Dance Dance Revolution came with both the cartridge and a roll-out floor mat that connected to the console. There were four large directional arrows: two blue pointing up and down, and two pink for left and right. A square, circle, triangle, and x symbols marked the diagonals, but it was the large center space, emblazoned with the phrase “Stay Cool,” that drew Remi’s attention first.
He’d just hooked up the game and backed up, pleased with himself when the tween tittering had begun. There were some concerning whispers between Bea and the gaggle of gathered girls at the party. It was then that the suggestion was made.
“Uncle Remi,” Bea had said with a giggle. “You should try it first. It is easy; just stand in the center and tap the buttons with your feet.”
He was going to say no, but it was a kids’ video game. He recalled thinking, how hard can it be? The answer he learned was damn near impossible.
But that was naive Remi—one who had not learned from the experience that future Remi was about to have. A man who hadn’t yet learned that some of life’s lessons are cruel, especially when surrounded by pre-teen girls.
Bea had selected the song, a remix of Kung Fu Fighting. She asked if he knew it. Remi had said yes. The girls laughed, like they’d heard a joke that Remi didn’t understand the punchline to. It was because he was the punchline; he just didn’t know it yet.
The word READY appeared on the screen as he took his position on the mat. The music started as he remembered: Oh-ho-ho-hooooo. But when the bass note dropped, and a rapper’s voice hollered, “Y’all ready! Let’s go!” It was at that moment he knew he was in trouble. As the iconic opening lyric was repeated, Remi converted it in his head to: “Oh-no-no-nooooo…”
The screen was filled with arrows—left, up, up, right. He’d struggled to step on the directional arrows on beat. He got two of the four. By the time the lyrics told him to “stay cool,” he finally understood what was happening here. Bea and her friends just wanted to enjoy the schadenfreude of the whole thing.
Schadenfreude
Noun | [common]
A German word for the joy that comes from learning of the failures, suffering, or humiliation of another.
Remi’s spasmodic movements, his vain and failed attempts to press the buttons to a rhythm, made him look exactly like the “Funky Kong” that the song mentioned. He recalled noting and then reflecting on the allusion to the giant ape that lumbered its way up the Empire State Building. As well as its iconic plunge.
Maybe it was this distraction, or maybe it was the fact he was a forty-year-old man with no real coordination to speak of, that finally resulted in his own tumble. Remi’s feet tangled on themselves, and he tumbled to the side. He’d tripped over the mat’s edge, half-spun, and collided with the coffee table. Embarrassing on a normal day, but as he crashed into the coffee table, which had been pulled to the side for space, but still held the birthday cake, this fall was an epic one.
Yep—Schadenfreude. Now covered in frosting, Remi listened to the girls howling with laughter, and as the song kept playing and the bloody arrows kept scrolling, he couldn’t help but laugh with them. What was his alternative? As he got up, he looked at the pad he'd fallen off of, at the “Stay Cool” in the center and simply tried to follow its advice.
Bea wasn’t even upset. Especially after he drove out to get a replacement ice-cream cake. Later, as he watched his niece show him how the game was supposed to be played, he couldn’t help but think how some allusions really are foreshadowing. In his case, the ape had fallen, but the fall was less important than the story. He knew it was going to enter the family annals of epic Remi moments, and the taste of ice-cream cake made the thought even sweeter.
So when Amihan asked him if he knew the game he’d be playing next, Remi did. He also knew how this shitshow was about to go down.
[SUB-MODULE: 1 / 3 – STEP SYNC]
Demonstrate strong balance and maintain directional control
The notification and Nel’s voice brought Remi’s focus back to the present.
“We decided it was time to have a bit more fun.” Her own HUD notification followed her words.
[RUNNING: STEP_SYNC_01.bat]
~ WELCOME TO TRIANGLE TIME ~
DIRECTIONS: Foot goes in triangles, obviously.
GOAL: Be a-cute, not obtuse, and try not to look like a dumb-ass!
“Nice,” he said with a laugh.
The room blinked as Nel’s script took over what was happening in the room. Triangles burst from the floor to drift towards Remi in time to a beat. The track had no lyrics, but he couldn’t help singing anyway.
“Remi was kung fu fighting,” he hummed as he pivoted to step left into a triangle. When his foot inevitably caught on a triangle’s edge and he went sprawling, he would add a nostalgic, “Oh-no-no-nooooo…” on the way down.
The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
He missed Bea more than he could ever describe. He fell often. Each time the room was filled with the echoes of laughter: his, Amihan’s, and Nel’s, but more importantly there was the memory of her laughter underneath it all.
Each time he got back up, he touched his scarf. Each time, the quiet thought: How many more times? As he got to his feet, he glanced down before the game restarted. The scattered punctuation marks had drifted together again. The symbol was an ellipsis. Apparently, even the scarf knew he was going to be here a while.
Repetition compulsion, Freud would've called it. Recreating trauma for mastery. But Remi was pretty certain that even Freud would've tapped out by now.
As the lights reset and the song rewound, he sadly thought of Bea. He was glad to include her in their collective joy, as it was for her laughter that he kept stepping forward, feet in triangles, until finally he no longer fell.
* * *
The system notification came a few seconds after Remi finished the last of Nel’s levels.
[SYSTEM MESSAGE]
[FOOTWORK STABILITY: CLEAR]
[BALANCE & DIRECTIONAL CONTROL CHECK: PASS]
[MODULE PROGRESS: 38%]
Module 2 will complete in five seconds.
Remi saw her coming, even before the countdown began. With her stick clutched tight in her hand, ready to strike, but this time he was prepared.
He shook his head as the countdown began. “Not this time. I’ll do it,” he said.
“You’ve got to die for the loop to work.” Nel’s voice drowned out the start of the countdown.
“I know. I’ll handle it myself.” As he said handle, he tightened his grip on his dagger. The room flattened into silence; only his pulse remained.
If he was going to have to die, he wasn’t willing to allow it to be at the hands of a friend. She was hard, but no one was that hard. Killing like that—repeatedly and with a friend—would scar anyone, even someone like Amihan. He needed to send home the best version of himself he could for her children and for himself. The damned Crucible had already done enough damage.
Luckily, the countdown didn't give him much time to dwell on it too much. He slipped the dagger from its sheath, and in one swift movement he cut his own throat. The blade bit deep; the white floor misted in droplets of red from the arterial spray. His body crumpled to the floor, freezing the timer as it once again reached one.
Beneath his body a pool of crimson formed, slowly spreading to form a puddle as the system acknowledged his death.
[SYSTEM RESTORE COMPLETE]
HP: 100% | Neural Sync: Stable
Death detected in Training Module 2
Reloading…
For a moment, before the loop took effect, he looked like the Papyropede he’d once torn apart, so long ago he barely remembered: creased, folded, and ironically also discarded by his own hand. Like before, the Crucible again lapped up the liquid seeping from beneath a corpse, hungry as ever, but this time it wasn’t ink.
[MODULE CONDITIONS MET]
Initializing Training Module 3: DEFLECT & DISARM
* * *
He woke shaken, and he needed a moment to reorient. The instant he’d stepped through the portal, his knees gave way. He dropped, curling into himself, and he stayed like that for a long time. Not that time meant much here. Regardless, he took it. He breathed in and out. Deep breaths. He needed to process, to internalize the damage, and to recover from it.
Fuck this place!
It might have been something he couldn’t have recovered from. Yet his defense mechanisms kicked in. As he sat there, he realized he was actually taking a god-damn mindfulness minute—like he was back in a PD session. Taking stock of himself. Focusing on his frigging fingers and toes.
Freud would've had a field day with all this.
Oh, hell no!
Remi’s barked laugh echoed around the room. It sounded a bit unhinged, even to himself, but it also worked, as he could force himself to uncurl. He’d crawled to the wall underneath Nel’s window, where he now rested with his eyes closed, listening to the clicks from her keyboard. She was probably lining up something for stage three, but with every tap, he felt himself returning.
The tapping faded, replaced by the faint sound of boots approaching. Remi kept his eyes closed, so he felt Amihan’s presence settle next to him rather than see her join him. Remi kept them closed. He really was doing better, but the dark was still comforting, especially after the days spent focussed on neon triangles.
Was it days? Or weeks? He wasn’t sure anymore, but ultimately it didn’t matter. He was here until this was finished.
“You got it faster than I expected, Guro,” Amihan said as she settled next to him.
“Thanks,” he replied.
“Still,” she said, “my youngest would beat you in a head-to-head game.” Her tone carried a hint of sadness, and while Remi didn’t want to pry, she clearly wanted to talk about them, so he cracked that door just a little.
“I remember you had two children, a boy and a girl, right?”
He couldn’t see her smile, but sensed it in the air between them. “Yes, Sora, my daughter. She talks too much.” She pushed up her left sleeve and tapped the ink there, a cluster of radiant lines that spilled outward across her arm. “These are for her. She shines in every direction, even when I tell her that hiding her light is safer. She reminds me every day that sometimes hiding is not living.”
Amihan pulled down the one sleeve, “And Tala,” she continued, exposing her right arm. Remi could see a band of flowing, wavelike lines curved along her muscle. “My son, these are his. He listens too much and moves too softly, but always forward. Never stopping. He is the one who really loves to dance.”
She let the sleeve fall back into place.
“In my culture, our batok carry our stories. My children are mine, and so I hold them in my soul and in my skin. I hold them for me, and with me. Always.”
“I’m sure you miss them.”
“I do,” she whispered.
“Maybe I could meet them someday?”
“No!” Her response came too fast, too hard—startling him.
“Oh,” he stammered as he opened his eyes. He found her looking at him directly, steel in her gaze.
“I’m here so that doesn’t happen. If you meet them, that means I failed with you. I will not fail with you.”
“I didn’t mean,” he said.
“I know that, but break time is over. You are far from being ready to handle what is coming.”
Remi was taken aback. “I mean, I’ve done pretty good so far.”
Amihan got to her feet and gestured with her stick for Remi to do the same. “Pretty good is not what you are going to need. When we are done, you will be a master. This is what I can do to help them. This is what I can do to help you.”
Remi didn't know what to say.
“I like you, Guro,” her voice steady but distant now. “But a teacher is not a hero in this place, nor is a friend a teacher. Everyone, my children included, need you to be the latter, so I will be what you need so that you can become what your story needs. I hope you don’t meet them because I know where you must go, and I don’t want them anywhere near that. So I will be what I must, in order to make you as powerful as these.”
She held up her Kali sticks.
“I will make you a weapon before I send you back out there. Because…” she hesitated, the edge in her tone softening, “…we both want the same thing: to keep them all safe.”
Remi’s throat tightened. There wasn’t anything to say to that, only the quiet nod that meant he understood. He grabbed his meter stick from the wall beside him, where it had been leaning. “I guess it’s time we got back to it then.”
? Phoenix Flight [Lite LitRPG - Dungeon Diving - Slow Romance] ?
by RainyLiquid
Weak to Strong, gathering of powers, skills, and spells.