==Hi, everyone! I'm back as promised with a chapter of good length :D I'm actually very happy with how this chapter turned out. I was laughing a lot while writing it, to be honest, so hopefully that means you will, too! Unfortunately, these next few days will be pretty busy for me because of Christmas, so I doubt I can update again until after the 25th is over with, and that might be the last time I can update this story for the remainder of this break. That doesn't mean I'm suddenly disappearing for a long time, but it means that I'll be in the new semester of school and be drowning in work again. Let's just say I made myself a hard schedule so I can transition into college better, but I don't know how that will vary compared to the schedule I had this past semester. I'm just glad I'll be graduating in early May and have the longest summer of my life, which also means more writing for you all! I hope you enjoy this chapter! Please review your thoughts!==
Yellow Claw & Yung Felix - "Dancefloor Champion"
Haunted: Collapse into Caliginosity
Chapter 62:
Victory Is Ours
"Battle goes to...Poison Posse!"
The arena erupted in loud noise over final result to the dance battle. Cole and Jay called out Macca's name to get her attention, but she couldn't hear them. Instead, she and her two friends shook hands with their three opponents. And then, out of the blue, Macca gets swept off her feet.
Cole, Jay, and I immediately stopped our clapping at the sight of Macca Soxx locking lips with someone who wasn't Zane. There was a baffled pause among us as we stared in disbelief and bewilderment. They both glanced next to them to look at me. "What...What just happened?" Cole asked me. "I thought you were getting Zane hooked up with her."
"I-I thought I was, too," I stammered, not allowing my eyes to wander away.
Something wasn't right. Macca couldn't do this to Zane. As a matter of fact, she wouldn't do this to Zane. If she didn't want to be anybody right now, why would she reject Zane but accept someone else? Surely she wasn't a hypocrite.
The guy kissing her was Rollin from Hood Ratz. He was the guy from earlier who was talking to Macca when I snatched her for fun. I had no idea what exactly their relationship was behind the scenes, but-
"Ready?" Cole beckoned to us all, getting out of his seat.
"I suppose," Zane sighed. His hand was still wrapped up in Nya's, but it was clear that his mood had soured. As for Cole, he was ready to leave. Seeing Macca betray Zane was enough for him.
As I got to my feet to follow the group, I watched as Macca was let go from the hold on her. She was a little ways away from us, but I could see her expression was one that was unhappy. She gave him a shove to get him to stop touching her.
"Jay, look, look, look!" I exclaimed in a hushed tone, grabbing his shirt to pull him closer. "She didn't like it!"
We continued to watch as Rollin gave her a confused gesture, but she just rolled her eyes and slipped off her green Poison Posse shirt to once again reveal her Zane tank top.
"You're right!" Jay agreed. "Zane still has a chance!"
Macca jogged over to the railing separating us from the platform. She reached over to grab Zane's hand and said something to him.
"Sure!" I heard Nya answer.
Macca smiled and then jogged back to the platform to join everyone else who had just competed with each other. They loaded back in the Ferrari with the equipment from the show in their hands and drove out of the arena.
"What's happening?" Jay asked me.
"Beats me. Guess we'll find out in a second."
"You think I have time to get myself some chicken nuggets?"
"What? We had dinner before we got here."
His expression never faltered. "I know, but I want chicken nuggets. Could you not smell the deliciousness when we walked in?"
I shook my head. "Sure. Whatever." I almost stepped forward when I realized Sensei Wu was still sitting down. He didn't move, just drew in steady breaths. "Sensei?" I began.
Without meeting my eye, he finally got up with the help of his staff and followed the others as if nothing was wrong.
We all made our way back to the main lobby where the organized chaos was. Jay disappeared to go get his desire for chicken nuggets taken care of. His absence caused us to have to do the weird huddling thing again to keep us grouped together.
"So, are we just heading back to the subway now?" I asked Nya, who was hugging Zane as he slowly ran his hand down her hair.
"No, we're meeting Macca behind the arena," she explained, not opening her eyes.
"For what?"
"I don't know. Maybe she wants to actually talk to us. It's not like we've actually had time for that tonight."
True, I thought.
"You know how to get back there?"
"No, but I think we should go outside and start walking behind the arena."
Also true.
Jay emerged from the mobile crowds with a plastic case full of greasy food. "We waited ten minutes in a sea of sweaty people just so you could get chicken nuggets and fries?!" Cole annoyingly asked him.
The Blue Ninja opened the container and pulled out a salted fry. "Want one?"
"No. I want out of here. Let's go." Cole took the initiative to lead us outside, where there was still vocal noise but had a lot more peaceful atmosphere than before. The air was cool and not windy. It was dark now. People still waited in the same line we waited in earlier to get inside.
A sponsor car covered in a red and gray paint job drove out from behind the arena. I looked at Cole. "Macca needs her car back, right?"
"Unless she's riding the subway with us," he replied, already making his way to where the car made its appearance.
Nobody seemed to pay attention to us as we rounded the corner in a sudden disappearance act. A long fence with a gate kept us out from the back lot full of sponsor vehicles. A guy was keeping watch of who came in and who exited but didn't stop us as we walked up to him. "Macca Soxx?" he asked us.
"Uh...How'd you know?" I replied.
"She said there'd be a freakishly tall guy in the group," he reminisced, pointing at Zane, "and she paid me twenty bucks to let you all go in." He unlocked the gate and rolled it open. "I saw her park a couple minutes ago on the left side."
"Thanks," I acknowledged, passing through with everyone else. Towards the end of the row was a group of tall guys with one short girl. They were hanging out at the back of a car when we walked up.
"Hey, guys!" Macca happily greeted us, breaking away from the group of Poison Posse and Hood Ratz.
"Having a private celebration?" Zane asked her, accepting her embrace in an attempt to mask his hesitation.
"Nah, we just didn't want her to be alone out here," her friend, Trent, justified. "But since you're here now, I'm gonna go home to my kitty cat."
"Alright, fine, you lameo," Macca played as he walked away. "See you tomorrow?"
"At the mall. Noon. Bye, Mac-Attack."
"Same for me, Macca," her other friend, Linus, added. "Don't stay out too late-"
All of a sudden, Jay's snack was all over the ground from Linus's accidental bump. Jay froze with his jaw dropped, but Cole, the Hood Ratz guys, and I tried so hard to keep our laughter contained. "No!" Macca voiced, clapping and doubling over in laughter because of Jay's reaction.
"Aw, man, I'm so sorry," Linus said to Jay. "Such a sad waste."
"It's not so bad," I tried to alleviate, picking up a fry from the gravel.
"Oh no," Cole began, "please tell me you aren't-"
I suddenly shoved the fry in his mouth, where he subsequently choked and spit it out. Everyone started laughing, but not as hard as I was. Cole grabbed my jacket and threw me on the ground. I felt all his bodyweight on me as he reached over to the pile of warm, greasy food to grab a handful and smash it all against my face. "AH!" I screamed for mercy, feeling the frothy potato and whole nuggets spread across my mouth and nose and forehead.
Three pairs of feet passed by my face before Cole stopped his revenge on me. He didn't even help me up! Instead, I was stranded on the ground, still laughing, without regrets.
"See you guys next time," Macca giggled toward Hood Ratz.
Zane's eyes followed Rollin until he was out of his peripheral vision. Rollin didn't even notice the burning stare he was getting from him. A melody of engines started with red brake lights illuminating the lot. We watched Macca's celebration party leave the premises.
"Did we scare them away?" I asked, wiping the grease off my face with my shirt.
"No, but you certainly put on a show for them," Macca replied.
"Speaking of shows, are you gonna tell us how you got Zane to sing for you? He said he never did such a thing!" Nya pinpointed.
"I'm glad you asked," she shared, opening up the trunk to her Ferrari. We all gathered around her to see what she was about to present to us. At first, it all appeared like an ordinary empty trunk would, but then Macca pressed a button that caused her back seats to inch out of sight in order to make more room. She pulled a strap to open a secret compartment that revealed a sheer flat screen. Her fingers reached underneath it to unearth it. It was amazing to see it come loose on a mechanical leg that could be adjusted however she desired.
"Zane wasn't lying to you about to singing to me," she alibied as she powered it on. "The truth is that I made him sing through my own magic just by getting a recording of his voice without him knowing about it."
The screen powered on to show an image of Macca with Linus and Trent looking straight at us from different angles on the screen with just their eyes and foreheads showing. She quickly touched an icon in the corner to make pull up a program full of DJ stuff. She made a list of names show up, and the first six were Zane, Nya, her, Jay, Cole, and me.
"You got all of us?" Jay asked.
She giggled, going to Jay's name to pull up mechanics for his voice. "I can basically record any voice and then manipulate it however I want. So if I'm sick or can't make it to the recording studio in time, I can just artificially make the vocals myself for any song. It's a newer technology that I'm trying out just for fun. I mean, I get to make stuff like this." She immediately pressed a box that emanated one of Jay's girly shrieks.
We all laughed at how accurate it sounded.
"I choose what words he can say and what note on a music scale he hits and everything," she continued. "I was thinking of making a whole album with this program just because I can, but I don't know if I should. You guys are just my first round of guinea pigs."
"What else can this thing do?" Cole questioned her.
She went out of the program to open another. This time there were images of us. "I might've also taken pictures of you guys when you weren't looking..." she sheepishly admitted. "But this program gives me distinct 3D avatars of whoever I import a clear picture of." She selected the avatar of Zane and was able to control everything it did.
"The third element to all this madness is a virtual turntable simulation that I can use to make actual music if I really wanted to," she continued, pulling up the program equipped with four quadrants with its own turntable and a mixing board in the center. She took a second to play a track on one of the turntables and somewhat mess with it so that we would get the idea.
"When I combine all three programs, I get something like this." She pulled up a video player and began playing a clip of a music video she made all by herself on the secret tablet in the trunk of her car. All our avatars appeared in different frames like real people, singing whatever Macca wanted them to. All the vocals meshed together harmoniously as the avatars danced with the transforming background.
"That's really cool," I complimented. "Until you get rear-ended, of course."
"Already thought of that," she reassured me. "Insurance covers all of this and it syncs with my phone automatically. I never lose progress with my work!"
"But why do you have this in your car?" Jay asked.
"Because I love my car! Do you have any idea how much money I've invested into this thing? It's like my child."
"But you do this stuff, right?"
"Of course I do. I have a lot more free time now, so I can explore new ways to make music and stuff like that."
"Alright, it's a pretty nifty setup you've put together," Cole analyzed as she shut it down. "But what are your plans for the rest of the night?"
"Well, I need to go to a car wash to get all this advertising crap off. Other than that, I was just going to go home, get all my stuff put away, take a shower, eat some dinner, and then hit the hay. You guys just going home?"
"Pretty much," I answered. "I can already hear the subway calling us back."
"Aw, but you guys don't have to leave now, do you?"
"I don't know, but it's getting pretty late. Tonight was fun, though."
She couldn't help but smile. "Thanks for coming out and supporting me. It means a lot, especially when you already got a lot on your plate."
"Don't worry about it," Nya replied. "It's nice to get out of the Bounty for once. You should let us know when the next battle is. We'd love to come back for another one."
"Really? I mean, I don't have the details yet, but I'll gladly send them once I do get them."
"Please do. We'll know what we're doing next time," Jay joked.
"Okay, then I will. And maybe next time you can eat your chicken nuggets in peace!"
We were let back out by the same guy, and by this time it was quiet among us. Well, that was until I broke the silence with a realization.
"Zane, I thought you were gonna make your move tonight," I suddenly confided. "Did you forget?"
"No," he immediately responded. "I chose not to."
I stopped dead in my tracks. "What? Why?"
He also halted. "It's pretty clear that I waited too long. Everyone saw what I saw."
"Did you not see the ending? She pushed him away."
He gazed at me with light reflecting off his retinas. Everyone realized we stopped and waited.
"What do you mean she 'pushed him away'?"
"She didn't like it, Zane. She didn't want him to do that to her. It also didn't look like he gave her much choice, either."
There was a pause. "...I still have a chance?"
"Yes! But you have to hurry! She's about to leave!"
He contemplated his decision for a moment. "Okay, I'll go, but don't wait on me. I'll meet you on the road in the Sea of Sand."
"Go get her, Zane!" Jay cheered as he ran off back where we just were. "We believe in you! But meanwhile..." He locked Nya's arm around his. "I think I'll fill in his place as pretend boyfriend."
Nya didn't protest the new plan as they continued the walk back to the subway station. I waited for another second to watch Zane get smaller and smaller in the barely lit parking lot as he got closer and closer to the end result we were all wishing for him to achieve.
It's now or never, Zane. Give it all you got.
I really hope this isn't too big of a cliffhanger XD But thank you PixelatedNinjas, RandomDragon, and SpitfirewaterNinja for reviewing! Merry Christmas! :)