Some human waste products dribble down the stone steps after them, but the Dead-As-Shit Battlefront is only down two members (Blaine and Brody) when they reach the third basement floor of the way down to the Guild.
"That's two of six death traps," Artie gasps as he tries to clean his glasses as best as he can with Jake's suit jacket. Most of them have shed their outer layers, leaving them partially clean-ish.
Nah, that's looking at it too optimistically: they've all just been through some really deep shit.
And Blaine… Sam's eyes fill with tears. Big, fat, manly tears, of course. Hot tears that flow freely and unashamedly down his cheeks over the (temporary) loss of a best friend.
Ryder rests a comforting hand on his shoulder a while later. "Uh… sorry about… leaving him behind like that."
"At least he was properly buried," Sam sniffs.
Ryder can't seem to stop a single eyebrow from jumping an inch up his forehead. "Properly?"
"You're right, he wasn't! I'm a terrible person!" Sam tries to rein in on the masculine sobbing, namely because the new guy hasn't been around in this afterlife long enough to truly get the concept of Manly Tears.
He takes a moment to fully pulled himself together, and in that moment, he also notices that Ryder has not moved his hand this entire time. He jerks his head in the direction of Ryder's left arm. "Thanks for the comfort."
"Yeah, no problem." Ryder's hand remains where it is.
Sam looks at the hand.
Ryder looks at the hand.
Sam looks up into Ryder's face.
Ryder looks at his hand some more.
Sam offers a hopeful grin.
Ryder steps away. His hand—actually, his entire arm—just sort of flops down to his side like a loose sack of muscle, and Ryder flushes red.
"Uh, dude? Is your arm okay?"
Ryder awkwardly walks away, his unresponsive meat just sort of swinging freely. "Yeah, it's fine."
He's disappeared behind Brittany's dancing form before Sam can call, no, it's obviously not, why isn't your arm working? Oh, that new guy's sneakier than he thought; he must have known that Sam would be immediately distracted by the blonde-turned-brunette, who pulls her hair free from its constant ponytail and shakes it out while dancing.
Damn, she still looks hot despite looking like shit. "We're gonna die young/ We're gonna die young/ Let's make the most of the night like we're gonna die young!"
Kitty slaps the other not-blonde lightheartedly. "Shut up, Brit." She runs her fingers through her hair. "Argh, I feel like shit. Com'on guys, let's get a move on. Artie, can you see?"
Artie looks sadly down at his smudged glasses. "Not very well."
"Tina, you're going to be Artie's eyes," instructs Kitty. "Be sure to save him from stuff and shit. He's our intel guy; he should know how to get us out of the remaining three death traps."
The third floor hallway in front of them is also straight, though almost twice as wide as the previous floors. Sam's glad for a bit more space; they've all been arguing who currently reeks the most, though most of the shouting is done from a distance to avoid inhaling too much of that lovely scent.
"There's a trap here," Artie calls, holding up his hands as they enter the wide hallway.
Kitty whirls on him. "What is it?"
Artie seems to survey the room in short order before frantically instructing, "Brittany, up front. Keep moving forward and all run behind you." Then, to everybody else: "Prepare to do some dancing!"
"What is it?" Unique asks, finally giving up on her trashed heels.
Without warning, a wall descends from the ceiling behind them and pounds into the floor. As if that wasn't intimidating enough, the entire surface explodes in one-foot long spikes… and the wall begins to scoot towards them, forcing them forward.
"Stay behind Brittany," Artie yells. "And jump through the man hole in the upcoming wall!"
Brittany begins to sprint forward, her long legs covering a lot of ground. Kitty, Tina, Sam, Ryder, Sugar, Artie, Jake, and Unique follow close behind.
"Unique is a singer," Unique wheezes. "She was not meant for this."
"Com'on, girl," urges Jake. "You need to make sure Jeff doesn't screw up your sewing machine again."
"Did you seriously say 'man hole'?" Ryder asks in bewilderment.
Sam turns his head in Ryder's direction—just in time to see another wall slamming down in front of their group. Hundreds of deadly spikes explode from its surface as that wall also begins to move forward.
A spiky wall behind and a spiky wall ahead, threatening to sandwich them into a bloody mess.
"Artie, where's the man hole?" Kitty shrieks.
Artie panics. "There should be a hole! A hole in the wall!"
As if responding to his words, the brief outlines of what looks like three-petal flower drawn like a triangle glows on the wall's spiked surface. Soon afterwards, the insides of the outlines burn away, providing four escapes.
"Is… is that the Triforce?" Artie asks uncertainly. The four holes do resemble one triangle stacked on top of another two.
"It's the Holy Trinity sign!" Sam yelps excitedly as Brittany easily dives and rolls through the central hole, about three feet off the ground. Christian symbolism for the win! "Joe made this trap!"
"Nobody cares about the religious significance!" Kitty yells as she sails through the central triangle; at the same time, Tina arcs through the triangle on top.
"But it's cool," Sam grumbles as he hops low through a bottom hole. He tucks and rolls along the ground, coming to a stop and glancing backwards despite Artie's instructions to keep moving forward.
Ryder seems to have followed his example, squatting and waiting for the right time to tumble between the spikes through the left triangle. Meanwhile, Sugar springs upward like the cat she is to land cleanly within the hole, pausing there casually for a moment before prancing back down to the floor.
Artie looks a bit uneasy—the guy used to be a paraplegic, Sam hears, so he must be still getting used to having working legs—but he clears the hole soon enough, rolling up to his feet in front of Sam. "Dude, get a move on!" he yells, hooking his arm in Sam's elbow and yanking him forward.
Unique squeals just a little, forcing Sam to glance back over his shoulder. Unique's fine; the cut she got on her leg is mostly superficial and she seems to be healing up already. With everybody safely pass the first wall, Sam continues running on Artie's heels, following the trail of brown shoeprints leading straight forward. There isn't another wall in front of them yet; just the first wall that they'd all managed to avoid, the one that keeps moving towards the back of the room as another moves towards the front.
The two spiked walls collide, a metallic screech that tears through their eardrums. For a moment, Sam thinks that they might be all safe, that the crush between the two walls canceled out all movement—but that hope is crushed with the two combined walls begin to move forward again.
"Second wall," Kitty yells. "Artie!"
Brittany replies first, pirouetting smoothly while rushing the second solid wall head-on. "There's a place downtown/ Where the freaks all come around/ It's a hole in the wall/ It's a dirty free for all."
At her words, the figure of a cross burns itself away.
"Damn religious significance," mutters Kitty.
"It's the beautiful cross!" Sam cries joyfully. "It's saving our lives!"
Tina sighs. "This is so stupid."
The bottom of the cross is a rather high jump off the ground this time; still, the cross beams are at least two feet wide, which means that most can dive through belly-down. Jake has to twist a little because of his wide shoulders, but even Unique manages to get through, though when she belly-flops on the floor, she's gasping for air. "This girl ain't gonna make it," she rasps.
Sam is having none of that. "You are going to make it," he urges. "Keep it up."
The second wall of spikes crashes into the oncoming walls, but the shrill squeal of twisting metal doesn't drown out the telepathic warning from Sugar that echoes in all their heads: Third wall!
At the same time, several voices yell, "Hole in the wall!"
In response…
"Fuck."
"Is this religiously significant?"
"Aw, hell to da no."
"That's not Christian!"
"Joe probably doesn't know about this, does he?"
"This would be Nick and Jeff's idea of a sick joke."
"Holy shit!"
"Get your asses into gear," Kitty snaps, preparing to jump at least four feet off the ground. "We're all going to get through this hole—it's seven feet long. Sam, this is our Penis Hole of Salvation."