User: DJ Violet Rain

Civ: Purple Rain

The user is able to psychically affect large groups of people at once. When more than one hundred people have gathered within close proximity of the user, the user can place them under their control. Everybody within that group will have their pain receptors put under control by the user, along with their blood-oxygen level detectors. The user can use this to make people experience pain, drowning, etc. The user can then make these people think that a specific person is the user of their Civ, causing them to target and kill that person. Once the user has deactivated, all memory of being under control vanishes. This cannot affect Civ users. This torture/ brainwashing effect can also be brought on to anyone the user touches.

Thomas stood on the ledge, silently judging the mosh pit. Do these people have nothing better to do than hang out in the caves? Wait, I have nothing better to do than hang out in the caves. Dang it. Then Thomas heard something over the loudspeakers.

“PURPLE RAIN!” Suddenly, the dancing stopped and the massive group of dancers began to convulse, covering their ears and falling to the ground, screaming and howling at the ceiling as they all stumbled into each other.

Haha, this is why you don’t listen to loud music, kids! Wait, what the fuck is a “Purple Rain”? Is that a new dance move? Thomas thought. Suddenly, the crowd stopped. They slowly and quietly stood up, turning their heads towards Thomas as he stood on the ledge. Oh, it’s a Civ. Probably should have connected those dots earlier. The music was gone now. Thomas was looking down at the still masses in tense horror. Waiting for someone to make a move. Then he heard one of them shout.

“Get the user!” it was a female voice, quiet and far off in the crowd.

Yeah! Get the user. Do my job for me! Wait why are they all looking at me? It was true. The crowd was all looking at Thomas as he stood on his ledge. Then, they all started screaming, and the horde rushed Thomas, looking ready to tear him to pieces.

“What the fuck?!” Thomas screamed, stumbling back as the horde began to shriek in agony, dozens of warm bodies began clawing at the stone ledge, breaking their fingernails as they struggled to climb up it, blood soaking onto their black band T-shirts. Thomas was already gone, reluctantly sprinting back into the tunnels. He could hear them begin to fade, as they hadn’t quite figured out the ledge yet. Thomas came to a fork in the road, the same fork he had come back from. “Okay forward left forward right . . . wait no that’s coming here, I need to reverse it. Wait that doesn’t make sense either, which way do I go?”

Then, Thomas heard wild wailing from behind him, and he turned to see a large man in his early twenties sporting a pink punk mohawk shambling towards him at full speed. He was clutching his temples in agony and his mouth was foaming with spit. He had somehow gotten a boost. “Look, man, I’m not the user. Just stay back!” Thomas pleaded, holding a hand in a “calm the fuck down” position.

The man didn’t seem to hear him, though. “Why are you doing this to me?!” the man pleaded, getting close enough to Thomas to swing a meaty left hook, which Thomas successfully ducked under.

“PHANTRANA!” Thomas shouted, sending a powered uppercut into the man’s stomach, which produced a shockwave as the guy flew back, striking a few other rave-goers who had just made it up as well, knocking them down like bowling pins. “I’m telling you I’m not the Civ user!”

They all had a wild and agonized look on their faces, twisted in pain. They didn’t seem to hear him. Thomas could hear more footsteps and yells as several more lumbered into view of Thomas, dispassionately crawling over the crumpled forms of their friends as they sprinted like zombies towards Thomas. “Okay, uh . . .” Thomas looked back at the three possible tunnels that could lead to the way out. He didn’t have much time. “Left!” Thomas ran down the left corridor on a whim as a group of five rave-goers crashed into the tunnel wall, attempting to dive into Thomas. As Thomas ran down the corridor, he put up a web of phantom veins in front of the doorway, creating a fishnet that his mindless pursuers got caught in, their arms poking through as they stretched against it.

“That should hold them,” Thomas said, looking back for a second. Then, his phantom veins burst, the ropes snapping as the horde grew and leaned on the purple netting, busting through it like the tape at the end of a race. “Nevermind.”

Then, the horde really started racing. It looked as though dozens of them had managed to follow Thomas into this long, rocky passageway, their ravenous bodies filling the tunnel from one side to the other as they attempted to squeeze their way through, getting caught on each other and the rocks.

“I’m not going to be able to just guess my way out of here, I need a strategy. Unless I get really lucky . . . no! No you can’t just guess your way out. You need to lose these guys somehow and then find the user.” Thomas looked back at the corridor. Many of them were beginning to slip through the human blockade many of them had created, and soon they were rushing forward towards him like a pipeline of people. “That’s it! I just need to go through the smallest corridor, I’m pretty thin; I can fit. But these guys will try to go through all at once and get themselves stuck!” Thomas shouted, looking back ahead as he came to a fork in the road once more.

There was a left corridor, a forward one, a right one, and a hole that led downward. The pit was technically the smallest, but he had no idea if it even led anywhere. “Uh, Phantrana?” Thomas sent a phantom eye down into the hole. It was pitch black. “That sounds too scary, I’m taking the left way.” Thomas hurried down the left corridor, which was the smallest but only slightly smaller than the one he had just come through. Thomas sprinted down the corridor, looking behind him and seeing the mass of meat, sweat, and hair dye spill out behind him.

* * *

“That’s a bit odd. Why is the assassin heading towards the creature?” Violet pondered, looking at a map of the cave systems with an orange dot inside one of the larger domed caverns. She knew, thanks to her Civ, where those affected by Purple Rain were, but she didn’t know why they were getting so close to “the creature.” Violet looked out at the empty grey stone mosh pit and sighed. “It’s a ghastly ability, certainly. But at least I can force people to listen to my original work, instead of my remixes of popular songs.”