Rising Shards

“That…is quite the outfit up close,” Marmalade said, averting her eyes from the approximately five pieces of small fabric that covered Chumbler. It was weird to see her not just in a skimpy outfit but I was used to Chumbler in her smaller gremlin form, and decided I vastly preferred that than the voluptuous figure above me.

“Pretty sexy, amirite?” Chumbler asked, jiggling around. “That’s why I call this my sexy form!”

"It's definitely...a form." Marmalade said.

Chumbler had approached all the way to the front of the stage, that came to about my chest height, before backing up and inviting us up with her. To our right, the small crowd murmured at the Kanibari boy Typo’s latest “jokes” about movies and shows he saw recently that he hated. To our left, Kitty was doing an extended beat box interlude to a shrieking Queceilitrex. Dr. Diast shrugged at us.

“What? Not gonna get on stage?” Chumbler asked. “I have these fun trinkets here! My badass bloodsabers and…whatever these things are!” She waved the Sharai Daggers around. I wasn’t sure how she ended up with them, but they were dangerous in anyone’s hands, especially so in a hypnotized Chumbler. "I'm sure you guys want these things. They can probably like sew or something! But like in an evil way, that's neat? So what do you say, fight time?"

“Sorry kid, I wanna assess this situation a bit first,” Diast said.

“Here, I wanna have a duel, I’ve always wanted a duel, aren’t they the ultimate gamble? You gamble to win or lose on a grander scale, and like with weapons.”

“You really run this gambling schtick into the ground, don’t you?” Marmalade asked. “Don’t you have any other hobbies?”

“I’ve only heard the fables about her,” Lillia said. “But from what I understood prior, this is her only hobby. And now that we’ve seen this place in person…”

“Yeah, it’s pretty clear.” Oka said.

“What’s wrong with having a singular, life encompassing hobby, huh?” Chumbler asked, jabbing at nothing with the daggers, which was still worrying not knowing exactly what they were capable of. I had to shake away the immediate panic of being so close to the artifacts that caused the beast tendency incident for me. “Here, I’ll make this easier on you.” She put her swords and the daggers in her armpits for a second and clapped twice. “There, violent block knocked out so we can have a fight!”

“Raaagh!” A voice cried out from above. Rappelling down from the catwalks above came Ovie, landing in front of Chumbler with her bloodsaber ignited. “Those…don’t belong to you.”

“OK?” Chumbler said. Ovie charged, clashing swords with Chumbler.

“Should we…help?” I asked.

“Which one?” Oka asked.

"I guess neither," I said. "Maybe we can bet on them both losing here?"

Chumbler broke out of the sword clash. She spun into an energy ball and rocketed upwards, bouncing away like she was made of rubber, landing far away past the slot machines. Ovie roared as she leapt after her, grabbing the rope she climbed down from and shot a jet of acid from her sword to rocket forward to her target.

"I guess we should maybe put a pin in their fight for now," Diast said. 

"But, the daggers!" I said.

"If this goes ass up you can blame me, but we really need to fix this Rain hypnosis." Diast said.

"I guess..." I said, eyeing the clash between Chumbler and Ovie one more time. They were pretty far away, and in the middle of the retention sprites now. Just trying to reach them could mess everything up.

With the first two stages occupied, we went to the third, where the would be standup comic Typo was on his latest set. It was a really gross bit trying to make fun of a wide swath of identities that I wanted to immediately forget forever, but he was easier to walk past than the others. 

"Now Cani shapeshifters, I got a joke about that, you'll all love this one." Typo said. "You guys know who I'm talking about! Aren't they just the worst? And like, you know who I really mean here, right? Which shapeshifting Cani I'm talking about?" 

I didn't know Typo, but I could guess where his 'joke' was going. It was word for word lifted from a horrific attempt at a comedy special from decades earlier that was reviled as one of the worst performances of all time for the sheer amount of cruel mocking of a whole lot of people. The only reason I became aware of it was when I was watching an uplifting video about discovering identities and lots of happy and hopeful trans stories as I was just starting transition, and the ad before it was the standup special in its entirety. I watched it in confusion until the 'comedian' had some very close to home 'jokes.' Deep loud cries alerted Stella, and once she had finished her angry letters and calls about that, she tried to make sure we had as much ad blocking on the computer as possible. My tummy hurt even hearing the imitation of the jokes, knowing where they were headed.

"This joke was nine hours when I rehearsed it in my head so this'll be a good one," Typo continued his bit. "I got a lot of things to say about—" The stage shook, and a portion under him gave way a bit before launching him into the crowd where he crash landed into a row of empty chairs.

“Oops.” Marmalade said, putting her ignited bloodsaber that she pointed in Typo’s direction. “New to my powers and all.”

“Beat me to it,” Oka said, putting her own bloodsaber away. “Or rather, your powers acted up before mine could.”

“I’m not even gonna do the ‘pretend I didn’t see that one’ bit, that was fully warranted.” Dr. Diast said.