"I'm pretty sure we shouldn't be seen here," Iris whispers, her voice barely registering over the obnoxiously loud, pounding music being played. She squints her eyes, but can barely see a few inches in front of her, into the sea of bodies she herself is currently standing in. Hearing no response from the person she was talking to, she whips her head back only to see much of the same. A seemingly endless conglomeration of people, glow-sticks held tightly in both hands, flailing their bodies to a vague approximation of the blaring music's beat. Though, none of the bodies belonged to her friend. Of course. Go figure. Iris sighs and mutters under her breath, or at the very least it comes out that way as the wubs are too strong to give her voice an inch. For a second, she looks back at where she last saw who she was looking for, and takes a couple of steps in that direction before spinning around on one heel and wading her way through the crowd ahead of her, inching closer and closer to the center of the crowd.

As she pushes her way through the crowd, a hand, closed into a fist around a bright green glow stick comes out of nowhere and smacks her right in the face. She tumbles and hits the cold hard ground hard. Her eyes suddenly start to feel heavy as her head falls against her right shoulder. The music reaches a deafening volume, or at least it seems to. Her eardrums throb harder with each passing second of the random sounds drill further and further into her ear canal and shake her brain every which way. She blinks a few times, trying to correct her new-found blurry vision. No matter how many times she blinks however, all she sees are blurry blobs of waving hands and flashing lights of all colors.

That is, until she blinks once more and sees a vaguely human shaped blob standing in front of her, reaching one of its undefined hands out. She shakily grabs onto its outstretched hand and pushes herself off the ground. Her knees buckle as she puts weight back onto her legs, and she falls into the blob supporting her. The blob leads her through the crowd.

It isn't long until both her and her new escort find their way to the outskirts of the crowd and it's around this time when her vision starts to come back to normal. She blinks a few more times and rubs her eyes, before turning to face whoever it was that helped her.


"Hey, uh, you alright?" The man practically screams over the music.

"Wha? Oh, yeah, fine. Just fell, I guess."

"Yeah, right. Cool. God damn this music is loud. You can hear me, right? I can barely hear you."

"Yes, I can hear you!" Iris screams at the top of her lungs. The man covers his ears and holds his hand up to her mouth.

"Gotcha. Seeing as you're good to walk now, I think, follow me. I know someplace a little quieter than right here."

"Well, alright!"

The man leads her down a narrow, though empty path inches from the beginning of the sea of ravers. Every few steps, Iris feels cool beads of sweat from one person or another brush against her bare skin and each time she cringes. It isn't much longer until he brings her to a door. He pushes it open and walks inside with Iris closely following, closing the door behind them.

The room is pitch black. At least until the man flips the lightswitch that is. Which he does to reveal a large, spacious room, with a dentist's chair in the center and a tray of syringes sitting adjacent. Iris eyes both items with suspicion in her eyes, before backing towards the door.

"I don't like where this is going."

"What?" the man asks before the lightbulb goes off in his head. "Oh right, this place does look kinda rape dungeony, doesn't it?"

"Yeah, just a little bit."

"I promise you, that's not what I have in mind in the slightest."

"Look, I'd like to believe you but I don't even know your name."

"My name? Uh, it's Michael."

Iris taps her finger against her lip and stares with brows furrowed at "Michael".

"Something tells me that isn't true."

"Yeah, it's Michael Michaelson. My parents are dicks."

"Hey! I'm sure your parents love you very much. But, yeah. That name is kind of embarrassing. Mine isn't much better, if that's any consolation. Iris Oppenheimer."

Now, it's Michael's turn to ponder. And by ponder, this narrator means cock his head over at Iris and clear his throat.

"I could swear I heard that name before."

"You might've heard the last name. J. Robert Oppenheimer. Director of the Manhattan Project. No relation, I don't think."

"No no no, your name specifically. It's kind of a unique one. Something you don't just forget aha! I got it! You're a professional wrestler, ain't ya? I don't watch it, myself. A little too homoerotic for my tastes. Was flipping channels one day and heard your name on it. Wow, how weird is that?"

"Pretty weird, I guess."

"How is that life, anyway? Being a professional wrestler? Seems like it's kind of a needless risk."

"I guess. It is rewarding in a sense though. It's a competition, more than anything and even when people take things too far in the name of competition or personal vendetta or what have you, winning and achieving are rewarding."

"So, now if you don't mind me asking, why are you here? I don't know but from the look of you and your profession, I can't picture you frequenting raves often."

"A friend of mine thought this would cheer me up. I've been a little stressed lately, in all honesty. See, I have this big match coming up and I'm going up against a guy, Cain, yeah like that Cain, y'know from the Bible and stuff, who throughout his first promo against me came off sounding like this other guy Pest, who uses XWF airtime to broadcast himself reenacting scenes from his favorite Exploitation films. Really, the resemblance is kind of uncanny, almost as if Cain is really Pest under the mask which would be quite the turn of events the more I think about it and I'm rambling aren't I?"

Michael jolts awake from his standing up nap in time to hear the last bit of that. "Yeah."

"Sorry. Nervous habit."

"Look, I think I have just the thing to relieve your anxieties."

He makes his way to the center of the room and over to the tray of syringes. Grabbing the nearest one, he produces a vial from the inside of his jacket and jabs the syringe into the top of it, extracting some of the clear liquid inside.

"Hey! My parents always told me to stay away from drugs!"

"Oh of fucking course," Michael mutters under his breath. "I get the one straight edge chick at the rave."

He clears his throat and starts to speak at a volume that Iris can hear.

"Don't worry, these aren't drugs. It's music!"

"Don't be silly! Music doesn't come in vials and it certainly isn't injected!"

"Oh, but it is. Think about it. When you listen to music, it's like a whole bunch of tiny tiny little needles injecting it into your ears, is it not?"

Iris' eyes go wide as she contemplates this blow to reality.

"Woah. I guess you're right. I never thought about it this way."

"Well, this lets you harness the power of music. Yeah that's what it does."

"Well, that sounds pretty cool! Sign me up!"

"Good! Now, all you need to do is sign this!"

He produces a contract and a pen from the same jacket pocket that he pulled the vial from. He lays the contract on the tray and hands the pen to Iris. She scans it without reading a single word and signs her name at the bottom.

"Good. Now take a seat."

Iris immediately obliges.

"In the chair. Not on the floor."

"You didn't say that part!" she says in response as she pushes herself off the ground. She makes her way to the chair and takes a seat on it.

"It was implied," he says before jamming the needle into Iris' elbow. She whimpers in pain as he pushes the plunger and the liquid flows into her bloodstream. A few seconds later her eyes slide shut and her veins start to glow bright yellow.

"Oh, you handsome devil," he says with a chuckle as he looks at his handiwork. "You've done it again."

As the words leave his mouth, Iris' eyes open wide. Pure white, except for the iris and pupil, which flash colors randomly.

"Implantation complete," speaks a stiff, almost robotic voice escaping through Iris' lips.