I dashed around the corner, my boots skidding across the rusted catwalk, and opened my inventory. My fingers flying through the interface, I stashed the Null Blade, then began to load every item I had equipped that gave any kind of bonus into my inventory, also: my pistol, my bandolier - everything except my nipple piercing. Then, I closed my inventory.
As the mutants came around the corner, carrying sawed-off shotguns and sharp edged lengths of metal that served as swords, I turned to face them and put my hands up in the air. They surrounded me, albino-pale from living down here in the darkness, leering, and then froze. A textbox popped up in front of me.
Warning: The following sequence of events contains non-consensual sex, torture, humiliation and pain. You may choose to accept Character Death now and respawn, but you will lose all experience gained in this dungeon and all items in your inventory.
Accept Character Death? Y/N
I looked around. The mutant guards remained paused, idling while they waited for my response. Now that I wasn't fighting them or running from them, I could see that they had thick, pale hides instead of skin, like that of a rhinoceros or elephant, except that these hides changed color when they needed to blend in with their surroundings, like an octopus or chameleon. Their weapons - both the shotguns and the crude shards of metal - were flaked with rust. They were naked, to take better advantage of their chameleon-skin, and I could see their soft cocks hanging down between their legs.
You knew this might happen, I told myself, trying to pump up my confidence. You planned for it. You've brought a trick no one else has brought yet. You can get through this. And then, I hit the 'no' button.
The text box disappeared, and immediately two of the mutants grabbed me by the arms. One of them pulled out some rope, and they bound my hands and feet, then slung me over a thick-hided shoulder. Down the passageway, I could still hear my friends fighting, and Razor calling for me, but the sounds were getting further and further away. They must already be retreating, I realized. The mutants began to jog, and then I couldn't really see what was happening; I was being jostled and bounced on a bony shoulder. I fidgeted with my bindings for a couple of moments, but I really had no idea how to get out of being tied up, and I hadn't put any skill points into it either. What skill would that even be, I occupied myself by wondering. Something to find out, for next time...
Eventually, maybe five minutes later, the mutants slowed down. I heard the sound of doors swinging open, and then we were rattling down a series of metal steps. I was dropped onto the ground like a sack of potatoes, something clanged as it swung closed, and I could finally look around - look around my jail cell, as it turned out. An icon to my lower left let me know that it was possible to log out here, much like in a tent or a room at an inn, so I did that.
When I pulled off my NerveGear, I used my phone to check the status of my raiding party. Coraline, Razor, and Lancea were all still in game, so I could leave them a message, but didn't expect a response. Probably trying to rescue me, I realized, then sent them all something anyway.
Audrey: I've got it.
I put my phone back on the nightstand, got off my bed, and went to the bathroom. It was Sunday evening - we'd been raiding all weekend, and though I knew I should sleep, I just couldn't. My plan had worked. I didn't know whether to be thrilled, or terrified.
Cora hadn't been exaggerating when she'd said her previous party had done a lot of mapping. In fact, they'd found most of the entrances to the mutant lair on level four, and also explored enough of the mutant excavation to have narrowed down the location of the Null Blade to only three potential locations: an ancient, ruined temple complex; a collapsed mine; and what seemed to be the sealed tomb of some ancient hero.
"We should go for the blade," I'd told them over mugs of ale.
"You're fucking crazy," our new, blue-haired priestess told me.
"Says the chick who tried to rape us all," Razor grumbled under his breath.
"I'm not crazy." I ignored Razor. "I picked up an item just for this. It's called a Nipple Piercing of Exquisite Pain. It makes-"
"-all pain feel like pleasure," Cora said with a nod. "So what, you grab the sword, if you get captured we come back and get you?"
I nodded. "Basically. At some point it will have to give me an option to log out; when it does, I hit you three up on the app, tell you everything I can about where they have me and what kind of guards there are, and then we plan a rescue operation."
The conversation hadn't gone quite that simply, of course; there were all sorts of objections and concerns, things to plan for... but in the end, I'd gotten my way. Now, the blade was stashed in my inventory. All I had to do was wait for everyone to be awake tomorrow, and then wait to be rescued.
And make it through a torture scene that had caused every other player who'd gone through it to quit, of course.