Everything was made from dancing colours. They danced over the walls and ground, as the floor’s slime covering caused luminescence across the whole colour spectrum on its flat, slightly bouncy surface, perfect to dance on. Flying disco balls scattered dots of light everywhere, occasionally blinding John when he made the mistake of looking up to the high ceiling.

The writhing lights were two-layered; the underlying structure was ordered to the sounds of the extremely loud music. Each hit of bass cause a ripple, each tone some sort of shape, like a rhythm game that automatically created a level based on a song. Superimposed on top of that was the spectacle caused by the several hundred people that were dancing, as each of their steps, stomps and taps caused coloured ripples to weave through the room.

It was quite trippy, and John really didn’t like it. Neither was he particularly fond of the way the music was blasting from the speakers everywhere at ear-drum ripping levels. Nor was he fond of the choice of music, made by an overenthusiastic DJ he couldn’t quite see, standing on top of a tower made from LED screens, that added yet another visualizer to the mix of colours, and more speakers the height of a grown-man.

From his position at the edge of the whole thing, sitting on a stool of a bar with black plastic surfaces, the only consistently coloured thing around that wasn’t blasting music, John had his eyes on Rave and Metra. His girlfriend was moving to the tact in a way that gave away that she knew just about every song that was playing by heart already. Steps guided by certainty and executed with a brilliant display of Agility and martial prowess, she looked right in her element. As a matter of fact, John couldn’t help but think that he had never seen her move this gracefully before, which was quite a tall bar.

Good thing as well, since her one-track mind, only focused on having a good time moving to the beat, created a sort of barrier where everyone who tried to do as men did and dance ‘at’ her to try and either cop a feel or actually initiate some sort of flirting was met with a flurry of motions they could only get in the way of.

Of course there was Metra as well, who at least kept her clothes in the current situation (although the same couldn’t be said for other members of the crowd, most of all a sort of sorority of dark elves that were quite nice to ogle at). She moved with such aggression and overbearingness that it occasionally seemed to John that she was re-discovering what break dancing was for all of humanity, combining it with a nice portion of belly dancing.

There were some openings in her style, but, as far as John could tell, these were intentional. Every time someone tried to get at her, Metra dodged or otherwise blocked the advance as if she was in the middle of battlefield training. As a matter of fact, that was exactly what it looked like Metra was trying to do here. Half of her dance moves could have doubled up as pretty effective kicks or punches.

Now John would probably have found himself with a renewed erection because of the two dancing girls, one in her skin-tight bodysuit, the other in as little clothing as possible (the naked sorority and other minor acts of perversion all other place notwithstanding), but he was just so uncomfortable around here that that was a thing of impossibility.

He probably would have loved or at least liked most of the things here on their own. The music wasn’t terrible (electronic was a good background for gaming, so he listened to his fair share of it), it was just way too loud. The trippy scenery was actually interesting, but there was just too much colour flying around. He didn’t mind people too much, but this density really wasn’t his natural habitat. The one thing he could say with certainty he actually hated were the lights though, especially the quickly on-off white flashes that happened every now and then and made everything in the room look like the framerate had just dropped to unacceptable levels. As a, or THE depending on who was asked, Gamer, John did not appreciate these kinds of visuals.

He looked back down at the thin piece of unfolded paper in his hand. The bar’s list of available products, not just drinks, was broadly categorizable into three things. Booze, Drugs and non-alcoholic beverages. The fact that the first two took up a combined 9/10 of the whole menu while the latter category could be broken down into the big three of sodas (Coca Cola, Fanta, Sprite), water and apple juice was pretty telling towards what John was expected to order.

“I’ll take a cola,” John had to shout at the top of his lungs just for the bartender, an attractive looking wasp girl in an outfit whose primary function clearly was to attract the biggest tips, to lean towards him and wait for him to repeat the order.

A one-hundred-dollar bill later, John was one cola richer. Living costs in the Abyss were outrageous. ‘I actually wonder whether they use the same money as real people do,’ John thought. With the trillions of dollars swirling around in the fantasy world his life had become, there was no way central banks all over the globe didn’t find something amiss.

He came up with two ideas while waiting for the ordered beverage, a waiting time greatly diminished by the fact that she had four arms. Number one: it wasn’t actually real money, it was a fake product the Abyss just adopted in order to live like kings on the other side on the rare occasions people got sick of living in a world with literally endless opportunities. Number two: there was some sort of rule in place by Gaia, akin to the one that masked going in and out of Illusion Barriers. Now that he knew that there was an almighty computation orb behind the sassy deity, John could actually believe that she had the processing power to pull off stunts like removing a shitton of cash from the real market to funnel it back into the Abyss.

‘So THAT’S where my money comes from,’ John theorized as the ideas melded together. They weren’t exclusionary, so he might as well combine them to something working more deeply. The next question would then be where that abyssal dollar came from. The obvious answer was the Roman Empire, as the abyssal USA wasn’t anything John presumed to have any power over something as important as the flow of currency. ‘The Roman empire is the most likely source of an extreme surplus of US dollars on the market. Today in things I never thought I would think,’ John finalized that train of thought with another question to himself: should he make his own currency or opt into that market once he got a bit more influence?

He weighed the pros and cons of each side while sipping on the glass that was halfway filled with ice cubes. The lack of cola didn’t really interest him; in the first place he had only ordered something to have an excuse to keep sitting there and not get into crowd of several hundred dancing people.

For a moment he had to search for Metra and Rave again. The former was pretty easy to find, thanks to her dancing style creating a circle around here where only the brave fools trying to feel her up dared to enter to promptly get tripped or otherwise humiliated. Kudos to them for trying relentlessly though, they were basically challenging the Dark Souls encounter of rave parties. Even sadder, they didn’t even know that Metra was his girl yet.

Meanwhile attention on Rave had largely subsided, as he noticed after spying her unmistakable pink hair in the crowd. Most people must have noticed or had been told by friends who exactly that person in their midst there was, as evident by someone stopping, looking around and then seeing John. A pretty concise message was sent through John’s eyes over the rim of his glass. ‘You can try, but nothing will come of it,’ that was the gist of it. He didn’t need to look scary; knowing that Rave wouldn’t cheat on him, there was no reason to try to dissuade people from attempting to get her.

There was the part of him that had been betrayed by a friend before that told him that that wasn’t the wisest course of action, that he should err on the side of caution and keep his girlfriend close and any even remotely competing males at an arm’s length. It wasn’t a pretty side of him, but thankfully it also stood against the rest of him that had one firm conviction: Rave, his girlfriend and someone who had loved him from where he started all the way to now, would never hurt him like that. Sure, that kind of conviction would make it infinitely more hurtful if he was proven wrong, but he couldn’t bring himself to believe the alternative even the slightest bit.

Especially if that other train of thought would lead to him limiting what she could or could not do when she looked so happy right now, dancing and spreading colour through the rhythmic movements of her feat.

The current song slowly diminished in volume as it petered out, and then John could hear a familiar voice. “FOLKS!” the speakers atop the tower spread the overhyped tone throughout the room. “ARE YOU AS PUMPED UP AS I AM?!” A wave of cheers accompanied the sound of smoke projectors. The speakers atop the DJ tower glided downwards on invisible rails and revealed the great music controller himself.

He had brown hair that was cut in a tremendously stupid way, being combed straight upwards and held by styling gel that must have had the power to fix the hole in the titanic. He wore a suit but did so in a way that made it clear he wasn’t about business in the slightest. No, his only interest was entertainment, and he acted accordingly, overbearing and like the microphone in his hand was a dancing partner.

“Thank you all for making my return to this club a great experience!” Jeff continued to work the crowd who cheered whenever he stopped talking. “I am so rich, people, I can keep playing here for the rest of my life! And that is exactly what I am going to do!” John felt Salamander check out what was happening on his side of the aisle and then quickly retreating again after she mentally rolled her eyes at the continuous bravados. A moment later Sylph clicked in and listened rather intently.

“Now, I don’t want to disrupt the PARTY for too long, but I want to play something for the lovers here! Here is Martin Garrix and Bebe Rexha, In the Name Of Love!” the song started up silent, and to the first words of the lyrics, Rave ran out of the crowd.

“Would you let me lead you even when you’re blind?” the female voice boomed from the speakers as Rave extended her hand towards her boyfriend. The only answer to that was to take it and watch as her lips bloomed into a wide smile. Hand in hand they made their way back into the calm crowd.

Couples, old, new and just temporary for the sake of the dance, swayed to the swelling refrain. The colours on the floor were a calm breeze as long as the song stayed as calm. Then the beat dropped and everyone went wild for a few minutes. Partners were whirled around, rainbows unfolded on the floor, and for a solid thirty seconds, everyone shared one floor, one world, with everyone but simultaneously existed only along the person next to them. They were all united in their distance from everyone but their partner.

Then the lyrics kicked back in. “If I told you we could bathe in all the lights, would you rise up -come and meet me in the sky? Would you trust me when you’re jumping from the heights? Would you fall in the name of love?” Rave answered that question by letting John lead their steps and still giving him a quick kiss by the end of it, despite the fact that he was a miserable dancer that only got the most basic steps well executed thanks to his high Stats alone.

She stayed close to him, forehead to forehead they swayed to the next segment. Lips moving quietly, Rave formed the same promises as the song. “When there’s madness, when there’s poison in your head. When the sadness leaves you broken in your bed. I will hold you, in the depths of your despair, and it’s all in the name of love.”

Again the song and crowd went wild, and to the screams of the outro, John stopped giving a damn about the fact that he was a miserable dancer and just did as best as he could. He probably made a fool out of himself, but Rave laughed as he whirled her around, only to then pick him up and do the same to him a moment later.

Their lips met as the words “In the name of…” petered out for a long kiss. At the end there were three moments of silence, then Jeff put the usual techno blasting back on, and Rave immediately started dancing to it.

But she danced with him and, if this made the pink lustre in her eyes glow with such intensity, made her smile and laugh so clearly and wonderfully and had all of her move free-spirited, then John could definitely live with going on a party like this every once in a while.