BatIM Five Trials

Chapter Twenty Two

Heading down the stairs, Jade looked around at the massive structures all around the amusement park which served as more than effective reminders of just how small she really is. She looked around the place, seeing massive shelves with many crates, barrels, and marry-go-round horse-looking cartoon characters on them. She gave them weird looks and then turned her gaze to the other side.

She saw two closed booths with a recording in between them by Wally, and Jade smiled, deciding to give it a listen after thoroughly examining the area. She also spotted a strength test game and slowly shook her head at it, looking at her shoulder. That looks like agony with a side of hammer swinging. It's unnecessary.

Finally, she approached the highlight of the giant room, a haunted house. The door was closed and seemed to have no power, but the ever-present whispers in her head picked up enough to tell her that it was the way to go. She walked to the right upon the whisper's instruction to see the source of power she needed to activate. There were five levers, four of which were not live. She pulled the first one. She could faintly hear the opening of metal gates from the direction of the previously closed booths and hurried over. Sure enough, two games were revealed. One, a shooting game and the other a game where you're supposed to toss balls at bottles.

She seemed almost confused until she remembered Wally's recording between the two of them. She approached it and pressed the play button, hoping his words would be helpful to her cause of rescuing Boris.

"These guys down at the warehouse get to play games all day while I'm stuck cleaning up after 'em. They keep locking themselves out of their own back room. So I says to 'em, 'look guys', I says, 'you're smart, right? Here's an idea! Why not rig these games to knock open the door if ya win? It'll be fun for you guys, and it saves me the trip down here every day.' They went for it like a dog to pot roast. I tell ya! If these guys don't start realizing who the real genius is, I'm outta here."

Jade had to admit, she was impressed by just how clever Wally's idea sounded, but at the same time it did and did not help. She now had to waste time playing games in hopes she could open the door. "Thanks for the pointer I guess, Wally." Jade said to the recording as she first went over to the ball toss. When she picked up one of the balls, however, carnival sounding music started to play. She almost laughed at this as she tried to focus on her aim, tossing with her left hand to save her right some pain. Unfortunately for her, she was terrible at aiming with her non-dominant hand and missed, barely tapping one of the bottles. She huffed and got the second ball, preparing to try again. Her second throw seemed to about have the same level of success, except it almost made one of the bottles fall. She sighed and took the last one in her right hand, and with this throw she was much more successful, knocking one of the three sets of three bottles off the barrel completely with a forceful throw. But three out of nine bottles was not enough, and a buzzer which served as the cadence to the music let her know that she had lost.

She sighed and looked for a simple way inside the booth, but none was provided. She was about to climb inside. . . only to see the balls and bottles moved themselves back to their starting point while she had not been looking. She gave it a skeptical look before picking up a ball again. Once again the carnival music started up, and Jade was wiser this time, tossing with her right hand to knock over the bottles despite the pain in her shoulder it caused. She knocked down every bottle with precise aim the second time around. Once she finished, she clutched her shoulder as a tone let her know that she won.

Great. I guess I have to play the other game right here too. Jade walked over to the shooting game, which revealed itself to be called Bullseye Bonanza. To come with it was a gun of some sort connected to a cord, presumably for the game itself. Jade took a deep breath, the gun reminding her of what she'd done to the Projectionist all too recently to have forgiven herself. She picked up the gun, and once again the carnival music started. There were no walls close enough for her to use in place of her injured shoulder and her left shoulder was non-dominant. She ended up using the injured shoulder as a prop for the gun as targets started popping up. Jade immediately started taking shots at them, the gun kicking slightly and jarring her shoulder. Her shots were mostly precise, hitting their targets. Only a few missed, shown by the five targets she didn't have the bullets to fire at. Luckily for her, she had shot enough to win, indicated by the same tone as the one played with the bottle toss game. There was a meter she hadn't noticed until after the fact with a little Bendy on the top, looking like he had moved across most of the way.