have actually played the game.” Marmalade said as Diast investigated the machine.

“Here, everyone huddle around me for like two seconds,” Diast said. We got into position the way she instructed, allowing her to use her power to stealthily open a hole in the machine’s metal side, allowing her to fish around, grabbing five tickets from it and patching it up like she hadn’t done that.

“I’m surprised that didn’t set the lasers off.” I said.

“It wasn’t violent, technically.” Oka said.

There weren’t a lot of winners for the front row seats, apparently. While there were a few scattered about, the big crowd seemed to be at the gambling areas.

“So what is our plan here?” Lillia asked. “If Rain’s causing the hypnosis, I assume we stop her first. But can we do that nonviolently? Though I suppose if we could do that, we could’ve just freed Caya and the others from the spell they’re under, couldn’t we?”

“Also…how do we get past her?” Marmalade asked, pointing to the front row of seats, where a very tall glowing woman with piles of empty wing buckets around her, cheering on as Kitty performed.

“Sing Kindest Ways or Devilish Ways!” The tall lady yelled. “Anything off of Seventeen, that’s my favorite album!”

"Seventeen is so good, ugh," Marmalade said. Oka's judgmental glare made her quickly add, "Sorry, guilty pleasure!"

"I'm surprised you're not more amped up to see Kitty perform in person then," I said. "Though I guess this isn't the best way to see her...she did show up at school but that's different, too, I guess?"

"As if I haven't seen her concerts live before, c'mon." Marmalade said.

"Are you like way bigger of a Kitty fan than you let on before?" Oka asked. "Because going from one guilty pleasure song to having gone to actual Kitty concerts...I have a lot of feelings about that."

"In my defense," Marmalade said. Then she didn't add anything else and just waited for someone to change the subject.

“Either way, I think the big lady's pretty distracted,” Diast said. “Which is good thing, because without Caya we are not equipped to take on an entity like that.”

“But are you equipped to take on someone like me?” On the center stage in front of us, Chumbler approached, her eyes swirling with hypnotic madness. She proudly pulled her hands from behind her back, revealing weapons in each hand. In one hand was her dual bladed bloodsaber (or rather, two bloodsabers taped together at the handles). In the other, the Sharai Daggers.