Cytus: Disaster
Shira, at about human size, decides to show you a new game. A shame it will be your last, once you've been reduced to a fraction of an inch in height...
"Hey, come here, I want to show this new game." You grumbled for a moment, as I had a tendency of showing off things that were of less than perfect interest to you, but usually just interesting enough for you to not want to walk away. "This game's called Cytus. All I have to do is tap the circles on screen in time to music..." my voice trails off for a moment. You briefly feel lightheaded, then the sensation of vertigo overcomes you entirely. When your senses clear, the world looks alien. The floor beneath you is glowing, mostly with white. And above? I'm looming as if I were a thousand feet tall, even though I'm still sitting at my desk. The room is otherwise dark; my brightness contrasts with the rest of your environment.
I continue speaking, as if nothing has happened at all. "And all you have to do is avoid getting crushed under my fingers. You're a quarter of an inch tall and in the middle of my tablet's screen. Don't even think about running off; I'll just flatten you like an ant without missing a beat." I wait a moment to let the words set in. Beneath you, the unit vibrates with the steady thrum of electronic music, one beat after another causing a thump to jolt through the screen and into your legs. When you look down, you see the word Precipitation in large print, with an even larger circle labled Start directly beneath you. "Ready?" I ask, though there's really no way you could be.
When I lift my hands over the screen, that brilliant light illuminates my palms, giving you a chance to see every glistening white scale. Far, far above, my snout looms like a face from Mount Rushmore as I grin toothily down at you. I take my time lowering a finger toward the 'Start' button located right in the middle of the screen, allowing you to stare in horror at the tip of my finger as you recognize just how badly it outsizes you... as well as giving you a chance to realize that this is your last chance to start running so you're not crushed before the game even begins. You quickly run to one side as my talon descends,
When I start the game, a resonating chime rises from the device, followed by a brief moment of silence as the song loads. When it comes back to life, I raise both hands over you once more and crack my fingers, showing off my palms for what will likely be your last chance to observe them. The music starts; piano, accompanied by a driving electronic beat. The first two notes on the piano have marks for my left hand to strike. As I hit those, my right hand waves goodbye and I just chuckle darkly at your inevitable fate.
The next few notes have one target for each of my hands, with my fingers steadily getting closer as you cower near the center of the screen. The floor immediately beneath you darkens; you need only a moment to realize that's where my hands are going to strike next. You sprint off to the side just in time; the resulting impact of my finger against the screen knocks you off your feet, accompanied by a gust of wind. It's simple enough for now - notes alternate between single and doubles - before a pair of solid lines appear beneath you. You run quickly to the side, but I just hold the marker at the start of the bar and watch the indicator fill. I take advantage of the brief break to lean in and growl right in your face.
A brief rest is followed by a piano arpeggio, marked by a sequence requiring me to drag my finger across the screen. It comes right for you at a speed you can't outrun; I lift it just a quarter inch away from your body. The beat hasn't changed, but the notes seem to follow the much more active piano; one tap is followed quickly by another as my hands glide across the screen and above your sky. Within a few measures, the music has reached a point that you're constantly running away from my fingers, no longer paying attention to the screen but instead simply watching my hands and trying to run away from where you think they're going next. This works for a time, though as the piano scales become more frequent; my fingers draw ever-longer trails across the screen in a rather dizzying display. You're occasionally blinded by the reflected light from my scales, glistening like a rainbow across your sky.
When the music hits a break in pattern and directs me to tap out a staccato eighth-note rhythm from the drum line, you figure out the pattern and hide right in the center of the screen. I smirk down at you once this sequence ends, mostly at your persistence at avoiding my fingers, but I know your luck is going to run out sooner rather than later. The next pattern? A long piano sequence, played by drawing across the screen, loop after loop after loop. Lines cross the entire screen, zigging and zagging from edge to edge. You can't possibly outrun my fingers as they glide this way and that. You can't even guess where they're going next, given the quickly shifting path painted on the ground beneath you. You instead run, blindly, praying to every god you've ever heard of that my finger won't simply catch you and break you.
Once the drum beat resumes, the pattern once again returns to tapped notes. It might be a chance to catch your breath, under other circumstances; here, it feels only as if exhaustion sets in the moment you stop moving. You're finding it harder and harder to move away from my fingers, spurred only by a brief surge of adrenaline when one of those dark circles appears directly beneath your feet. After another piano line comes up, however, your luck finally runs out. One of my talons catches you in the back, throwing you violently to the screen's surface. That single, casual movement of my fingers feels like you've been run over by a truck. The same talon severs your legs near the knees; you may scream but I'll never hear it over the sound of the music.
Even with you writhing on the 'ground' in both agony and fear of what might come next, I continue playing the song as if you weren't there at all. You're able to hear my fingers coming down upon the screen right next to you, causing the screen to flex and your ears to pop, but you don't have even the merciful release of death as I continue playing along. Another drum section leads to me tapping so close that you can feel my finger come down upon one of your arms, shattering it into a dozen pieces beneath just the tip. It's only as the track reaches its denouement, where another hold note compels me to place one of my fingers directly upon your quivering body.
Though that note may last just a fraction of a second, it's the last moment that you'll remember from this life. The screen flexes by a millimeter, but there's not nearly enough space between it and my finger for you to survive. As the digit comes down upon your prone, helpless form, you're squeezed like a tube of toothpaste in that brief second. The bones in your feet and legs are simply shattered, followed swiftly by your hips. You feel as if you're vomiting up your own entrails as everything is forced out of your mouth, leaving a small smear across the screen. Ribs crack, then shatter, each one followed almost immediately by the next, all as the weight of a single finger settles upon your body. Things start to go dark as the blood loss takes its toll, but you still feel your sternum cave in before your skull is compressed and crushed beyond any hope of recognition.
I play out the final few notes of the song and just chuckle coldly at your corpse smeared across the screen. "Huh, new high score," I notice, looking at the shimmering 'A' near where your remains lie. I get up, grab some screen cleaning spray and a cloth, and simply wipe what little remains of you off my screen. "Maybe I should play another round before calling it a night..."