The Mondo Ruction Infinity Minus One - ROUND 1 - The Crystal Rose Hotel & Resort

The strawman was dumped out in the middle of a large open plaza. It was a bright and lively place or at least it seemed as though it had been at some point. Now the fuschia paint had faded to a dirty peach and though there were many posters and shopfronts the facades were peeling with disrepair. Once carefully cultivated topiaries were growing unkempt, their original shapes (presumably hearts and cherubs and genitalia) were lost, barely discernible only to those who already knew what they were supposed to look like.

Various food and souvenir kiosks were dotted throughout the plaza, with whimsical signs advertising such treats as Cherished Bakewells, Turkish Delighted, Adorable Avocado Float and Kismesis Knickerbocker Glory. Though all were now closed up behind metal shutters. In the distance a theme park with a modest selection of rides, including a single simple rollercoaster, stood silent. There were only three actual buildings visible around the plaza; the largest of which proclaimed itself The Crystal Rose Hotel. There was also the Overflowing Heart Souvenir Shop, and a small building with a much less ostentatious sign reading: Gateway. Beyond these landmarks nothing but pale pink fog in every direction.

Faraxetty climbed to his feet using a nearby metal railing as support. His body moved like a bag of old straw but somehow he managed to find a sort of internal solidity and stand just as a human might. Here in the very center of the plaza he was surrounded by metal railings and flanked by a large wooden sign with a picture of an enormous fuzzy heart-shaped entity and the words:

"Meet LoveMo."

"Get Your Picture Taken With LoveMo."

and then an additional sign next to that reading:

Love Resort Staff Ask You To Keep Your Interactions With LoveMo Strictly PG13 Thank You.

and hastily scrawled beneath it:

DO NOT TOUCH LOVEMO.

Triple underlined.

Faraxetty looked around groggily, his head lolling to the side and righting itself after every twist of his head. Despite the sign about LoveMo there was no sign of LoveMo. There was no sign of anyone in fact, and this was a fact that disappointed Faraxetty.

Up until recently he had been alone, and by recently I mean that before The Oddball grabbed him up and shoved him into a rough circle with the rest of the combatants he hadn’t seen people before. Their strangeness, their own goals and thoughts and wants had bled into him as he stood suspended there. For the first time Faraxetty felt fear and confusion and curiosity and any emotion other than emptiness. Not necessarily pleasant emotions, but dazzling to Faraxetty after an untold age living in complete emptiness.

And now, in this eerie empty plaza, some new emotion gnawed at him. The dim miasma of love that hung over the resort perhaps soaked deeper into Faraxetty than any of the other combatants due to his deep emptiness. It was an emotion of frissant joy. A longing for and an attachment to which hadn’t yet found themselves something to attach to. Faraxetty glanced once again at the large wooden sign depicting LoveMo.

“I love LoveMo.” he said, trying out the words to see how they sounded. They sounded right and he continued with a growing sense of conviction, “I love LoveMo.”