FSE

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A Real Festival Celebration

Chapter 4

For Mizzukat

By Draconicon

"...is the fourth day...isolation...cut off...rescue..."

Gus leaned against his hand as the hotel staff slapped the radio, percussive maintenance being the last - and somehow most reliable - method that they had to try and get anything off the airwaves with it. The lion hadn't bothered putting on any clothes; most of the hotel was slowly turning to barbarism, and even those that hadn't been completely knocked out by his music had started dressing up less and less. The staff hadn't bothered to put on pants that day, and the sight of their asses half-hanging out of their underwear was not a bad view as they tried to get something from the outside world.

He chuckled as he watched one rat fiddle with the antennae. The fact that they were so desperate as to haul one of the oldest pieces out said it all. Even though they'd have no way in hell to talk back, they wanted to know what people were saying.

And it worked, to his surprise. Gus's ears flicked back as he sat up a little straighter, listening to the news coming through.

"Sadly, despite several attempts by the billionaire parents of some of the attendees, no rescue has been possible. The rain and storms off the coast have prevented any aircraft from pushing through toward the island, with helicopters blown off-course and several pilots hospitalized due to accidents in the air. While the weather reports state that the storm should clear in the next three days, we will continue to monitor the situation and report if there is any change."

Three more days, then. Three more days before he'd have to start wrapping things up and making sure that nobody started spilling the beans on what he could do. That was more than enough time, as far as Gus was concerned.

And it's not like some of them are going to talk, anyway, he thought, picking up his mug of coffee. Raul's getting too much out of it, Xander's not even got a clue, and most of the other rich guys and their bodyguards are more concerned about shoving it under the rug to try and come after me. Just a matter of keeping it that way.

A bit of a pity that it was all coming to an end, but he supposed that was just the way that it had to go. As much as he enjoyed all the pleasure that came from a better, more isolated 'hunting ground' for partners, it was something that couldn't last. At least he'd finally had the chance to go at it as hard as he wanted, though, which was better than could be said for -

"You're him, right?"

Gus looked up from his coffee, turning on his barstool. The lobby was still fairly active, despite the general malaise that had fallen over the hotel, but the speaker was someone new. The near-naked lion hadn't seen this shark before. He looked more clear-headed than most of them, as if he hadn't been in and out of trance for the last few days.

Hmmm...

Leaning back against the bar, Gus crossed his legs at his ankles. No guitar with him this time - he'd left it up with Raul and Xander - but he didn't think he needed it. Not this time. He smiled as he looked the slender man up and down, taking in the gray skin, the lighter flesh along his chin and down the front of his neck, and the fancy suit. There was some money there, and a fair bit of it, at that.

"Heh, probably," Gus said. "I mean, I have no idea who 'him' is, but I'm guessing that you're looking for the person causing all the orgies."

"That's correct."

"Looking for some fun yourself, or something else on your mind?"

"Is this seat taken?"

The shark gestured at the barstool at the lion's right, and Gus shrugged. As the suited man sat down beside him, Gus spun back around, shifting his position so that his balls hung slightly off the edge of his seat. The contrast between him and the shark - naked and formally dressed, perverted and rather chaste, a bit rough and a bit not - was all the more enticing, and he chuckled as he leaned against the bar.

"So, whatcha looking for me for?" Gus asked.

"I have a proposal."

"Heh, how sweet; you're looking to get married?" he teased.

"What?! No, I - you -"

Gus chuckled, shaking his head as he pushed the mug away. One of the half-dressed employees picked it up and walked off with it as he spun the stool around. The shark looked flustered, but more than that, he looked irritated. Not someone that was down here for a simple talk, then; he had something that he wanted.

"I'm fucking with you. What's on your mind?"

"...Do you do custom work?"

"Depends. Do you mean writing custom songs, or are you talking something like a musical hit job?"

"..."

"Heh, the second one, then."

He shook his head, not entirely surprised that the topic had finally come up. After all, it was something that had happened once or twice with the more clear-headed victims to the music. They started realizing what the guitar could do, and then they started thinking about what might happen if they were the ones calling the shots. What would happen if they started paying Gus to play songs for an audience of their choosing?

Not something that he was that keen on, really. He liked having his own story, his own ballad to play, and going around doing custom jobs for people like that usually meant playing into the narrative of authority.

"Not my thing," Gus said.

"But you're already controlling everyone here. Or near enough," the shark said. "And you don't know what I have to offer you."

"I'm pretty sure it's money."

"And connections. After all, you've been on the road, bumming it from place to place, selling CDs out of the back of a car."

The lion narrowed his eyes at the shark. Not entirely wrong, though it was something that he hadn't been thinking about. Bumming it from place to place was accurate, as he had been hitchhiking every which way just to get from one venue to another. Some CD sales, too, though they were seldom anything more than pocket money compared to anything else that he did. He sat up a little taller on his chair, looking away.

"Someone's been doing their homework."

"I always do before talking to a potential client. Or a potential new partner," the shark said. "The name's Kyle. I thought that perhaps we could talk through some business ideas. Something that might work out between us, for your personal enrichment."

"Let me guess. You want me to help you get some 'exposure' from the other assholes that are holed up in the hotel," Gus said, chuckling under his breath. "Make them do some shit that would get them humiliated in the wider world, let you get some evidence of it. We leave, you pay me for the work, and then, you have me on call for anything else that you need doing."

"Something like that, though I had a few other ideas."

"Like?"

"Like convincing them to sign a few contracts on behalf of their families while they're here...having a few meetings with their families to cause some disruption, perhaps creating a few cheating scandals...convincing some very straight men to be gay for a night, and let others find out..."

Kyle looked him in the eye, and the shark wore a smile suitably toothy for his species. There was nothing but the sheer hunger that he'd seen in a dozen slimy businessmen before, and he knew for a fact that if he agreed, he'd end up on the side of the road someday, buried in a shallow ditch, waiting for someone to stumble across the body. The shark was as bloodthirsty as every stereotype about his species, and nobody - not even Gus - would say that it was a good idea to trust him.

"And I bet that you could come up with some really creative ways to make that happen," Kyle said, chuckling. "I'm not like some of the puritans that you're probably used to dealing with. If you want to fuck with them, go ahead. I doubt that there's going to be anyone that'd stop you. As long as I get the things that I need out of it -"

"You don't care how I have fun so long as you get your cash."

"I doubt that you'd be doing anything I wouldn't want to see. But the cash - and the other little shifts - are the important thing. What do you think? You'd have better access to people in high society than you'd ever get on your own."

"Heh, and you'd have a secret weapon that would let you become little Mr. King of the Hill wherever you went." Gus shook his head. "Thanks, but no thanks. I ain't in the market to play kingmaker."

"...Perhaps you're not thinking clearly. You'll have the chance to make more money than you've made in your entire life. My father will listen to me when I come back with you in tow, and even if he doesn't, you can make him listen. There's nothing that would be out of reach for the pair of us. Doesn't that appeal to you?"

"Oh, it appeals more than you know, but I also know how this works. You'll use me for as long as you can, get everything you want, and then I'm inconvenient. I'm someone that's sucking up resources, someone that has part of the share that you want. And as soon as that happens, I'm good as gone. I've seen this game played a hundred times. I'm not becoming one of the casualties of it."

"Are you saying that you don't trust me?"

"Heh, I don't trust anyone that makes more than $80k a year. When you start climbing, you start looking down. And the minute you start looking down, you start thinking about how much better you are than anyone else below you. Ain't everyone - I've seen a few that have a decent heart and try and reach down to help others - but it's enough. And you're way, way higher up than that."

"...I see."

Kyle looked away. Gus could feel the little strain in his chest, the urge to say yes and get some of that big-time money, but it was a little thing and easily quelled. The one time that he'd listened to that, it had been way back when he'd first gotten the guitar and he'd thought that he'd found a way to the big time. The whole thing had come crashing down as soon as his 'partner' found out that the guitar had a bit of magic to it and that was the whole reason it worked. The fight between them had been...intense, to say the least, and Gus had barely gotten out of it in one piece. The fact that he still had the guitar was something of a miracle.

Thankfully, the shark was still treating him like he was the magic here rather than the instrument, which meant that he was probably still in the clear. Probably.

Gus waved for another cup, but while the staff were putting it together, Kyle snapped his fingers. A pair of tigers stepped out of the background and grabbed the lion by the shoulders, holding him tight.

"What the -"

"I'm not like the other idiots that came here to party. I don't have that easy trust that things are just going to work out. Like you, there are people that will do something stupid. You turn down the best offer that you'd ever get, and they might start talking about the things that they see happening here.

"You see, I don't want to risk someone running to the other rich families and telling them that I have ideas. Or worse, running to my father," Kyle said as the tigers lifted Gus off the stool. "And that means that I have to wrap up loose ends so that they can't come whipping back around to strangle me. You understand."

"I understand that I was right about you being a fucking bastard!"

"Heh, that too."

With a wave of his hand, the shark sent them on their way, and the tigers marched him away. Gus's toes barely touched the floor as he wrenched his shoulders this way and that, trying to get free of the taller, thicker-shouldered felines, but they were the real deal. They were strong, they were trained in how to handle people, and they were very focused. One glance over his shoulder told him that while they weren't zonked out, they were married to their purpose, and that purpose was doing whatever Toothy McMoneybags told them to do.

Fuck, this is a problem...

There were a hundred ways to deal with a snitch on an island. They could throw him off the cliffs and leave him to drown, or just take him 'round the back and inject him with enough drugs to make him OD on the spot. If they weren't picky about it, they could just break his neck and throw him into the water to be found at a later date, if he wasn't eaten in the process by some aquatic predator.

Fuck...fuck, fuck, fuck...

The worst part of it all was that he had thought he'd been smart. Turn down the offer, but what the hell happens when you tell the devil to fuck off? Ain't like the devil had to listen to you. And the devil didn't like to be known, so -

This ain't helping!

"Hey, you, uh, don't suppose you're going to take it easy for some favors?" Gus asked.

There was no answer. The tigers just kept marching him across the lobby toward the front door without a word.

"Well, can't say that I didn't try..."

Gus shook his head and breathed in deep. Other lions might have roared, might have fought, might have twisted themselves up into a whirlwind of fur and fury, but that wasn't him.

"HELP!"

He screamed at the top of his lungs, flailing his head side to side as his voice echoed across the lobby. Some of the staff jumped, and some of the attendees turned to stare, but even those that started in his direction stopped almost instantly.

"HELP! HELP!" Gus screamed.

Any thought of looking pathetic was right out the window. Didn't matter if he wasn't some cool lion that was able to pull some trick that'd get him free; all that mattered was getting loose of the tigers before they found a way to off him. That was the only thing that mattered, and if it meant that he embarrassed himself, he'd take it.

"SOMEONE HELP ME!"

The staff were damn near useless, their eyes anywhere but on him. The manager walked over to Kyle, only for a bundle of cash to be shoved in the rodent's hands and for him to walk off with his face down. No help there. They were almost at the front door, and Gus threw his head back with one final roar.

"FUCKING HELP ME!"

CRACK!

For a second, Gus thought that someone had pulled the trigger of a gun. He gasped, his eyes wide -

But no. The sound had been someone's fist hitting one of the tigers across the face, and a secondary thud was the sound of said feline hitting the ground. Gus gasped for breath as one arm was freed, and he flailed it around.

The other tiger was too surprised to stop the claws across his face, but before he could react, Gus's rescuer brought his fist around again. Another resounding crack brought the taller feline to the ground, joining his friend in an abrupt nap.

The lion turned, panting, and smiled as soon as he saw who'd come to his rescue. It was Raul, and the stallion grunted, rubbing his fist with his free hand.

"Heh...looks like you didn't leave those guns in the military when you retired," Gus said.

"Guess not. Looks like some of that training stays with you." Raul chuckled, wringing out his hand. "Fuck, I forgot how much it hurts when you hit someone like that. Fuck...fuck..."

In other words, don't count on that again.

The lobby was quiet as all eyes rested on them. Kyle glared at him from the bar, the shark slowly getting to his feet and gathering the rest of his bully-boys - three of them - to his side. They made their way to the elevators on the far side of the lobby, fed by generators outside, but Kyle kept his eyes on Gus the whole time. The lion returned the favor, not looking away until the elevator door closed.

"Is the hotel room still okay?" Gus asked.

"I think so, yeah. Xander's still up there, and I told him to keep the door blocked."

"Let's get back there. Now."

"Yeah...yeah, I think that's a good idea."

#

Once they were ensconced in the room and had the door blocked as best they could - Raul had pulled some of the bedframe from the second mattress apart and used them as boards across the doorframe - Gus settled in and asked Xander if the antelope knew anything about Kyle. Once he'd given the influencer enough to work with, Xander's expression told him that they were in for it.

"Hoo, boy. You don't piss off the small fries, do you?"

"Ain't worth it," Gus admitted, shaking his head. "So, who is he?"

"His dad's a senator, but one of those that's got a lot of connections with big business. Oil and manufacturing, mostly, with a little bit of coal and some of the military contractors. He got in big, got rich, and then started running for other sorts of power. Getting richer all the way, from what I heard."

"So, in other words...he's basically got unlimited money."

"Yep."

Which meant that he had a 'voice' about as powerful as Gus's guitar was, at least in terms of getting people willing to do something. Put enough zeroes at the end of an offer, and a preacher would kill a kid. Or worse. The lion rubbed his forehead, holding out his hand for his guitar. As it floated to his fingers, he laid it over his lap, strumming his fingers across the string in nervous motions.

"Okay, so...we've got a rich kid pissed at us, and he's smart enough and rich enough to know that he's got options here," Gus said, tapping his fingers against the guitar. "And knowing him, he's managed to avoid getting zonked out from all the other concerts that I've been giving, so he knows enough to not listen to me if I'm singing."

"Which means that he's probably looking at keeping his men from listening to you, too," Raul said. "If I was the one calling the shots, I'd be stuffing earplugs in every one of those tigers of his."

"Fuck, that'd explain a lot..."

Gus rubbed his forehead, trying to think through the problem. They had three days, three days in which Kyle was going to be doing his absolute best to fuck him up. If they were able to outlast the other man, then there might be more sweeteners, money to keep him quiet until more professionals could be hired off-island to off him. That'd be a different sort of chase, though, one that would favor him; he'd have room to move, and more than that, he'd be able to go from place to place, gathering some help and -

But that'd mean that he'd have to survive the next three days first, and considering that here were some really rich, really stupid people on the island, that meant that common sense was probably right out the window. Even if most of the bodyguards didn't carry a gun, he would be amazed if there wasn't some sort of security armory in the hotel for the staff, or some idiot that hadn't brought a trophy weapon with them.

And in terms of what the three of them had?

Gus had the guitar, but if the guards and Kyle knew how that worked, then that meant it'd be limited, at best. He could play loud, maybe knock some of them off-balance, but controlling them would be impossible until the ear plugs were out. Not great, really, particularly with the other side having greater numbers.

Raul had that military training of his, and clearly the older man still knew how to use it. That said, he was already nursing his hand from the brief fight down in the lobby, and he was in his fifties. He'd put the stallion in a one-on-one fight with a lot of people, but stamina wouldn't be his friend. Experience, power, but not stamina.

And then there was Xander Q. The influencer had money, clearly, but he wasn't going to be able to match what Kyle had. Nobody here had that kind of cash and influence, or the promise for that much more. Maybe he could make offers of 'exposure', but that was as far as his resources went.

Fuck...

In the space of an hour, Gus had gone from feeling like the king of the hotel to being the prey of some rich fuck. He hadn't thought that was possible, but he supposed it went to show that there were ways for anything to go tits up. The lion rolled the guitar around on his lap, resting it against his chest as he leaned over it.

"What are we going to do?" Raul asked.

"Do we have to do anything?" Xander asked. "What's he want, anyway?"

"He wants me to fuck with people."

"What's wrong with that?"

"Nothing, if we're all having fun," Gus said, shaking his head. "But the way that he wants to set himself up as a little king, and bring everyone else down? And keep everyone that's already down right where they are? Fuck that."

He squeezed tighter around the guitar. He had his fun - oh, he had a ton of fun - fucking with people. Most of the time, he didn't care about what sort of consequences they faced at the end of their little engagement, but this time? Oh, this time he was pissed. Some rich asshole had decided to try and play a game, say that they were the same, that this was just -

Oh, Gus wasn't going to take it lying down. He was going to -

Crack.

All three of them looked up as the door bent inward. Raul shook his head.

"Looks like someone stupid enough to try and beat the door down instead of opening it," the stallion said. "Good for us. Gives us time."

"Time for what?" Xander asked.

"Getting the hell out of here," Gus said, getting to his feet. "Window?"

"Checking."

The aged stallion jogged over to it while the thugs at the door continued hammering away. Despite the fact that hotel doors were only meant to open outward - which was why the bars on the door were meant to serve as barriers of entry, not a means of keeping the door supported - the wooden board was slowly bending. Cracks were popping at the door frame, and he doubted that they had a very long time before the door itself gave way.

"Raul?"

"Window's clear. Nobody's outside yet."

"Alright, Xander. You first," Gus said, waving at the window.

"...You know, this is going to be a hell of a story. If I live through it."

"If we live through it, I'm writing you a kick-ass soundtrack for it."

"I'll hold you to that, man. Yo, Raul, how do I do this?"

As the stallion helped the antelope climb out the window, pointing where to get hand and hoof-holds on the way down, Gus faced the door. He strummed his fingers up and down along the strings of the guitar, thinking of how he could do this. One good strum would have broken down the minds of most people, but with earplugs, that plan was out the window. Improvised lyrics might slow them down, but not stop them. He groaned.

If Greta were here, this would be so much easier...

But lacking that reality-warping power that came with both guitars being played in the same space, he'd have to do something else. He looked around, trying to come up with a plan -

Then one hit him. He grinned.

"Cover your ears!" he shouted over his shoulder.

BWHOOOOOOOOM!

The loud chord wailed from the guitar, but it didn't stop there. He rattled it, swinging it up and down as a wailing cry came from his throat. Swing it up, down, up, down - there. The resonance, just enough for the echo to push through the walls rather than rebounding off them. He keyed himself to it and kept singing.

"_Ain't a good time when the rich come to play

Flashing the cash, and clutching their suits

So fuck 'em all, it's our time, our day

Fuck their lies, fuck up the suits!_ "

It was a shitty fucking lyric, and he knew it, but the point wasn't to get something brilliant to paper. The point was to get people riled up, to get them angry. They wouldn't even realize it at first, but -

He sang it again. And again. And again. Xander was gone, out the window, and Raul was shouting at him to follow, but Gus kept hitting the strings and singing the same verse. The hotel door was nearly battered down, the gaps too big for him to miss anymore. He could see tigers and bulls on the other side, big species meant to make a point, but he kept singing -

"Hey! Someone shut that - fucking suits!"

Gus barely kept the laughter in long enough to run to the window. One, three, seven voices outside the hallway started screaming about the 'suits,' and the door stopped cracking as the bodyguards had to deal with a hallway filled with pissed-off normal people. Gus threw himself out the window, barely holding onto the guitar with one hand and the nearby drain-pipe with the other. He was laughing so hard that he almost lost his grip, giddy with success.

"What the hell did you just do?" Raul asked as they climbed down.

"I started a class war."

"...You're scary, you know that?"

"Tell that to Kyle. Maybe he'll piss off."

Doubtful; if anything, this would only make Kyle that much more convinced that he needed to either kill Gus or get him on his side. Either way, this wasn't going to end from this little confrontation. Down, down, down they went, and the three friends darted out of sight, around the front of the hotel to some of the surviving greenery off to the side. They huddled down, Raul barely able to fit beneath the branches, and waited.

They didn't have to wait long. Two tigers and another bull stepped out of the hotel, sweeping the area with sunglass-covered eyes. Gus held his breath, gripping the guitar all the tighter. If they were spotted...

But they weren't. The thugs went back inside, though not far. He imagined that they were waiting for him and his friends to come back, waiting to jump them and take them down.

"Well, this just made the next three days a lot more interesting," Gus muttered, sitting down. "And a lot more awkward, too."

"You're telling me. I was looking forward to another good night in bed, not roughing it," Raul muttered.

"Roughing it? What, like camping?" Xander stuck out his tongue. "Ugh. That does not sound appealing."

"Consider it part of your story," Gus said, waving his hand dismissively. "For now, we got bigger problems."

Such as what the hell they were going to do with Kyle having this much power. It was one thing to have some rich bully-boy getting a preferential seat at the bar, and even the sudden eviction from the lobby made some kind of sense. Someone getting this sort of reach, however, to just invade someone's room with a definite malicious intent...

Looks like we're going from anarchy to a dictator in the making, heh. And I get to be the hero of my own story, if I play my cards right.

"What do we do?" Raul asked.

"For now...Giltadoa," Gus said. "I can work with him, I think."

"Oh, and I can pay him and try him out. Never got the chance to before," Xander said.

"We'll talk about that when we get there."

But Giltadoa was only a stop-gap. The hybrid dealer was a businessman at heart, so while he'd follow the money at first, the moment that he got a better offer, they'd be at the mercy of the shark again. He'd give them shelter for as long as they could keep paying for a session, though; he would follow his own rules that far.

But after...

Well, that was the question, wasn't it? Three days to hide out and make it work, or three days in which to come up with a plan that would get Kyle off their backs. Gus could probably disappear into the crowds, make a new life somewhere else, keep moving from place to place with his music. He doubted that Kyle could just make Xander disappear, either, with all the people that knew about him and where he'd gone. But Raul...

He looked at the stallion again. The older man was a good fighter, but his best days were clearly behind him. Whatever fight he had in him was a common man's fury, nothing that would stand up to the assholes that had all the real power in the world. He'd be swarmed under, humiliated, and possibly completely disappeared in just a week, if that.

Looks like I can't just wait it out...

And at this point, it was almost personal. He wanted to take Kyle down because Kyle had made the dumb-ass assumption that they were anything like the same. For all that he had done what he wanted for the past four days, for all that he had played them into slutty situations and used them, it was all temporary. He'd never pushed them so far down with his guitar that they wouldn't be able to come back up. The fact that this fucker thought that he'd be interested in not only screwing people over once, but in perpetuity, rankled.

"I'm going to fuck up this man's whole career," Gus muttered.

"Yeah, um, I'm looking forward to you trying, but could we maybe get out of the open?" Xander asked, looking back at the hotel. "I don't see anyone yet, man, but this is Kyle we're talking about. Maybe, uh, maybe we find somewhere a little safer?"

"Yeah...yeah, sure. Raul?"

"I know what the RV looks like. Follow me."

They made their way through the bushes, two of them dressed, one of them very much not. Gus felt every branch, every leaf, every root against his body, and he was stiff as a board in minutes. He started thinking a few horny thoughts about what they might get up to when they got to Giltadoa's place, but every time that he started indulging them, a flash of anger came back and broke that up.

And that made it that much more personal. He'd finally turned the festival into something fun for himself, and now the damn shark had to come in and turn it into something serious. What a buzzkill. What a fucking asshole, coming in and ruining his vacation.

One more reason to fuck him up, I guess, he thought.

They left the greenery behind and arrived at the parking lot of RVs. Some of them had been moved, some of them shifted and damaged by the earthquake on the first day, but the slightly gilded one they were looking for was right where Gus had left it the day before. It was surrounded on three sides by other RVs, which would at least give them a clear view of anyone that was coming after them.

"So, who's going to knock?" Raul asked.

"I'll do it. I'm looking forward to this," Xander said, strutting right up to the door.

The End

Summary: Gus has been having fun, but it looks like someone else has finally taken notice of what he's able to do. Who knows where it's going to go from here?

Tags: M/solo, Nudity, Teasing, Tone Shift, Danger, Rich Asshole, Antagonist, Shark, Lion, Horse, Antelope, Mind Control, Music, Series, Gus,