Chapter 2
Laharl, Flonne, Etna, Kieran and the others all walked upstairs. Kieran opened a door, then they all walked in. It was a room full of several good condition DDR machines.
"Why aren't these machines all messed up too?" asked Laharl.
"They are protected from the forces of Mid Boss by shield," explained Kieran.
All of a sudden, a random gate appeared out of nowhere. A guy with red hair and a sword walked through. "Who are you?" said Etna.
"I am Adell," he said, "I came here to save Dance City."
"Adele? That's a girls' name! " said Laharl as he laughed his butt off.
"No, it's Adell with 2 L's," clarified Adell.
"Like the computer? I had a Dell once and it was a piece of crap," said Kieran.
"No, it's one word. Anyway, I heard Dance City was under attack by Mid Boss. Are you guys trying to defend Dance City also?"
"Definitely, dood," said the prinny.
"We have to defeat the enemies in games of DDR, " said Etna.
"What's DDR?" asked Adell.
"I was just about to show everyone how to play. DDR is a dancing video game," said Kieran.
Kieran began explaining how to play DDR to all eleven of the other people, demons, and prinnies. He explained about when to hit the arrows, scoring, grading, passing, jumps, and timing. After explaining for 12 minutes and 33 seconds, they were finally ready to try DDR.
"I want to go first!" said Flonne.
"OK, pick a song on Beginner," said Kieran.
Flonne scrolled through the available songs until she found one called "Love Love Shine."
"This song has love in the title. I'll pick this one," said Flonne. She pressed the button to begin the song. The music started playing. Flonne jumped up and down on the dance pad with excitement. When the song began, Flonne started hitting the arrows. She managed to hit about three quarters of the arrows and get a B. "You passed your first song," said Kieran, "Who else wants to try?"
Laharl jumped on the pad, and scrolled to Max 300 in the song list.
"I don't think you want to play that one, " warned Kieran, "It's very difficult, even on Beginner."
"I'll challenge myself anyway, " said Laharl as he pressed the button to begin the song. A fast techno song began playing as spikes appeared in the background of the screen. The arrows started scrolling up the screen at 300 BPM. At first, Laharl wasn't used to the speed of the arrows , and he almost failed the song. He started getting more perfects and greats after about 30 seconds. "You can do it!" cheered Flonne. Laharl thought "shut up, Flonne" in his head for a second, then resumed concentrating on the song. A few seconds later, the song slowed down and stopped. Laharl was caught off guard by the song when the arrows started moving again, but after missing a few arrows he got back into the rhythm of the song. At the end of the song, he got a perfect on the last arrow. "You passed Max 300 for your first song," said Kieran, "Even on Beginner, that's not easy. Usually, if you're shorter, you're better at DDR."
"4 foot 5 and proud of it," Said Laharl, "I can kick the butts of enemies 5 times my size."
"I'm 5 feet, so that's why I can pass 12's," said Kieran.
"I'll go next!" said Gordon in a loud, booming voice. He walked up to the machine and started to scroll through the songs. He picked a song called "Superhero." "I'll play Superhero because I am a superhero," he said. When he selected the song, he accidentally set the difficulty on Heavy instead of Beginner. When the song started, a bunch of arrows flew up the screen rapidly. "This is impossible!" said Gordon.
"That's because you're on Heavy," said Kieran, "Let me exit the song and set it back to Beginner." Kieran pressed a button on the machine, and the machine went back to the song selection screen. The song started again, this time on Beginner. Gordon failed after about 20 seconds. "How can I fail? I'll never save Dance City now! Curse you, height," said the six foot two inch Gordon. Everyone else tried a song and everyone else passed. After the last song was played, there was a noise.
"That's my cell phone, " said Kieran. He had received a text message which said:
"your arcade is going down
down with DDR
we'll destroy all your machines
tonight at 6:15.
The 6 footer squad."
"Not the 6 footer squad!" said Kieran angrily, "We'll defeat those too tall DDR failures."
To be continued…