This chick in the front row was wearing a giant yellow sombrero and there must have been a tank of nitrous oxide hidden inside it or something. Whatever it was sent the rich weirdoes into literal giggle fits. Six little hoses tipped with silver nipples dangled from the ludicrously wide brim, and every so often six of her pals would come party, suckling like piggies and punching their tickets to seizure town. By the time we took the stage I could see probably twenty of them all flopping around on the floor while rocking the dopiest grins.

One lady among the floppers was wearing what I bet was a million-dollar tiara and her head kept smacking the front of the stage and it was spilling diamonds everywhere. But nobody was in a hurry to pick them up.

Because that was the vibe out there in the audience; like a dangerously overcrowded flophouse in the horniest corner of Beverly Hills.

I took it all in: the human blimp bumping up against the ceiling, easily sixty or seventy feet above us; the old men in matching rubber dog masks watching from their private balcony; the smell of opium and buttsweat mingling in a lavender cloud; kids who were way too young, filming segments for their Youtube channels; random outbursts of rich people laughing — you know what I mean; you know how they laugh.

There was also a red-headed leprechaun giving a lapdance to a man seated in a throne who I won’t name but it rhymes with Bing Gnarls; a lot more pogosticks than you’d ever guess, doing things pogosticks never should; both chaps that were assless and chaps with extra asses; sapient powdered wigs; little people wearing monocles, serving finger-food on silver trays; goddamned rich people laughing again; the lizard people getting into it with those Illuminati fuckers like they do at every event; a champagne bottle popping, its cork rocketing hard off one of the sound-and-bulletproof windows.

And standing outside that same window I saw the villagers with their dirty faces pressed against the glass, trying to steal a glimpse of the spectacle their town was built for. Most of them would never be invited inside. But in just a minute or two, I was going to start singing, and they’d have a frontrow seat while all these rich fucks finger-banged their own brains out.

I gotta admit I had some concerns:

Was it wrong to massacre the audience?

And regardless of ethics, how might it affect our odds of winning the larger contest?

But to tamp down my nerves all I needed to do was steal a glance at Handsome Alex. A pair of miniature suns burned gleefully within each of his bony eye sockets. He wasn’t even a little bit worried about what was to come.

He’d said as much after I accidentally killed Three-Clicks during soundcheck; he’d said then that I’d gone and put something in motion, something that couldn’t be stopped. Cryptic as fuck. But I loved it, and I guess we were finally about to find out whether he was full of shit or not.

Because the announcer was done with the other two skews and now he was floating over our stage. He was painted silver all over and had on these high-tech boots that flew him from place to place like Iron Man.

But instead of rocketing around propelled by flames these things were farting out a shit-ton of bubbles like one of those machines you’d rent for a kid’s birthday party – if you had a normie family and weren’t an immortal seed of evil inhabiting a dead man’s skin-suit and whatnot.

“Finally, on Stage Three we’ve got Motley Skew!” The announcer’s magically-enhanced voice rang throughout the hall, cutting through the crowd’s intoxicated din with impossible clarity. He dragged his gaze across the four of us onstage and then took off his bug-eyed sunglasses and shot us the Stink Eye.

“Jeez, this skew really lives up to their name, don’t they? I’m saying, people – just take a look!”

“We’ve got Uncle Boner back there behind the kit, giving major dumpster-diving behind a Spirit Halloween superstore vibes, and then holy shit get a load of Fatfuck McLoser up front on the mic. Not much else to say there, honestly. But check out Lady Birdface! She has bird shit overflowing from the birdnest in her fucking bird-stuffed neck-hole.”

He paused to take a calming breath. “And then there’s you.” He pointed down at Mina. “You’re hot. But you look like there’s something major wrong with your brain. I’m not sure if that makes you more or less hot.”

He was right about that. All of it, but the bit about Mina’s brain in particular. The poor girl was literally losing the plot; the compelling narrative was falling apart a little more every time something brought her attention back to Lady Gates’s whole…. bird thing.

She was staring at the raven with such singular focus that she began to slowly trot across stage in that direction, giggling and drooling. Her flying V hung at the end of its strap, banging against her thighs with each step, completely forgotten. I intercepted her at midstage and spun her around so she went staggering back over toward her mark.

The announcer shook his head at the scene and bubble-farted his way higher up into the air.

“Alright, skew-heads. You know the drill,” he blared. “Start killing each other at the sound of the gun.”

Almost before he got the word gun out of his mouth, a plume of smoke puffed up from the soundbooth in the center of the audience and we heard the crack! of the starter’s pistol.

Handsome Alex and Lady Gates didn’t miss a single beat.

She started right in slapping some funky-ass riff like I never saw coming from the old lady and the effect of her Syncopated Slapping trait on Long John and the Donut Holes was evident almost immediately. Her bass-playing counterpart on that stage flubbed a note and then he cried out in startled surprise as the middle knuckle on the middle finger of his right hand suddenly snapped back at close to ninety degrees from its original position.

Over on the Superbus stage, their bassist was all pissed off and sneering at us. He was a clone of the Drix dork I’d killed and he recognized the legendary trait Lady Gates had just triggered; the one I’d stolen from his predecessor. I wondered if they were able to clone him a copy of the trait on such short notice or if he’d been forced to settle for something less.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

Didn’t matter. He couldn’t do dick about his butthurt feelings right then, because it was obvious his team was also looking to take the easy-pass to Round Two by teaming up with us to wipe out the Donut Hole dorks, just as your boy Kirby had predicted.

The Superbus guitarist was blasting power chord after power chord in the direction of the vulnerable Holes, bending the air between them like a heat mirage. He was wearing a huge elephant mask for some reason. The trunk was constantly getting in the way of his playing and he kept throwing it back over his shoulder and yelling at someone off-stage. I assumed it was the interdimensional alien wardrobe girl or something.

Despite fighting against his own floppy trunk, his relentless assault was forcing the Donut Holes’ frontman—who I assumed was Long John due to the fact he wasn’t wearing a goddamned thing except for a strategically-positioned tube sock—to counter with a series of desperate falsetto squeals like if you strapped every last Brother Gibb into their own electric chairs and then threw them all into a giant fucking blender.

If Long John timed his screeches just right they would deflect the power chords like some sort of sonic parry. But within seconds of the starting gun one attack had already penetrated his lyrical defenses, the concentrated shredding force tearing a deep gouge down his bare thigh. Now his tube sock was soaked red.

Meanwhile, Handsome Alex had started a slow roll on his cymbals at the precise moment Lady Gates slapped her first note. This was our scuzziest defensive counter, and the plan was for him to maintain it constantly from the moment a skew-off started:

[Rolling Blackout]

LEGENDARY TRAIT

As long as you maintain an ongoing drum or cymbal roll for a minimum of four beats, one member of the targeted skew will be locked out of using or gaining positive effects from all talents and traits. The effect jumps to a different member every four beats. The Legendary version of this talent affects two opponents at once, with an increased duration of eight beats.

The trait required four beats to fully deploy, but once it started swallowing up all their powers it was only a matter of time until the Superbus guitarist tore those Donut Holes to pieces. All it would take was for the blackout to roll over Long John and disrupt his ability to fend off the power chords.

So you see we could have just waited this thing out. Victory was inevitable from the fourth beat on.

But then we’d never get to find out why Handsome Alex was so coolly confident about the unique issues my singing in front of a live audience might present. The fact that I was about to kill everyone in attendance.

The mic in my hand felt like a detonator attached to a bomb so dirty it could force all these rich freaks to scoop out their own fucking brains with their bare hands. Because it literally was.

I suddenly felt so at peace.

I held the mic up to my lips, and in the moment before I began to sing the first verse of my very heavy take on Row, Row, Row Your Boat, I saw all four members of Superbus start to shimmer like holograms. The mothership was beaming them back up, if I had to guess.

But they were too slow. I hit the third row and they all stepped back out of their transport beams and started ripping their scalps off.

With every syllable I sang my voice became more powerful; volcanic; shaking the whole venue. Dust was falling from the ceiling and the entire audience started shrieking. Shrieking. Shrieking.

One-by-one they all started to self-mutilate in wild and exotic ways. It was a sight so vile it could only have been divinely orchestrated.

And I did something stupid. I went and had a religious experience and dared to say his name:

>>>>>>>>>>RIVULON<<<<<<<<<<

My teeth all blasted out of my mouth and embedded themselves into the sombrero-girl’s face like brown and yellow buckshot. My tongue felt barely attached. One of the vessel’s eyeballs had ruptured and was running down my cheek. It seeped into my mouth through a hole in my cheek.

To my right, Mina fell on the stage and started puking out black foam that crackled with thousands of strobing explosions. It was a good thing she fell on her stomach with her face turned to the side, because you wouldn’t want to choke on that stuff.

On the other side of the stage, I glanced to see that the raven had tunneled down into Lady Gates’s chest cavity and then burst out her back, where it then became entangled in the long strip of duct tape we’d used to cover the split in her latex bodysuit. Seemed like forever ago. Anyway, the poor bird fell on the stage and rolled around at the headless Lady Gates’s feet, becoming hopelessly knotted in the tape.

A wet-sounding sploooorch stole my attention and I looked across the audience to discover that Long John had ripped off his sock and blood was geysering out of the crotch-wound. He proceeded to bludgeon his drummer with the sock.

That should have opened the door for the Superbus guitar player to finish the Donut Holes off with a couple well-placed power chords, but I suddenly realized they were already all dead. Their body parts littered that far stage, and it struck me that they had died so fast because they were fresh clones – same as the pair I’d killed back in their cabin. Something about being freshly born made them weak as babies, go figure.

And there were still two Donut Holes standing. If we all somehow lived through this they’d advance to the next stage and the Drix dicks would be sent packing back to the murderbot dimension.

I laughed. I heard Handsome Alex laughing behind me. Just straight up cackling; chilled my heart in the best way.

And then time stopped.

I’m talking everything froze in place right at that second—the airborne gore, the floor-floppers and the brain-diggers, the villagers banging on the windows and cheering me on—everything except for me and Handsome Alex.

I turned to face my old friend.

“Huma shef wuh thifeck is heffenung?!?” I said, my tongue finally coming completely detached and slithering out of my mouth like a slug. It splattered on the stage at my feet.

[Handsome Alex]: Use the chat. Your vessel’s speech has become incomprehensible.

[Kirbdawg]: “Holy shit what the fuck is happening?!?” Is what I said. Why has time stopped?

[Handsome Alex]: It’s because of him.

There’s a sound you come to be familiar with when you start running with entities of unfathomable power. A lot of them can teleport at will, but that’s not really accurate. The really powerful fuckers, the ones I’m talking about here, they don’t actually go anywhere they don’t have to. Instead, they bend space-time to be in multiple places at once.

And like I said there’s this sound when you’re in the same vicinity as this trick. Like the shutter on an old, mechanical camera, or maybe it's the sound of an impossibly enormous eye opening and closing. Possibly a sphincter of some sort.

Whatever it is, I hate it. It usually means you’re about to get your ass kicked.

I heard it right then, behind me, and me and Handsome Alex were suddenly bathed in golden light. He looked so badass. When I turned around the scene was the same as before, still frozen, but a man was floating there in the air over the audience, sitting in an ultra-elaborate throne.

He was larger than any human, both in height and bulk, but otherwise he appeared as one. He was bare-chested and his skin was smooth and brown. A thick, lustrous mustache extended into twin curls on either side of his face. The turban he wore over his raven-colored hair swirled and crackled with lightning.

The smirk on his face had me feeling super uneasy. To make a point of how tough I was, I slurped some of the slime from the vessel's ruptured eyeball off my upper-lip. But without a tongue to clean myself up I only managed to just spread it around, leaving myself a gross eyeball-slime mustache.

“Greetings, Lord Hawijimi,” Handsome Alex said from behind me, confident-as-can-be. “We are honored by your presence."