“What the fu--,” this wasn’t what was supposed to be playing. Yeah, it was Disturbia, but it was also Nightcore. Alex wasn’t connected to the internet; this was actually downloaded onto her phone. She didn’t listen to Nightcore! Someone had access to her phone and had downloaded this? [i]F#$%ing Riley,[/i] she had no idea that Riley was responsible, of course, but she was pretty confident that she was the one putting all that pr@n on Malcolm’s browser, and she didn’t figure Ian would have done it. Click. Click. Click, click, click!! [i]Ugh, guess it’s not going away, either[/i]. It was even a clean version of the song! Whatever, she might be seeing pissed emojis floating around her head like tweety birds, but there was no reason she had to put that on Andrea. The song would end, and hopefully it’d then move on to something that wasn’t the clean edit of Nightcore Disturbia. Music was probably set to shuffle, probably, so even if there was more of the same after this track it would have just as much chance of coming on as something less incredibly ridiculous. Good news, maybe, the lights were synced to the beat. [i]Did I program it to do that?[/i] she couldn’t remember, but it was super baller either way. Somehow the viewing room had become a glass balcony dance floor, had a really cool ambient red low light for power loss situations, there was even some of that glow in the dark neon yellow paint in shapes of arrows on the floor leading to the exits and written directions painted on the walls telling you how to evacuate the holo room. 

I mean, it was bright as shit outside, in the holo room anyway, but something about the one way glass made it seem darker inside the viewing room than any unlit glass room open to the brilliant outdoor faux sunlight ought to be. Alex could tell the program considered Dragoon to be blinded, by Ian, the central terminals making their routinely obscure beeps, boops and buzzing, whirring noises in time with the changing conditions in the simulation, almost inaudible over the music but just noticeable, and just familiar enough from the hours viewing several of Ken’s team’s bouts in the room she, Andrea, and Malcolm had spent together before the Dragoonslayers were formed, for her to pick out despite the cacophony. Casting a quick glance over her shoulder, she could see why; they were engaging Dragoon, who was swinging wide and short of their position. The real Dragoon would have moved upward and to her right, launching the spear with that Jedi weapon tracking shit she could do toward Ian, who would’ve been impaled and died immediately, while she skirted along their flank faster than any of them could react and hit Swarm from behind, just as her spear made its way back to her, through Net, who would’ve turned and tracked her movements before ever realizing the weapon was moving seemingly of its own accord. Then she’d turn, hard, on Riley. Shivers again, even a bead of cold sweat running from the base of her neck.  It wasn’t a reasonable simulation to run against these four. Even the six of them, without all the additional costumes who responded, wouldn’t beat the real Dragoon without taking casualties. 

Alex knew she had to talk to Ian after this exercise. She’d been acting like a bitch toward him for weeks now. She was over the stupid Hot Fudge Sunday homecoming incident, the other kids at school certainly weren’t done making jokes behind her back about it, but she wasn’t mad at Ian anymore. She didn’t hold any of it against him, and was mostly just too proud to stop treating him like an asshole at this point. I mean, he was an asshole, but a well-meaning asshole who was trying to punk the shit out of that bigger asshole date of her’s, and if it had worked she would’ve f#$%ing loved being there to see it. And Malcolm? Was she going to talk to him about earlier? Did she care if he was mad about her and Andrea storming off to the viewing room? Maybe she would, later, after screwing with his stupid simulation. In the meantime, however, she was the only one dancing, and that just seemed wrong. Still dancing along to the beat, Alex reached out her left hand for Andrea's while she tapped at her phone blind and with just her right thumb. This part should be easy. Getting onto the system through the backdoor Anne had left her was clearly not working out to be as successful as she’d have thought it would have been, everything was going more than a little wonky, but the system already had programs designed to do what her next steps would be; develop, and deploy monsters to combat the heroes in the holo room, and cause the civvies to get in their way during the process. 

If everything worked according to plan, the civvies would stop running and panicking, and start dancing to inaudible Livin La Vida Loca. Swarm’s bugs would have picked up on the que, and instead of running to perform their tasks would now be twitching violently in the closest thing their insectoid frames could get to Latin Pop dancing, which, mostly, just looked like they were vibrating. Dragoon herself would be unaffected, but her spear would launch itself into the air and begin a helicopter like ascent, probably just twirling until it hit the ceiling and, depending on what setting the Guardians were using, it would either disappear or fall violently back to the ground, likely impaling some chump hologram civvie, so on the whole it wasn’t a total loss for Malcolm and the rest of the Scooby Gang; at least Dragoon was disarmed and the mood was a whole lot cheerier, no? Who doesn’t like Ricky Martin? Some young blonde guy in a suit would cut Riley off on her way to save the now dancing children in the SUV, attempt to take her by the hand and twirl her, just as Alex would twirl Andrea in the viewing room if she had taken her hand. After twirling her, she would pull her close, Andrea facing away from her, kicking her feet and hips to the beat while she brought the phone horizontally in front of Andrea’s face. The custom mob spawn tool wasn't terribly complicated, scroll bars and point and click drag visuals were employed by the Guardians for ease and convenience of throwing whatever came to mind at the combatants in the holo room on demand.