Loki’s smile widened, like a thin blade stretching across his face. His voice uncoiled through the room like biting silk.
“…by forming couples!”
A silent flash passed over the crowd. Each teenager felt their feet begin to move without consent, their bodies pulled like marionettes on invisible strings. The boys approached the girls—some with growing discomfort, others with the awkward excitement of a school dance. Faces clashed in surprise; there wasn’t one too many, nor one too few. Each pairing seemed drawn from a cruel and perfect design, a twisted mirror of symmetry. A boy in an oversized suit met a goth girl in a corset laced too tightly. A jock and a bookworm. A shy redhead and a taller girl with the bearing of a dominatrix. All frozen, hand to hand.
Loki spun on himself, his invisible cape floating behind him like a theatrical shadow.
“It’s… touching, truly. A collection of future heartbreaks and repressed regrets.” He yawned without bothering to hide it. “But this party… it’s about as entertaining as tea with old spinsters on a rainy day. You deserve more. You deserve heat. Instinct.”
His fingers rose slowly, and a strange warmth began to seep through the air, as if the room itself had started to breathe—panting.
“So. Let’s change that.”
An unspoken word escaped his lips. The floor seemed to bend beneath their feet, the music twisted, slowed, groaned—as if the technology itself hesitated to go on. He spread his arms.
“I’m going to turn each and every one of you into something… more authentic. Closer to what you’re hiding beneath your pretty human masks. Anthropomorphs. In pairs. One by one.”
The shockwave hit—first disbelief, then fear. Screams broke out. Heels clattered across the floor. A girl ran for the emergency door, a boy stumbled after her.
But Loki snapped his fingers. Clang. The doors locked with a single sound—harmonic, terrifying. The entire room seemed to tighten around them.
“Now, now…” he said, his voice sweet as poisoned honey. “Don’t panic. In a few moments, you’ll adore me. And adore yourselves.”
He stepped down from the stage, walking slowly between the paired youths, examining each like ripened fruit on the verge of being bitten. Then he returned to the stage, picked up the microphone without thought.
“Well then. Do we have… any volunteers?”
The silence was thick, heavy with the scent of adrenaline, sudden sweat, animal fear. Some averted their eyes. Others dared look at him, not knowing whether to beg to be spared—or to be chosen.
Loki grinned with all his teeth.
“Very well.”
He raised his hand, made a slow circular gesture.
“The first couple to come forward will be…”