Type: Original Kingshot-style short story Subject: Mira hears strange noises from Bob's Town, investigates, and walks in on Bob doing disco-era karaoke in his throne room -- with lasting consequences Created: 2026-09-23 Added to archive: 2026-09-24 Source: Original scenario requested by Roger, 2026-09-23. Not drawn from real chat. Tagged 1551 / RIP. The song is referenced by genre and performance only (no lyrics quoted).
Mira first heard it while she was sharpening her bear-rally spears, which is the only reason she thought it was a monster.
It came from the direction of Bob's Town, low and wobbly, then rising into something that should not exist in nature: a falsetto. It cracked, recovered, and cracked again. A cloud of startled birds fled the town walls.
"That's a wounded animal," Mira told her horse. The horse, to its credit, refused to go.
She went alone, weapon drawn. The gates hung open. The guards were gone, and so was the market. Every lantern had been swapped for a glittering mirrored sphere that spun on a rope somewhere above the courtyard. Colored light slid across the cobblestones in slow, deliberate, disco patterns.
The doors to the throne room stood ajar, and a fog machine (nobody knew where Bob had gotten a fog machine) rolled out around her boots.
She stepped inside.
Bob stood on the throne dais wearing a white polyester suit cut so wide at the collar that it looked like a pair of landing flaps. The shirt was open to the sternum. A gold medallion the size of a dinner plate hung from his neck. His trousers flared at the ankle, and his platform boots added a good four inches to a man who did not need them. One arm pointed at the ceiling in the pose everyone knows, one hip cocked to the side.
He held a microphone. It was clearly a ladle with a ribbon tied to it.
The court had been arranged in folding chairs. The advisors were there, along with the ministers and one very old scribe who had plainly been there for hours. All of them stared straight ahead with the glazed eyes of hostages. Someone had made a scoreboard. It read BOB: 10 / 10.
Bob saw her and did not stop. He escalated. He hit a note that made the chandelier hum, held it, and winked at her.
Mira's spear slid from her fingers and clattered on the marble.
He did the shoulder shimmy, the finger point, and a full spin that ended in a knee slide across the dais and into a candelabra. Wax flew. The scribe whimpered. Bob rose, unbothered, breathing hard, and gestured grandly for her to join the chorus.
"Come on, Mira!" he called between verses. "It's a duet!"
"It is not," said Mira, very quietly, "a duet."
She backed out of the room slowly, as you would from a bear. The fog followed her to the gate. Behind her, the song reached its final, endless falsetto, and Bob held that note until something in the castle cracked.
Later, back at camp, the others asked what she'd found. Mira stared into the fire. She said only:
"He had a medallion."
She has not eaten a bowl of chili since. Nobody knows why, and she will not say. But whenever anyone whistles near her, her left eye twitches, and she quietly begins to walk in the opposite direction.