“What is your main problem?”
The moment he said that, a pair of devil horns grew out of his head, and his eyes turned a dark shade of red. Spikes of red lightning shot from his horns, where they arced up to deflect the purple lightning attacks from above.
Then he unleashed his “Whawk!” attack, which involved him making a deafening birdlike “Wh-ha-ha-hawk!” laughing/shrieking sound, which unleashed a sonic area-of-effect attack that injured all seven incarnations at once.
But what made Morris an even more fearsome opponent was his right-hand man, Jerome “The Mirror Man” Benton, who carried around a large gold-framed vanity mirror that he used to create half a dozen mirror-image clones of Morris, each of whom began to unleash his own Whawk! attack.
The rest of the Original 7ven joined the fight too. Jimmy Jam and Monte Moir each wielded a modified red Roland AXIS-1 keytar that fired sonic funk blast waves out of its neck each time a chord was played on it. Jesse Johnson fired sonic thunderbolts from the pickups of his Fender Voodoo Stratocaster, while Terry Lewis did the same with his bass, and Jellybean Johnson stood behind them, firing red lightning skyward with his drumsticks, wielding them like two magic wands. Each of the band members could also fire a deadly blast of sonic energy directly from their own mouths, just by shouting the word “Yeow!” over and over again.
In between his Whawk! attacks, Morris unleashed equally devastating verbal attacks. And for some reason, when the other members of his band repeated what he’d just said, it seemed to power up his verbal sonic attacks and cause them to do even more damage.
Morris would shout, “You can’t battle me, son! You still wet behind the ears!”
And his boys would echo him: “Wet behind the ears!”
Morris Day and the Time were magnificent to behold. But in the end, it wasn’t enough to save them, or us. Because the Princes had just summoned their henchmen too.
Purple Rain Prince summoned his band, the Revolution. They all wore regal outfits with ruffled collars, just like him.
Microphone Gun Prince summoned the New Power Generation. There were a bunch of them, and they were all armed to the teeth, with every kind of instrument.
And then Third Eye Prince summoned his band 3RDEYEGIRL (which, my HUD informed me, was spelled in ALL CAPS).
All three bands appeared on the ground, encircling us in the arena. They began to attack us from the surface, while six of the Princes continued to attack us from the air.
That was when Aech shouted something to Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis about “activating their producing powers.” They smiled and nodded, and then snapped their fingers in unison—instantly summoning two dozen uniformed henchmen of their own:
Janet Jackson and the Rhythm Nation.
When they came marching into the arena, Aech looked like she might pass out.
“Holy shit!” she said. “I can’t believe that worked!”
And then it became an all-out sonic war.
I don’t know exactly what happened next, or how it all went down.
But when the dust settled, all seven members of the Time had been killed, including Morris Day and all of his mirror images. (Purple Rain Prince somehow used his mirror shades to shatter Jerome’s mirror, so he was no longer able to use it to make Morris clones—and that was the beginning of the end, I think.)
But before they died, the Original 7ven managed to take out all three female members of 3RDEYEGIRL, all of the New Power Generation, and every member of the Revolution, except for Wendy and Lisa, whom I managed to take out with blasts from my Cloud Guitar.
Four incarnations of Prince had gone down, but three had managed to survive the onslaught: Microphone Gun, Third Eye, and Mesh-Mask. But all three of them looked badly injured—and extremely angry about it.
I got off another lucky shot from the Cloud Guitar and managed to nail Third Eye Prince directly in his third eye. Apparently that was his weak spot, because he vanished in a shower of glittering purple dust. The last two incarnations gasped, and so did Aech.
I felt a glimmer of hope. Maybe we had a shot at winning this thing after all.
Then the Cloud Guitar—which had been rapidly overheating in my hands while I was mentally patting myself on the back—finally exploded, causing me to take several hundred more points of damage. My health bar began to flash bright red. My avatar was near death. By some cruel twist of fate, I happened to have exactly seven hit points remaining.
But it wasn’t over yet. There were three of us, and only two Princes.
“Yes!” Shoto cried. “Now we’ve got them outnumbered! Five down and two to go!”
And that was when we lost him. Shoto let out a long hysterical laugh—a clear sign that he was starting to suffer the effects of SOS. Then he signed his avatar’s own death warrant.
“One-two princes kneel before you,” he sang, while failing to suppress his synaptic-overload-induced laughter. “Princes! Princes who adore you!”
A horrified look crossed Aech’s face, and she threw her head back to study the sky. A split second later, a purple lightning bolt descended from it and struck Shoto, killing him instantly.
Aech and I watched in horror as Shoto’s avatar slowly faded out of existence, leaving all of his items in a pile on the ground. Acting on survival instinct, I ran over to scoop them up and add them to my inventory. Aech ran over to stand shoulder to shoulder with me.
At some point during the melee, Mesh-Mask Prince had descended to the ground behind us. He was facing us, standing with his back to the steps that led up to the Temple of Seven. He took a menacing step toward us, and as he did, the black stone floor of the arena beneath his feet turned to gold, and so did the floor directly ahead of him, creating a straight gold pathway up the center of the arena and out of its entrance. Where the gold path intersected with the desert highway outside, it began to transmute the asphalt to gold too.
I glanced over at Aech and saw that she was staring intently down at the transmuted gold beneath our feet in wonder, with a thoughtful look on her face. Then she looked back over at Mesh-Mask Prince. A woman in a glittering gold dress had appeared beside him. She was dancing and spinning in circles, with a large sword balanced on top of her head. My HUD informed me that this woman was Prince’s first wife, Mayte Garcia.
Floating in the air between Mesh-Mask Prince and Mayte was a brilliant gold light, like a tiny star. It was too bright to look at directly without being momentarily blinded, and I averted my eyes. But Aech stared intently at it, ignoring everything else.
“This is just like the music video for ‘Seven’!” she shouted.
“Is that helpful?” I shouted back. I glanced up and saw that Microphone Gun Prince seemed transfixed by the golden light too. His attacks forgotten, he just hovered above us, staring, and the arena fell silent for the first time since we’d stepped into it.
A second later, I heard a woman begin to sing, in a clear, beautiful voice. The voice went on singing for several more seconds before I realized that it was Aech. She was singing a cappella. The lyrics were to a song I had never heard before.
All seven and we’ll watch them fall
They stand in the way of love
And we will smoke them all…
One day all seven will die
As she sang, the two incarnations of Prince joined in. Somehow, their collective voices instantly resurrected the other five Princes, and they all joined too.
When the song was over, the seven incarnations of Prince all floated down and joined hands in front of Aech. She looked surprised. And elated.