The room was filled with Gears when Gytha woke.
She couldn't see them, thank God, but she could hear them moving through the room. The exhausted groupies squealed protests as Klokateers yanked them to their feet for cursory inspections.
"Huh . . . what're you guys doing?" Nathan slurred.
"Just a loose skank check, Milord," one of the Gears answered.
"Got a brunette with blonde highlights!" A Gear called from the other side of the room. "Short, too!"
'Oh, that doesn't sound like a loose skank,' Gytha thought to herself. 'That sounds like a loose Gytha.'
"Her tits are too big," one Gear declared. "The one we're looking for is flat as a board."
Gytha scowled up at the ceiling a few feet above her head. She had breasts! They weren't big, but they were there!
"I don't do flat-chested chicks," Nathan declared. "Check Skwisgaar or Murderface's room."
"We've already checked Lord Murderface's room, Milord. Another team has been checking Lord Skwisgaar's room for the past half-hour."
Unseen by the hidden acrobat, one Gear knelt down to shine a flashlight under Nathan's bed. When the sweep revealed nothing but dust bunnies and a few discarded liquor bottles, the hood sat back on his heels and glanced up at the huge canopy over the lead singer's bed. After moment, the Gear leaned back over the mattress and stared intently at the underside of the canopy. He gestured for another one to join him.
Just visible in the thick red fabric was the outline of a small body.
Gytha reflected that it had suddenly gotten very quiet down there.
"What are you guys staring at? What's – what? It's . . . oh. Uh, I guess she's not here! You guys can leave now!" Nathan bellowed in a loud voice. "Goodbye! I guess I'll just go back to sleep!"
Fuck!
Gytha attempted to lunge for the air vent, but a blade came up through the canopy fabric and the whole thing tore, dumping her unceremoniously in Nathan Explosion's bed.
"That's the one! Get her!"
Gears piled onto the enormous bed, causing the mattress to bounce and flail wildly. Gytha bounced twice in an undignified spread eagle position before gathering herself and landing on her feet.
"You guys are fucking up my mattress!" Nathan pointed out in a bellow.
Gytha bounced high as a Gear lunged for her, flipped over as another tried to get his hands on her and used a third as a springhorse to launch herself towards the canopy. The fabric was beyond all use, but she managed to catch onto the canopy frame and flip herself around it like it was an uneven bar.
A Gear bounced off the bed awkwardly and flipped over a bedside table loaded with lubricants and sex toys, scattering the items across the floor. One of the groupies still present jumped back to avoid a jelly vibrator and stepped on a full bottle of lube, causing it empty it's contents in a rather spectacular way. As the original groupie went down, she pulled down the one next to her and started a domino effect. Partially dressed women and Klokateers fell, landed on bottles of lubricant, which squeezed out more and added to the puddle of slipperiness currently spreading across Nathan's bedroom floor. Within a minute, pretty much everyone in the room was either wallowing in lubricant on the floor or hiding on the bed from said lubricant.
"Jesus, this place is fucked," Nathan grunted, sliding slowly across the floor.
Normally Gytha would have agreed with this sentiment, but she was busy noticing that everyone appeared have fallen or slid away from the door. Without hesitation, the little gymnast spun around the bar twice to build up speed and launched herself towards the floor in general direction of the floor. Hitting the floor butt first hurt and it felt like there was something jammed somewhere intimate, but she zipped through the door on her back.
She zipped through the door, across the hall and straight towards the balcony.
The railing supports weren't close enough together to actually prevent a person from falling through them because hey, this was Mordhaus; 'safe' wasn't exactly on the list of priorities. It was only a mercy that they weren't razor-sharp.
Gytha flipped onto her side and caught a railing before she could careen off into space. Nathan's bedroom was overlooking the great hall of Mordhaus from the top floor. A four-story drop awaited anyone unlucky enough to test the railings.
The unfortunate Icelandic lady dangled from one railing support, nothing between her and a messy death but fifty feet of thin air.
On the bright side, whatever had been jammed in her butt was gone.
Something splattered on the end of the breakfast table.
Charles looked towards the sound, but something plopping into his coffee made him look back around. Across the table, the only other early riser in the band looked up from his cereal.
"Whats ams dat, Charles?" Toki asked, shoveling in another mouthful of cereal.
"Something . . something fell in my coffee," the CFO stated, fishing around in his cup with a spoon. "Here it is. It's . . . ah . . . oh."
Toki Wartooth giggled around his breakfast.
"You gots a cockring in joos coffee!" he informed his manager.
Charles replaced the cockring and shoved his coffee cup away. While Toki still tittered like a schoolgirl, the band manager turned to look up.
Dangling from the top balcony was a small figure in black.
"Dat's what ams de acrobats lady," Toki observed. "Hey, can I gets poseds pictures of dats routines she does on my guitar? Dat was cool."
Charles' eyes narrowed slightly as he took in the struggling woman.
"We'll . . . we'll have to see about that, Toki."
The Gears were starting to get to their feet. Or at least to hands and knees and were crawling laboriously in her direction.
The railing supports were too far apart for her to simply reach over and the floor in front of her was covered in lube. Shit. Gytha swung a leg for the nearest support and managed to hook her ankle over it. Her hands – which had still hurt when she woke – were now filing a list of complaints and submitting them to the union.
She really didn't have time to struggle with her weak hands. One ankle still hooked over the far support, Gytha kicked her other leg as high as she could, clamped her toes on the edge of the floor and with a combination of 'walking' her toes and brief tugs with her ever-weakening hands, managed to hook her ankle over the support she clung to.
It had to be at least a two hundred and twenty five degree split and normally she'd be ecstatic with such an oversplit, there was still the business of falling to her death to deal with.
Her weight now on her legs, Gytha let go of the support and clung to the edge of the floor. With an almost Herculean push, she pushed herself up on her legs until she could wiggle belly first onto the floor. She crawled gingerly to safety and looked up.
"That's the one! I've got her!" an enormous Gear bellowed, running down the hall towards her.
Evidently no one had warned the massive man about the trail of lube on the floor. The Klokateer slipped on the near-invisible trail, went down on his back, and hurdled towards Gytha. The little woman somersaulted backwards to avoid him and landed on the railing. The unfortunate Gear shot through the gap under the railing and plummeted. The man smashed into the end of the table where Charles and Toki were eating breakfast.
The force of the blow collapsed the far end of the table and made the other leap into the air, dumping both men's meals on themselves or the floor. Charles looked down at his ruined suit – now coated with an almost-full bowl of oatmeal – and sighed roughly. Toki picked through the remains of the table for a Dethbell and rang it daintily.
Word had gotten around about the lube. Newly arrived Gears now carefully picked their way over or around the spreading puddle while their already slippery compatriots tried to contain the worst of the flow. Nathan Explosion was handed off to a pair of hoods and walked carefully away from the balcony, still fighting to keep his balance.
The hoods approached Gytha cautiously, which was somehow worse than an all-out charge. Still standing on the railing, she inched away from them, trying desperately to think of a way out of this.
The hallway was jam packed with Klokateers. The vaulted ceiling left nothing in the way of beams or supports to run for and there was nary an air vent in sight. The only way out was down. Way, way down.
Shit.
The Gears lunged forward. Gytha leapt for the void.
By the time Charles had toweled the worst of the mess off of his suit, Toki was sitting cross-legged in one of the dining room chairs, a cloth napkin in his lap, a bowl of fruit, honey and granola in one hand and his neck craned back to watch the high-flying antics of 'de acrobats lady'.
"You am know she remindings me of?" he inquired casually.
"Who would that be, Toki?"
"Titter de clown from 'The Happy Melons' show," the heavy metal beast said conversationally. "Dey both gots serious flexibles."
"Ah . . . that's nice, Toki," Charles said, gesturing for a Gear.
"Ooop! Dere she goes!"
Gytha had fallen before. Given her dayjob, it was right up there with pulled muscles as an occupational hazard. But she had never fallen four stories before. Four stories was a long, long way.
A chandelier hung at around second story level offered a bit of hope. Gytha reached and grabbed the edge. The chandelier jerked sideways in reaction the sudden weight on it.
It was at this point that Gytha's abused hands decided to stage a strike.
The light bar slipped from her grip and she plunged the last two stories with no control and no possible way to minimize the impact.
She landed on the dead Gear that was being carried away by two of his compatriots.
For a long moment, she lay dazed, staring up at the vaulted ceiling with a fixed gaze. The chandelier swung back and forth, momentarily obscuring the line of hoods that peered over the railings at her.
Moving slowly and painfully, Gytha rolled off of the dead Gear and tried to sit up.
Hands seized her from every direction, wrenching her into a standing position. A Klokateer before her pulled out a handgun and cocked it with flourish, then aimed it right between her eyes. The chances that this one was loaded with glitter and confetti were very, very slim.
Gytha squeaked and screwed her eyes shut.
"Wait."
The utterance was soft; spoken in a conversational tone but the captive gymnast still started as though it were a gunshot. A soft crunching sound reached her ears and she hazarded peeking with one eye.
CFO Charles Offdensen was standing before her, munching on a bagel.
The utterly cool visage was spoiled slightly by his oatmeal-spattered suit, but only slightly.
"Bind her – securely – and put her in my office. I'll deal with her personally after breakfast," he ordered.
A stay of execution for any reason should have been a relief, but hearing Charles motherfucking Offdensen saying he'd 'deal with her personally' really, really didn't make her feel any better.
"Can I gets dose pictures?" Toki inquired from his seat.
"We'll just have to see, Toki," the manager stated.
Charles and Toki finished breakfast in the kitchen, then the CFO headed up to his office. He had a spare suit in the massive suite, so changing wasn't a hassle. He'd let the contortionist stew for a few minutes longer.
The manager nodded to the two Gears positioned on the sides of his office door and entered. Charles stopped just inside his office and took stock of the situation.
"That's . . . . that's . . . . . . ah . . . . thorough," he announced.
"We weren't letting her get past us again," the Klokateer to the left of the door growled.
"I can see that. It's . . . ah . . . looks professional."
"Klokateer # 8856 takes a certain interest, My Lord," the Gear to the right of the door informed him. "He says he'd love to show what he's capable of with more than ten minutes to work with. He also humbly requests his ball gag back when you're finished with it."
"Uh-huh. And the blindfold? It looks like leather."
"#8856 says that's his least favorite one and he lost the gimp mask that came with it, so he really doesn't care if it's ruined, but the ball gag has sentimental value, Sire."
"Ah. Well. I'll keep that in mind," Charles said, closing the door behind him.
Gytha Sinnsdottir was tied up on his desk.
Well, that sentence didn't quite tell the whole story. It was like saying someone who had just been struck by lightning was feeling under the weather. While true, it lacked the severity necessary to fully convey the situation.
Evidently the Gears had been feeling particularly vindictive when they chose how to position her. The very flexible Ms. Sinnsdottir's arms were stretched out before her, bound together at the wrists and elbows. She was forced into a backbend that left her sitting on her own shoulders, while her ankles were tied together behind her. A line ran from her wrists, under Charles' desk and attached to the rope around her ankles, essentially tying her to the desk. A large red ball gag and black leather blindfold added the gilding to the bondage lily.
For a moment, Offdensen marveled at the fact that he could be here, in this position, witnessing such a thing before nine in the morning.
"What happened to my life?" he wondered out loud.
Well, he still needed to change. The Icelandic gymnast certainly wasn't going anywhere. Charles took a spare pair of trousers and a clean shirt out of the closet and headed for the en suite bathroom.
"I'll be with you in just a moment, Miss Sinnsdottir," he announced before closing the door after him.
Charles was came out of the bathroom quickly, half expecting Gytha to be wriggling out of the ropes, but she remained where she was, drooling around the gag onto his blotter.
"Hey, Ahffdensen! David Bowie called me . . . uh."
Pickles burst in the door. The dredlocked ginger paused in mid rush, taking in the bruised, bloodied, and bound woman on the desk and his manager in just slacks and a half-way buttoned shirt.
"Can it wait, Pickles? I'm right in the middle of something here," Charles stated, doing up his shirt.
"Uh . . . . don't worry about it, I'll come back later," the drummer muttered, retreating quickly out the door.
Heedless to how the situation looked, Charles put on a fresh tie and suit jacket before turning back to his captive guest.
"I trust the position isn't a problem for you, but I do need to use the desk. Let's get you out of this mess," the manager sighed, unbuckling the ball gag.
What seemed like a lake of drool spilled out onto the blotter. Charles sighed again, but slipped the blindfold off and set about wrestling with the knots. Two minutes later, he withdrew a small, sharp blade from a desk drawer and simply sliced through the bonds. His companion freed, Charles sat at his desk with an authoritative air.
"You impress me, Miss Sinnsdottir."
Gytha came to the conclusion that she could either come out of her pose gracefully or avoid kicking Charles M.F. Offdensen in the head, but not both at the same time. She elected to fall off the front of the desk.
"Maybe . . . ah . . . not right this second, but I am impressed nonetheless. Please take a seat."
It took Gytha a minute to crawl up into the surprisingly comfortable chair offered to her.
"Let's cut right to the chase; in eighteen hours, with no resources and no knowledge of the layout of Mordhaus, you eluded our security forces twice, came into contact with every band member, spent the night in Nathan Explosion's bedroom and even got close enough to me to ruin my suit and land . . . something very embarrassing in my coffee. That's impressive. I'd like to offer you a job, Miss Sinnsdottir."
Gytha blinked at him for a minute.
"A . . . a job?" she finally managed. "Doing what?"
"Officially, you'd be listed as a 'security consultant', but you would do just what you've been doing so far: testing our security. You'd get your own quarters, of course, but a few days a week, you'll be given a band member to 'tag'. You'll have to avoid the Gears and place a small tag on the given band member to complete the job. You'll stay in Mordhaus and be well compensated if you accept."
"'If I accept'? I get a choice?"
"Of course," Charles said reasonably. "If you aren't interested in working for Dethklok, you only have to walk through that door and you'll never hear from anyone attached to the band again."
Gytha followed the manager's nod to a nearby door. She . . . she could just leave? She could walk out and never hear from anyone attached to the band again? Why did that sound so very final? Gytha started to frown, filing the offer under 'extremely suspicious'.
"Dat door? Dat door right dere?" she asked, pointing.
"Ah, yes, that one. Feel free to go through it if you like."
Charles noted the highly suspicious scowl Gytha gave the door.
"Do you . . . . mind if I just check somet'ing?" she asked.
"Not at all. Go right ahead," Offdensen said generously.
Gytha stood and made her way to the door, limping slightly. As the CFO watched, the small woman sniffed cautiously at the door. Gytha placed her hand on the door. It was cold. Gytha scowled harder. An extremely cold door in Mordhaus? An extremely cold door in Mordhaus that promised freedom?
Gytha looked around and saw a brass railing on a nearby bookcase and got a good grip on it. She considered the state of her hands and hooked a knee around the door frame.
Then she opened the door.
The suction at fourteen thousand feet actually wasn't that strong. She probably could have gone without the knee hook. She still peered down the chute at the ground thousands of feet below. Well, she told a lie; it looked like Mordhaus was over the ocean right now.
There was her choice; a quick plummet to her death, or employment by Dethklok.
Gytha pulled the door shut and leaned against for a minute. A few hot, angry tears streamed down her cheeks.
"You're a sick, sick bastard!" she spat. "A psycho monster! Riddu ter!"
"Yes? And your point would be?" Charles inquired calmly.
"My point is, I can't say such things after you're my boss!" Gytha snarled, turning away from the door.
She stomped back over to the desk and sat down.
"Where do I sign?"