Hidden away in the vast, unforgiving desert of a broken world, a temple withstood the test of time. Though its majestic pillars and luscious archways had crumbled and decayed over the centuries of its existence, it still teemed with mystical energy and majesty. Magical forces guarded this wonder of manmade engineering, protecting it from fading completely into obscurity. The Nier gang find themselves wandering these hallowed halls yet again, rummaging through unknown splendors of a forgotten time.
“Can’t believe I got dragged into this shithole again,” Kainé grumbled.
“If you do not like it, you could simply wait outside,” Grimoire Weiss counter-grumbled.
“He’s got a point,” said Nier, “Emil, Weiss, and I are perfectly capable of finding this relic that guy wanted.”
Emil gently floated into the conversation, “I can go outside and wait with you if you aren’t feeling good, Kainé.”
“Hmmph,” Kainé folded her arms across her chest, “And stand out there in that fuckin’ sandstorm? No thanks. Sand gets everywhere in this outfit.”
Weiss turned to face the white-haired half-shade. “You don’t mean-“
“Everywhere.”
` “Bah!” Weiss overdramatically floated downward, “Perhaps if the hussy wore appropriate clothing for once in her life, she would not be having such problems!”
“And perhaps if the book shut up every once in a while, I would have about half the headaches I do now.”
Nier interjected, "Maybe we should split up and search for a bit. We’ve cleared all the challenge rooms with their weird rules, so it should be safe to go off on our own.”
“Sounds like a plan,” Kainé said, “The sooner we get this fetch quest done the better.”
“Hey, don’t put it like that,” Nier chastised, “This guy has been really down in the dumps lately. Y’see, his wife died because a Shade-“
“Yep. I’m leaving,” Kainé said, leaping across the hall to the other set of stairs. Her heels clacked down the ancient stairway as torrents of sand rushed down in the ravine below. Kainé looked into the various chambers to her side as she passed, checking for anything that might be considered a relic so they could get out of here. She had no such luck, but she did notice one room that she was pretty sure hadn’t been explored yet. It was filled with the same giant stone blocks that the other rooms had scattered about. She peeked her head in and noticed an unlocked door on the other side of the room.
“Huh, that looks important,” she said to herself, wandering into the chamber. Upon taking a few steps in, magical barriers appeared across both the exit and the entrance to the room.
“Oh god damn it,” Kainé cursed, “I thought all the fucking rooms were cleared!”
The rules for the room were made clear to her:
The following actions are prohibited in this room:
Leaping Rabbit
Racing Wolf
Evasive Mouse
“Fuckin’ A, so I can only walk?! Who the hell designed this shit?!”
Noticing movement from above, Kainé quickly realized she had no time to complain. One of the blocks positioned itself above her head, then lifted up for a second.
“Oh shit!” Kainé power-walked forward, just barely getting out of the way before the block came crashing down where she was just standing.
Kainé looked back at the block, which slowly raised back up into the air. “These things are out for fucking blood!” She muttered under her breath. She then heard the noise of scraping stone on either side of her. She whipped her head to either side; two blocks were rapidly closing in on her position!
“Fuck fuck fuck!” The scantily clad swordswoman marched out of way, being careful not to do anything that would be deemed as running or dodging so as not to upset the magical ruleset of the room. However, as soon as she got out of the way of those, another block came from the front.
“Cocksucker!” She moved to the side, skirting around the block and right into the path of another one.
“Shit! Fuck! Piss!” A slew of profanity came from her mouth as she was forced to awkwardly walk past trap after trap, the autonomously moving blocks seemingly dead set on squashing the intruder. Unfortunately for Kainé, it was only a matter of time before she zigged when she should have zagged. As she rounded the corner of the most recently dodged cube, she looked to the side to see another rapidly approaching.
“Wait! Fuck!” She was right in the middle of its course of impact, meaning that it was just as fast to go forward as it was to back up. This delayed her decision making just enough to let the cube close the distance.
“ACK-!”
SPLAT!
Not caring about the poor soul between them, the two cubes smashed together. The cube then retracted, giving Kainé some much needed breathing room.
Of course, the damage was already done by this point. Although she was powerful, Kainé’s soft, squishy body was no match for the unrelenting force of a weighty stone block sandwiching her. Kainé had been utterly flattened by the impact. Her body from head to toe was now a uniformly level plane just slightly sticking out from the block she was plastered to.
Her anticipation of her impending crushing had only ensured that she was reduced to a poster in an embarrassing freeze frame of the split second before the splat. In an exercise in futility, she had raised her hands up around her face to somehow shield the impact. It did not help. In a similar vein, her uncovered leg was raised up as though she was about to break the rules and dodge to the side to avoid getting crushed. Kainé’s waist was bent slightly giving the living wall relief a slightly off kilter feeling. If that weren’t enough, her face told the whole picture. Unable to move her face muscles, Kainé was locked in an uncomfortable grimace, her pretty face stuck in the split second she realized she fucked up.
“Fucking… Ouch…” Eloquently summed up her thoughts on the matter. Although she was mostly immobile, she was still able to look around, her flattened eyes darting around the surface of her face. She didn’t get long to get a bearing on her surroundings, however. She failed the challenge, and so, she needed to try again. Kainé was teleported back to the starting point.
“God damn it,” she thought, “Did I seriously get fucking crushed?! And… am I still crushed?!”
Though the magic of the temple had been courteous enough to instantly transport Kainé back to the starting point, it did not feel the need to reinflate her to her normal dimensions. She stood rigidly in place for a moment, her whole flat form balancing on the thin line where her foot touched the ground, but it was not fated to last. A slight twitch on her part sent her tipping backwards.
“No no no!” Kainé tried to correct herself, but the push only managed to tip her forwards instead. “Shit! Other way!” She managed to halt her momentum again but overcorrected. Unable to stop the descent this time, she landed on her back with a soft pwoof.
“Ugh, damn it. What the hell is even happening?! What am I made of, fucking clay?! W-Wait a second…” Now that her vision was directed upward, Kainé noticed what she had noticed at the start of the trial: the very first cube that tried to crush her, floating directly above her! It had reset back to its original position and was now about to carry out its preprogrammed job to slam down on the starting position.
“Oh, fuckin’- Move, body! Hrrngh! C-Come on! Get the fuck up!” Kainé’s best efforts to move only resulted in her stiff body rattling around a bit. Though she would have earned an A for effort, the block did not care. It raised up, then slammed down.
WHAM!
The number of times Kainé had been crushed by a huge magical stone block had just increased by 100%. This time, gravity did its best to help out, slamming Kainé with even more force than before. The block ascended again to reveal what was left of Kainé.
This most recent smash did away with any veneer of depth Kainé still had. Though she was lacking in z-axis, x and y had filled out a bit more; the impact of the crushing had pushed some of her squishiest body parts outward a tad, causing her boobs to spill out of her top and her hips to widen. If any onlookers were nearby, they might be thrilled, but Kainé was far from it.
Agitated by both the immense pressure on her body and the feeling of defeat, Kainé ranted mentally. “Owww… Come the fuck on, how was that fair! I couldn’t even fuckin’ move! Bitch-ass block! Let me try again!”
The temple granted her request, resetting the challenge. Detecting that the challenger was still in the correct starting place, it didn’t even bother teleporting Kainé this time. Naturally, this left her in the same spot where the first cube did its slam. Once again, it levitated above her.
“Oh, you have GOT to be FUCKING KIDDING!”
WHAM!
Another resounding impact compacted Kainé even further into the floor. Her form was spread outward even more, though this time more messily. Rather than a sensical distribution, her form was splotched and smeared haphazardly. Her flimsy layer of a body couldn’t withstand such pressure, as was evident by the fact that she was now partially transparent from being smashed so thin.
“Ghhh… Stupid fuckin’ cube! You’re lucky I can’t move, you six-sided bitch!”
Despite all her inner tirades, the cube reset another time. And, like before, it pounded her into the floor.
WHAM!
“M-Motherfucker!”
Now the poster on the floor was much more of a stain. Her body was even less defined than the last time, and less opaque too. And again, the chamber reset itself.
WHAM!
“GAH! F-Fuckin’! Bastard!”
The chamber reset itself again.
WHAM!
“NNGH! Son of a… bitch…!”
And again.
WHAM!
“F-Fuck…er…”
And again.
WHAM!
“F…u…ck…”
The chamber kept going and going, defying the laws of physics and flattening Kainé thinner with each slam. Each impact slammed her harder into the floor, embedding her into the ancient stone of the temple through sheer pressure and perseverance. As her body took more and more punishment, Kainé became more faded and smeared, going from a lady-like stain to a vaguely personlike smear to a nearly formless pigment of colors on the ground. She continued to curse to herself thinking that surely the next smash would be the next, but they just kept coming and coming…
Until they didn’t.
“H-Huh… wha-…? Y-Yeah, that’s r-right, bitch! That all ya got?!”
The temple had much more, but its magic was only set to work on people, and all it could detect at this point was a strange splotch on the ground. The magic barriers lifted, leaving an empty chamber with what was left of Kainé. Her legs, her hips, her breasts, her face, her mind, every single part of Kainé was nothing but an extremely faded discoloration on the floor.
On Kainé’s part, having all her features smeared into undefined paste left her with a sensitive tingle across her entire form. Pressure covered every square inch of her being, and she was so embedded into the stone that she couldn’t even twitch a muscle. Of course, her muscles were now just thin layers of dried paste at this point, so she wouldn’t have been able to do much anyway.
It was a bit hard to think with her mind mashed into a microlayer, but Kainé could still consider her situation. “O-Ok. Just gotta… Peel myself up now… Nnnngh! Hnnngh! Fuuuuuuck! Ok that’s not gonna work…”
Suddenly, the door to the chamber opened.
“Oh cool, another chamber opened up!” Emil’s voice echoed down the room as he entered it.
“Oh shit, Emil! Get out, this thing is fucking dangerous!”
The rules were relayed to Emil:
The following actions are prohibited in this room:
Leaping Rabbit
Racing Wolf
Evasive Mouse
“Oh, ok!” Emil said cheerfully. He lazily floated above all the blocks and made it to the other end, clearing the challenge in seconds and opening the doors again.
“Wow, that was an easy one!”
The mess formerly known as Kainé simply laid there and considered her life for a moment.
Just then, Nier and Weiss turned the corner, entering the room. “Anything in here, Emil?”
“Nah, just a really easy challenge! No sign of Kainé though!”
“H-Hey! I’m right here, dumbass! I’m not that messed up- GAH!”
Nier took a few steps into the room and stopped, planting his feet right on top Kainé.
“Weird, I feel like we looked into all the chambers,” Nier scratched his head.
Weiss floated in, glancing around the room. “Perhaps the hussy decided to brave the elements instead of help search. We already found the relic we were meant to acquire; we should meet her outside.” Weiss then looked at Nier, then noticed something at his feet. “I say, boy, what have you stepped in?”
Nier looked down and lifted his boot, “Ew, what is this?”
Kainé felt the humiliation burn her up. “It’s me, dumbass! Get your fucking boots off of my fucking face and scrape me off this god damn floor!”
“Hmmm…” pondered Emil, “That stain… It kinda reminds me of something…”
Nier and Weiss inspected the discoloration as well.
“…You kind of have a point there, Emil.”
“Yes, it is very reminiscent of something.”
“H-Hey fuckers! Quit lookin’ at me like a bug you just stepped on!”
Even though Kainé was nothing more than an over-abused film, the extreme embarrassment caused her blush. The off-white bits of the stain got a shade pinker under the gaze of her friends.
“Woah!” Emil gasped, “Did it just changed colors?”
“I saw it too,” Nier replied, “And I just thought of what it reminds me of. Look at the white and the light blue; it’s just like Kainé!”
“My god…” Weiss came in for a closer look, “…I think you’re right. My vast magical power is able to detect signs of life from this spattering mess on the ground. It seems our dear Kainé has been smashed to paste!”
“Finally, ya fuckin’ figure it out!” Despite her attitude, Kainé was relieved that she wasn’t just going to be left as a smear on the floor of a forgotten temple.
“You’re right Weiss!” Emil pointed, “Look, I think that’s her face!”
Nier, pointed to a different end of her, “No, I think her face is on this end. Look, I think that little bit is her eyes…”
"Hey! You can't just mistake a girl's face for her ass!"
“It matters not!” Weiss interjected, “We must go retrieve tools to extract the hussy from her predicament.”
If Kainé still had intact eyes, they would have widened. “G-Go?! What the fuck to you mean, go?! Why can’t you just peel me up?!”
“Why can’t we just peel her up?!” Nier asked.
“Look at her, boy!” responded Weiss, “We’ll need to get her out of here by removing an entire section of the floor, then take her home and figure out some way to restore her from there. Come, let us not prolong her time in such a sorry state!” Weiss resolutely floated out of the room, not caring to hide the concern in his voice.
Nier scratched his head. “…I guess we better do what he says, because I have no idea how this even happened in the first place. Don’t worry Kainé, we’ll get ya fixed up in no time!”
Emil reassured her as well, “Yeah Kainé! Just hang tight, we’ll be right back!” With that, the remaining three-dimensional members of the party departed, leaving behind an empty chamber with a sad little stain at the entrance. Alone, Kainé contemplated how she went from powerful warrior to barely noticeable discoloration over the course of only a few hours, and had one thought:
“I am NEVER letting him drag me into this shithole again.”