Glieuaeiel's DJ

Dodgeball Ritual

I'm sitting with my sister, watching a dodgeball game. All of the players are wearing gray shirts with four check-boxes in a row across the front, with a variable number of boxes containing X's. Only one person, a friend of my sister's, has all four boxes marked, and I ask her about it. "It's because he's dead," she says. Meaning he's already been hit four times, and it's an unusual circumstance that he would continue the game under these circumstances. "Oh," I laugh. "That explains why there's no one else wearing that."

One of the players gets the ball, senses an alley, and charges up the gym towards the end zone. There's a player from the other team right behind him, and it looks like he's going to get tackled, but he does a baseball slide and he makes it! But he goes past a wall and out of my line of sight. People are celebrating his point, but he calls out that he still got hit. So it's a point, but he gets a mark on his shirt. I try to remember--did he already have three?

He comes back past the wall. Yes, three marks. So he's "dead," now. Suddenly I wonder if there's a ritual to commemorate this occasion. I ask my sister, but then my question is answered for me when the guy carries out an ornate chair and a purple blanket patterned with silver stars, setting the chair in the middle of the gym.

I switch places with the player, so now I'm sitting on the stool, trying to cover myself with the blanket. Everyone standing around the chair has a funereal expression on zir face. Once I'm covered, I'm whisked off backstage somewhere. There are musicians back there. Later, when another player is whisked off in the same ceremony, I notice that one of the musicians is rushing terribly.

Laser Tag Classroom

I'm sitting in a classroom when I see an enemy sneaking through the door. "Watch out!" I shout. Then I pull out my laser tag gun and start shooting at them. They angrily shoot back at me, but for some reason their shots don't seem to register on my suit. I feel awkward, like somehow I'm cheating. Should I just pretend that they hit me, since by all rights they probably should've? But then the person shooting at me loses all of her HP and leaves. By now the classroom has prepared its defense against the incoming invasion. More enemies come through the door, and people start shooting. All of the enemies are shooting exclusively at me, and it's overwhelming. Plus, one of them is somehow launching laser grenades at me. I have absolutely no idea how to do that, and I feel like I'm losing. And indeed, soon all of my HP is gone. I guess they got their vengeance, but that was not fun.