Part Two: Stop the Party!
Midari probably shouldn't have been drinking considering she was the closest thing this party had to a bouncer, but being one of the rare fans of self-inflicted pain, she'd done it anyway.
Calling her drunk would be a bit much, considering she'd only had about a glass and a half worth of alcohol and downed nearly twice as much in lemon water, but calling her tipsy was not an exaggeration. Her unsettling smile stretched wider, her grip on her pistol loosened, her laughter came louder and easier. Despite that, her senses remained largely unchanged. While her hearing had dimmed a bit thanks to a slight buzzing starting up inside her head, her field of view remained clear and steady and her stride was the same long, stiff-legged stagger many of her fellow classmates had come to fear.
She only looked for specific things. The drunks she ignored; unless they were passing out or puking they weren't a danger to anyone on their own, even themselves. The couples making out in barely-hidden places she left alone as well; as long as both parties seemed like they had consented she had no obligation to break something like that up. All she really cared about were two things, those things being that no hard drugs made their way here and that nobody started a brawl while she was nearby. And neither had happened so far, leaving her bored out of her mind.
She was no longer content to pace circles, making sure that everything was a-okay in the main room. Yumeko and Yumemi had 90% of the crowd pacified, and for the rest, she was sure one of Ayame, Naoe, or Nana could handle it. Thus, she slipped her pistol into her pocket and went upstairs toward the gambling rooms.
She entered into the nearest one like a phantom, her arrival seemingly unnoticed by most of the dozen or so other students in the room. All of them seemed focused on their gambles: slot machines in the corner (although this only held a few students, the rest seeming to know that any machinery here was more than likely to be rigged), so those who were gambling clustered around Sayaka and her blackjack table, the girl dealing hands at a frightening speed as chips, curses, and even the occasional catcall crossed its wooden surface. Unfortunately, all of the games here were too mundane for her, and after idly watching the blackjack players for a couple of hands she determined none of them even came close to being a substitute for Yumeko.
"Seems like everything's going fine in here," she said, attempting to break up the room's crushing monotony. In an instant, every person swiveled to face her. One even screamed like they were acting out a low-budget horror movie.
"I thank you for checking in on us, but no help is needed at the moment," Sayaka said, still managing to deal a new hand in the midst of her statement. "In the future, if your services are required, I will call you in using the walkie-talkie."
"Fine," Midari said. "If someone starts punching someone else, though, call me specifically, okay?"
Sayaka simply nodded, which Midari took as a yes considering there was little to say. Midari considered trying her luck on the slot machine just for the hell of it, but it wouldn't scratch the itch Yumeko had set on her. Not even close. That girl couldn't be replicated by anyone else at the academy, even Kirari.
She loved her for it. She worshipped her for it. She yearned for those feelings to be returned.
Next time, she told herself. You'll get her next time.
After chasing those thoughts out of her head with a couple of slaps to the face, she marched onward through the other rooms to reveal similar scenes to the first. Something of interest almost happened when an argument broke out around the roulette table in the third room, but before anything came of it Runa stepped between them, her petite form and unsettling manner of speech somehow getting them to calm down. Grumbling with disapproval, Midari spent a little longer there to make sure nothing else transpired and then continued her aimless journey.
Every gambling room looked the same: dead-eyed students engaging in pointless gambles while the equally dead-eyed moderators strung them along through their pointless, miserable games. Midari didn't know how any of them gained satisfaction from something so insufferably dull, but she moved on without questioning it. If she got exposed to any more boredom, she'd probably fall asleep, and there was little good that came out of a security guard sleeping on the job.
Once she'd finished her trip, another side effect of the alcohol she'd drunk appeared to kick in. Even though she'd gone to the bathroom less than an hour ago, her body screamed at her that she needed to go again. She considered delaying, but it'd take a few minutes, maximum, to get that done. Nothing too grotesque could happen here while she was gone, which was good; if something like that did happen, she wanted to be the first to witness it.
For now, though, Midari marched down the empty hall in search of a bathroom, leaving the rest of the academy behind.
As the party wore on, Sayaka started to notice changes in the people who sat at her blackjack table.
When it was first unveiled, the players she dealt with remained polite for the most part. They usually bid small amounts (or at least small compared to the norm), made small talk with each other, and didn't display much emotion win or lose. However, once the sunlight began to fade, so too did the inhibitions of her players. The stacks of chips on the table grew larger and larger, curses and whoops being exchanged after each hand. Every time a player wandered off, someone just a bit more drunk took their place. The room had started to smell of a potent combination of sweat and alcohol, to the point where shortly after Midari had popped in, Sayaka even considered pausing the game for a few minutes so she could get some fresh air.
She soldiered on, though. Kirari expected nothing less of her, and in turn, she expected nothing less of herself. She'd do the job until the job was done, and that was the end of that.
The foursome at the table fidgeted and twitched in their seats as Sayaka dealt their latest hand. The first player, a beanpole of a boy with coke-bottle glasses and greasy black hair tied in a ponytail, went bust, cursing as he did so. A petite girl missing several teeth stopped upon reaching 17, a tank of a girl with ocean-blue hair upon reaching 20. The fourth one, wearing full clown makeup including a squeaky red nose, busted as well, proceeded to shove his chips in Sayaka's direction, curse her out, and storm away from the table, not even bothering to see what her hand was.
"All right," Sayaka said to no one. "Dealer shows." And she did show, her cards displaying a perfect 21.
"Dealer wins," she said, sliding the chips in her direction, ignoring the hard stares of the table's other three inhabitants. By the time she'd prepared to deal the next hand, though, she could no longer ignore the blue-haired girl pointing an accusatory finger in her direction. "Miss, is there some kind of problem you need me to deal with?"
"You're cheating," the girl spat through clenched teeth.
The next line came naturally. "And what is your proof?"
"I've been here for ten hands. I'm playing every hand to the best of my ability, and yet I've lost every single time. There's no way in the universe my luck is that bad."
In a bit of a surprise, no foul play had actually occurred unless you counted the girl's blackjack skills. Maybe she knew how to count cards, maybe she didn't, but either way she seemed like the kind of person who could barely add her cards correctly, let alone utilize them to their best extent. Sure, she'd gotten a couple of really terrible hands, but while Sayaka had been on a hot streak for those past ten hands, other players had won a few times. She'd simply had bad luck, and Sayaka had good luck to counter it. Nothing else could be said about the situation, not from Sayaka.
"No cheating has occurred on my part," Sayaka said, her voice still calm and orderly. "If you wish to observe other players for signs of cheating…"
"Fuck that," the girl said, standing up and shoving her chair aside with a crash. "You. Me. Right here, right now. It's on, bitch."
Sayaka kept her composure. It was sure to be a one-sided fight if things came to blows, for her at least. She had a taser and this girl did not. That alone swung the odds massively in her favor. However, that wasn't how she preferred to handle things, so she simply reached for the walkie-talkie clipped to the waist of her dress. "Event security to Gambling Room B, please. I repeat, event security to Gambling Room B."
Then she turned to face her aggressor. "You can either leave or be thrown out. I don't care which one happens, but either way, you're gone."
The girl stood indecisive for a few seconds, but after they passed, she spat on the floor and faked a lunge toward Sayaka, causing her grip on her taser to tighten. Then, she turned on her heel and stalked out of the room, vile curse words snaking their way toward Sayaka until she disappeared from view.
Sayaka shrugged it off. The only thing that surprised her was that it had taken this long for someone to do that. "Well, now that that's handled, would you two like to return to the table for another hand?"
Both of them did, but before they could even finish placing their bets, everything got derailed by the sounds of loud shouting from the floor below. Both players picked up their gambling chips, left their seats and moved towards its source, and at that point, Sayaka reasoned she had nothing to do at the moment and did the same, keeping half an eye on the other patrons in her room to make sure nothing else happened.
Once she reached the edge of the room and could see the main area, she became witness to a frightening scene. The girl she'd just kicked out was currently brawling with three or four other people, somehow staying upright despite her taking blows from all sides. As she watched with bewilderment, two more people rushed into the brawl, then one, then three, and before long, it seemed like half the floor was involved even as she called event security to the main floor and wondered where the hell Midari had fucked off to before this all started.
Sayaka sighed. You had to do everything yourself nowadays.
Thus, without a word of internal dissent or even a thought of hesitation, she charged down the stairs, taser in hand and ready to fire.
Ryota was currently in the process of thanking every god he could name that at the very least he'd skipped the alcohol. If he hadn't been sober, he would most certainly have been caught in this mess, or even worse, involved.
The scene unfolding around him looked so bizarre he couldn't tell whether it fit better in a horror flick or a comedy skit. About two dozen Hyakkaou students, most of them far drunker than any high schooler should ever be, had started attacking each other with various degrees of efficiency. Some did little more than feebly slap at anyone who got close, but at least a few were throwing full-on punches, and others seemed to have no qualms about hitting below the belt. Curses and half-baked insults poured out of their mouths in a tidal wave of negativity as they fought, fervent intensity radiating from each word.
Since he was sober, dodging their attacks wasn't too hard, except for one guy with bloodied knuckles that managed to give him an open-handed slap to the cheek. He managed to force his way to the edge of the cluster of humanity before extracting himself with some difficulty, trying to figure out where the hell Yumeko and Mary were so they could get the hell out of here.
"Yumeko? Mary?" Ryota's calls dripped with desperation, wanting nothing more than to be somewhere else. "I think it's time to go!"
It happened in a blur. One second, he walked alone, and the next, the two of them both had a hand on his shoulder and stared at him as if they were ghosts he had summoned through a sacred ritual. Ryota made a mental note to never play any horror games with them.
"Yeah," Mary said, drawing out the word. "I'm not sure about you, but I think I'll skip… that." She pointed at the brawl occurring center-stage, which was growing worse by the second. Ryota even saw (and heard) Midari firing her pistol into the air as she entered in an attempt to at least draw the crowd's attention, but it was no use: the people involved were too single-minded for that to work.
"I understand, but I'm not that confident in the event security's ability to break this up," Yumeko said as Midari dove headlong into the melee, laughing maniacally as she did. "There's only a few of them, and there's a lot of fighters."
That number appeared to be growing by the second, with student after student piling into the mess to either avenge hurt friends or blow off steam or do whatever it was they thought fighting would solve. The level of violence seemed to grow in tandem, with punches flying, feet kicking, and blows landing. It'd be an interesting Monday that week, to say the least.
Before anyone else could say anything, another blur of motion caught Ryota's eye. Sayaka had clearly heard the commotion and come rushing downstairs, taser in hand. Ryota hoped for the best: maybe if just getting hit wouldn't stop them from attacking each other, ten thousand volts could do the job just fine.
"This behavior is absolutely unacceptable," Sayaka said with grim determination, leveling her taser and beginning to fire. "Event security has been called to remove everyone involved from the premises, and I swear to God, I can—"
Maybe it was because they noticed she was dealing far more damage than anyone else involved in the brawl, or maybe they just sensed that a new participant had entered. Either way, though, it resulted in at least two dozen of the drunk brawlers stopping whatever they'd been doing beforehand to charge Sayaka, who broke into a run for the opposite side of the room without changing her expression, frantically firing her taser over her shoulder like she was the last survivor of a zombie outbreak while jabbering into a walkie-talkie in her free hand. "Event security to the main floor, please! I repeat, event security to the main floor!"
Midari seemed to be doing an okay job with knocking people down, but most of them just picked themselves back up like nothing had happened and rejoined the seething mass of humanity. Midari's friends, who Ryota couldn't have named if he tried, entered the room at a full sprint to try and settle things down, but at this point, the situation looked unsalvageable; it was a miracle no one had pulled a weapon yet.
"Hold on," Yumeko said. "I'm not sure how Sayaka plans to take control of this, so I'd like to see how this plays out. Plus, if things get really bad, hopefully they'll know better than to try and attack me."
Ryota's eyes almost started bulging out of his head. "They're attacking Kirari's personal secretary right now. I doubt you'll be much different, and I don't want you to get hurt."
"It'll reflect badly on me if I witnessed this and did nothing," Yumeko said. "It's not fair, but that's just how the story goes."
Ryota didn't have a defense for that, but his brain struggled to form some kind of argument anyway. However, before he could make any kind of connection, the group caught up to Sayaka as he stared in horror, absorbing her like a speck of dirt in a puddle as she struggled and fought.
Just in time for a hideous screech to rip the room in two.
Kirari exited her pocket of heaven to a scene straight out of hell.
What appeared to be a drunk, angry mob had materialized and started charging around the room, and while Midari seemed to be attempting to curtail the group, her pistol was useless in close quarters and her ability to win a twenty-on-one fight was nothing to write home about. Kirari might have just made her way to the mic to try and grab their attention or even sat back and watched as everything played out, but then a piece she hadn't known was missing snapped into place.
Sayaka emerged into her field of view for a split second before being absorbed into the mosh pit that was the dance floor, screaming her head off as her taser got knocked away, stopping dead on the floor with a sharp whack. While the attacks from everyone in that blob seemed scattershot and didn't have one specific target, to Kirari, every last one of them followed one objective.
Reach Sayaka. Stop Sayaka. Maybe even hurt Sayaka.
Kirari wasn't letting that happen. No one got to hurt her precious Sayaka. Not now, not ever.
A feral scream in her throat, Kirari tore her way into the crowd, uncaring of the blows that came from all sides. She didn't quite remember how she got to Sayaka and she didn't care, everything blending into a hazy mixture of pain and sweat and fear, no one seeming to care who she was or how she'd gotten there. She took Sayaka's hand without her even noticing and pulled, forcing the two of them through the disaster alike even as her cheeks burned and her side throbbed and her legs were kicked. Then, like a deep-sea diver having run out of fresh air, they breached the surface, gasping heavily, as they hurried away from that mess under their own power.
The crowd didn't seem to notice for a short while, continuing to attack each other like the lunatics they'd become. Meanwhile, Sayaka looked at Kirari with an expression close to wonder. "President…"
"I'm not the Student Council President anymore, Sayaka," Kirari said. "Just Kirari is fine now."
Sayaka started over. "Kirari… why did you do that? And how?"
Kirari let out a bemused chuckle, even as the crowd now turned toward her. "Now, now. Do you seriously think I'd have this much money to my name and not invest at least a little of it into learning some basic self-defense? Furthermore, I couldn't just hang you out to dry with that awful mob. You and I both know things could have gotten much worse if I hadn't stepped in."
Then the riot was on them again, Kirari yelling for Sayaka to run and Sayaka complying, putting distance between her and the kids chasing her not worrying her too much for all their drunken weaving. She tried to summon the beast that had gotten her out the first time, but couldn't pull off the trick again even as she scratched and clawed while Midari and her girls took down everyone they could, Midari laughing even as she took a right hook to her good eye. Then the mass of humanity rippled and boiled over again to admit Yumeko Jabami as she finally made herself visible, calmly inching her way forward as if the fighting was naught but an illusion.
"Kirari, you need to get out of here," Yumeko yelled like that wasn't obvious, extending her hand. Kirari didn't waste the opportunity, grabbing on as Yumeko repeated what she had done with Sayaka, pulling them out until once more she stood separately, even as the fighters took notice once more and turned toward her with everyone else having fled at the first sign of fighting.
Kirari and Yumeko both knew better than to just let them catch up, and they ran around the room in circles to keep the group. Kirari managed to catch a glimpse of Mary standing in the corner with a look somewhere between amused and horrified even if she saw no sign of Ryota, then they had to start moving again as it seemed like everyone had stopped hitting each other to focus solely on them for some reason that probably made sense in their alcohol-addled brains. The two of them ran and ran and ran some more, but even as the Beautification Committee did their best to take everyone out, almost every time they knocked someone down they'd pick themselves back up like nothing had happened, and soon even the Beautification Committee started to falter, all of them collapsing except for Midari, who was still laughing her ass off.
Then, a new voice interjected, loud and obnoxiously peppy. "Alright, ladies and gentlemen! Who's ready for one final song?"
In a move that surprised everyone, even Kirari, about a third of the brawlers stopped whatever they were doing to cheer, even as a few of them got punched or kicked or otherwise assaulted in some way and blacked-out students still lay on the floor. Then, as the rest of the crowd stopped and stared for a second, trying to figure out just what had caused this massive interruption, they caught a glance of Yumemi, back on stage for an encore like this was all part of the show.
Before anyone was ready, the opening for another one of her songs (Kirari forgot the name, they all kind of blended together for her) had passed, and Yumemi once more sang her heart out, putting as much raw emotion and energy as she could into every word. Maybe Yumemi knew how hypnosis worked or maybe her music had become just that infectious, but within thirty seconds the fighting had almost stopped, most of the students involved either dancing or singing along even as they simultaneously groaned in pain from their various injuries. As for the few stubborn ones, Midari was more than happy to deal with them, and soon everyone not involved in this musical number of sorts was on the floor either sitting or just passed out.
As the song went into its final chorus, almost everyone began to stagger away in awkward clumps, grunting and moaning as they wandered away like fresh zombies. The rest were in no condition to wander, but that was alright, at least for now. Kirari could pull some strings and get them to hospital beds. This was her own stupid fault, after all.
Once Yumemi's song ended, she wrapped everything up in the simplest manner possible.
"Show's over, everyone! Thank you! Good night!"