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  1. “Hello, hello, hello!”
  2. Eight beings roused themselves from…well, they hadn’t been sleeping, actually. Perhaps they just roused themselves into awareness. Not that there was much to be aware of. The space around them appeared to be of pure blackness. There was not even a floor to stand on….though somehow, they stood. If they tried to move, then they would soon realize that they couldn’t, as though their limbs were too heavy to do anything, or as if they were caught on flypaper.
  3. “If you have tried to move and found you couldn’t,” the voice started again, cheerful as before, “There is no cause for alarm. Please do not panic. It’s only for my own convenience so you don’t all start scurrying around here.
  4. “But in any case, welcome! Welcome to my…most humble abode. No, no, no need to try to be polite, I can already see it in your eyes. A very lovely place, am I right? But you aren’t here for a social gathering in my home! Wanna know why you’re here? You lucky eight have been chosen from pretty much everybody in existence to participate in my battle to the death!”
  5. He paused for dramatic effect. It might have echoed if there was anything to echo off of.
  6. “And this is why you all can’t move now. I can just imagine you all either running about or trying to kill me at this point. That would really mess up the feng shui I got here. But yes, you’ve been all entered involuntarily to this little thing I’ve got going on called…mm, the Magnificent Onslaught, I suppose. It’s pretty self-explanatory. I send you guys somewhere, you kill somebody, I send you somewhere else, so on and so forth. The most interesting part’s the killing. Try to make it entertaining, m’kay? And I might have a few guests over too, so be sure not to embarrass me, hm?
  7. “Welp, here’s just about where I send you off right now, but I think you all should at least know who you’re fighting, right? Collateral damage’s fun and all, but still, best to go into a battle knowing your enemy.” A bright spotlight suddenly turned on, directing itself at one of the contestants. For a brief moment, part of a black shoe could be seen at the edge of the light, but the mysterious figure jerked it out again.
  8. “So here’s the first contestant,” the voice said casually, not giving away any sort of flustered tone. “This thing right here before you is called Mephitis.” The being featured under the spotlight was rather insubstantial. As in, it was only smoke. Purple smoke, to be exact. Not one part of it was moving. “Oh, I suppose that’s rude. In any case, as you can see, Mephitis is a poisonous cloud of smoke. But, well, he’s sentient. You may be able to notice that he does have a sort of shape. Very interesting, isn’t it? Make sure not to breathe him in, though. Not sure what the effects of his poison are, but it really can’t be great. That’s why it’s called poison.”
  9. The spotlight moved down the line, alighting on a being that was shaped mostly like a boy. His skin, however, seemed tough and leathery. His hands were clawed and webbed and it was probably safe to assume that his feet were the same. He had gills down his neck and sharp teeth protruded over his lip. He looked tense and seemed as if he wanted to run. “This boy here is known as Selachi Shortfin. As you could probably tell, he’s not just some ordinary guy. Actually, he’s part shark. See those teeth there? He’s got rows of ‘em. I have no idea how that all fits in his mouth. Or how he doesn’t constantly cut his lips. But there you have it. And of course, shark-boy is amphibious. I’m not entirely sure if you’ll be able to see this later on. Who knows!“ The voice then paused for a moment. “Honestly, he’s just a kid. But still, with those teeth and some strength and some mafia experience, I’m sure he’ll put up some sort of fight.”
  10. And the spotlight moved on. This time, it shone on a floating mirror. The mirror was quite ornate, made of silver and decorated with carved flowers, dragons, pearls, leaves, anything that just seemed to fit on a mirror and sometimes things that just didn’t. It was possible to maybe make out some sort of shimmering figure slightly above the mirror holding it up, but it was a little hard to make out. Though the mirror obviously was reflecting the light, nothing shone outside the spotlight. “This is…something that doesn’t have a name. I suppose you could call it Mirror. I dunno. She’s a mirror spirit and she likes floating around, maybe following some people, showing them stuff in her mirror…actually, she might know a lot. Some of you might have heard of Snow White? Think of her as a magic mirror. Maybe. I guess.”
  11. The spotlight shone on a sleek woman next. She would have looked normal if she weren’t made of metal. Still, the handiwork done on her was amazing. Had she some sort of skin, perhaps she would have looked eerily real. “I suppose robots don’t actually have genders, but for the sake of convenience, I’ll call her a her. Actually,” he said after a moment. “Clouds of gas don’t really have genders either. Hm. Actually, a lot of you don’t have genders.” There was a long pause as apparently the stranger contemplated the genderlessness of much of the unwilling contestants. “Right then. Well, this is a robot. Her name is Beta. Because that’s basically what she is. A pretty good beta, but still not exactly complete. She can do a lot of stuff. She has a lot of accessories. You’ll find out over the course of the battle, I suppose.”
  12. Moving on to the right. The light shone on…nothing. Until the floor beneath apparently floated up and turned slightly so all could see the apparent mess of color. “This guy…or girl...is, uh, Arthur. I think. So it’s a guy. Or at least used to be a guy. Right now, he’s the unfortunate remains of Arthur after a rather unlucky run-in with a witch. Basically, now he’s a chalk drawing. Although there might be some spray paint and stuff in him too. He’s limited to being two-dimensional, but I have a general knowledge of what he’s actually capable of. You’ll get to see that too, of course.”
  13. Not too many left. This one was 3-D and a giant lizard. He wore a snazzy white suit and his long tail curled up near his head. He might have been at a party because there in his hand was a small glass of, most likely, some sort of alcoholic drink. “This fellow is Vander Wells. He’s an international spy. But also a lizard. Honestly, I can’t think of too much to say about him. You know lizards…they climb walls. And eat bugs. And fight extremely eccentric supervillains sometimes. You know.”
  14. The second to last was a bird. It could have passed as a kiwi. If kiwis were seven feet tall and had sharp teeth. “This one…doesn’t have a name either. Birds don’t tend to fiddle around with things like individual names. Unlike lizards, of course. This one’s omnivorous and fairly heavy and strong. But, well, still a bird. It’s not very smart, if you don’t mind me being impolite. It’s driven by a bird brain. You know how small those are. They’re like, veeeeery tiny. Very.”
  15. And apparently he had nothing more to say of the bird because he moved on to the last contestant. The spotlight didn’t move with him, however. “I know you can’t see him, but there is someone there and his name is Mest Blanc. Or maybe her. Another one of those weird gender things. Though ‘Mest’ sounds like a guy name…maybe. But in any case, Mest is a shapeshifter. However, there’s a reason I’m not showing him and/or her to you and that is because schle involuntarily shapeshifts to whatever people see her-him as. If I showed you her-him now, then that figure will affect pretty much how you’ll all see him-her throughout the entire battle and we can’t have that. That’s oh-so boring. I’d rather see what your imaginations make up for him. Or her. You know, I’m not sure what happens when more than two people look at schlim. Something to find out later, I suppose. Should be interesting. Hopefully won’t result in a paradoxical explosion. That would be unfortunate for everybody involved.”
  16. The voice paused once again, as though lost in memories of paradoxical explosions and possibly flying organs. Then, suddenly, the mysterious figure snapped. All eight were aware of a strange feeling of sort of being there but vaguely going away without moving at all. “Ah, I’ve introduced you all to each other, but you don’t even know my name! How rude of me,” the being suddenly said, though his voice was steadily growing fainter. “Let’s see. Just call me…
  17. “The Gatherer.”
  18. It had been hard to hear, but somehow it echoed in everybody’s minds.
  19. -----------------------------
  20. When Mephistis felt ‘all there’ again, he noticed that the other contestants were nowhere in sight. He also noticed that he was inside a building. The walls may have been cold and indomitable during its heydays, but now, they were slightly crumbled and moldy. Something dripped from the ceiling, which was riddled with holes, and the floor was littered with half-buried bodies.
  21. The Gatherer’s voice echoed in his head, or at least what could be really called a ‘head.’ The poisonous cloud assumed that it was also being broadcasted in the other contestant’s minds. Mephistis only half listened. He floated around a bit, trying to see if he could somehow find some of the others to kill.
  22. “This place is an old military facility. It might have been called the best back in its time, but as you can see right now, it wasn’t. As far as I know, there was a war or something. There always is. These guys obviously lost. But their cool weapons and stuff are still functional. So go ahead and poke around. Might give some of you an edge. You’ll hear from me again when one of you is dead.”
  23. And with that, all was silent.
  24. Mephistis went around the corner in the corridor. There were only half-dead lights and a few corpses littering the place. He wafted down the other way and peeked around the corner. Nobody there too. Nobody living, in any case.
  25. He started drifting down the hall absent-mindedly, thinking about this situation he had ben suddenly thrown into. It honestly shouldn’t be too hard for him. In fact, it seemed almost too easy. After all, there was nothing that could hurt him. Who ever heard of someone punching air? However, he also had no other weapon than himself. It’s very hard to pick up weapons as a cloud of gas and this was very important because there were a couple of other people who he certainly wouldn’t be able to kill with his poison. The metal woman, for one thing. He was certain that metal couldn’t breathe and thus his poison was very much useless. The second would be the floating reflection ghost. That one didn’t even have a mouth.
  26. Speaking of which…
  27. Turning another corner, Mephistis found himself drifting right into the floating mirror. As he backed away in surprise, he noticed that he could now clearly see what seemed to be a little, white-haired girl clutching the mirror. Though her eyes were closed, her mouth was set in a blissful smile. She floated closer, as though wanting to show him something, but he snarled and backed away again.
  28. “You think taking the form of a child will make me sympathize with you? Ha!” And though he knew it wouldn’t be able to do much, Mephistis condensed slightly and slammed right into the mirror. It only pushed her back, but she got the message. Mephistis watched with some satisfaction as the spirit rushed down back where she came from.
  29. Still, that didn’t solve the problem about killing the unkillable. The other ones were solid. Maybe he could somehow get them to help. He wasn’t exactly the best at…teamwork…but well, it seemed there was no other way.
  30. He made a mental note to not automatically suffocate the next person he saw.
  31. -----------------------------------
  32. Vander Walls was just a tiiiiiny bit nervous. Maybe more than a bit.
  33. It’s just that, when someone plans to take you out of your own world and stick you in a battle to the death, Vander was the sort of spy that would like, you know, a friendly warning beforehand. His permission. A weapon or two would be nice. Maybe a signed promise that he wouldn’t actually die.
  34. And if that wasn’t enough, he just had to be in a place with all these…ugh…dead people.
  35. He dropped his alcoholic drink and the glass cracked on some rubble. There had been a nice cricket on a stick, but he didn’t have much of an appetite anymore. With some trouble, he tried to pick his way carefully over the rocks and bodies and things but then gave up and crawled on the walls. The walls were certainly damp and mossy, but there weren’t a lot of, well, obstructions. Every once in a while, though, his hand would go right through a particularly weak part and his tail would twitch nervously. By the time this was over, his suit would probably need a good scrubbing.
  36. Upon rounding a corner at one point, Vander was startled by…something. Whatever it was, it had apparently waited for him around the bend and decided to jump out with its arms raised going “Booga booga booga.”
  37. Vander almost launched himself to the other side of the hall. He had no idea what the thing looked like, but on first impression, he thought it quite large and hairy. Then he realized…’Booga booga booga?’ That seemed like something a lame college student would try to do to creep out his friends. In a spectacularly lame way.
  38. And yes, in front of him was another reptile. One of those frilled lizards, about college age, and suddenly looking very, very sheepish. She was neatly dressed in some sort of lazy Halloween costume and had glasses on. Very slowly, she folded up her frills.
  39. Vander rather doubted that there was another lizard running around here. The facility had so far only been populated by humans (all dead) and the new lizard was definitely not military-trained. So that just left the contestants he was supposed to fight. And the only one he could think of that this lizard could possibly be was that one that was never shown.
  40. …Mest was a girl’s name?
  41. Very quickly, Vander got into a fighting stance. “I warn you, I am highly trained in the arts of…uh…” The well-dressed lizard tried to think of some sort of exotic name that would sound vaguely like some sort of martial arts, but he had no need to. The “zombie” frilled lizard that was probably Mest raised her hands in defense and backed away.
  42. “No! No, no, no, I’m, I didn’t mean…I was only trying to find a way to look more threatening to people!”
  43. Vander didn’t relax. “So. You jumped out at me shouting ‘booga booga booga.’”
  44. If reptiles could flush, this one certainly would have. “It…was the first thing I thought of. I was hoping you’d…see me as some sort of monster or something…but now I can see how well that worked,” she muttered, picking at her fake-bloodied clothes. “I swear I wasn’t going to attack you. Just…scare you a little so…I might have a fighting chance…”
  45. The frilled lizard actually looked so pitiful that Vander had no choice but to lower his guard. “Well, uh. Sorry…? I guess? Um, look. It’s Mest, right? I wouldn’t worry about it. I don’t scare easily, you know. And, uh, you could probably startle someone else. But you know, I think you’re fine the way you are…no, not like that, but, uh, I can…sorta…help. Surviving. You know.”
  46. “So if I’m hearing you correctly, you’re saying that we’re teaming up so that we don’t die.”
  47. “Uh, yeah, something like that.” Vander held out a scaly hand. “A truce, you know?”
  48. Mest deliberated for a few moments before shaking the hand. “Sure. I can’t really do this on my own anyways. Where’re we going?”
  49. “Er,” Vander said, spinning around a little. “That way.” And they walked.
  50. “Why am I dressed as a zombie anyways?”
  51. “Uh. I could try changing it. You’re only that way ‘cause of me, right?”
  52. “No, no,” Mest sighed. “I’m pretty sure I’ll be shifting around a lot. Your perception of me will change anyways.”
  53. After a while, Vander started crawling on the walls again. Dead bodies were just that icky.
  54. “By the way, what does happen when more than one people stare at you?”
  55. Mest sighed again as she patted her frills as though she had never seen them before. Which she probably had. “A whole lot of headaches,” she said and didn’t bother continuing on.
  56. “Uh, right.” Vander wondered if it would be too impolite to pursue the subject but ultimately decided to drop it. “Um. That Gatherer guy mentioned weapons. So…let’s find some…? I guess?”
  57. “Yeah, that sounds great.”
  58. -----------------------------------------------
  59. Somewhere in a corner of the military base, amongst drippy ceilings and deader than dead bodies, a robot stood.
  60. Beta hadn’t moved at all for a while. For the past few minutes, she had simply stood, as though she were taking everything in. Her new location, her new mission, her new opponents…
  61. She clicked and whirred as she contemplated the threat levels of each being she was ordered to fight. The one known as Mephistis and the ones with no names obviously could do her no harm and thus were rather low on the list. After all, she had been fitted with much technology. Most of it experimental, to be honest, and some of it completely useless for battle (she hadn’t exactly been made to fight seven other strange beings), but still. She was sure that she could handle giant birds.
  62. The only one that troubled her, the one that she was thinking about most of all, was the one that she couldn’t put a face to. Mest Blanc.
  63. The problem with robots was that they had no imagination. They usually just saw things as they were. Even though she was not at all bothered that there could be a being made of pure poison and a ghostly mirror and could possibly manage to think up an example of some other bizarre specimen (possibly a combination of every other contestant) that could represent the mystery person, her electronic mind was just not built to make up something.
  64. Mest was filed as the highest threat.
  65. Well, except for one.
  66. Beta only took orders from a small group of people and they were the ones who had been kind enough to assemble her and train her and reassemble her whenever she fell apart. The Gatherer may have trapped her, he may be forcing her to play by his rules…but that was only for now. Somehow, Beta would have to find a way to get to the Gatherer and force him to return home. If she was kept away from her home for too long, who knows what might happen.
  67. The Gatherer had said that he would return once they killed someone. It was pretty obvious what to do then.
  68. Intent on getting this whole ordeal done with as quickly as possible, Beta set off.
  69. -------------------------------------------------------------
  70. “Damn! Dammit!”
  71. Selachi punched a nearby wall. It might have hurt, but his skin proved thick enough for his hand to go unharmed. Still agitated, the boy started nervously shuffling around. Thinking over everything that had been sad again, he almost cursed again and punched something but stopped himself and instead ran a hand through his hair. As he thought of what to do next, he pulled his sweatshirt hood on, decided he didn’t want it on in the first place and so pulled it off again. He tapped his foot. His leg jittered. He paced around a bit and ran his head through his hair again. Seriously. How the hell was he supposed to handle this.
  72. The boy almost thought back to his father, but he snorted and waved him away from his mind. Even if he was pretty ruthless, he probably couldn’t do anything without his groupies he so loved to hide behind. The only thing useful that he ever got from his old man was firearm training. And unfortunately, he had no firearms right now. Selachi was starting to come to the unfortunate but logical conclusion that he was going to die here.
  73. Wait. Groupies.
  74. If he wanted to live, he needed friends. And the only friends he could choose from were the very ones who he had to kill to win this thing. So maybe there’ll be some betrayal involved, but, such was life. Grab some friends who were possibly easy to kill, kill the harder ones, then kill the easy ones. Easy.
  75. Well, maybe not. It was still going to be hard. But he was definitely not going to die here and now at least.
  76. Though Selachi calmed down a little, he still moved about nervously. It wasn’t like he could tell who would be willing to help him out. And there was also the chance they would backstab him first. You know what he needed? He needed a drink.
  77. He was so distracted by these worries that he almost didn’t notice an open spike trap right in front of him. He almost stepped right into it until he noticed a skeleton impaled right on a spike at the bottom.
  78. With a yelp, he leapt backwards, dark eyes widening. Somehow, he managed not to bite his tongue. He almost turned to go back the way he had come. But, as he continued to stare at the pit, he couldn’t help but notice something…strange. The pit seemed a little…stretched? And, turning his head slightly, he could definitely see…lumps? Weird curves?
  79. But when he blinked, the pit seemed normal again.
  80. Selachi approached carefully once more. And now that he was thinking about it, the pit itself didn’t make sense. What sort of military base would have a pit trap? That seemed rather medieval. And why would there be a skeleton inside if all the other corpses he had seen were still busy decomposing?
  81. Right at the edge, he carefully dangled one foot over the pit and slowly set it down.
  82. It landed on the floor.
  83. Surprised, Selachi couldn’t help but test his eyes by scuffing his foot against the pit/floor, which as a result, smeared the chalk. The whole pit wavered and withdrew in a whirl of color to the other side of the hall, revealing the real hallway. It uncovered the rubble and corpses that it had somehow managed to hide and shivered in the far corner. Selachi was even more surprised and it took him a while to even think of approaching the colorful entity.
  84. “Eh, hello?” he slurred, stepping over the corpses along the way. Wait, it was just a drawing…thing. How could it even hear? “Ach, schoot. How’ll I talchk t’ it…?”
  85. The colorful whirl seemed to collect itself and drew itself up on the wall, where it formed the words ‘I can hear and understand you.’
  86. “Oh. I guessh that machks things eashier…what th’ hell was that bahck there?”
  87. It took a while for it to write out its next message. ‘I was hoping to drive people away from me by making an illusion of danger so that they may search for another way down the hallway. But then you stepped on me.’
  88. “Ach. Uh. Shorry. I didn’ know…but, uh, that was a pretty ckhool thing you did.”
  89. ‘I’ve learned a lot about perspective in art. What is it you want.’
  90. Right to the point, huh. “Wha’? Oh. Was jus’ shaying shorry, man.”
  91. ‘Pardon me, but I can’t help but feel suspicious that someone who is supposedly supposed to kill me hasn’t done anything yet but jitter around in front of me like a nervous girl.’
  92. “Wha’?” And he found that yes, indeed, he was still having trouble keeping still as though he were some sort of addict suffering from withdrawal. “Oh. It annoys ya?”
  93. ‘I suppose not,’ it wrote after a while. ‘Your name is Selachi, right? Mine is Arthur.’
  94. “Ah. Alright. Art.”
  95. ‘Ha. Ha. Ha.’ It was a little hard to tell without a voice accompanying it, but Selachi assumed Arthur was being sarcastic.
  96. “Okhay, shorry. Sheriously, I…wanna…mind bein’ partnersh?”
  97. ‘’Partnersh?’’ Arthur wrote out and Selachi flushed again. This time he was very certain he was being made fun of. Before he could snap back a retort, Arthur quickly scribbled something else out. ‘It is an interesting idea, especially since I cannot actually kill anybody. Not directly, anyways. I think I’ll take you up on your offer.’
  98. Selachi gave off a toothy grin. “Great. Aweshome. Well. What shall we do?”
  99. -----------------------------------------------------
  100. “Well…I don’t think it’s going to kill us…”
  101. “Look, I just don’t like birds, okay? I’ve had very bad experiences with birds,” Vander snapped.
  102. “You’re a lizard. I think you’re just biased.”
  103. “In case you haven’t noticed, you’re a lizard too right now.”
  104. The large bird gazed at the blankly before flipping up a piece of rubble in the air expertly with its feet and gulping it down. It stared down at them for a long time in that odd, twitchy, bird way before deciding the two in front of it were no trouble and continued picking at the corpses on the floor. Vander shuddered. Disgusting.
  105. “I suppose then it’s really just a regular bird,” Mest inanely commented.
  106. “What?”
  107. “Well, normal animals tend to not make assumptions and judgments the way humans do. And lizards,” she added, glancing sideways at Vander.
  108. “Oh thank goodness. If it attacks us, at least I know it’s only a mindless animal.” Vander winced when Mest nudged him sharply in the side.
  109. “Oh come on. Don’t be like that. You’ll hurt his feelings.”
  110. “I’m pretty sure he could hurt more than my feelings,” Vander grumbled, rubbing his side.
  111. “C’mon,” Mest cooed, shuffling slowly towards the large bird. It stopped chewing on someone’s ribs to stare at her carefully. “It’s okay, we won’t hurt you….” She looked down at her clothes and then looked back up at Vander. “Why am I suddenly wearing hippie garb?”
  112. “Hm? Why should I know?” the lizard replied, trying to act nonchalant.
  113. “Because you’re the only one here right now and so you’re the only one who can possibly affect my appearance.”
  114. “Must be something subconscious,” Vander said blithely. “Because I have no idea why you’d be dressed as a hippie.”
  115. Mest glared at him for a little longer before turning back to the bird in time to quickly withdraw her hand as he snapped at it. “Hey!”
  116. Vander twitched his tail and grinned in an ‘I-told-you-so’ manner. At least until the bird blinked its beady eyes in a vaguely intelligent way and suddenly rushed off.
  117. “What do you think—“ Vander blinked. Mest looked quite different. First of all, she was now a short, dark-skinned human. Second, she was now a he. The spy noticed that her skin was still a bit scaly.
  118. “Hello,” a smooth voice rang out. For the second time that day, Vander leapt backwards and landed in a random fighting stance. He soon found that said fighting stance would be completely useless when he found himself face-to-sort-of-face with Mephistis.
  119. “I mean you no harm,” he called out after both Vander and Mest right as they turned the far corner. Mephistis muttered something low under his breath and quickly followed. “I’m not trying to kill you or anything,” he added as they turned another corner.
  120. Man, people could run fast when they wanted to.
  121. “Can you please at least listen to me?” Mephistis shouted in frustration, wishing for the simpler times when he could just smother everything in his noxious clouds.
  122. Following them again, he found that they had come across a dead-end in the form of a barricade of rubble and bodies. The two whipped around and pressed themselves against the wall. Mephistis noticed that one seemed to be shifting between a form of one of those humans he had used to see sprinting about in the woods and a giant lizard, much like the one to her/his side, before settling on a happy medium.
  123. “Now if you would just listen to me, I want to tell you that…I want to make an alliance.”
  124. This didn’t seem to calm down his prospective teammates. “Am I speaking another language or something?” Mephistis snapped, dropping any sort of cultured airs. “I don’t want to kill you! I want help!”
  125. “Sorry, but I can’t help but distrust poison,” Vander said, still hoping to somehow phase through the wall.
  126. “Is that it? The only reason you ran away from me is because of my composition?” Mephistis asked testily. “I have to say, that’s very presumptuous of you. Almost racist in fact. I’m even making sure you’re not breathing me in right now so you won’t die a painful death and you don’t trust me? I could probably be killing you right now, but I haven’t.”
  127. “That doesn’t even mean anything,” Vander argued, apparently overcoming his fear of breathing in poison as he squared his shoulders up and jabbed a finger in his direction. “It only means you have ulterior motives! I’ve seen this sort of thing before—“
  128. “No, no, he’s right. We’re being judgmental. Sorry,” Mest said towards Mephistis. Vander glared at her. Or him. Or whatever.
  129. “Are you seriously going to trust him? He practically screams supervillain!”
  130. “You’re supposed to be some sort of stereotypical superspy, right?” Mest sighed. “I’m not sure how it’s like in your line of work, but in real life, things are a lot more complex than just ‘good’ and ‘evil.’ You can’t just judge a guy just because he’s...purple. And made of poisonous gas. And sort of shaped like a fox. And a bit sinister-looking…” Mest paused, looking a little hesitant. “My point is…Mephistis here will be a great ally.” And here she smiled uneasily at the cloud of curling smoke. She wasn’t sure, but she thought Mephistis smiled back. It was hard to tell with smoke.
  131. “So, uh, Mephistis. We were just looking around for some weapons. Have you found anything?”
  132. The smoke twisted in the air for a moment. “I may have seen something while searching around, yes. Follow me.”
  133. And he seemed to flow down the hallway. Vander grumbled and started to run to catch up, wondering if it would be rude to cover his face when talking to Mephistis, when Mest suddenly drew him back a little and they slowed down so Mephistis rushed far ahead, but was never out of their sight.
  134. “I know what I said before, but I don’t trust him. I think we need to figure out a way to be able to kill him…especially if he suddenly turns on us.”
  135. Vander tried to hide his surprise at the sudden reveal of Mest’s scheming side and failed. “Well, um, okay, but I really don’t think you can ‘kill’ air.”
  136. Mest paused, starting to grow more lizard-like as Vander stared at her. “Right. We’ll think of something. Tell me if you have any ideas.” And they caught up with Mephistis, who was waiting for them at a door.
  137. “Fell behind?” he asked innocently.
  138. “Uh, yeah. Sorry,” Mest said.
  139. “Hm,” Mephistis grunted. Vander and Mest glanced at each other, both unsure what exactly it meant. Mephistis turned back to the door. “I’m guessing neither of you can squeeze under the door like I can. Wait out here for a moment. I’ll check to see if anybody else is inside it.”
  140. The smoky form flattened itself out and slipped between the cracks in the wall into the other room. After a moment, Mephistis pushed himself back out. “Well, I may not know exactly what’s in there, but I think you may like it.”
  141. Vander tried the door. “Locked,” he sighed.
  142. “By what?” Mest asked, peering over his shoulder. The lizard simply pointed to the keypad.
  143. The three of them stared at it for a while. “You’re a spy, right? Don’t you have some sort of weird gizmo to get past this? Some sort of lock-breaking method? Hell, even fingerprinting powder?”
  144. “I may not know much about fingerprints,” Vander said, “But judging by our surroundings, I’m pretty sure any fingerprints that had been on this keypad would have worn off long ago. But I do think I have a way of getting inside…”
  145. Mest looked excited. Up until the point Vander leaned over and pressed ‘1111.’
  146. “That’s it?” she said in disbelief as Vander went on to press ‘1112.’ “That’s your method?”
  147. “It’s not like I have some sort of lock-breaking computer hidden away in my suit,” Vander said as he doggedly went on to ‘1113.’
  148. Mephistis seemed equally as impatient. “I would rather get in through a faster method,” he hissed. “Why don’t one of you break down the door?”
  149. “I don’t think either of us are strong enough,” Vander pointed out. “Why don’t you find a way to open the door from inside?”
  150. “Some things I lack, if you haven’t noticed, are hands.”
  151. “Maybe the walls are weak enough,” Mest suddenly said and kicked the wall right beside the door. It gave off an unsatisfying ‘thunk’ noise, but Mest was heartened to see a dent and some cracks.
  152. “That will take very long too,” Vander said, pushing ‘1611.’
  153. “Not as long as your method. And maybe you don’t know this, but I really doubt that a code for an important room in a secure military base would have repeating numbers,” she added haughtily.
  154. Vander considered this briefly, then pressed ‘1234.’ To Mest’s chagrin, the door opened.
  155. “Right, let’s see what’s in here,” Vander said casually. Mest sulked behind him as they walked in.
  156. The room was dark. When Vander fumbled for a lightswitch, they found that the bulbs were dead. Still, they could see enough in the gloom to make out the large console by the wall. It housed several monitors and sported a variety of tantalizing buttons and levers to press and pull.
  157. “Interesting, isn’t it?” Mephistis said, sounding excited.
  158. “Hm, I guess. Probably some sort of security control system, maybe. I wouldn’t put it past this place to have automated turrets or something…” Hopping delicately over yet more decomposing soldiers, Vander approached the large console. “I doubt this thing still has power though.”
  159. “I’m not entirely sure what some of the words you just said meant,” Mephistis said, “But it all sounds like it would give us a huge advantage. Turn it on.”
  160. Vander looked down indecisively before just pressing a random button. To his surprise, most of the monitors flickered on. Unfortunately, they all said the same thing: KEYCARD REQUIRED.
  161. “One of these guys oughta have a keycard on them,” Mest said, kneeling down next to a particularly rotten one with no trouble. Vander backed away in disgust and was about to say something about hygiene when an explosion of feathers and ‘awks’ erupted from a dark corner and jumped at them, bristling and angry.
  162. Mephistis reacted almost immediately. He flew right at the aggravated bird and slammed into its breast but only managed to slow it down a little and ended up dispersed around instead. The bird whipped its long neck around alarmed, as the purple cloud swirled around its legs. It rolled around sluggishly before it finally managed to start drawing itself together again.
  163. “Wait,” Mest shouted out before Mephistis could do anything more drastic. “Don’t do anything to Awk!”
  164. Mephistis paused and he and Vander stared at Mest, who was now really cementing herself as female in their minds. “’Awk?’” they asked in unison.
  165. “Yeah, that’s the name I just gave him, okay? Look, I…I don’t want anybody to die right now. Besides, he’s got something in his mouth.” They looked back at the newly-christened Awk and saw that, yes, there seemed to be an entire arm hanging out of his beak, swinging around wildly as the bird twitched its head around anxiously. Clutched in the hand was something that looked quite similar to a keycard.
  166. Mest approached carefully, now wary of the bird’s sharp teeth, and reached out for the keycard. The bird seemed to growl a bit and she retreated before moving forward again, jumping up quickly and grabbing the card before Awk could retaliate.
  167. “There you go,” she said, handing the card over to Vander. She stared inquisitively when the lizard impulsively backed away and noticed that some flesh from the hand had stuck to the card. She wiped it off on her pants and pushed it into Vander’s hand. He shuddered a little, but turned around and swiped the card.
  168. Immediately, the monitors blinked and showed several shots of many parts of the building. “Alright then,” he said, shaking off unseen gunk on his hand and cracking his knuckles. “Let’ see what we can do here…”
  169. -----------------------------------------------
  170. Beta had barely come across anything at all. Everything here appeared to be either dead or just not interesting. All the locked doors were easily bypassed with a well-aimed kick but behind them, there was nothing. Useless weapons and more dead men and sometimes computers and a lack of contestants to kill.
  171. If machines could feel frustrated, this is how Beta would feel now. But obviously she was just an emotionless robot. The rather unnecessarily aggressive reaction when she saw the mirror round the corner towards her was just robot protocol. Firing her plasma gun before the mirror even noticed her was completely justified.
  172. Despite being shot at, the mirror stuck around, bobbing wildly and jerking around in a desperate way. If Beta had thought about it, she would have inferred that the mirror wanted to show her something. In fact, she could begin to see an image start to fade in on the face of the mirror. But then she fired again.
  173. The mirror, now clearly aware that staying any longer would just result in getting shot at, sped down the corridor surprisingly quickly.
  174. As Beta chased after it, she withdrew her gun back into her arm. Shooting while running would just alter her aim too much for her to be able to really hit it and was thus an inefficient use of her energy. Instead, she diverted much of her energy to her legs and took longer strides, almost looking like she was flying along the floor.
  175. The mirror took a sudden turn that she missed, but she didn’t bother turning back. Instead, she rammed straight into the wall in the direction the mirror had headed off to, burst through the room and jumped through the other side back into another hallway. She quickly noticed where the mirror was headed now and, without losing momentum, continued the chase, shaking off some dust as she did so.
  176. The chase went on in this manner. At one point, the mirror would make a seemingly random turn that Beta would miss and she would run right through the walls to try to catch up with it. At one point, Beta, perhaps a tad fed up, fired a few shots towards the mirror, but for one thing, most of the shots flew off-course, and for another, those shots that actually would have flown close to her target were dodged expertly, as though the mirror had eyes on the back of its…er, head.
  177. Beta chided herself for being so rash and focused on running again. One point, she had to catch up. That would be the time to attack.
  178. After a moment, she wondered if the mirror was actually going to a certain area, not just running randomly. That thought was cut short once she almost ran over the shark boy.
  179. “Holy crap,” he shouted and leapt backwards. Beta took out her gun. This noticeably agitated Selachi even more and he raised his webbed hands automatically, almost tripping over his feet in his haste to back away.
  180. “Hold still,” Beta intoned flatly as she charged up a shot. However, her keen eyes noticed the way that his eyes shifted. They glanced quickly up, right above her.
  181. She couldn’t help it. She looked up. And gasped and rolled to the side when she saw what seemed to be a large anvil about to fall on her. She jumped back up to her feet, expecting a thunderous crash and became confused when none came. While she was busy staring at the ceiling, Selachi, in a fit of either insanity or desperation, tackled her.
  182. It was a bit of a stupid idea, in hindsight, to tackle someone made completely of metal. His head had knocked right against her chest and he felt a sort of ringing throughout his skull and his skin felt sort of burned and generally he had felt better and then they landed and it got worse.
  183. Arthur stopped pretending to be a falling anvil and angrily scribbled on the ceiling, ‘You idiot that was a distraction so you could escape, not rush head-long into a crazy robot’ but it was no good. Nobody could take time in a fight to look up and read the message. Arthur possibly fumed for a bit. It was hard to tell.
  184. To nobody’s surprise, Beta easily threw off Selachi and, while he was busy groaning, walked right up to him and pushed the gun right up against his face.
  185. “Hold still,” she repeated coldly. “I must kill you so I can reach the Gatherer and destroy him.”
  186. “Woah, woah woah,” Selachi shouted from under the barrel of the gun. “You’re tryin’ t’ go againsht that guy?”
  187. Beta didn’t answer. Selachi took the continuing hum of the gun as a ‘yes.’
  188. “No, no, wait, look, you ckhan’t beat him alone,” he said almost instinctively. The gun was still threateningly close to his face but the robot was obviously now listening. “I mean, you’re a robot, right? If thish guy ckan grab all of ush an’ drop ush here without a shweat, thinkch of what he ckhould do to you if you jush’ rushed headlong at him.”
  189. Beta thought for a moment. “You should fix that lisp of yours,” she said, sounding vaguely nagging.
  190. “Yeah, yeah, shut up, it’sh the teeth,” Selachi muttered quickly. “But my point ish, you need a team, y’know? People t’ help.”
  191. Beta thought for another moment. “And you want to be on this team,” she said finally.
  192. “Yeah, yeah,” Selachi nodded eagerly.
  193. “And what would make you so useful that I should spare you?” The tone was so cold that it sent chills down Selachi’s spine.
  194. “Well, uh,” he stuttered, caught off guard. “Er, no offensh, but I’d thinchk you’d be…vulnerable in the water, right? Metal and shtuff. You’d shink, right?”
  195. “I can swim,” Beta said a tad forcefully. “I have been built with the capacity—“
  196. “Yeah, how ‘bout anti-rushting? You got that?” Selachi said with a grin, suddenly feeling a bit more confident.
  197. He assumed the following silence was a ‘no.’
  198. “Now, I’m handy to have ‘round.’Shpeshially if water happens t’ be around. Y’get what I mean? Sho…mind puttin’ down that gun…?”
  199. A few tense seconds later, Beta stood straight and withdrew her gun once more. With a wider grin, Selachi jumped back onto his feet.
  200. “Right,” he said cheerfully, clapping his leathery hands together. “I’ve got another guy here an’ I’m telling him to ckome out. Sho don’t go kchrazy on him—I shaid don’t,” he shouted in a panic when Beta leveled her gun at the quickly retreating Arthur.
  201. A hole in the wall and some hasty explanations later, and Beta withdrew her gun yet again. “Geez, I don’t even know if a gun ckhould kchill him. But sherioushly. Don’t go ‘round shooting anything that moves. If you want a good army t’ fight off ol’ Gatherer, you should probably ashk politely ‘fore doin’ anything…”
  202. Behind Beta, Selachi could see Arthur writing out another message. ‘I don’t like her I don’t find her reliable not to mention amazingly foolhardy to try to rebel against don’t pause so long idiot she’ll get suspi—“
  203. Beta suddenly whirled her head around to see what Selachi was looking at, but by then, Arthur had snapped back into looking like splattered paint a lazy artist just threw on. She turned back to Selachi, eyes burning, just as he finished, “…rash.”
  204. “Yes,” she agreed, though he suspected that she wasn’t exactly listening. “Root out all the useless components of the army and then rise up against the Gatherer.”
  205. “Hold up, I didn’t—“
  206. ‘She doesn’t listen either I don’t like that’ Beta, seeing Selachi looking over her shoulder, turned her head around again but caught nothing. Arthur was just a lazily rocking swirl of color.
  207. “By ‘root out,’” Selachi said carefully, trying not to stare at Arthur’s messages anymore. “You mean—“
  208. “Terminate so they don’t get in the way,” Beta said with finality. There was no arguing it.
  209. Selachi tried anyways. “But firsht we machk shure they kchan help ush,” he said, sounding both agitated and pushy.
  210. “The bird is useless to our goal,” the robot said, apparently ignoring the shark boy. “We should kill it.”
  211. “Uh,” Selachi said. “We shtill need t’ find the othersh an’—“
  212. But Beta was already starting off.
  213. It took a few seconds for either Arthur or Selachi to even realize she had left. A few more seconds to figure out which way she went.
  214. “Craaaaaaaap,” Selachi huffed out, running his hand over his hair as he started running in the direction that the robot probably ran.
  215. ‘Perhaps we should just leave her alone,’ Arthur suggested, keeping up easily with the boy. It was probably easy for him, having no legs or even a physical body. Selachi was already gasping. Damn his stupid lungs.
  216. “She…she hash…really powerful ally,” Selachi managed to wheeze out. “I th…I think…”
  217. And suddenly Beta was in front of him again. “You are too slow,” she said rather reproachfully. “Get on my back.”
  218. “W-wait.” Selachi leaned over on his knees and rested to catch his breath. He could tell that Beta thought this was a waste of time. Well, what did you expect from someone who didn’t have to breathe? “Alright, alright,” he said, and he let himself be carried. With a slightly bitter feeling, he realized he felt like a kid again up here.
  219. Beta hadn’t started running yet. “Will Arthur be able to keep up?” she asked.
  220. “Wha’? I dunno,” Selachi shrugged wearily, clinging tight to the robot’s neck.
  221. Arthur, in response, drew itself from the floor up onto Beta, changing his color so that he was the same silver as she. This seemed to disconcert her slightly, but she nodded. “I will have to use more energy to keep going as fast,” she said thoughtfully. “Hold on.”
  222. When Beta started running, Selachi realized just how unprepared for the speed he was when, for a few seconds, he forgot how to breathe. As his sweatshirt hood flapped in the breeze, he couldn’t help but think that he would rather the metal didn’t chaff his legs.
  223. --------------------------------------------------
  224. “This really does show everything inside this building?” Mephistis said rather excitedly, almost pressed up against the monitors.
  225. “Yup, I’d guess so,” Vander replied, scanning every monitor for any sign of movement. Once in a while, he’d look behind him nervously, only to see the bird staring warily back while Mest tried to…tame it or something. He almost thought to tell her that her cooing was extremely distracting but figured it would only beget angry replies. So he turned back to the monitors.
  226. “Aha,” he exclaimed, taping one of the screens. Mephistis lowered himself to see. Drifting slowly, almost sleepily down the hallway was the floating mirror.
  227. “Excellent,” the smog crowed. “So that means we can find it and attack it now!”
  228. Vander frowned at the eagerness of his new…ally. “No, wait. I mean, we don’t know where any of the others are. I still want to stay here…sort of as a vantage point. In any case, the mirror’s not particularly doing any harm, is it?”
  229. Mephistis was silent for a moment before saying slowly, “I feel almost embarrassed to admit it, but I ran into that mirror near the beginning of this round. It is pretty powerful. It almost was able to defeat me.”
  230. “Really?” Vander asked curiously, aware that this was possibly a chance to learn the poison cloud’s weakness. “How?”
  231. If a vaguely fox-shaped cloud of purple smoke could look solemn, then this was how Mephistis looked now. “I believe it was described as a ‘magic mirror.’ It did something. But, as it’s magic, I can’t fully understand or describe it.”
  232. Vander paused for a moment as he continued searching the screens while simultaneously tracking the mirror. “I see. That Gatherer guy said something about Snow White, actually. Ever heard of her?”
  233. Mephistis made a movement that might have been a shake of his head, or at least the part of him that represented the head. “No, I’m afraid not.”
  234. “Neither have I,” Vander replied thoughtfully. “Sounds sort of like one of those weird supervillain names. Wouldn’t put it past those eccentrics to have a ‘magic mirror.’ It’s probably all robotics.”
  235. “You don’t believe in magic?”
  236. “Slight of hands or illusions or whatever. There’s always an expla—hey! I saw something!”
  237. “Where?” And Mephistis was pressed up against the monitors once more.
  238. Vander stared at the screen. It had gone by so fast. He couldn’t have possibly seen what it was at all. He caught sight of the blur of movement again zipping across a monitor below the first. Then it whizzed by another. The lizard gaped for a moment before suddenly fumbling with some switches.
  239. “What are you doing?” Mephistis asked, somehow sounding even more excited than previously. Apparently, seeing advanced technology for the first time sort of does that to you.
  240. “I’m going to see if I can pause this so I can actually see what that blur is.”
  241. If Mephistis had eyes, they would have grown wide. “You can pause them?”
  242. “Yeah,” Vander said. After a moment, he felt the need to clarify, “the tape. Not time.”
  243. “Oh.” Still, the cloud stirred noticeably when Vander finally did manage to pause the screen. And even more once he found the rewind button. All the while, the blur kept flying past the cameras, sometimes stopping for a brief moment to burst through doors but never for long. As an afterthought, Vander started flicking his tail against some buttons until he found something that zoomed in on the doors that were forcibly opened.
  244. “Ah, weapons,” he said rather happily. His smile faded when he finally managed to catch the blur. “Oh,” he sighed, staring at the robot and the shark boy. Sharky’s face seemed twisted in some strange kind of panic. There was also something strange about the coloring of the robot, but Vander couldn’t exactly pin it down and so ignored it and went back to nervously tracking down both the languid movements of the mirror and the silver blur. Neither seemed to be getting close yet, but now that he knew that the mirror apparently had some strong, mystical power that managed to scare something about as solid as a ghost and that the robot and Sharky were most likely armed and that he was yet to even touch a gun yet, he was growing understandably nervous.
  245. “Shit,” he finally spat, wishing there was a chair he could lean back in.
  246. “What is it?” Mest asked, suddenly appearing behind him and making him jump in the air again. He rubbed his snout.
  247. “It’s…ugh. We need weapons, but we can’t go out without risking running into the silver speedster or the cursed mirror or whatever. Plus, I still don’t know if I can find my way around this damn place, even if I have been watching these stupid screens for what? Half an hour?”
  248. Mest stared at him for a moment. “More like twenty minutes, maybe,” she finally said. “Anyways, we don’t really have to leave here, do we? If we wait, maybe Beta will run into the mirror and they’ll kill each other.”
  249. “Yeah? And what if one of them comes here, when we’re unarmed and completely helpless? What about then, hm?”
  250. “I thought secret agents were supposed to be unflappable,” Mest muttered, then said louder, “Well there must be something here that can, I dunno, control turrets or whatever defense stuff they have here. There are plenty of buttons to push. So let’s try some.”
  251. Vander didn’t exactly like the sound of this plan but couldn’t exactly think of a better one and so, together, they jabbed at the machine like typing maniacs.
  252. Most of the controls in the camera room controlled, what do you know, the cameras. So it took a while for them to come across anything useful. One button yielded the words ‘CAMERA NUMBER__’ and they puzzled it over for a while before Vander finally just looked up where the mirror was hanging around and entered the camera number for that. The mirror was shown to be quite surprised at the sudden hail of bullets and quickly disappeared down the hall. The turret appeared to react to sudden movement and followed it until its pivot did not allow it to turn any further and it stopped automatically.
  253. Nobody said anything for a moment. “What was that?” Mephistis suddenly snapped. “How does it do that?”
  254. Not really wanting to bother with an explanation, Vander just said, “Well, that’s one problem sort of solved, I guess. Let’s see…hurm…I think I’ll try shooting down that mirror…”
  255. “No, wait,” Mephistis said sharply. “What about the metal woman?”
  256. Vander stared at him for a while. “I can’t hit that! Don’t you see how fast she’s going? That mirror goes much slower and besides, didn’t you say that it was dangerous?”
  257. Mephistis cursed inwardly but said, “It is exactly because of how fast the metal woman is going that I think we should attack her now while we have an advantage. I did say the mirror was dangerous, yes, but we can easily flee from it. Next time we see the metal woman, we may have to face her not behind the safety of the…the…”
  258. “Cameras,” Mest supplied helpfully.
  259. “Yes,” Mephistis continued uncertainly. “Not behind the safety of the cameras, but actually face-to-face. And with her extreme speed, that may be hard for us.”
  260. “You have a point,” Vander reluctantly conceded, “But it’s still going to be hard to hit her…” Still, he turned back to the monitor screens and stared at them intently. “…I don’t even know which camera she’ll show up next,” he said after a while of just watching the blur smear across the screens.
  261. “Just find some sort of pattern,” Mest urged. “And have some sort of rhythm…”
  262. Vander almost complained about having to do this. But he tensed instead and just watched the screens. Whoosh. Whoosh. Whoosh.
  263. Suddenly, as the blur entered the view of one camera, he quickly typed down the number of the camera he thought likely for it to show up next.
  264. Amazingly, he was right. He almost sighed with relief. Luck overrules the odds yet again!
  265. --------------------------------------------------
  266. “Oh craaaaaaa—“ Selachi breathed out before the sound of bullets drowned him out. He could briefly see Arthur swirl around Beta’s leg, spelling out ‘I don’t like’ before suddenly hiding on her back so that he wouldn’t be hit. The sharp-toothed boy sort of doubted Art could actually be harmed by bullets, but it probably stung anyways if he didn’t liked being stepped on.
  267. Selachi tried to hide as much of himself behind Beta as possible but it was hard to do so while piggy-backing. For a while, he debated whether it had been better to be almost torn apart by strong g-forces or to be shot at and decided being shot at wasn’t too bad. Even so, he scrunched up as much as he could behind Beta’s back.
  268. Beta stepped backwards as bullets either glanced off her metal frame or dented her slightly. She stared up at the turret impassively and scowled. “Hold on,” she intoned to Selachi.
  269. “Wait, what? What are you dooh my god what stop it don’t” Selachi’s claws dug into Beta as she suddenly leapt straight towards the hail of bullets.
  270. -----------------------------------------------
  271. Vander watched with growing dread as the camera showed him how the robot jumped all the way up to the ceiling and tore off the turret and threw it so hard against the wall that it apparently decided that simply breaking apart was not enough and so exploded instead.
  272. “Oooooh dammit,” he said slowly.
  273. “So fire another turret,” Mest said calmly. “What’s she doing?”
  274. The camera showed the robot apparently looking around. Then it appeared she had found the camera for she leapt up towards that, examined it a bit before tearing that off its mount as well. After a moment, she appeared on another camera, walking slowly this time, still looking around. She found that camera as well and also ripped it out. And so it went for the next unfortunate cameras.
  275. “Oooooh dammit,” Vander repeated.
  276. “What? Is she doing something?” Mest demanded. Even Awk, somehow understanding the gravity of the situation, stood at attention.
  277. “I have no idea. She might be tracking the camera feed. If so, she’s probably headed this way.”
  278. “You can do that?” Mephistis asked in amazement.
  279. “Man, I don’t even know!” Vander shouted back in frustration.
  280. “We better get out of here,” Mest said seriously, but as she headed out the door, Vander grabbed her arm.
  281. “If we go out there, we might run into her!”
  282. “And if we stay here, we’ll definitely run into her,” she replied calmly.
  283. There was a tense pause.
  284. “I bet some of these other buttons do something,” Mephistis said casually. “In any case, if you want, I could always just distract her. She can’t hurt me.”
  285. They pondered this plan for a moment.
  286. “Alright,” Vander said carefully as another monitor succumbed to static. “Mephistis, you go out and try to distract her. I think judging by the path she’s taking, though I’m not sure, if you go out and left and wait at the next crossing, she’ll come to you. I’ll turn on all the turrets. They’ll probably fire about you, but considering things, you probably won’t really mind it. Then Mest and I will…uh…we’ll have to stay here, really. But we’ll try to figure out if there’s something else here…”
  287. Mephistis seemed happy with this and just left. Vander quickly turned on the turrets. Awk cowered a little, hearing bullets fire outside.
  288. “Okay, so now what?”
  289. Mest shrugged. “Press random buttons again?”
  290. Vander frowned a little and glanced at the console again. “I sort of think we’ve pressed everything, honestly…”
  291. “There’s that red button I’ve been eyeing for a while.” Vander looked towards where Mest pointed. There was indeed a bright, big red button. Mest went to press it but Vander quickly grasped her outstretched arm.
  292. “Don’t,” he said sternly.
  293. “What? Why? Red buttons are important, aren’t they? This one’s probably useful.”
  294. “If there’s anything I’ve learned from being a secret agent,” Vander said seriously, “It is to never press red buttons.”
  295. Mest looked at him rather blankly. “I hope you’re not really expecting a self-destruct sequence.”
  296. “I, er,” Vander said in a completely unconvincing manner. His grip loosened slightly.
  297. “I’m pretty sure that’s only in the movies,” she added before wrenching her hand out of the lizard’s and pressing the button.
  298. ----------------------------------------------------
  299. Beta stopped once more, suddenly confronted by a sapient poisonous cloud.
  300. “Hello,” said Mephestis rather politely. “I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you to stop right here.”
  301. “I don’t see how you can,” the robot pointed out and was about to just walk by when suddenly, Selachi gripped her shoulder tightly.
  302. “Hey, hey, hey, wait,” he said, a little worried. “You aren’t forgetting ‘bout me, are ya?”
  303. Beta paused and Mephistis laughed. “That’s right. If you try to keep going, your cargo might just die…in fact…” the cloud rushed forward. Beta quickly retreated. Mephistis laughed again.
  304. Beta quickly ran over a list of what she could do. She could use her vacuum cleaner. But that meant pulling the cloud over to her which was potentially dangerous to Selachi. She could try throwing chemicals at it to create some sort of destructive reaction that could potentially tear the cloud apart. But not only did she not have any chemicals, but she had no idea what the elemental components of Mephistis were. And…now there were no more ideas. She continued hopping backwards as Mephistis advanced. She didn’t even notice Arthur silently slipping off her.
  305. The being of color and paint expertly camouflaged itself as it followed the skewed battle. He too had been trying to think of ways to get rid of Mephistis…but he was one who couldn’t even really interact with the real world. And Mephistis didn’t seem the type to be scared of illusions. Or at least the illusions that came to his mind. So he simply followed, thinking. What exactly would a poisonous cloud be afraid of…?
  306. He didn’t have much time to think, however, as quite suddenly, an alarm sounded. Red lights flashed everywhere as the noisy alarm continued to wail. Selachi covered his ears and almost fell off Beta’s back and so clung to her neck again. Mephistis paused, rather confused.
  307. The alarm may have been made to alert the soldiers who bunked in the building long ago before they had died horribly. But now, there was nobody to alarm and so nothing happened.
  308. But apparently, the soldiers found it hard to break old habits. Mephistis watched curiously as the dead surrounding them suddenly shuddered and forced themselves to their feet. The few that still had eyes left had no light in them. But they were still obviously driven to push back any intruders, no matter if they were robot or part-shark.
  309. Beta took this all in without any worry. Selachi started hyperventilating.
  310. -----------------------------------------------------------------------
  311. “I told you. Never. Push. Red. Buttons.”
  312. “Well, it wasn’t a self-destruct sequence,” Mest said defensively. She ripped a DUNCE cap off her head and threw it on the ground. “And stop that!”
  313. “I can’t help it,” Vander said rather dryly. “It’s subconscious and also you’re a twat.” Nearby, the bird awked in alarm as the zombie soldiers drew ever closer. “Alright, zombies aren’t so bad. Not the worse I’ve ever been through. I guess. They’re pretty freaking slow. We can get through this.”
  314. “Yeah, but there’re a lot of them. Ever try pushing through a crowd that’s eager to eat you?”
  315. “Oh shut up.”
  316. Nervously, Awk darted his head out and snapped one dead arm clean off. It dangled in his beak for a moment before getting spat out at another shambling undead. He started shuffling from foot to foot.
  317. Vander, though he wasn’t the religious sort, started praying to whatever god that actually listened for him to not be the first to die. Beside him, Awk shifted a little, bending his long, powerful legs.
  318. “Hold on,” Mest suddenly said.
  319. “What?” Vander replied rather intelligently before he was grabbed rather roughly. Mest swung an arm around Awk’s large, furry body right as the bird decided to make the jump.
  320. Unbalanced as he was, he didn’t make a perfect landing and stumbled and all three of them rolled uncomfortably into the wall. Still, he had managed to clear the hoard of zombies and before they could turn their rotting corpses around, Mest and Vander and Awk were up and running. When Awk started moving ahead, Mest grabbed ahold of him again and Vander, deciding that some birds were better than others, just went ahead and hopped right on his back. He seemed to preoccupied to care about his sudden passengers, what with the undead surrounding them. As the hallways were littered with bodies, it was getting quite hard to move through them. But Awk was somehow able to either kick them away, beat them with its wings, or simply jump over without hitting the ceiling. To be honest, zombies weren’t very good killers.
  321. But robots are.
  322. Beta noticed them before they noticed her. Before they could collide, she leveled her gun. Nobody could do anything, least of all Selachi, who was starting to get nauseous from moving around so fast. “Wait,” Mest called out, but Beta had already fired the gun. The bird couldn’t know what hit him. Especially since he was barely aware that anything had hit him at all. Once the charged laser ripped a hole right through his body and he tumbled to the ground, everybody else were suddenly teleported out of the zombie-infested facility.
  323. --------------------------------------------------------
  324. In the darkness, the Gatherer’s voice chuckled again. “So that’s how the first round goes, hm?” he said lightly. “Well. Sorry, little ‘Awk,’ you just weren’t powerful enough. In any case, some of my colleagues have found out that just because something relatively mundane has been entered in the battle doesn’t mean that it’s actually going to win.” There was a sound quite similar to someone discreetly pocketing several coins or whatever denomination of money all-powerful trans-dimensional beings considered valuable. “In any case, it’s time for the rest of you to move on to the next round, I believe.” As he was talking, another scene faded in, as though it was shy and nervous and felt intrusive. Eventually, it shuffled its way fully in and revealed itself to be an old, rickety, house. The sort of place that ghost enthusiasts would hang out around. The sort of place that ghosts would hang out around, actually.
  325. “Alrighty then!” The Gatherer’s voice continued to boom. “I guess this is another building in a rather decrepit state. Don’t worry, I’ll add more variety to the locations. Maybe. In any case, watch your steps! The stairs can be quite…treacherous…”
  326. -----------------------------------------------------------
  327. Vander had still been on the bird when it was suddenly killed and he was suddenly teleported away. Meaning that he was still about three feet off the ground. The landing was a painful one, especially when the floor gave way beneath. The only way he saved himself from a tragically embarrassing death was by grabbing the edge of a floorboard above. Luckily, this one didn’t break and he was able to pull himself up.
  328. Looking around, he found that, yes, he was alone. Everybody had probably been distributed throughout the house. He briefly wondered if he should sit tight and hope either Mest or Mephistis (preferably Mest) would come across him sooner or later, but one look at his dusty, creaky, unsturdy surroundings convinced him otherwise.
  329. Also wary of the creaking floor, Vander couldn’t help but think that the basement would be the safest place to be right now. Less of a chance of having the floor collapse beneath you. Treading lightly, he surprisingly found the door to the stairs below fast. But as he stared down into the darkness, he couldn’t help but think that he really shouldn’t go down there. There wasn’t exactly a reason for this thought. It just came to him from who knows where. He lingered in the doorway before deciding that it was either animal instinct or spy instinct or a combination of both and he was not one to ignore any instinct. He shut the door and immediately, he felt the chill around his heart subside. With a sigh, he began to walk down the silent halls. At one point, he tried walking on the walls again, but decided against it when the plaster came away in his hands. He dusted off his suit, but more dust just fell on it. This just depressed him.
  330. ---------------------------
  331. Selachi, too, started the round in a similar fashion to the lizard. Without Beta to hold him up, he fell right on the floor. The old wood groaned ominously, but amazingly, didn’t break. The shark boy was about to thank whatever god in whatever heaven-equivalent until suddenly the floorboards splintered and collapsed. What happened next couldn’t really be put in polite terms. His ass got stuck in the new hole.
  332. Selachi instinctively swung his arms in the air as though he were swimming, but stopped when the boards creaked threateningly once more. Slowly, he brought his hands down against the floor, twisting his arms awkwardly in the process, and pushed.
  333. Well, now he was sort of in a sitting position, but his butt was still in the damn hole. He suddenly had a thought that almost made him chuckle and wince at the same time and hoped that there really wasn’t somebody in the room below. Oh dear god especially not Beta. He could imagine her firing immediately at any loud cracking sound. This sobering idea motivated him to bend his legs so that at least his heels were against the floor and shove up with his hands so that he practically flew back up onto his feet. He tottered for a moment before regaining his balance.
  334. He was in a bedroom. It would have been extravagant probably a hundred years ago, but now there were cobwebs and dust and mold and junk. Someone had even taken the trouble to come in and spray some meaningless graffiti on the wall, which was already starting to fade as the wallpaper peeled away. The first thought he had was ‘water’, but he quickly realized that any waterlines that lead here would have been cut off years ago. This just made him feel even thirstier.
  335. In any case, since he was alone, he might as well take the time to scheme against his fellow contestants and survive. Although it was probably not a good idea to tempt fate, he stared pacing the weakened floor, not one to hold still when there was some pondering to do. He started nervously chewing on one of those sweatshirt string things. What were those called? Did they even have a name?
  336. Beta was exactly the sort he didn’t want to team up with. She was much too powerful and he was pretty sure that once she realized there was no fighting back against the Gatherer, she would deem him useless and that would be the end of that. Right now, he had a rather tenuous relationship with her that seemed it could only end with her killing him at some point in the future. He aimed to change that.
  337. He couldn’t count on any of the other contestants to go ahead and kill her. In fact, he doubted many of them could. So it was an issue he’d have to deal with himself.
  338. Right now, it seemed Beta trusted him. Or at least didn’t consider him much of a threat. So it gave him more room to maneuver…actually, couldn’t she be dismantled? Would that count as ‘dying?’ Selachi tried to think back to when he had spent an unnecessarily long amount of time on her back. Did she have screws? Dammit, he couldn’t remember. The only thing he remembered were the blur of everything passing by and the uncomfortable feeling in his stomach. But was there another way to put together a robot besides with screws? In any case, some sort of toolbox would be useful to carry around, then. He could probably hide wrenches and screwdrivers and stuff in his pockets and after Beta cleared out some of the competition, he could unscrew her.
  339. Selachi paused in his pacing. Maybe he should reword that sentence.
  340. Resuming his pondering, he turned around and almost yelped when he saw his own reflection. While he had been lost in thought, the mirror had snuck up on him. He stepped back and the mirror floated back cautiously, apparently having learned before that some contestants just attacked first and asked questions later. As Selachi watched, he noticed that, looking at the mirror from the corner of his eye, he saw a ghostly girl clutching the mirror, floating right behind it. Her eyes were closed, but her mouth was set in a nervous line.
  341. When nobody made a move, the mirror seemed to relax (if mirrors could do that) and floated closer, in a rather tranquil way. Selachi couldn’t think of anything to say but “Uuuuuuh.”
  342. The mirror said nothing, as mirrors didn’t really have mouths. But he got the feeling that it was waiting for him to do something. Waiting rather eagerly, in fact.
  343. “Uuuuuuh,” Selachi repeated, stopping himself from gnawing on his lip. “Sho. You’re lichke, uh, a magichk mirror.” The mirror bobbed a little. It kind of looked like a nod, so Selachi took it to mean that. “Alright. Chkool. Um. What ekxacktly doesh a magichk mirror do…?”
  344. Nothing seemed to happen for a moment, then something rippled across the mirror’s face. Selachi squinted at it and leaned closer. The image cleared and it showed him…Beta, yes, it was definitely her, and she was marching around rather purposefully. The mirror shimmered and then showed Mephistis, curling around lazily in what looked like an attic. It showed Vander, still fastidiously trying to wipe dust off himself. It showed every other contestant and, apparently, what they were all doing now.
  345. Selachi was understandably excited. This was a huge edge. This was possibly the sort of advantage he needed to win. “You ckan show me anything?” he said very eagerly. “I am totally not gonna die thish round!”
  346. And he might have jumped and whooped had the floorboards been slightly stronger and had the mirror not done what it did next.
  347. He had barely caught it, but what he saw was quite a downer. It was definitely a scene of him dying by Beta’s hands.
  348. It was probably a response to the joyful exclamation he had just made. It seemed like a rule to have your hopes immediately dashed after you’ve built them up. He found solace in the fact that the scene was pretty vague. It may not even be this round. But it completely convinced him that, yes, Beta had to go, despite her strength and her usefulness…
  349. “Ish there a toolbocx or shomething lichke that that ckan help me defeat Beta?” he said, almost snapped, his hands shaking now. After a few tense moments, the mirror showed him a red, rusty box in what appeared to be the basement. “Great. Good. Nobody down there, right? No? Good.” Selachi started out the bedroom door, trying to be as stealthy as possible. He was vaguely aware that the mirror was now following him even when he didn’t ask it too and he couldn’t help but feel relieved. It was nice having someone watch your back. Even if it was only a mirror.
  350. It was a little frustrating to Mephistis that none of his goals had been realized at all. All the unkillables were still very much alive. The trouble of making an alliance had not paid off at all. He wanted to just get the whole thing over with and smother this whole damn house with his smog but no, patience, something had to happen. Sometime, it had to pay off. Those solids had a tendency to be smart. Just prone to being poisoned. He should make friends with as much as them as possible, have them all meet up, get them to brainstorm something. The metal woman and the glassy ghost would be dead soon. Perhaps even the next to die. That was a nice thought.
  351. There wasn’t anything of interest upstairs, at least not to him. Mephistis still took note of several dusty objects up here, in case his allies found this sort of thing interesting, then seeped through the floor down below and out of the attic.
  352. To his surprise and slight pleasure, he almost immediately saw the sharp-toothed boy. “Hello,” he called out, still halfway through the ceiling. The boy started, looked up and gaped before self-consciously covering his mouth.
  353. “No, wait, don’t be alarmed,” Mephistis said quickly, a little frustrated that he had to go through this trust-building thing again. “I’m not going to kill you.”
  354. “What ‘bout that time where you shaid that you would kchill me?” Selachi retorted, though it was slightly muffled.
  355. “I am sincerely sorry about that,” Mephistis continued without any hesitation. “The situation was desperate for my allies and your…carrier was getting too close to them for their comfort. So I was sent out to try to drive her away. And as I couldn’t threaten her, I threatened what seemed precious to her, which happened to be you.”
  356. Selachi looked away darkly but still did not put his hand away from his face. “Pfeh. I wouldn’t be shure ‘bout that.”
  357. This was the sort of thing Mephistis was hoping to find. But he kept his tone calm and somewhat consoling. “I assume you are not finding a good ally in the metal woman?”
  358. “Loochk, I knew she wash rash, but I didn’t thinchk she’d go on an’ do shomethin’ lichke that!”
  359. “Something like what?” Mephistis asked, curious as to what had set the boy off so bad.
  360. Selachi paused for a moment. “Nothin’,” he snapped. “Shomethin’ I shaw in th’ mirror…”
  361. “The mirror?” Mephistis said sharply. “You came across it?”
  362. “Yeah,” the shark boy replied slowly. “It’sh right behind me, isn’t it?”
  363. Mephistis looked down the hall behind Selachi. It was decidedly empty. “No. I don’t see it.”
  364. Selachi turned around as well. There was a look on his face that Mephistis couldn’t quite catch, then a look of vague comprehension. Then he turned back to the smog. “Oh, I guessh it left,” he said. “Sho, I guessh you want to machke shome short of allianshe?” he said suddenly. Mephistis may be only a bunch of gas molecules tenuously bound together, but even he could tell that Selachi was holding something back.
  365. But he had no idea what and didn’t want to lose a potential ally by bugging him about it.
  366. “Why, yes, I do…by the way, do you happen to have any sort of plans about the metal woman…?”
  367. ------------------------------------------------
  368. Said metal woman was having a lot of trouble walking around.
  369. It seemed that rotten, moldy floorboards were not very good at holding up a few hundred pounds of metal and circuitry. As soon as the round started, the floor snapped away under her. But she was determined to not fall and so hopped for the floor. But as soon as she landed, that too collapsed and so she fell straight down, through the floor below, and crashed right into the basement, and even then, the concrete there gave way a little.
  370. Beta slowly stood up again, shuddering. She wondered if something got jolted out of place. She may need to check herself for repairs…but right now, she was too worried about the little shark boy. Wherever he was, he was obviously not with her. And in her opinion, that was the most dangerous situation to be in.
  371. Without hesitation, she headed towards the stairs. But as soon as she put her weight on them, they collapsed as well. She made a frustrated little grinding noise. It appeared as though she were stuck here.
  372. If she was, then she might as well try to find anything useful here.
  373. The basement didn’t look impressive at all. Though it seemed to house a magnificent wine collection, that was quite useless to Beta. The concrete was cracked in places and weeds were slowly winding their way out into the gloom. They might as well have stayed underneath.
  374. Beta clicked on her lights on her shoulders and they illuminated the darker depths of the basement slightly. There wasn’t much there, though. Deteriorating furniture, emptied wine bottles, dead lightbulbs and a lack of life. Besides the weeds, of course.
  375. She turned around quickly but saw nothing. Strange…because her eyes had picked up slight movement.
  376. Making her way back, she drew close to where she thought she saw the movement…and yes, there was definitely something there. She drew her gun right as a rush of color flew up along the wall, clung to the ceiling, then shot towards the stairs. It took a few shots for Beta to realize who it was.
  377. “Wait!” she called out and grimaced at the slight static in her voice. So the fall did mess her up a little. She hoped she could repair it herself.
  378. At least Arthur paused instead of running. “I need help,” she explained to it. “I can’t get up the stairs. I’m too heavy. Find Selachi, or maybe other allies, to help me up.”
  379. Arthur considered making a joke but figured humor would be lost on the robot. ‘I don’t think anybody can help you up here. And I don’t think anybody should come down here either. Don’t you feel it?’
  380. “What?” Beta asked, though now that he mentioned it, she felt something that none of her sensors could possibly pick up.
  381. ‘Something’s here. It’s not exactly happy that we are. But it can’t do anything to us. It could do something to the actually living, though. Taking anybody else down here would be dangerous for them, I think.’
  382. Beta hurmed for a bit. “I suppose I will have to stay down here then. You should still go up, I think. We do need more people to help fight against the Gatherer. And some new data has turned up that needs thinking about.”
  383. ‘You go do that, then.’ And the whirl of color swirled quickly out of the basement.
  384. Beta stood there for a moment, uncertain what to do. Her mechanical mind whirred for a second.
  385. When the round changed, there was absolutely no chance given to confront the Gatherer. And though he managed to hold a (one-sided) conversation with them, the time between rounds seemed merely a second. Which meant that she wouldn’t be able to overcome the Gatherer by killing and hoping he would let his guard down. So her options were to kill everybody else or somehow be able to move between dimensions.
  386. She was willing to take up a challenge.
  387. But this meant being not only in tip-top shape, but even better. But though she might be able to figure out a way to travel dimensions, she probably didn’t have the means to build a way. What she needed was a scientist. One of the smart scientists that made her, preferably.
  388. But one thing at a time. First, find some spare parts.
  389. And with that, she searched the basement again. There was nothing else to do.
  390. She picked up a large chunk of rock from the ground and, in a few seconds, had formed it into a sort of hammer using her chisel. Though obviously useless to her, she couldn’t help but think it would be a good weapon for Selachi when she saw him next. Examining another room, she found a boiler, and after making sure that it was indeed turned off, she tore it apart. The metal was not as strong as her own metal, of course, but it would be useful in an emergency if she, say, needed to replace a limb.
  391. She suddenly realized that if she was going to collect parts, she would need some sort of backpack. More searching didn’t yield anything, so she took a minute or so to speed-sew one for herself. She tested the strength by gently tugging at it and, deeming it strong enough and big enough to carry her things, shoved all her trinkets inside and slung it over her shoulder.
  392. There was nothing to do besides search the basement. Beta carried this action out again. Inactivity didn’t suit a robot.
  393. She came across a mound in a room she was certain wasn’t there before. Around the mound was nothing, and that worried her. No cracks in the concrete, no weeds searching for air to grow in, no rotting furniture or any sign of life.
  394. And Beta was vaguely aware of something without quite sensing it. And although she knew Arthur had left her alone, she had a feeling there was someone else there.
  395. -------------------------------------------------------
  396. Arthur wound his way along the walls, camouflaging himself every once in a while when he heard a creak or any sound at all, really. But there never seemed to be anything making the sound. He was starting to think that it was just his imagination, much more rampant due to nerves, but still, he hid at the slightest sound. It was better safe than sorry.
  397. He was almost glad he did, for if he had just rushed recklessly down the halls, he might have been seen by the person who was hiding right around the corner. Or maybe she was waiting for someone. It certainly seemed that she was, peering carefully down the hall like that. Strangely, she seemed familiar. And as he sidled up closer, he understood why. This person was…she was the witch.
  398. Arthur wasn’t one to rush things, but…it was the witch. He deserved revenge. Why should he wait for some sniveling explanation or for her to hex him again? So he approached with no pause. The witch looked down at herself and looked around before catching sight of him and when she did, she screamed. And it was a wonderful sound.
  399. But not to Vander, who just found muted screams, above everything else about this environment, to be hell on his nerves. He found he didn’t recognize the voice and so decided that, since it seemed female, it was most likely Mest. And even though his instinct was to run away and possibly let the strange shapeshifter die, he skittered towards the scream instead, tail twitching nervously as several times, his foot went through the floor.
  400. When he finally found the source of the scream, he was a little confused about what was going on. It was definitely Mest because although she was mostly in the form of another person’s perception, he could see a bit of his own image of her corrupting the form. But he really didn’t see anybody else in the hall. Another thing of note, though was some sort of…graffiti on the wall. But it was the most abstract graffiti he had seen before. There might have been an image there, but whatever it was, it was all stretched out and broke off on some walls to continue on others and wait, was it moving?
  401. As Mest curled up on the ground silently, Vander moved slightly to the right, in the center of the hallway, and the image clicked into place. It was a pretty realistic depiction of a setting of fire and brimstone along with some sort of shadowy demonic apparition. Even Vander would have found the image cripplingly frightening, had he not known the secret behind the illusion. Honestly, it was still frightening as he saw something apparently reach for Mest, who was still laying uselessly on the floor. The floorboards creaked underneath her, so, not knowing what else to do, Vander kicked at where he was quite sure part of the strange illusion stretched to.
  402. The image writhed as soon as he did and shuddered and seemed to melt away, withdrawing to one side of the wall. Vander rushed towards Mest and tried to pull her up, but she lashed out at him, still trying to cover her face.
  403. “Look, will you stop that, it’s me, okay? It’s Vander! There’s nothing there!” the lizard said in frustration before trying to pull her to her feet again before the floor collapsed beneath her or something. She reluctantly unfolded, but stayed crouched and shivering. “What are you, devoutly religious?”
  404. Mest was slowly growing towards a medium between a lizard form and a witch form and appeared to settle with a form that was dressed in all black, was scaly and sported an unusually long nose. “I, I thought,” she spluttered, shuddering.
  405. “It was only that chalk thing or whatever,” he explained, pointing to the swirl of color that was sheepishly lingering nearby. Mest flinched.
  406. ‘I’m sorry,’ wrote Arthur. ‘I thought she was no never mind in any case it was stupid of me.’
  407. “Yeah, yeah, apology accepted,” Vander said quickly.
  408. ‘I’m not even sure why I expected it to be her…’ Arthur mused, apparently to himself. Vander was going to say that it probably had something to do with the subconscious mind and weird perspective magic shapeshifting stuff crap but decided the time spent with needless (and possibly incorrect) explanation could be used to getting Mest in some sort of working condition.
  409. Vander had no idea what to do when it came to consoling dames. The first thing that came to mind was slapping them in the face.
  410. Mest looked up at him in shock, rubbing her cheek.
  411. “Ow,” she exclaimed rather pointedly.
  412. “Sorry,” Vander said. “It was the only thing I could think of to keep you from getting hysterical on me.”
  413. “By slapping me?” Vander shrugged helplessly.
  414. In any case, at least Mest was no longer a whimpering load. The two turned to Arthur. “So? Anything you’d like to add?”
  415. ‘Besides ‘I’m sorry?’’ The mess of color pondered for a moment. ‘I think I need help destroying the robot. She’s too dangerous. Too rash. She may just end up killing everybody. We’ll need to team up to defeat her. I am pretty sure Selachi will join in any endeavor to destroy her.’
  416. Vander thought for a moment. “Alright, cool. So let’s think of a plan.”
  417. “What?” Mest shouted. “You’re just willing to forget what he just did?”
  418. Vander stared at her. Nervously, he licked his eye. “Aren’t you?”
  419. “No.” she responded, a tad forcefully.
  420. “Look,” Vander whispered. “It’s nice to have more allies and I’m pretty sure if necessary, I know how to actually defeat this guy. Still working on Mephistis, though,” he added. “But in any case, let’s think of a plan,” he said louder.
  421. ‘I do have some useful information, which is that the robot is confined to the basement and is unable to stand on any of these floors without falling through.’
  422. “The basement?” Vander repeated nervously, remembering the daunting feeling from just standing right in front of the door.
  423. Arthur seemed to notice this. ‘Yes, I know, I’ve noticed something strange down there too so perhaps this isn’t the best time to act against her. Unless we find out exactly what’s down there and can thus prepare against it…”
  424. Vander thought for a moment. “Well, you were in the basement, right? And whatever it is did nothing to you. So I think you’re in the best spot to scout out whatever’s going on down there without getting killed by Beta.”
  425. ‘Are you sure you’d not rather me find Selachi and bring him over to you?’
  426. “Well, I was going to just search for him myself…why?” Vander asked, worried. “He’s not gonna attack us on sight, is he?”
  427. Arthur swirled, during which he might have ‘hrrrm’ed had he a mouth to do so. ‘I just didn’t want you to fall through the floorboards. But no, you won’t have trouble.
  428. I think he’s quite sane.’
  429. --------------------------------------------------------
  430. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
  431. “Yesh. Shut up.”
  432. “It just seems to me that you’re in a rather precarious position right now.”
  433. “Shut up.” Selachi dangled from the railing. It looked like a long way down. The mirror floated nearby, still apparently going unseen by Mephistis.
  434. “I hate to say it, but I did warn you. I told you that I thought the stairs might be dangerous and prone to collapse.”
  435. “Well talking about it isn’t going to help.” Is there any way I can get down?” He was talking more to the mirror than to the cloud of smoke, but Mephistis still moved about the room a little.
  436. “It’s not far down to the floor, but I get the feeling that you would just crash right through. If you think you can hang on longer, I could probably try finding some help.”
  437. He waited for an answer. Selachi continued dangling. “Uh…are you…?”
  438. “Yesh, I’m fine,” the shark-boy replied harshly. “I’m gonna try my chanshes.”
  439. “You what?” This sounded a little worrying. Like, lose-another-asset worrying.
  440. But, as a collection of gas, Mephistis could only watch as Selachi tried to swing his leg up on some stairs that were still intact. When that failed (because the boards snapped), he slowly tried shuffling his hands down the railing to at least get closer to the floor. The railing snapped, but didn’t fall apart in his hands quite yet. Carefully, he tried sliding his hands down the stout balusters that were handily supporting the railings and had successfully slid all the way down to the bottom part of the railing, even with Mephistis and the mirror hovering anxiously around him, when…well, the old wood gave way.
  441. Mephistis acted instinctively, flying directly beneath the shark-boy and condensing himself as much as he could. This managed to be enough to slow Selachi down so that he didn’t hit the floor that hard. It also had the added side effect of Selachi passing straight through poisonous gas. Although falling right on rotten floorboards isn’t all fun and games either.
  442. “Oh shit,” Mephistis said, though Selachi must not be dead because the Gatherer hadn’t piped up or anything and so he sort of just curled around nervously above him. “You’re okay, right? I don’t think you got a lethal dose. Can you move? Hello?” The mirror also hovered nearby, a series of images flashing across its face.
  443. Selachi groaned, which was a good sign. He was mumbling something about pink elephants, which was not. Mephistis sighed. “Damn. I guess I better get the others. See if they can...uh….”
  444. He turned. He turned again, around in circles. He definitely felt something…
  445. When one is maintaining an illusion, it is very important to keep up the illusion. For example, if one makes it so that it appears that it isn’t even there, it probably should do something stupid like, say, touch someone, because even if they can’t see you, they can certainly feel you. Mephistis was currently feeling a part of him condensing into purple liquid on the face of the mirror, but did not notice liquid streaks of himself running down an invisible wall. And the mirror did nothing, either unaware of the concept of condensation, or hoping that if it didn’t move, Mephistis would just move on.
  446. And, surprisingly, he did, chalking the strange feeling up to the strange atmosphere. When the last wisp of smoke left, the mirror went ahead and moved towards the prone body of Selachi. It prodded him. And again.
  447. Selachi groaned, struggled to get up, and found that the floor was not cooperating with him to stand still enough so he could put his hand down. Then, quite suddenly, it stopped and he stood up again, surprised and suspicious but still woozy-headed. He glanced towards the mirror and, despite his foggy mind, managed to come to some conclusion.
  448. One question he had, though: If illusions could make a poisoned man see straight, could he walk straight as well?
  449. Selachi started with one foot forward, stumbled, and ran right into a wall. Nope.
  450. “Ckkkhhraaaap,” he breathed out. His vision grew blurry, then was sharpened. He had the vague feeling that if his body was trying to tell him something was dreadfully wrong with it, it was probably not best to cover it up with illusions and crap, but he was just thankful that everything wasn’t spinning. He tottered around experimentally before asking out loud, “You know th’ way to th’ bashement…?”
  451. The mirror floated ahead of him and, with some difficulty, he swayed after it.
  452. ----------------------------------------------------------
  453. Vander couldn’t help but think it said a lot about himself that he didn’t even flinch when Mephistis suddenly popped out at him from around the corner. And that he could actually tell that a thing with no real face was upset. “What’s wrong?” he demanded quickly.
  454. “Well, I tried to gather more allies. You know that shark boy?”
  455. “Yessssss?” Vander replied, not entirely sure if he liked where this was going.
  456. “He was on the stairs when they collapsed and he fell. And I tried to catch him.”
  457. Both Mest and Vander stared at him incredulously.
  458. “I’m sorry,” Mest said quite loudly. “But did you just say that you forgot momentarily that you were a big clump of smoke?”
  459. “Would you rather I had left him alone?”
  460. “Well, it might be possible, I dunno, that if you left him alone, he could be…not poisoned now?” Vander rubbed his eyes, feeling a headache coming on. “No, no, sorry, I know, he probably would’ve died if you didn’t try to….’catch’ him. How is he?”
  461. “I think he was almost unconscious, but not too hurt. Maybe.”
  462. “Well, we were planning on meeting with him…I suppose it doesn’t make too much of a difference if he’s sort of poisoned or not, right?” Mest shrugged. “So I guess you better lead the way.”
  463. Mephistis turned in the air and headed quickly down the hall.
  464. “What the hell was he doing, going down the stairs like that anyways?” Vander shouted towards the cloud ahead, panting slightly.
  465. “I think he was trying to get down to the basement,” Mephistis explained. “He said something about a way to destroy the metal woman, but he didn’t really say much about that. He didn’t get a lethal dose, though. He should be able to wake up quickly. There may be some nausea, but he’ll be able to tell us what his plan was…”
  466. Mephistis stopped suddenly and it took careful reaction on Vander’s part to not walk right into the cloud. “What? What is it?”
  467. “…if…he was right where I left him…” Mephistis slowly finished.
  468. Mest and Vander had no need to peer over Mephistis, for they could clearly see right through him that, there were some collapsed stairs, like Mephistis had mentioned, but Selachi Shortfin was definitely nowhere in sight.
  469. “Damn,” Vander spat. He felt as though he had been spitting that word quite frequently lately.
  470. “And he had a plan to kill the metal woman,” Mephistis said sadly. “He couldn’t have gotten too far, though. It may have been a small dose, but my poison is very disorienting…oh, hm. He could have fallen down a hole…”
  471. “I’m pretty sure I know exactly where he is,” Vander said quite grimly, his jaw set tight.
  472. “Really? Where?”
  473. “If I had to guess,” said Mest. “It’s the basement.”
  474. “Exactly.”
  475. Mephistis swirled in the air for a moment before flowing down and through the floorboards briefly. Then he came back up. “Yes, he’s down there. And you’re probably not going to like what’s going on there.”
  476. “Dammit, and we can’t get down there!” Vander started pacing, aggravated, and kicked some dust up in the air.
  477. “Look, I know you said that you ‘felt’ something wrong about the place, but that was only a feeling, right? What’s down there that can be so bad?”
  478. “Okay, okay,” Vander said, glaring seriously at Mest. “Remember the thing I said about never pushing red buttons? You also never not go with your instinct. And if you’re plopped into a creepy house and you’re standing in front of the door to the basement and your instinct alarm is going off, shouting in your mind, For the love of god, don’t go in there, then it’s best to listen to that damn alarm and stay away. From. The. Basement.”
  479. “Alright, alright, I get it,” Mest said, holding up her hands defensively. “…Though Sharky obviously didn’t…”
  480. “Yeah. That’s what’s worrying me. Even some splotches of paint could feel something was up with the basement, and yet he didn’t?”
  481. “So…what do we do?” Mest asked.
  482. Vander paused for a moment. “Well, I don’t know about you, but I want to stay away from trouble as much as I can. And what’s going on in the basement sounds like trouble. And we still don’t know what exactly is down there. I think Mephistis is safe to go down, but not us.”
  483. Mest snorted. “And I thought you were a super secret agent. You are so cautious and boring…”
  484. “Better boring than dead,” Vander snapped sharply. “In any case, Mephistis could probably survive anything that goes down there. So he can sort of scope out the situation. If he can take care of it, fine, we don’t need to get involved. If he needs help and think we won’t die by going down, he can report back to us.” He paused. “You’re okay with that, right, Meph?”
  485. “Hm? Oh, sure, yeah,” Mephistis replied hastily, a little caught off-guard by the new nickname. “No problem.” And he effortlessly seeped through the floor and disappeared down below.
  486. Vander sighed and it almost masked the constant groan of the old house. “Right. So, now I’m not sure quite what to do.”
  487. “Maybe because you left the exciting stuff to the guy who can’t even hold anything.”
  488. Vander ignored the blunt tone. “Speaking of, think of a way to kill poisonous gas?”
  489. “Mmm, no, it’s really a tough thing to think of. I can only think of sucking him up in a vacuum cleaner. But obviously that wouldn’t really kill him. Wouldn’t even trap him for long, I bet.”
  490. Vander was silent for a moment. “When you’re around him, you’re a dark-skinned child. A child, I assume because he sees all of us as harmless, and I don’t really blame him. But I’m wondering why he even sees you as human in the first place. I could imagine another poison cloud or something like that…but a human?”
  491. Mest shrugged, then offered her own psychological opinion, having had some experience. “Well, if he saw me as someone like him, that would mean he saw me as an equal. But I think he’s pretty confident he’ll win. Really, I’m pretty sure the only reason he hasn’t killed us yet is because of Beta. Poison doesn’t do much to robots. Or mirrors, come to think of it. Why does it matter, anyways, how he sees me as? It’s not going to help us figure out a way to kill him.”
  492. “Look, I dunno, I’m just trying to grab on…any sort of lead or something. So there are humans where he comes from and obviously they can’t do much against him. Maybe he’s the only one of his kind or maybe he’s actually purged the world of all life or something. Maybe he really is going to just kill us all.”
  493. Mest stared at him for a long time. “Why would he immediately think of something extinct?”
  494. “Hm?”
  495. “I mean, out of sight, out of mind, right? If every breathing life is extinct, they’re out of mind, unless there is something to remind him of it. Passing conversation.”
  496. “A lot of us are human-shaped,” Vander pointed out. “That could be a reminder.”
  497. “Okay, maybe, but then if these dark-skinned humans he saw me as went extinct, then don’t you think he should have been surprised to see me at the start?”
  498. Vander paused. “I think,” he said slowly, “You may have a point.”
  499. “So if he wasn’t surprised to see something supposedly extinct, then it’s more likely that these breathing humans survived somehow.”
  500. “Which means…they probably found a way to survive the poison…by some sort of antidote. But that would have to be applied constantly, especially if he just let himself go as a haze around a village. So rather…”
  501. “The people of his world figured out a way to drive him away!” Mest said excitedly. “Something he would be afraid of because it would kill him, maybe!”
  502. “That’s heartening,” Vander said, “But I’m not sure how we’ll ever figure out what they did. It’s not like we’ll ever talk to any of these guys.”
  503. Mest smiled widely at him. “I might have a way. Sort of.”
  504. Vander paused and stared at her. “Does this have to do with weird shapeshifting crap again?”
  505. Mest hesitated. “A little. Okay, yes.”
  506. Vander sucked on a tooth. “Damn. I am not going to understand this, am I.”
  507. -----------------------------------------------------------------
  508. It was amazing. Selachi had reached the basement stairs without falling down anything like a hole or something. Even more amazing, he didn’t go and fall down the stairs. Almost did once or twice, but he made it down on his feet instead of landing on something that he shouldn’t land on, like his head.
  509. It was annoying how there seemed to be some sort of worrying niggling in the back of his mind. It was there and not there at the same time. He was getting good at ignoring it, though. The basement seemed a little creepy too, actually, but then again, what part of the house wasn’t creepy? So it just fit right in. He was used to this creepy shit right now in any case. Didn’t scare him one bit nope.
  510. Selachi wobbled a bit at the bottom of the stairs and sucked on his lip, somehow managing to not cut himself on his rows of sharp teeth. “Right. Sho where’sh th’ toolbox?”
  511. The mirror floated serenely. It occurred to him that it wouldn’t be so out of place in a creepy house like this. Why did he suddenly think that? Oh wait it’s moving now better keep up.
  512. Selachi tripped often over the cracks in the pavement, not quite clear-headed enough to really avoid looking like a drunk idiot. Weeds seemed as though they were trying to grab at him, to hold him fast to the floor, but he kicked his foot away, uprooting several in the process. He passed moldy desks and gently kicked away old bottles. Somehow, it reminded him of home and he struggled faster, trying to keep up.
  513. The mirror waited patiently for him at a door that would probably fall over if he touched it. He stared at it, trying to see beyond its moldy exterior into the room behind. There were sounds coming from the room, worrying him somewhat, though he honestly couldn’t be sure because the sound kept getting softer and softer, as if he was wearing some sort of muffler over his ears.
  514. “There’s…nobody in there…right?” he asked the mirror carefully, and in response, it appeared to go up to the door and…phase right through it.
  515. He blinked, though honestly he shouldn’t be so surprised. If a possessed mirror could show you things it couldn’t possibly know, it could probably go through walls.
  516. He hesitated a moment before just screwing up his courage and pushed the door open. Or rather, down.
  517. Before the old door could even land, Selachi’s ears were blasted by the drone that had seemed oh-so quiet just a moment before. He tried to stumble backwards in confusion but only stumbled in. Eyes swimming, he somehow managed to notice Arthur on the opposite wall, scribbling out hastily, ‘You idiot, what are you doing get out of here’ and he did see Beta kneeling on the floor in the center, mumbling something incredibly fast. He also noticed a lack of a mirror and a toolbox. Of course. Because the mirror was actually behind him and the toolbox was a trick. It had all been a trick. He wanted to turn and jump at the mirror and maybe even bite it but the poison’s effect, having been suppressed and ignored, came back with a vengeance and he stumbled to the floor, got up, and stumbled again and then he could only see blurs of things that might be there.
  518. Aaand now he was hallucinating. Damn hallucinations. He blinked up at his father, who seemed to be quite calm despite apparently being surrounded by a Dali-esque painting.
  519. “Get up,” he growled, and though he was stout and pasty, his teeth were still quite threatening. “Nobody would dupe my boy and get away with it.”
  520. Selachi struggled to his knees. “How’m I shupposed t’—“
  521. “No ‘essh’es!” his father cried, striding over and forcing Selachi to his feet. “Remember what I told you? Nobody takesh you sheriou—nobody will think of you in fear if you keep lishping!”
  522. “How ckan you not lishp with theshe teeth, Dad? Huh?! I ckan’t help it!”
  523. “You achkt lichke you ckan’t control your teeth,” his father spat. “Ckan you not ckontrol how you eat, then? Who you bite? Are you afraid to hurt an ally with your teeth? We are sharks, boy, we are kchilling machines. We show no remorshe!”
  524. “Dad,” Selachi said seriously, still shuddering from his dizzy head. “Shut up.”
  525. His father let him go, his face unreadable. Without this imaginary support, Selachi collapsed on the floor again. The mafia boss in front of him turned, looked back with a tint of sadness in his eyes, before disappearing like the hallucination he was.
  526. Selachi knew he could handle this without the help of his father, imaginary or not. He just had to figure out a way to peel himself off the floor.
  527. ---------------------------------------------
  528. Things, Arthur realized, were getting wildly out of control. And he was feeling quite useless right about now. It was frustrating.
  529. He couldn’t do a thing when he went down and found Beta shuddering so hard that it seemed she would just fall apart. Strange black goo seemed to be seeping through her metal plates. And after a moment, she let out an unearthly howl. Tools flew out and in. He saw the gun, but it was quickly replaced by a whisk and something that looked like a rolling pin which was then replaced by a drill and then her normal hand. Things turned off and then on and there was some sort of sparking noise before she even started calming down. Arthur may not be an expert, but somehow, he couldn’t help but think that Beta was possessed.
  530. What exactly did you do in this sort of situation? Back in his old life, Arthur had never paid much attention to superstitions. (He didn’t even know robots could get possessed.) But still, he remembered…a few things…there was something about salt, right? Not that he could even hold salt if there were any around. But, maybe, what about holy symbols? That’s always supposed to beat off supernatural creatures. Crosses were handy for exorcism, right? Even an image of a cross…right?
  531. He had no other ideas. Arthur crawled to the wall opposite of Beta and formed himself into a bright, golden cross.
  532. He wasn’t entirely sure if this did anything. Beta just knelt. She stayed, kneeling, covering her face with her hands as black goo dripped from her body and she hissed a constant stream of words. Or, Arthur found, as he listened closer, it was the same two words over and over…
  533. And then Selachi came bursting in, doing absolutely nothing to help the situation. Actually, he probably made it worse. Beta glanced up towards the shark boy, her eyes wide and black as he stumbled around and fell to the floor like a wounded gazelle. She stood up, apparently unfazed by Arthur’s cross, and strode towards Selachi with a grim purpose, still hissing those two words, but getting louder all the while until all Selachi could hear as he tried to push himself up to his feet was “getoutgetoutgetoutgetoutGETOUT.” Her hands changed again, to many different tools, all sharp, all eager to stab at something of flesh and blood…
  534. Oh dammit, Arthur couldn’t help but think as he rushed over to the immobile Selachi. Why was it that whenever people were in peril, they could do nothing but sit and gape? How did the human race survive this long with a tactic like that?
  535. Though he had to concede that Selachi wasn’t exactly human. But human enough.
  536. Beta’s movements were slow and jerky. Arthur had no problem reaching Selachi first and so washed himself over the corner the shark boy was crouching in, mentally calculating the exact color and shade he should turn into to make it appear as though it was simply an empty, dark corner.
  537. He could see Beta hesitate. He could feel Selachi tense nervously and relax underneath. At least he had the brain to figure out that it was best not to move.
  538. But even though he had made sure to make the illusion as perfect as possible, even though Selachi made sure to not move, not even breathe, Beta only hesitated a second. She continued marching over threateningly.
  539. Oh, of course. If she had a Swiss Army knife-like arm, it wasn’t beyond consideration that she could have infrared sensory systems. Damn.
  540. Selachi figured out very quickly that by staying here, he would be killed, so he somehow pushed himself up on his feet and started for the door. Beta jerkily moved to intercept, but Arthur, in desperation, wound up around her foot. As the corrupt Beta lifted it, Arthur clung tightly to the floor so that she could barely put it forward, as though she had been caught in tar, before finally, something had to give.
  541. Unfortunately, it was Arthur. Apparently, a conglomeration of random paint just couldn’t stand up to a robot who was really determined to move her leg. For a split second, he seemed to have double-awareness. He was the swirl of paint writhing on the floor. He was the dull clump of paint clinging limply to Beta’s retreating leg. He was both. And then he was only one. As he continued to cringe in pain, he couldn’t help noticing that other part of himself drip off his leg like blood.
  542. What Selachi couldn’t help but notice was that there was still a bloodthirsty robot chasing him. And the ghost possessing her had figured out how to use a gun.
  543. Luckily for him, she hadn’t quite figured out how to aim, though he was pretty sure he wouldn’t be able to count on that for long. He had to think of a way out of this. But obviously there was no way he could turn around and kill Beta. That was pretty much suicide. He tried to run for the stairs which would hopefully not collapse this time.
  544. Ever since the possession, the basement had dropped all subtlety. Shrieks echoed throughout the place and the walls rippled and bled, sometimes even dripping messages on the floor. Distance seemed to be warped, as Selachi found when he ran and ran and ran but never seemed to get closer to the stairs. He was getting tired and although it seemed the poison was wearing off, he still was prone to stumbling towards the floor.
  545. And then he finally fell, getting blood all over his clothes. And in that instant, it was all over. Lying there on the warm concrete, he was sure that he wouldn’t be able to get up in time for Beta to not kill him. But his legs weren’t ready to give up and he was already halfway to his feet when Beta stepped next to him, still hissing. She seemed to be growing warm. Uncomfortably warm. Steaming, actually. He could feel the air around her singe his cheek.
  546. And that was around the time that, in a whirl of cool air, Mephistis slammed into her chest.
  547. It at least surprised her enough for Selachi to get back up and running. He managed to reach the stairs. He grabbed onto the railing and set his foot down, which promptly crashed through the step. He cursed and went back to running for another room.
  548. The element of surprise now completely used, Mephistis couldn’t do much at all. Beta walked through him and continued on, her legs bending unnaturally. She sped up even as she never went faster than walking speed. Selachi reached the door first and slammed it shut behind him, scattering wine bottles everywhere.
  549. It was foolish to think that a door would stop her, but it at least made him feel better. What didn’t make him feel better was the fact that he had just shut himself in a dead-end.
  550. But there was still some hope. Floating serenely in the air, the mirror gazed down at him. The ghostly image of the girl holding it was smiling. He was hoping to change that soon.
  551. How much time did he have? Probably not much. Selachi grabbed several bottles off the ground and started tossing them towards the mirror. They smashed against the wall as she disappeared, but, now knowing of its deceptive nature, Selachi didn’t stop. He picked up armfuls of bottles and threw them about wildly, not exactly aiming anywhere, for there was nothing to aim at, but instead aiming everywhere. Glass shards started raining from the walls, which mingled with the blood that gushed out every time a wine bottle hit them. Even when Beta finally smashed down the door, the air around her crackling with heat, her metal growing red, he continued throwing bottles. He started throwing some at the door.
  552. One hit the mirror.
  553. In an instant, it appeared in the air and fell to the floor with a clunk. Selachi watched with satisfaction as it lay there, cracked, smoke wisping out of its reflecting surface. He felt a little concern when the wisp of smoke started going into the floor rather than up to the ceiling, as nature would usually have it. He grew extremely concerned when the whole house started shaking. At the same time, Beta fell to her knees again, singing the concrete, and screamed.
  554. All around, the house heaved. It ripped itself out of its supports. It tore itself off the ground. It broke the floor and pulled itself in half and put itself together again.
  555. ----------------------------------------------------------------
  556. The mirror spirit was having a lot of fun with its new home.
  557. The former inhabitant was not too pleased with this, though. It continued to scream “getoutgetoutgetout”, though this was no longer directed towards the intruders in general. It was being directed to the spirit who had usurped its place when he was busy trying to deal with the new beings.
  558. It left Beta, leaving her steaming on the floor as she struggled to clean out her systems and cool herself down before her wires melted. The floor continued to buckle as two spirits battled it out for the house.
  559. And somewhere on an unseen plane, an argument took place.
  560. ‘This is my home I have been here many years it lies over my corpse you have no right’
  561. ‘Well then you shouldn’t have left it for just anybody to hop in’
  562. ‘I had to I had to drive them out’
  563. ‘You obviously hadn’t tried hard enough do you see what I’m doing if you really wanted to get rid of them you could do this’
  564. ‘Young spirits are all alike they don’t understand anything’
  565. ‘Maybe I understand more than you think obviously the better of us should stay and I am better than you’
  566. ‘Do you really believe that’
  567. And then there were no more words. The house tore itself in half and in the new crevice there was nothing, only an infinite blackness. Again and again, the spirits dealt blows to each other. Again and again, these blows materialized as severe damage to the house. The other contestants were having a hard time keeping on the ground. Beta, still lying prone on the ground, almost fell into a gaping abyss that opened up until Selachi grabbed her leg. It scorched his hand and he cried out, but still he managed to pull her up as his skin smoked.
  568. And then the house was still.
  569. Somewhere, the mirror spirit tried to keep itself together. But the damage done to its being was too much. Its essence was flowing away from it like leaves in the wind. The veteran spirit stood over it. When it lashed out towards him, he didn’t even respond. He didn’t even grace it with a snide remark as it dissolved from the plane, gone completely from both spiritual and physical.
  570. ------------------------------------------------------------
  571. “Phew,” the voice of the Gatherer said as the six remaining were transported out of the decrepit house. “That got me a little worried there. Imagine! If that spirit hadn’t died and one of you guys did, I’d have to teleport an entire house to the next round! Now that would just be silly!”
  572. And very quickly, the next round swam into view. Though the view was mostly boxes. They seemed to be in a gigantic room piled high with boxes. It was a labyrinth made of boxes. “Welcome to the…uh, well, it’s some sort of warehouse. They keep a whole lot of stuff, as you can see. A wide variety, too. It’s almost as if they supply everything for everyone…
  573. “Oh yeah, and there is a door here, but I suggest you don’t go out. Also, be wary of the employees who run this place!”
  574. ---------------------------------------------------
  575. As soon as the voice clicked off, an alarm blared urgently. “Gas leak in Sector 3-XMI!” a voice declared. If Selachi had to guess, that was probably Mephistis.
  576. He turned around, craning his neck to see how high the boxes stretched (answer: very high), before deciding that it was impossible to try to climb over them. He turned around. Wherever ‘Sector 3-whatever’ was, he intended on avoiding it as much as he could. True, Mephistis may have saved his ass back in the creaky old house, but he wasn’t intending on getting poisoned again.
  577. He winced as his hand made itself known and looked down at it and winced again. While his hand used to have a slight gray tint, now it was raw red. The skin was peeling slightly. Every once in a while, it would shoot a message of pain up to his head, as if reminding it, ‘hey, remember me? You totally burned me and it would be nice if you took care of this burn or something. No rush.’
  578. It would be nice if one of these millions of boxes had something like, say, a burn ointment. It would also be nice if he could take out one of the boxes without everything collapsing on him and thus killing him.
  579. Well at least he didn’t seem to be poisoned anymore. He felt quite well act—oh wait, spoke too soon.
  580. Selachi wiped his mouth and tried to spit the taste of bile out. Staring at the little mess he had made turned his stomach. As he stepped around it, he said under his breath, “Cklean up on aisle nine” and chuckled to himself even though it wasn’t very funny. Well, it was nice to laugh at least.
  581. --------------------------------------------------------------------------
  582. “Basically,” Mest had said before everything went to hell, “If someone believes that I am someone or something, then I sort of kind of start becoming that someone or something. I mean, not like that, but I start gaining knowledge or memories or something that that someone or something would have or at least what that someone or something is expected to have. It usually happens when I’m left alone with one guy for a long period of time too.”
  583. Vander shook his head. He still did not understand this crap one bit. He supposed it made some sort of sense. If he abandoned any definition of ‘sense’ he had held before. But, well, it was better to trust the one who actually had an idea how her power worked, so he might as well just go with whatever she said.
  584. Now that he thought of it, he realized he was in a team that was starting to rally against Beta and Mephistis. But after those two were taken care of, what would he do?
  585. Well obviously he was expected to find a way to kill the rest. Arthur, Mest and Selachi.
  586. He wasn’t able to think of a way to kill any of them. Maybe Arthur, who didn’t have a face…and Selachi, who he hadn’t even really talked to at all yet, but Christ he was still a kid. And Mest was…maybe an idiot. But he wasn’t going to kill her over that. She…how could he think of killing her? They hadn’t been long together, but she was still more like a friend than an impersonal partner. He couldn’t kill anybody. Was there even another choice though? He could…
  587. He could die himself…
  588. With shame, he realized how quickly he had thrown that idea out. He was too afraid of death to even contemplate it. But then what? He just couldn’t run and hide. Even if he did just let the others die, just not do anything and watched, eventually, there would be only two left and he would be forced.
  589. Vander rubbed his forehead. What if…what if…he killed the Gatherer?
  590. He scoffed out loud. “Now how the hell would I do that?”
  591. “Who’s there?” Apparently, he had just caught the attention of a wandering guard. Vander bit back a curse as he heard heavy footsteps tromping towards him. And with a sinking heart he realized that he was at a dead end, a wall of boxes looming high over him, cutting off any other avenue of escape.
  592. The guard turned the corner, baton at the ready.
  593. He found nothing at the other side.
  594. He was confused, sure that he had heard something, but a few seconds later he didn’t have to worry because a thick tail came in from above and whacked the side of his head quite soundly.
  595. The guard collapsed and Vander waited for a while, perched on the boxes carefully, before even thinking of climbing down. He was extremely grateful that the boxes had not decided to fall out and crush him. That would be an embarrassing death. Probably embarrassing for the guard too.
  596. And speaking of the guard…
  597. Vander started rifling through the prone figure on the ground, looking for any sort of thing, really, that could help him in some way. ID cards were always useful. The cudgel, though not particularly a strong weapon, was still stronger than fisticuffs. Hm, some sort of PDA. After fiddling with it, Vander found a detailed map of the warehouse, where the security room was, how each sector was organized…quite a bit of useful information. He decided to look at it carefully after he got the…less savory part of spy work out of the way.
  598. He grumbled as he started peeling the guard’s uniform off. This always made him feel uncomfortable. And he bet this guy never washed his clothes or anything either…they smelled horrible. Ugh.
  599. The clothes didn’t even fit Vander all too well. It wasn’t that the guard was fat (it was all muscle, Vander noted slightly enviously), but that Vander was all bones. The clothes hung over his lean frame and he was sure it made him look ridiculous. Not to mention he was sure that – here he checked the ID – Wallace Yern’s friends probably knew that he hadn’t been a lizard before. Damn. If only he had like…a mask or something…
  600. “Hello? Hello?”
  601. Vander glanced down at the walkie talkie. Well, if there was one thing he prided himself on, it was his ability to mimic voices.
  602. Thinking for a bit, he turned the radio on and started shouting in a low, gruff, terrified voice, “Oh god, it’s, aaaah crap it’s too strong—“ and here Vander kicked into the wall of boxes. It was harder than he had thought and he shouted with real pain. But the kick did what he intended to do and he threw down the radio and jumped away as an avalanche of boxes tumbled down onto the other side of the dead end. Some came dangerously close to falling on the unconscious guard, but ultimately, he was left unharmed. Vander checked the radio. It was buzzing alive with questions from the other end and he smashed it with his foot. He regretted this very quickly as he scraped off metal radio bits off his now-wounded foot. Then he started dragging the guard up to the collapsed wall of boxes and hid him a bit underneath some. He would probably be found quickly, but it should at least buy him some time…
  603. And in his baggy guard clothes, Vander walked calmly away. He wasn’t quite sure how long it would take for more guards to come running to the site of the accident, but he was sure he would be long gone by then.
  604. --------------------------------------------------------------------
  605. Around her, the air fizzled. After a moment, it stopped. She had finally cooled down enough to not burn everything she touched.
  606. Beta stood still, making sure all systems were functional, all black goo expelled and all ghosts kicked out before she even dared to move. That was…an almost terrifying experience. She had never had to handle something like that before. Lost control. Had to watch as she almost killed a boy. No, it wasn’t her. Of course not. But it was essentially her. She shouldn’t have let that happen.
  607. She couldn’t see Selachi at all. This worried her. What happened after the house shook apart? How was his hand? It couldn’t have fared well with her metal scorching hot like that. How could she find him again?
  608. She looked around at the corridor of boxes. Of course, she would be able to map out this maze easily. But Selachi would be moving about too and she was afraid that she would probably miss him. Like they would just pass each other like in some stupid sitcom. Though Beta wouldn’t have made that connection because she had never watched a sitcom before.
  609. In any case, what she needed was a way to find Selachi quickly. That meant getting a great advantage point, to survey the whole place or at least part of the place and thus be able to actually see the shark boy roaming around.
  610. Satisfied with this conclusion, Beta bent her legs and leapt up, shooting several feet into the air before even slowing down. With sharp fingers, she stabbed her hand into the boxes and waited for them to steady before beginning the climb. It would take a while, perhaps. There were a lot of boxes to cover. But she felt she could probably make it fast enough. She was, after all, a robot. Inhuman climbing speed was the norm for her.
  611. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
  612. This was such a pain.
  613. “You can’t stop me,” Mephistis announced to the men clad in black and strange masks. He assumed the masks were the reason why his poison just wasn’t affecting them. This was so annoying.
  614. He could hear one man talking into some weird thing. “Yeah, uh, Steve, I think the poisonous gas is talking.
  615. “Yes, I’m sure.
  616. “No, I’m not. I’m wearing the mask, aren’t I? How am I supposed to be hallucinating if I can’t breathe it in? The other guys hear it, right?” And here, the masked men nodded and ‘yeah’d in affirmation. The man was silent again for a moment. “Yeah, I realize that, but we really didn’t bring anything to contain it, we only brought stuff to fix a gas leak and clear the air. Look, I doubt it’s going to just come with me…okay, fine, I…”
  617. “Hey, it’s moving,” one guy said and the first man stopped talking into the weird thing to look up sharply.
  618. “Wait, you,” he called out as Mephistis started floating away.
  619. “There can’t possibly be any way for you to stop me and there is obviously nothing you can do to convince me to stay,” he said, “So I am just going to leave.”
  620. “No, wait, you—follow it, I’m going back to grab the vacuum, try to keep it in your sight at all times…”
  621. “I’d like to see you try,” Mephistis laughed as he went even higher. Humans may be able to make interesting things, but they certainly weren’t able to fly.
  622. But apparently they could make things that could help them fly.
  623. Mephistis found this out when the men he had left behind roared up into the air with the help of some sort of jetpack. Or gravity propulsion thing or something. Whatever it was, Mephistis had no idea what it was and so was completely caught off guard at the sight of the men flying after him.
  624. “Hmmm, very well, but I wonder if you can keep up?” he said out loud and he moved through the air as quickly as he could. The men continued after him.
  625. ----------------------------------------------------------------
  626. “I still don’t like you,” Mest called back as Arthur trailed slowly behind. “I’m going to ignore you. Stop following me.”
  627. If she had bothered to look back, she would have seen Arthur writing out hasty explanations and apologies, but it wouldn’t have mattered if she saw them anyways. She would have just ignored them.
  628. “In any case, you still apparently see me as some sort of witch so obviously you don’t like me either, so why don’t we agree to disagree and part ways?”
  629. If she had bothered to look back, she would have seen Arthur writing out hasty warnings, but it already was too late. Mest let out a squeak of shock when, all of a sudden, something large and metal landed right in front of her, creating a shockwave that pushed the walls of boxes back a few centimeters. Beta looked her over and said, “You aren’t Selachi.”
  630. “I, I, I,” Mest stuttered, his eyes wide. And then he noticed that he was a ‘he’ now.
  631. “Oh, but you look like a scientist,” Beta continued, sounding a little hopeful. “Perhaps you can help.”
  632. Mest fingered the lab coat over his shoulders and adjusted his glasses. He was slowly getting used to the scientist’s body. In fact, he rather liked it. Especially now that he knew things he never knew before. He was starting to learn a lot about Beta as well. “You really think I’m a scientist,” he said, sounding a little amazed. Beta stared at him questioningly. The good thing about a robot with artificial intelligence, Mest was slowly finding out, was that they were never wishy-washy. Things were either something or they weren’t. And right now, Mest was a scientist and no other perception of any other person could overturn that.
  633. “Do you need anything specifically?” he asked in the most businesslike tone he could make. He almost grinned. He had never sounded this serious before.
  634. “Several of my functions may not be working properly,” Beta replied dutifully. Why would she think of him as a scientist, though? Mest thought about this a little and almost missed the next part of Beta’s response. “But I feel that I must find Selachi first, and perhaps the others. There are potentially some useful items stored here. It would be beneficial to all of us if nobody died just yet.”
  635. “Right, right,” Mest nodded in a scientist-like way, still thinking about why he was actually a scientist. Maybe the robot just didn’t have enough imagination to imagine anything else. “Finding everybody quickly. Let’s build a radar that detects life forms.”
  636. Arthur had been lurking around, uncertain of what to do, but upon hearing this, he drew himself up on some boxes and wrote, ‘Are you serious how does that even work besides it’s only going to find two people it certainly can’t track Mephistis’
  637. “Oh shush, I can do this, I’m a scientist,” Mest said dismissively. “I just need some spare parts.”
  638. ‘You don’t even have any tools’ Arthur pointed out.
  639. “Hey, you don’t know what Beta can do, but I do. She can definitely help with most of the work and stuff. Do you have anything?”
  640. “Of course,” Beta replied impassively, unshouldering the pack she had made. “I picked up a few items that I thought may be useful…”
  641. Mest considered the various objects seriously. Arthur metaphorically rolled his eyes. ‘It’s all just junk’
  642. “No, I can do something with this. But I’ll need, like, some sort of wires…a speaker, a battery if I can’t connect it to you…a receiver too, actually…”
  643. “Understood. Wait here.” And she was off, picking up towers of boxes as though it were nothing and peering inside for any sort of useful items. For the few minutes she was gone, Mest was no longer a scientist, and she sighed, already missing all that intelligence.
  644. Soon, Beta was back, and she tossed down a few more objects to add to the paltry pile. A digital clock, a stereo, a doll, a two-way radio and anything else she thought could be of some use.
  645. “Right,” Mest clapped her hands together cheerfully. “You can do what I tell you, right? We’ll need to take apart several items…hey, you, make yourself useful and watch out for anybody that might come our way, something like that. I’m pretty sure there’re guards wandering around here.”
  646. ‘I’ll be surprised if you actually manage to make anything out of this junk,’ he wrote out before leaving.
  647. “Well prepared to be surprised then! Okay, so first, we should make the display…that’ll be made of the glass. So we need to sort of melt down these fragments and…”
  648. The next half hour or so was spent making this radar. Beta was an incredibly fast worker who sometimes even managed to anticipate some of Mest’s commands. Every once in a while, Arthur would come around to check on the progress and to report that nobody was around. Eventually, he just stopped and watched as the radar was completed.
  649. It fit over the side of Beta’s head. “It’s gonna sort of work like echolocation but it can also maybe pick up heartbeats of faraway targets. It’s probably a little distracting to look at a screen with one eye and everything else with the other, but I guess you might manage.”
  650. ‘It can’t possibly work,’ Arthur said. It worked.
  651. “Ha! Never doubt science!” Mest crowed, though to be honest, he was sure he wouldn’t have normally known how it worked either.
  652. ‘I don’t think it’s actually science how could anything there be put together to make that where did you get the microchips or the programming or whatever to build that’
  653. “If it works, it works, okay?” Mest snapped back. “Anyways, now that that’s done…since there’re guards about, there are going to be more than two blips on the screen, of course, and only two of them are going to be Vander or Selachi, so you should probably—hey! Wait!”
  654. Beta shot off, climbing the box walls again, this time with a destination in mind. Mest watched sadly as she was back alone with Arthur and thus, vaguely witch-like again. “Damn,” she said sadly. “I was hoping to find Vander…”
  655. ‘Why don’t you just whip up another one of those scientific radars, hm? It worked last time.’ Mest was slightly amazed how sarcastic chalk and paint could be.
  656. --------------------------------------------------------------------------
  657. Selachi crept around, uncertain about what to do now. Every once in a while, some guards may pass, but he had been lucky so far. Apparently, they weren’t yet looking around for him. They only knew about Mephistis and apparently something else that managed to kill another guy. He bet it was Beta.
  658. More guards passed and as he pressed himself into the shadows, he heard one guy complaining bitterly about ‘underemployment.’ At least that meant that he was unlikely to run into many. He slunk off once they passed.
  659. It was probably a bad idea to go the way the guards came from, but he couldn’t help but want to find where the ‘base of operations’ was. Or whatever they called it. It was better than staying in the box maze.
  660. He made a few random turns in hopes that he was more likely getting closer rather than farther. And then he noticed a curiously smoking wall of boxes.
  661. It was probably a bad thing to lean in closer to the smoking wall, but Selachi did anyways, apparently filled with a need to sate his curiosity. He stared as he walked. The smoke seemed to be pushing itself in between the boxes…although smoke couldn’t just push itself out. But it didn’t seem very likely that there was something in between the boxes that was producing smoke…so…
  662. With a start, Selachi realized that the smoke was purple. He backpedalled quickly, but it was too late, and soon, all of Mephistis had pushed its way through the wall of boxes and swirled before him. He seemed just as surprised as the shark boy. But shouts behind the wall caused him to flinch and hiss, “Hide me and run.”
  663. “Wha—“ Selachi managed to get out before the wall of boxes exploded towards him. Before he could react, Mephistis slid up his sleeve, surrounding Selachi under his clothes. The shark boy had no idea what to think about this and, honestly, didn’t really want to think about it. Lucky there were other things to think about, then. Like the very threatening men crowding around him as boxes continued to fall from the sky.
  664. “What are you doing here?” One masked man demanded, holding up some sort of gun, maybe. Selachi instinctively raised his empty hands and they flinched. Shoot. They must have never seen a guy with webbed hands before.
  665. “Alright, what are you?” One rudely said, causing him to scowl. He hated this. He hated this whole thing. It was a headache. Even more of a headache. And now he had a burned hand and a possibly killer robot and poison gas inside his clothes and rude men gaping at him and actually if Mephistis was billowing about in his clothes now did that make him look pudgy?
  666. So it may have come to nobody’s surprise that Selachi was very anxious at the moment. Being anxious made him even more jittery than usual and he shuffled about, juggling between fury and anxiety before finally jumping up and surprising everybody by biting off the end of the gun.
  667. He spat out gun fragments, as well as a few teeth that were quickly replaced by the hundreds of other teeth he had, and stared sheepishly at his shoes. He felt a bit lucky that nobody had gone and shot him yet.
  668. “Uh. Shorry,” he said.
  669. “I think you oughta come with us,” one of the masked men said sternly. He had a gun that was quite intact and Selachi was pretty sure he couldn’t go up and bite the barrel off again now that they knew he could.
  670. He sighed. “Yeah, yeah, I got it…” Mephistis seemed to stir under his clothes (god he will never not think that anything but awkward) but he ignored it as best as he could and allowed himself to be led by the masked men. One spoke into a radio and after a brief conversation, it was decided that only two would be needed to take him back to wherever they were taking him. He found it a little insulting. But he would also rather that he weren’t led at all.
  671. The masked men at his sides didn’t make good conversation. They walked and pushed him along and stared straight ahead, always silent. Silence made Selachi nervous. At least he was already moving so that he didn’t need to fidget.
  672. “Shoooooo, what’sh thish plashe all about anywaysh?” he said, lisping like crazy. One guard glanced down at him.
  673. “…You don’t know?”
  674. “Look, I jusht got here,” Selachi said rather irately. “I shwear I don’t know anything that’sh going on right now.”
  675. The guard stared at him now. “You’re saying that you’ve infiltrated the largest warehouse in existence, the carrier of everything anybody would need and then some, the storage for the world, and you don’t know that you did?”
  676. Selachi glared up at him from under his hair. “No. I didn’t.”
  677. “You didn’t come here to steal anything or to get something for someone or….anything?”
  678. “Does that happen a lot?” Selachi asked.
  679. The guard thought for a moment. “No, not really.”
  680. “Well, I didn’t come here to any of that.” Selachi resumed glaring sullenly at his shoes as they continued walking.
  681. “I see,” the guard said, obviously not seeing at all.
  682. “Get their masks off,” Mephistis hissed under his shirt (uuugh he was still shivering about that).
  683. “What was that?” one of the guards asked.
  684. “Hm? Did you hear something?” Selachi asked innocently.
  685. The guard glanced around for a bit. The other guard joined in. Both had to concede that there was nothing there. “I guess…not…”
  686. “I’m not gonna do anything,” Selachi said.
  687. Thinking that he was referring to them, the guard replied, “Yeah, but we still need to take you in. Unauthorized people aren’t….authorized to be here.”
  688. There was no response from Mephistis. Selachi decided that he had gotten the message.
  689. The place they were taking him was indeed not part of the box maze. They went in an elevator and went up several floors before stopping at a rather clean hallway. It was white, almost blindingly so, and the guards pushed him down this hallway towards a door at the end. There were windows overlooking the whole warehouse, and he gazed out at them, trying to look impassive but failing. The box maze might have been dull, but he would prefer to be down there than up here now. He held in a breath when he noticed that, at the far end was an open dock. He tore his eyes away from the inviting waters and stared at the doors they passed instead.
  690. And, quite suddenly, the windows burst inward behind them.
  691. The guards turned around swiftly, holding up their guns and shouting out, “What—“ but already that took up too much time. One guard was kicked to the floor roughly with a loud ‘crack.’ The other guard opened fire, but, unfortunately for him, bullets don’t work well on robots. He was knocked out as well. Selachi stared as Beta was suddenly in front of him, looming, staring down coldly at him.
  692. Then the door opened behind him as several other employees had heard the gunfire. Only a few surprised exclamatory shouts were allowed before Beta incapacitated them as well. During this time, Selachi felt Mephistis trickle out of his sleeve and, with a rush of air, flew out the broken window.
  693. Oh, right, thanks.
  694. Beta was done knocking everybody unconscious and turned around and stepped towards him. Selachi instinctively stepped back. Beta halted suddenly, a strange look on her face…a pained look on her face.
  695. Selachi’s mind reeled a little bit as he thought about what exactly this meant. Because surely robots don’t actually have emotions. Or wait, did they? There were a lot of sci-fi books and movies about this sort of thing, right? But then again, that was fiction. But then again, this certainly felt like a strange fiction.
  696. “I…uh,” Selachi said, suddenly feeling incredibly awkward, more awkward than having plumes of smoke snuggle in his clothes and that was saying something. The air was feeling thick and he started shuffling around, suddenly unable to keep still again.
  697. “Is your hand okay?” Beta asked, her voice cracking slightly. He assumed that was from the damage she took from the last round.
  698. “I…uh,” Selachi repeated, flexing his burned hand a little. It probably wasn’t a smart move. He noticeably winced. Still, he said, “Yeah, it’s…alright. Or something.” Pretty okay for a second degree burn, he almost said, but stopped himself. He really shouldn’t be spiteful. He was the one who grabbed onto her like an idiot. I mean, what could possibly happen to a robot? Well, maybe she would have broken apart, but wasn’t that what he had wanted? Even though the mirror had lied to him, he couldn’t get that image of Beta killing him out of his head. So maybe she wouldn’t do it now. But sooner or later, she would have to, and why would she ever hesitate? Certainly not because she felt bad for him. For one thing, he didn’t really need anybody’s sympathy. Also, robots don’t feel things. So why the hell was he afraid about hurting her feelings? Gaaaah.
  699. “Let me help,” Beta said. Selachi stared at her helplessly. If she wanted to do something, it wasn’t like he could actually stop her. And he didn’t exactly want his arm broken just because she wanted to help and he refused and she insisted. That would actually be a little embarrassing.
  700. “Yeah, okay, shure,” he said, holding his hand out and looking away with a petulant scowl, as if trying to make sure she knew very well that he didn’t actually want her care. Beta’s lips turned upwards slightly, though Selachi didn’t see, or perhaps refused to see.
  701. Carefully, she took the leathery hand. Selachi flinched at the touch of cold metal, but still did not pull his hand away. Besides, it actually felt…nice.
  702. Something else that felt soft and cool was rubbed on his hand, soothing the burning pain. By the time he glanced back forward, Beta was already bandaging his hand using a roll of cloth bandages that she seemed to just have conjured out of nowhere.
  703. The roll of bandages disappeared again and now his hand was nothing more than a white mitten. Selachi found that he couldn’t really move it at all. It would probably interfere with swimming…but then again, it was very unlikely that he would even get to a body of water. Thinking about that again, he turned towards the windows and sighed. Beta followed his gaze.
  704. Something mechanical in her hummed before she finally announced, “I am going to get you out of here.”
  705. “I…what?” Selachi spluttered, a little flustered.
  706. “I will take you out there. You will swim far away. It may not take you away from the battle, but it will take you away from the fight and you will be safe until the round ends. I will be trying to find a way to end this battle…or at least take it to the cowardly Gatherer.”
  707. Selachi would have laughed if anybody else had said it, but somehow, having a robot say it made it seem all the more possible. He couldn’t think of what to say for a moment. “I…I don’t need to run away! I’ve been doing fine sho far!”
  708. “Yes, but I still think you should get to the water. You’re more suited to be there, anyways.”
  709. Selachi chewed on his lip and stared out to the docks again, all the way at the far side of the warehouse. He couldn’t deny that he wanted to be there. Water was good. Water was comforting. “Alright,” he finally said. “How did you find me anywaysh? Ish it that thing over your eye?”
  710. Beta shifted a little. “It helped. I still had trouble finding you.”
  711. Selachi’s eyes narrowed. “…What short of trouble…?”
  712. --------------------------------------------------------------------------
  713. Yet another unconscious body. Vander had no idea who had done all this, but he was both grateful and very frightened. Whoever was knocking about guards willy-nilly probably wouldn’t mind knocking him out too, where he would be rather vulnerable to any of the other contestants, easy pickings, blah blah blah whatever you wanted to say for ‘not dead but might as well be.’ He suddenly regretted the guard disguise.
  714. Actually, the person knocking all the guards unconscious was probably a contestant and if so, he was sure that they would see past his rather stupid disguise and kill him instead.
  715. He almost jumped out of his skin at the sound of pattering footsteps, but grinned with relief when he heard they were guards. They were in a panic. He supposed they found the unconscious bodies too.
  716. However, they were headed his way, and this wasn’t something to be relieved about. Thinking quickly, he hid his thick tail self-consciously behind his back and covered his face and moaned loudly, stumbling out of the hall. He screamed and put on quite a good show as a guy who had been attacked horribly by some unspeakable madness lurking about in the warehouse.
  717. He also didn’t need to bother with hiding his tail because he had misjudged something, and that was which part of the hall the guards were in. He had jumped out assuming they would be in front of him. They were actually behind him. Where his tail could clearly be seen.
  718. “What the hell,” someone shouted and Vander quickly realized his mistake. Still keeping up his act, he lurched around and tripped over towards the group of guards, who were rather quick to retreat. Seeing as he could no longer hide his lizardness, he let his hands widen to at least show some of his face. He moaned a little more for good measure before gasping out, horror and dread dripping off every word (not saying much because there was only one), “H-help—“
  719. One reaction he hadn’t exactly expected was a gunshot. He recoiled quickly and shouted “HOLY CRAP, god damn, I didn’t mean like that you morons!” He probably shouldn’t have snapped like that. But getting shot was a pretty scary thing to happen to you. The guards stared at him, unsure what to do now. Vander stared back as he slowly realized with mounting horror that both his disguise and his act was just plain useless now.
  720. He couldn’t help but think about how much this sucked.
  721. Luckily, he didn’t have to think about it much more because, suddenly, two of the guards in the back fell over, downed by what seemed to be a gun. The rest turned around, gaped in terror, and started wildly firing. Vander noticed this did nothing. He also noticed that it was mostly because what they were firing at didn’t exist.
  722. While Arthur distracted the remaining guards, Vander knocked them all on the head with his tail, whipping it around swiftly so that they fell down, stunned. He was somewhat startled to hear several more shots ring out and in that instant, all of the fallen guards were dead.
  723. “You didn’t have to do that,” Vander said, wide-eyed and shaking as Mest approached casually. Or at least, she tried to look casual. She was obviously shaken too.
  724. “Look, they were all about to… I dunno, capture you, or at worst, kill you. I didn’t want you to die. Aren’t you supposed to be a spy?”
  725. “Would you stop assuming things about spies!” Vander shouted, almost ready to throttle the young, naïve, lizard girl in front of him. “Whatever you heard about spies, wherever you got your knowledge of them, it’s all wrong, okay? We’re not suave, we don’t have any super secret spy powers or anything, we may be some training, but I’m just a regular guy, okay? I’m…” Vander looked away and sighed. “I’m not even a real spy.”
  726. Mest stared. “Okay. You’re a pretty cool spy in my book and you’ve survived ‘til now, so that counts for something. I don’t really know what else to say though. You’ve just made this a little awkward. And I was going to tell you something important too.”
  727. “What?”
  728. ‘She’s figured out a way to kill Mephistis,’ Arthur wrote out on the wall.
  729. “Ah.” Vander paused, collecting himself quickly. He would have to find time later to be embarrassed. It was time to ignore all blubbery unmanly emotions. “…How?”
  730. “Wait a minute, first, do you have something useful that comes with that uniform?” Mest said quickly.
  731. “Well…a map…? It’s pretty—“ She yanked the PDA out of his hand before he could finish his sentence. Vander debated snapping at her again but decided to wait to see what she had to say at least.
  732. “Ah! Great! This is perfect!” she cried out gleefully and Vander couldn’t help but lean in closer to see what she was making a big fuss about. She at least let him see the map. “Alright, look, this part of the warehouse,” she said victoriously, jabbing a finger at a part of the screen that was labeled ‘Frozen Goods.’ “Obviously they have to freeze whatever is there.”
  733. Vander shuddered involuntarily. He didn’t particularly like the cold. “Okay, so what?”
  734. “Well if you know your science, obviously you would have known that with change in temperature comes change of state of matter. Gas to liquid. Liquid to solid.” Vander stared for a moment as it slowly dawned on him what Mest was suggesting. “Right, you see, don’t you! What better way to kill poisonous gas than freezing it!”
  735. “Are you sure it’s cold enough, though?” Vander said nervously.
  736. ‘They probably have some sort of temperature control for that,’ Arthur wrote.
  737. Vander sighed. “Alright. So we’re going to lead Mephistis to this giant freezer and hope he doesn’t catch on, is that the plan?” Mest nodded rather cheerfully, still happy that she managed to figure out a way to actually harm a collection of smoke. “…How did you figure this out, anyways? I thought we were going to have you stick around with Mephistis alone…”
  738. “Beta sees me as a very smart scientist,” Mest explained. “I don’t think she is capable of imagining anything else. In any case, let’s head over to the freezer at least…”
  739. “Wait, what about finding Mephistis?”
  740. Mest waved a hand dismissively. “We’ll probably come across him on our way there.”
  741. “Isn’t…this place a little too big for people to just randomly come across each other…?”
  742. “We ran across you, didn’t we? Not to mention I saved your ass.” Vander sighed and gave up. Especially when Beta happened across them by chance.
  743. “It’s a good thing you got here,” Mest said happily once everybody managed to get back on their feet from the sudden crash landing from above. To Vander’s slight surprise, he found that Mest was now, indeed, a scientist-looking character. “We might need your help finding Mephistis! There’s something important that needs to be done and it can’t be done without him. Now that you’re here, maybe we can build some sort of tracker for poisonous smoke…”
  744. “I don’t think we need that,” Beta said calmly.
  745. “Why?” She pointed up in the sky. The others looked up, and there was Mephistis flying right overhead, zooming past them rather quickly.
  746. “Shoot! MEPHISTIS!” Mest called out, but it was too late and he was gone. “Aagh, Beta, follow him quickly and tell him where’re we’re gonna be, or at least take in back to us. We’ll just head to the freezer area.” Beta nodded and bounded off, catching up quickly to the plume of smoke.
  747. “Right, so let’s do this quickly. Do you know where we are?”
  748. “Just give me the map and follow me,” Vander said and they headed off quickly.
  749. Arthur rushed ahead of them, writing out, ‘How will we actually get him inside the freezer? I doubt he’d like to go in there.’
  750. It took a while for them to read it (because it was hard to read while running), but Vander agreed. “Yeah, it’s not like he doesn’t know about his own weakness or anything.”
  751. “Mephistis may be a conniving, scheming sort of guy, but he’s not smart. Or at least isn’t familiar with most anything that has to do with technology, if you haven’t noticed. Remember the cameras?”
  752. Vander couldn’t do much while he was running so he just nodded as they took a sharp turn.
  753. “In any case, we’ll just say that there’s something at the other end. Or an escape route. Or something. We’ll act like we don’t know why he’s so reluctant to get in, if he is, and we’ll pressure him. We lose him and duck back out of the freezer and shut it. The door should be airtight or something. And there you go, he’s dead.”
  754. Vander still wasn’t sure about this. “I’m still not sure about this.”
  755. “It’ll be easy, and it just might be the only chance we get! It’s not often buildings have enormous freezers!”
  756. “Yeah…” Vander sighed and they continued to run.
  757. When they arrived at the imposing metal door, Beta and Mephistis were already there. The poisonous cloud seemed a little nervous around Beta and was happy to see them. “So what’s this about?” he asked. Maybe Vander was just paranoid, but the cloud sounded a little suspicious. Maybe this wasn’t a good idea. Maybe it wasn’t going to wor—
  758. “It’s another part of the facility,” Mest said casually, adjusting his glasses. Mephistis stared at him for a moment before deciding that yes, it was Mest. “If we go through here, there’ll be a way out of the warehouse part and into a…what was it, Vander?”
  759. Vander almost cursed him. He hadn’t been prepared to adlib too. “Weapon storage. We still need some. We might even find a door out of the building itself. The Gatherer warned us not to, but it might actually just be a way of getting out of the battle.”
  760. Mephistis bobbed in the air, looking as contemplative as a cloud of smoke could get. “I see,” he said finally. “And so we’re all going?”
  761. “Yeah, especially since now, it’s better to stick together. There might be more guards on the other side. I wouldn’t leave my weapon storage unguarded,” Mest said seriously before turning the wheel on the steel door and pulling it open.
  762. Mephistis recoiled from the cold air. Vander did too. He didn’t want to tell Mest, but…he was weak to the cold as well. Cold-blooded. Exothermic. That sort of thing.
  763. “You coming or what?” Mest shouted back as he started inside. “The cold isn’t so bad! Are you really so afraid to get a little chilly?”
  764. “I’m not sure if…” Mephistis started, actually sounding worried. This managed to bolster Vander’s morale a bit and he followed Mest inside, despite the temperature. Beta, of course, had gone in unflinchingly, and though he couldn’t see Arthur very well now, he was sure he had slid in as well.
  765. “It’s okay, it’s only a short way,” he said assuredly. “We’ll be in and out fast.”
  766. When Mephistis still hesitated, Mest went back out and moved as if to push him in jokingly. “I’m not sure what you’re so worried about. It’s only a little chill, you know?”
  767. “Right…” Mephistis said and reluctantly trailed in as well.
  768. The freezer was dark and extremely cold. Vander could feel himself getting sleepy, his mind numbing. He slowed down, though he would have slowed down naturally, to let Beta pass, and then Mephistis, who was already sluggish and a bit more liquidy. He lingered further and further behind for a chance to escape back out of the damn thing with Mest and…where was she (or he) anyways?
  769. With a feeling of dread, Vander turned around. Mest was still at the door and was struggling to close it.
  770. The lizard’s yelp of “Hey!” caught the attention of the others. Mephistis ,realizing what was up, tried to rush back out, but the cold was suppressing him, forcing him down, weakening him. Vander couldn’t exactly see what the others were doing, but he fumbled with the gun that came with the guard uniform. Mest noticed this and struggled to push even harder but as he raised the gun in a shaking grip with the grim knowledge that he would probably miss his mark, it was knocked out of his hand by Beta.
  771. He turned his head slowly to stare at her in shock. She seemed a little surprised at herself as well. But she steeled herself and said, “I cannot let anybody harm a scientist.”
  772. Mest stared before laughing. “I’m really liking you, Beta! I hope the cold doesn’t kill you too!”
  773. “Are you seriously trying to kill us at the same time?” Mephistis hissed angrily, perhaps not actually wanting an answer but wanting a distraction so he could collect himself again and escape. Vander’s vision was getting dark and he stumbled to the icy floor. “I can last longer than this weak lizard.” He laughed menacingly at this, no longer concerned with holding up a helpful façade.
  774. “Well, maybe one of you will die first, I guess, but I’ll deal with that as it comes. Hey, Beta, do you think you might be able to keep Vander alive until Mephistis is just about ready to die?”
  775. Beta stared down at her, but stiffly nodded. “If that’s your order, then I will carry it out.”
  776. “Awesome, and make sure nobody opens the door,” Mest said rather cheerfully as she managed to close the door all the way. Before she did, though, the barely conscious lizard could hear her call out, “Sorry, Vander, it’s nothing against you. You’re pretty cool. I’m only looking out for my own survival. You know how it is.”
  777. The door may or may not have slammed shut with a resounding ‘thud.’ Vander wouldn’t know because by then, he had fallen asleep and was quickly on the path to freezing to death.
  778. A hatch on the back of Beta’s head opened and a lamp with a strong bulb shone. She sat down in a way so that it shone on both the unconscious Vander and the sluggish Mephistis.
  779. Part of Mephistis that had condensed on the ice and floor turned back into gas and he was getting warm enough to at least pick himself off the floor. He glared at the robot. “Why—“
  780. “My orders said nothing about keeping you alive too,” Beta said simply. “But if you betray my trust and attempt to poison Vander in order to get out of the freezer, I will not give you this warmth.”
  781. Mephistis sulked. “Alright.”
  782. “In any case, this bulb will not last forever. We need a way out.” She paused. “Is Arthur still here?”
  783. Arthur crawled into the small pool of light. “The only one outside now is Selachi. We need to contact him if we want help. Do you think you can at least get out?”
  784. ‘They may have built the door to keep cold air in,’ he replied, ‘but they certainly didn’t build it to keep someone like me in. Where’s Selachi.’
  785. -----------------------------------------------------------------------
  786. He really should have just swum out to sea. The whole world was out there, after all, no crazy battles and weird alien things to kill him. The bandage might hinder his swimming a little, but not much. He would be out of there, nothing to worry about until the round changed. Well, maybe there were sharks in the water, but he knew how to take care of sharks.
  787. So he lingered around under the water instead. It was boring, but he breathed easier here. His thoughts came more clearly. And they were sensible. They continued to say that he should swim away right now. He continued to say that he should stay around the docks. When his mind demanded a reason why, he couldn’t answer.
  788. And again, against his instinct, he broke the surface again and peered up over the concrete floor, hearing nothing but still extremely reluctant to go all the way out.
  789. He wasn’t sure what he was expecting. Was he expecting someone else up here? It wasn’t like he had heard anybody coming and there wasn’t much reason for many people to be here. It seemed like Beta had knocked out a whole shitload of guards, if not all of them, and the other contestants more likely than not didn’t even know there was a dock here.
  790. He leaned on the side and stared back at the towers of boxes, feeling a little bored to be honest. But boring was good, right? Boring was safe and…wait, he saw something move.
  791. Selachi sank a little into the water, ready to fire away if there was any sign of trouble. But a sigh of relief bubbled out when he saw that it was only Arthur.
  792. “Hey, Art,” he waved casually. Arthur seemed to flinch away from the flecks of water. “How’re all theshe people finding me?”
  793. ‘There’s trouble,’ Arthur wrote out. Selachi frowned.
  794. “What kchind of trouble…?”
  795. ‘That crazy shapeshifting girl boy whatever has pretty much betrayed everybody else and they are all locked in a freezer both the poisonous cloud and the giant lizard are dying I’m not sure about Beta in any case they sent me to find you so you can help them somehow.’
  796. Selachi hesitated for a moment. Arthur seemed to understand why.
  797. ‘It’s up to you really if you want to leave them or not. Whatever you think is easier for you.’
  798. “Beta told you how to find me?”
  799. ‘Yes she did. I’m surprised you’re still here. I bet she would be too, actually.’
  800. Selachi hesitated a moment more before jumping right out of the water, a large dorsal fin retracting back into his back. Arthur retreated again in order not to get splashed. “Right, I’m going,” he said rather seriously for someone his age.
  801. ‘Okay I remember how to get to the freezer from here so’
  802. “No, I’m not going to the freezer.”
  803. ‘What? But then where are you going?’
  804. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
  805. Now it was only a matter of time to wait for the round to change.
  806. Mest decided that she would have to stay away from the freezer. At least just in case they actually managed to escape. She definitely couldn’t handle everybody at once. But then again, Beta would feel obligated to protect her, so at least she had that going for her.
  807. It took her a while to realize that she was identifying herself as a female.
  808. Quickly, she whipped around. There was nobody there. But feeling her new sets of uncomfortable gnashers, she laughed.
  809. “Oh come on, shark boy, I know it’s you! Hardly anybody is imaginative enough to think of me other than their own species!” Still nothing. “And I know you’re alone too, so no bluffing!”
  810. Mest hardly had time to react when Selachi fell down upon her from above, scratching clumsily with his clawed, webbed hands. Unfortunately, Mest’s skin was now about as tough as his was and his burned hand was still bandaged and quite useless. Not to mention Mest could claw and bite back.
  811. They separated, both bleeding from bites and the few scratches that managed to actually dig deep. Selachi picked out some teeth from his wounds. Mest watched him carefully. “Why are you even attacking me?”
  812. “I think you know,” he said coldly. Mest stared at him oddly and then grinned.
  813. “Ah, the freezer thing? How’d you find out about that?” Silence. “Fine, don’t tell me, it doesn’t matter. But why are you so upset about that? You didn’t really know them personally, did you? Besides, they’re all supposed to kill you. I bet they were already plotting to kill you. Same with me. Which is why I killed them first. You understand, don’t you?” She grinned beseechingly, attempting to look at least somewhat innocent. Selachi still glared coldly at her. “Look, you must understand, I mean seriously. I mean, you were part of the mafia or something, ri—“
  814. “Don’t. Talk. About. That.” He rushed in blindly, but she stepped to the side, grabbed his arm as he passed, and pushed him into some boxes.
  815. “I don’t want to kill you,” she said flippantly. “That would just ruin the trap I set up. And I realize you probably don’t want to team up with me now, what with all the betraying, but why don’t we agree to just go our separate ways right now and, well, duke it out later? Besides,” she said with a grin, “You can’t be too concerned about them if you haven’t even gone and freed them yet.”
  816. Selachi slowly stood up, sporting some new bruises. “Well, maybe I have,” he shot back. Mest frowned.
  817. “…No, you didn’t. I’m sure of it. But maybe I should make sure you don’t get any bright ideas…” And she stepped towards him. But he quickly jumped to his feet and ran off. Mest followed. “Dammit! This was such a good plan! I was so proud of it! Don’t go messing it up!”
  818. They took random twists and turns, Selachi always turning sharply but never quite shaking off Mest. For the shapeshifter’s part, she was having a hard time catching up. And then finally, he turned a corner and she turned a corner and found herself in a place with Selachi nowhere in sight.
  819. She saw the water. Did he jump in and swim away? Well, as long as he kept away from the freezer. But still, she didn’t like not knowing where he was.
  820. Oh wait, he was right behind her.
  821. Selachi tackled her from behind and they both tumbled into the water.
  822. If he had expected to gain an advantage on his own turf, though, he was sorely disappointed. Mest may have not been used to the form of a shark girl, but she got used to it quickly and whatever boon Selachi got from being immersed in water, she got too. They put up their fins, ripping through their clothing, and charged at each other, biting and scratching again. But Mest was a fast learner and, Selachi suspected, older and bigger than him. She kicked him in the stomach, forcing him down and knocking the wind out of him before swimming up to surface, apparently not actually very comfortable with fighting in the water at all. Selachi desperately lashed out and grabbed at her webbed foot before it got out of reach, but she kicked down at his head. He tenaciously held on. She laughed, her voice taking on a warbling tone in the water. “Are you trying to drown me?”
  823. Selachi grabbed onto her with his bandaged hand and dragged her down so that he could grab onto her waist. After a while of trying to hold on to a thrashing shark girl (more disturbing thoughts gah why was his mind so dirty), he…shut his eyes.
  824. Whatever he was holding on to now, it was definitely not a shark girl. It was humanoid in shape, he could tell, but it felt…slick. Somewhat formless. A strange and alien being. He thought he could feel his arms almost sinking in as though it was made of putty. Most importantly, though, he was very sure that it did not have gills.
  825. He held tight as it thrashed even more frantically. He kept his eyes closed even though he wanted to see what he was actually grabbing on to. He shuddered as it started to slow down and didn’t stop shaking after it had completely stopped.
  826. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
  827. “Well, that was interesting,” the musing voice of the Gatherer said as the contestants’ surroundings twisted and morphed again. “You all are certainly starting to get along, hm? And one of you is at least growing up…but in any case, it’s time for the next round.”
  828. As a new building was built up around them, so were the occupants. They were all frozen in whatever they were doing. They were also not necessarily human. Some of them even had helmets set over their heads, as though the air was not safe for them to breathe. Some wore complete body suits. All of them had the scientific air about them. “Yup, so here’s something for you. A place that doesn’t just house the world’s greatest minds, but the universe’s. And where is this place? Why, in the depths of space, where nobody can hear you scream.” And then he laughed. “But really, they can’t. In any case, shall I keep the scientists like this or unfreeze them? What do you think?” He paused for a moment, as though there was an answer to listen to. “Hm, well, I suppose it would be rather depressing to see these scientists never finish…whatever they’re supposed to be doing. I’ll let them move about then! Watch out, though, they might not take kindly to strangers. And you remaining few are certainly strange!”
  829. There was a snapping noise and everything was in motion again.
  830. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
  831. Arthur cringed as neat shoes (or whatever footwear the alien required) trod on him and so, when he got the chance, he dove from the floor to the wall and sat there, looking somewhat like graffiti. A colorful and abstract graffiti.
  832. Some scientists looked at him distastefully, but he didn’t care. It was only when an alarm rang out that declared, ‘MESS ON WALL NOTED ROBOT DEPLOYING TO CLEAN MESS’ that he started to worry. And indeed, as the halls eventually cleared of scientists, a robot came careening around with a scrubber and…ugh. Cleaning solution. The robot stopped in front of him, considered its adversary carefully, then set its bucket down and got ready to work.
  833. Arthur tried to hide himself by changing his color to that of the wall behind him, but that didn’t work out so well. The robot did not react any differently and continued to dunk its scrubber in the soapy water and got ready to scrub him into oblivion. It was entirely possible that it didn’t see in color, but in…grime…vision…some science thing.
  834. Arthur was not about to just sit still. As the robot brought the dripping scrubber towards him, he moved to the side.
  835. The robot paused this time, humming quietly. It had never, in all its pseudo-life of scrubbing walls and floors, seen the mess move. If it was capable of worrying, then it might have considered that this was something not to mess with. But it had a wall to clean and it was going to clean the hell out of that damn wall. It brought the scrubber close again. The mess of chalk and paint edged away. He persisted. It zoomed around the corner and out of sight.
  836. The robot was completely bewildered for a moment, but then hefted up its bucket and zoomed after it, as fast as its little wheel could allow. The chase was on, the bugle had been sounded and the hunter was definitely not going to lose the fox.
  837. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
  838. “How did it get here?”
  839. “Perhaps it was sent to spy on us.”
  840. “Why make it so obvious then?”
  841. “Such a poor design. So primitive.”
  842. “But it still got in here.”
  843. “Sent to capture us or destroy us all?”
  844. “It would have done that by now. Not that it could.”
  845. Beta stood stiffly as several scientist prodded and poked at her. She didn’t liked being prodded or poked, nor, she found, did she like being referred to as ‘it’, but she dealt with it. Not because she was unable to kill them, oh no, she was certain that she was unable to kill human scientists, and these slimy, scaly, spiky, whatever-y creatures may be scientists, but they certainly weren’t human.
  846. But scientists were still good and helpful and they could possible actually help her with her own plan of fighting against the Gatherer. She needed something that could open a hole in dimensions and take her right to the smarmy bastard. These people could most likely make that something.
  847. If they would only stop talking and listen to her.
  848. “I’m pretty sure it doesn’t mean any harm,” burbled one thing that looked a bit like a small kraken. “In any case, I hate to see a robot so out-dated. Why don’t we improve it?”
  849. “You’d best be careful doing anything to something that just appears out of nowhere,” another scientist warned. “Remember that old story, that one about that war and the horse…”
  850. “That’s a myth,” one hotly retorted. “One made thousands of years ago, and besides, those…Progens were idiots to accept a gift of a large, robotic horse. They should have seen it coming when it started rampaging and firing lasers.”
  851. “Please,” Beta said suddenly. “I have something to say.”
  852. It grew very quiet all of a sudden, and had Beta any nerves to begin with, they would probably be wavering like an uncertain adolescent in the full throes of teenage hormones. Instead, she just waited for what the various creatures around her would say.
  853. “Ah, I see,” something said, doing something that might have been a nod though Beta was not quite sure if it even had a head to nod with. “A message.”
  854. And then an entirely different argument started up about who would send a message and if it was a dire warning or a trick and if it was from some small, possibly undiscovered planet and why that very idea was completely ridiculous or if it was from the past and why that idea was even more ridiculous than the last…
  855. Beta sighed. Sometimes scientists could be extremely frustrating.
  856. “There are several other beings who have appeared here with me,” she finally said, fed up with the squabbling. “These beings, including me, have been entered into a battle to the death against their will and I am trying to stop it. In order to do so, I must confront the being who has started this whole ordeal. However, he seems to hold transdimensional powers and possibly others he has held back from my view and in order to get to him, I must break through the barriers between dimensions and into his own dimension which appears to be some sort of small pocket dimension, an ability which I do not hold now seeing as where I’m from, I do believe that sort of technology has not even been developed yet.” She paused to let the words sink in. As the seconds ticked on, the scientists’ various visage slowly settled in to an expression of bafflement or maybe disbelief or perhaps just discontent. It was hard to tell with some of them. Beta suddenly remembered something. “Oh, and I may need to have the ability to cool something down to an extreme temperature,” she added.
  857. The scientists continued staring with whatever ocular appendages they may have.
  858. -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
  859. Selachi was still shaking. He remembered a lot of the men that worked for his dad always laughed it off after they finished a hit. Either that or they just didn’t talk about it and went about their lives as usual. He wondered how the hell they could do that after…after drowning someone in the sea, feeling them struggle for air, burn for air, after keeping them from the life-giving air and then feel them grow cold and limp and dead.
  860. Would her dead body just…stay there? The only sign that they had ever been to the giant warehouse? Would it float to the surface, bloated, rotten, after a few years of decomposition, or would it attract fish or—Selachi forced the word out—sharks, who would nibble at her until she was nothing but bones underneath?
  861. Selachi slowly unwrapped the bandage. Did she even have bones?
  862. And suddenly, he snapped back down to earth because although he still shook at the thought of the slimy skin he had held so tight, he still needed to live. Perhaps that was how his father’s men laughed it off. They probably wanted to live too.
  863. And so that was how he became aware of all the…things staring at him. He stared back with the perfect teenager glare, as though everybody in the hall had just intruded into his room.
  864. “Excuse me,” one thing said reproachfully with all the airs of someone who is plenty smart and is certainly smarter than you. Selachi barely noticed this because the one who spoke looked, to be blunt, like green scum that had grown so much that it had become sapient. Actually, that wasn’t blunt enough. It looked like boogers with a mouth. “Boy, is there something you need?” He asked this in a way that implied that he didn’t need anything and frankly, had a complete lack of a need. So completely lacking that he had a huge surplus of not-needing.
  865. “Do you have shomeone that loochks lichke me?” Selachi demanded, not about to be pushed around by a stuffy, green scientist alien.
  866. “I…what?” The alien stared, as though unsure if he actually heard that. The scientists around them busied themselves with something, though Selachi noticed that they never strayed far from the conversation.
  867. “I wanna talchk to shomeone. With teeth likch mine and shkin and handsh and shtuff lichke me, you know, lichke a sharkch,” he explained rather helpfully. This did not wipe the shock expression off the alien’s face.
  868. “You are really asking for that. I can’t believe it,” the alien bubbled rather resentfully. “I hope you realize how extremely insensitive that request is.”
  869. “Yeah, right, I get it. Ckan I talkch to him? Or her?”
  870. The scientist sighed as though this was the worst ordeal he had to go through all day. “I’m sure we can find someone in this extremely diverse workplace,” he muttered just as one other scientist out of the lingering group decided to break off and enter.
  871. “Will I do?” she asked rather brightly and Selachi didn’t even look her up and down when he said, “Yeah, good, mind goin’ shomewhere private?”
  872. They went into her office which happened to not be too far. “I hope you realize that we will still have to ask you to leave. This isn’t a place for children.”
  873. “’m not a kchid,” Selachi muttered as he sat down opposite her desk. She smiled a toothy grin that showed off her own set of sharp teeth.
  874. “You certainly talk like one. Why do you need to talk to me in particular anyways?”
  875. “Firsht of all, where are we?” Selachi asked. The shark woman pursed her lips a little. He wasn’t sure if it was from amusement or disapproval.
  876. “A scientific lab designed for practically all species to coexist and work together on whatever our minds think up. It’s designed to fit all of our needs and comforts. I, for instance, have a pool all to myself if I feel like swimming around. I know a Yznian scientist has his room filled with dirt. I have no idea how he gets anything done. In any case, we’re floating around, orbiting the planet of Ngilla today. We usually move from planet to planet. It settles the debates about where this important facility should go. We tried to go for the ‘center of the universe’ answer, but then we all bickered about where the center of the universe even was…everybody decided it was closer to their own planet than anybody else’s…”
  877. “Okcay, what year ish it?” Selachi said, hardly giving time to let himself think about the answer.
  878. “What calendar are you talking about?”
  879. Selachi paused. “I dunno…you ckome from a planet ckalled…Earth…?”
  880. The scientist smirked. “Terra, actually. With all the exotic names, us Earthians felt a little awkward. Apparently just translating it to Latin made us feel better. In any case, by Terran calendars, it’s 4015.”
  881. Selachi almost felt like he had been punched. He was a little glad he was sitting. The scientist peered at him with sharp eyes. “Anything else, or would you actually like to know my name? Lamni Thresher, by the way.”
  882. “Oh damn I…I’m shorry…” For a moment, the shark boy sat in quiet embarrassment before bringing himself to say “Shelachi Shortfin.”
  883. “Shortfin, eh?” Lamni chuckled. “That’s one from the history books.”
  884. “Whadya mean?” he asked rather defensively.
  885. “Nothing,” she replied, though judging by her grin, it was definitely not nothing. “In any case, you still haven’t told me why you’re here. How you’re here, either.”
  886. “Uuuum,” Selachi deliberated. “Whatever I shay, will you believe it?”
  887. “That depends on what is being said,” she replied, leaning over her desk now, her chin now resting on her clasped hands.
  888. “Right. Well I’m here because some dude, God or whatever, wants me to fight some other guys to the death and he sent us here.”
  889. Lamni didn’t even blink. “Okay, anything else?”
  890. Selachi’s mouth suddenly turned dry. “Um, well, you might wanna hide shomewhere, ‘caushe a lotta of th’ time, thingsh go to hell really quichkly when we’re around…”
  891. The scientist’s eyes gleamed, but otherwise, she didn’t move. “A scientist never runs, I hope you know that, Shortfin.”
  892. The shark boy squirmed. “Shelachi’sh fine,” he muttered. “But sherioushly, one of th’ guysh I have to fight, he’sh lichke, poishonoush gash! That’sh all he ish! I really don’t thinck that—“
  893. “Poisonous gas, you say?” Lamni said sharply, suddenly turning to some sort of holographic screen that popped up when she pressed a button.
  894. “Uh…yeah?”
  895. “Made of chemicals that are highly reactive when in contact with chlorine?”
  896. Selachi was suddenly starting to feel uncomfortable. “I dunno. Why?”
  897. “Because there’s recently been a sort of accident in Laboratory 238—a chemical testing lab. This accident involved chlorine and an unidentified gas that, apparently, appeared out of nowhere. The result of the reaction caused a lot of heat, a large explosion that burst the blast gas, something unheard of until now, and…a strange, milky white substance that tastes a lot like cherry jello, I’m told.”
  898. Selachi wasn’t entirely sure what to say, so he said nothing.
  899. -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
  900. And in the meantime, Mephistis stumbled, as much as a cloud of purple gas could stumble anyways, out into the hall, but already the emergency shutters were falling. He felt weak and drained and there was smoke everywhere but not his smoke and he felt the smallest he had ever felt before and there was weird white stuff everywhere and he couldn’t help but feel that they were a part of him and yet not and he wanted to take back those lost parts of him but he had no idea how partly because he didn’t know a thing about chemistry. He had never heard of its existence before now, and even then that was questionable. The most concrete thing he knew was that there had been an explosion and there were probably going to be some people asking about the unconscious people he had just left behind.
  901. Oh, and robots, he saw, as they came in in droves, ready to decontaminate anything that needed decontaminating. Mephistis sped down the hall and stumbled, as much as a cloud of purple gas could, over Vander, who had been lying unconscious there the whole time but now had been promoted to the state of semi-consciousness after the explosion.
  902. “Get up get up,” Mephistis said quickly, wishing now that he had the ability to nudge. He wanted to suffocate him, kill him now so that the problems of this place would no longer be his problems, but again, he reminded himself that he still had no way of killing two certain contestants and even though everybody pretty much knew how to kill him now, he needed their help. Which meant he had to help Vander right now.
  903. “Oh dammit,” he moaned as Vander blinked sluggishly, apparently his body temperature still too cold for him to really move. “There’s a whole bunch of robots and I think they want to kill us, okay, so get up already!”
  904. Vander listened a bit to the blaring alarm. “No…I…I’m pretty sure…only kill…you…” and then he went back to sleep.
  905. Mephistis almost screamed with frustration but then, as the hiss of some strange machinery grew closer, he stuck himself down Vander’s now rather grubby suit.
  906. The robots were made to deal with any sort of weird trouble the scientists might cause, and scientists had the capability to cause a lot of trouble. But they certainly weren’t built with the idea in mind that they would have to deal with poisonous gas that could actually think.
  907. They looked over the unconscious Vander and noticed how the reading clearly said that the poisonous by-product of a dangerous experiment had taken home inside him. They also noticed that Vander was not a registered scientist of the facility. They also noticed that he was alive, though in need of some heat. They had no idea what to do. They relayed the information to someone who might know, who was capable of at least pretending to know. The robot builder, repairer, consultant and counselor looked over their query and had to admit that he couldn’t even begin to pretend to know what to do. “Drag him over to a hot lamp or something,” he said finally in the tone of someone who only threw that idea out there because it was the only thing he could think of. “Um. He might wake up then. Maybe. And then…uh…”
  908. More queries came in. Whatever he had been expecting, he had certainly not expected a bunch of colorful paint zooming in from under the shutters to apparently escape the ire of a cleaning bot. Why did it seem like the oddest things were gaining sentience all of a sudden? “Okay, wait, some of you drag him over to a lamp. Ask Doctor Slyver for his or something. Some of you stay behind and clean up that…white gunk and try to revive the injured scientists. Rest can…I’m not sure how you deal with paint and chalk that moves, but deal with it, okay? I need a drink.” And with that, he shut off the stream of queries, pushed himself off of his chair, stretched and walked out the room. He was fairly certain that it would take a lot of cajoling for anybody to get him back in that chair.
  909. -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
  910. “So,” Lamni said conversationally as they walked briskly down the hall. Selachi had been against it, obviously, but Lamni pointed out that he probably wouldn’t be able to find his way around. He hated scientists. They were smart. So were women. So a women scientist was doubly smart. In any case, now she was leading him over to the site of the explosion. He wasn’t entirely sure why he was getting closer to it, but he felt as though he should probably do something to advance the round. Preferably not dying, though.
  911. If it had been anybody else, he would have barreled right into the two shark people. But, not being blessed with the third dimension, he simply zipped underneath, barely flinching as he passed right under their feet.
  912. Selachi whirled around. He could recognize that splash of color anywhere. Actually, probably anybody could. It’s not often you make friends with living chalk. “Art! Hey! ART!”
  913. Arthur paused and spun on the floor, but didn’t come closer. Hearing some clanking behind him, Selachi spun back around again and saw why. A few small robots stopped at the end of the hall and paused, looking a little sheepish. They weren’t particularly humanoid. They were stout and had one large, round eye that bleared red. They shuffled uncomfortably, as though suddenly caught doing something private.
  914. “That one of your fellow contestants?” Lamni asked matter-of-factly.
  915. “…Yeah…but he’sh a friend,” he clarified.
  916. “Very interesting,” she replied before stepping forward towards the group of surprisingly sheepish robots. “Right.” She suddenly held up an ID card, as though flashing a badge. “I’m Lamni Thresher, biologist, and I’d like you to know that both the shark known as Selachi Shortfin and the….piece of work known as Art,”
  917. ‘Arthur,’ he wound out, now getting a little closer.
  918. “Sorry, Arthur, are not to be disturbed, for they are welcome guests until they leave. Or until I say so, I suppose. Spread the word.”
  919. The robots seemed very pleased with this and sped off.
  920. “I hope you do realize that I don’t exactly want any fighting to go on here while I’m around, at least not without my permission,” she said out loud, apparently to nobody in particular. “And I’d rather not have some good scientists die. Just so you know.” Selachi said nothing and Arthur simply got closer, sure in the knowledge that he was unlikely to actually kill anybody.
  921. “Right, in any case, what are you guys planning to do? I know we’re going to go to the one who caused that explosion…but you guys aren’t just going to start fighting, are you?”
  922. Selachi exchanged glances with Arthur, or at least gave a glance towards him seeing as he couldn’t glance back. “Eeer, we’re not really on fighting termsh right now.”
  923. ‘The only one who probably wants to fight also is probably waiting for us to kill certain contestants he can’t kill himself,’ Arthur offered. This time, Selachi made sure to not look at him.
  924. “Right, so I think it’s safe to say that you guys can all meet and then we can figure out what to do. I know it’s a battle to the death, but it sounds like most of you don’t even want to fight. So we’ll just gather you all up and then have a…conference of sorts. You have access to some of the smartest minds in the universe. I’m pretty sure we can help you find the next action to take.”
  925. It seemed like a stupid idea and one that would quickly get thrown out in favor of the one that ends up with someone dead and the round over. Still, Selachi found himself agreeing with her.
  926. Arthur didn’t. In fact, he had started writing out a (polite, at least) objection when Selachi stomped on him. He was good enough not to twist his foot, though.
  927. -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
  928. “Can’t you work faster?” Beta asked with no urgency in her tone, but quite some impatience.
  929. “These sort of things take time,” said one roboticist who was nearby and carefully navigating through the wires in her back. “The stuff you’re asking for, they’ll take some time to build, and I’m not even sure if one of them is possible. We’d have to consult scientists of all fields and then there’ll probably be some debate about what this will do to the fabric of the universe and if it is really wise to make it and what would happen if dropped in the wrong hands and—“
  930. “Skip it.”
  931. The roboticist was a little miffed and his pincer barely stopped itself from cutting a very important wire. “Look, these procedures are very important! They’re not the most interesting part of working here, but they really make sure that what we make actually works, instead of producing some sort of small, faulty prototype—“
  932. “I’m fine with prototypes,” Beta insisted. “Build something that could work, even might work, and I’ll take it.”
  933. “Science isn’t supposed to be rushed, I hope you realize,” he said, possibly scolding, though it was probably not nice to scold an impatient robot. Not nice for your future, anyways.
  934. “Sometimes things must be rushed in order to prevent other things before it is too late,” Beta said very seriously.
  935. “But sometimes things that are very important and looming are too important to risk screw-ups, thus justifying the need to not rush and possibly make some fool mistake that you would have caught if you had just slowed down a little and looked at the—“
  936. “Please try not to start a circuitous and pointless debate,” Beta said sharply.
  937. “Sorry.”
  938. He continued to fumble around a bit with various circuits.
  939. “What are you doing, then, if not attaching the freezing machine or the dimensional ripper?” Beta finally asked. “I am aware you’re making upgrades. But what sort?”
  940. “Oh, more likely than not, we’ll need to make more room for the stuff you’re asking for. Not that I’m getting rid of anything, just either replacing them or making them more compact to make more room, you see? I am also contacting the others to tell them not to do tests.” The scientist paused for a moment. “They’re not happy about this. I think they will do tests anyways.”
  941. “Tell them that I will march over there and start destroying very important products of research if they don’t get them done fast enough. Which means no testing.”
  942. Another pause. “They’re more than happy to follow your requests,” he said, somewhat cheerfully. “Sheesh, look at all these tangled wires. Waste. You know, I could really get rid of most of these and you’d still be in good shape, if not better. Really, whoever made you must have not heard of the Munsch-Krabb Circuit—“
  943. “That’s a waste of time,” Beta snapped.
  944. “No, no, it won’t take any time at all, and like it or not, you’ll be waiting here a while before we can even start attaching anything to you.”
  945. Beta thought it over. “Fine.”
  946. “And your metal is so dented…and you know, I could actually make you look more realistic. More expressive, you see, and actual hair, or at least some polymers that look like hair—“
  947. “Waste of time.”
  948. “But—“
  949. “You can’t win this one. Waste of time.”
  950. The roboticist sighed. Today, he had realized that robots really didn’t make good company.
  951. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
  952. Vander had felt as though he had been sleeping for several years. He felt as though there were weights strapped to his arms and legs and tail and even his eyelids so that he could barely lift a thing. He felt as though the world was just too big and too annoying to deal with right about now. He summed up everything with one word. “Ugh.”
  953. He managed to open his eyes though. But upon exposing them to the glare of the strong sunlamp, he had to shut them again. “Uuuuuuuuugh,” he clarified. But slowly, against his own wishes, he was waking up.
  954. He stared at the robots surrounding him. “Wha--?” he started.
  955. “They’re after me,” he heard near his head. It was Mephistis’ voice. This was enough to wake him up the rest of the way and he shot up, sitting on the elevated table, causing several robots to back up warily.
  956. He had a few other words to say, namely, “What the hell!”
  957. “No, calm down, I don’t exactly want you to get riddled with holes because you are flailing around like an insane idiot.”
  958. “Who’s getting what?!” Vander yelped, mostly having heard the word ‘holes’ and not exactly liking it, no matter what sort of context it was in. “Where is your voice coming from?!”
  959. “You really are making yourself look insane. The point of me whispering is for the robots to not know what I am saying to you right now.”
  960. “You’re avoiding the question, aren’t you, I’m not going to like this answer, am I,” Vander moaned, words spewing out of his mouth so fast now that he was practically about to bite his tongue.
  961. “I am underneath your clothes. You could say that I’m hugging you.”
  962. “You what.”
  963. “Now now, this sort of thing just happens.”
  964. “Crawling up my pants just happens!?”
  965. “It was down your shirt.”
  966. “That doesn’t help one bit.”
  967. “You are missing the point here,” Mephistis said, starting to lose the patient tone. “We are surrounded by robots who don’t recognize us and may see us as a threat, in fact, and your ranting is probably cementing you as ‘threat’ in their tiny robot minds so what you need to do is calm down and try to explain to these nice little robots that you are terribly sorry for everything that has happened such as the explosion—“ As soon as he said that, he immediately regretted it.
  968. “You caused an explosion?”
  969. “Oh no, of course not, the story is that you accidentally did and then you make everything else up but now that you’ve been talking to yourself the whole time I am not sure if the robots will accept any story you throw out so maybe it’s pointless now.”
  970. “SIR,” one robot finally managed to pipe up after it lost a bet with its peers. “I MUST QUESTION YOU ABOUT WHY YOU ARE HERE AND ALSO DO YOU KNOW ABOUT WHAT CAUSED THAT EXPLOSION IN ANY WAY PLEASE DO NOT OMIT ANYTHING.”
  971. “Look, I really have no idea what’s going on, okay,” Vader said, sounding bewildered and frustrated and perhaps a little angry. “I just woke up. This is the first time I’ve seen this place. I don’t know what I’m doing here. Actually, I sort of do, but—“
  972. “AMNESIA PERHAPS WE SHOULD DEAL WITH THAT IMMEDIATELY,” one robot intoned, approaching with something that looked worryingly like a melon scooper.
  973. “Woah woah woah, stop, don’t do anything with whatever that is I’m fine seriously I know my name and my occupation and I have a job and a wife although I suppose that’s been on and off considering the work I do,” Vander babbled, having shot off the metal table like a champagne cork. He was now hiding defensively behind it. “I mean we aren’t divorced or anything yet but sometimes I worry and seriously that thing is making me nervous.”
  974. The robot stared unblinkingly and slowly, the melon scooper thingy disappeared.
  975. “Okay, good, you don’t know how much I’m happy that thing is gone.”
  976. “SIR IT’S ONLY A—“
  977. “No, I don’t even want to know what it’s called, okay? Just…I suppose there’s no chance that you’ll just let me go?”
  978. “NOT REALLY,” the robot droned impassively. “UNLESS YOU HAPPENED TO BE A SCIENTIST GIVING NEW ORDERS—“
  979. “Hello boys,” A scientist said smoothly as she walked in through the door. Behind her, Vander could see Selachi and Arthur. “Lamni Thresher,” she added before the robots could ask, flashing her card. “I got things under control here. You can just go leave for whatever else needs done.”
  980. The robots left with their melon scoopers and Vander relaxed visibly. He then shivered as Mephistis slithered out of his clothes as Lamni raised an eyebrow. If he were able, he would have blushed with embarrassment.
  981. “So, now we have four,” the scientist said rather cheerfully. “One left, right? Is she a robot? Because then I think I know where she is…”
  982. “Okay, what’s going on?” Mephistis demanded, and though he still sort of smelled singed (was that even possible?), he still managed to be somewhat threatening, in that slightly ethereal, not-entirely-there sort of way. “Who is she and why do I feel that you’ve all went on and made a stupid plan?”
  983. “Lookch,” Selachi said, suddenly stepping in front and glowering at the cloud. “We don’t need your permishion to make every little deshishion. Thresher just doeshn’t want ckollateral damage and neither do I.”
  984. The shark boy shifted slightly, obscuring Arthur’s ‘Yeah, I bet you wouldn’t, lover-boy.’
  985. “Thing ish,” he continued a little louder than necessary, “We’re in shpashe now and th’ shtuff we do here, it ckould, I dunno, open a hole or shomething an’ then we’re all in trouble, sho we need to be ckareful, y’know? Meaning we should probably talk thingsh out like she shaysh. Right…?”
  986. A few odd glances met him, but the one of amusement from Lamni and the confused look that slowly turned into a knowing one from Vander embarrassed him the most.
  987. “Thank you, Selachi,” Lamni said with a smirk and that just embarrassed him more. “So I think we should find this last ‘contestant’ and together, we just might figure something out to end this non-violently.”
  988. “You can’t reason with the robot,” Mephistis snarled. “It has a one-track mind. It will just attack us. It can. And it can kill us…”
  989. Arthur had slid up onto the wall and flashed several colors to attract attention before writing out, ‘You can’t expect to say that without me challenging it I knew you were stupid but I thought you were at least somewhat clever.’
  990. “Look, I—“ Mephistis started, thinking the swirl of chalk was done, but Arthur continued writing.
  991. ‘I was there, remember? I was in the freezer and I saw her make sure that Vander didn’t die. She also made sure that you didn’t freeze either. Or do you have short-term memory along with your persistent idiocy? So no, you can’t say that the robot can’t be trusted. She is more trustworthy than you besides.’
  992. Mephistis waited for a bit. “Done?” he asked rather crossly. When Arthur did not respond, he took this as a yes. “You can’t say anything. You left, remember? She sent you out. So you don’t know all that happened.”
  993. ‘I say that the fact both you and Vander are alive is fairly good proof of her good intentions.’
  994. “I say that the fact that Selachi never came and opened that freezer door is fairly good proof for me to doubt you,” he retorted sharply.
  995. “No, look, he did find me,” Selachi cut in quickly, ready to defend his very first ally.
  996. “And I wonder why it took you so long to reach the freezer, hmm?” the cloud shot back and Selachi, with no response to this, recoiled slightly before staring morosely at his feet.
  997. “Alright boys,” Lamni said in a conciliatory manner. “We can sort this all out later. Right now, I think we should gather up the last of your fellow contestants. Then we can decide what to do.”
  998. Mephistis looked towards Vander for help. Although really, Vander couldn’t tell what expression he was trying to display, but he could guess. The lizard shrugged in his disheveled suit. “I think I could go for a civil chat rather than being almost frozen to death,” he said.
  999. And with that, outnumbered three to one, Mephistis could do nothing much but sigh and go along with the stupid scientist and the other stupid contestants and follow them out the door. “I think your friend is probably the robot that our robotics department is suddenly devoting a lot of attention to,” she explained. “It’s not too far, and whatever work they’re doing on her…yeah, it looks like they’re almost done.”
  1000. “What work?” Mephistis asked suspiciously.
  1001. “Doesn’t really say,” Lamni called back casually. Mephistis grumbled more but still could do nothing much except follow. So he did.
  1002. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
  1003. Lamni was slightly wrong about one thing. Beta was already finished.
  1004. “Seriously,” the roboticist trilled nervously, scurrying about her as she examined herself carefully. “We don’t know if any of this actually works. I mean, we’ve built this sort of thing before, of course, but we’ve never attached it to someone like you, you see? I mean, and it’s so fast, and your circuitry map…it’s still pretty unfamiliar to us…are you sure you don’t want us to…I dunno, improve it? And that dimensional ripper, you really have to be careful with that, I mean seriously…”
  1005. “I understand,” she finally said, sounding a little cross, which made the roboticist shut up immediately. “I will have to go find my friends now. I trust that nothing will give me trouble along the way?”
  1006. “No, oh no, of course not, we’ve sent out the word…and you promise you won’t use those things carelessly? Or at least in a way that would have the lowest number of casualties? You’re not going to kill anybody, is what I’m saying—“
  1007. “I know what you’re saying. And I will not kill anybody I don’t mean to,” she said stoically. The roboticist wondered if he should ask if she meant to kill scientists but thought better of it. She seemed in somewhat of a rush anyways.
  1008. And she was gone and he was very relieved.
  1009. Beta walked swiftly down the halls, and indeed, nobody seemed to give her a second glance. Well, a lot did, but nobody gave her a third one and that was good enough.
  1010. She had no idea where she was going. She had no idea if she would even run into the rest. She had no idea how big this facility was but whatever the size, it was extremely unlikely that she would—
  1011. She almost ran into Selachi.
  1012. “Oh good,” she said as he eyed the new attachments to her arms rather nervously. “I have to—who is that.”
  1013. “Ah, hello,” Lamni said rather cheerfully, but even some sort of nervousness permeated her tone. “I’m just leading your friends around.”
  1014. “’Friends?’” Beta repeated and yes, behind the two were the others. But she still glared at Lamni suspiciously. “I see.”
  1015. Selachi coughed. “She’s a scientist,” he explained hopefully. “She’s been helping us around. She’s hoping we’ll be able to finish this battle non-violently.”
  1016. “Although I appreciate the thought, I have already figured out what to do,” Beta intoned. “I plan on ripping a hole in dimensional space in order to reach the Gatherer. Then we will fight him and hopefully not lose. And then we will all go home.” She said this so firmly that he was almost convinced it was a plan that could not go wrong. Except for the ‘maybe not die’ part.
  1017. It was Vander’s time to cough. “I don’t think that’s exactly ‘non-violently.’ And that also sounds incredibly dangerous.”
  1018. “Too many unknown factors,” Lamni added. “Which is why we need to sit down together and try to make a better plan. I’m not insulting it, though, but I want to help and I want to make sure that you all have a higher chance of not dying.”
  1019. “But there’s not enough time,” Beta insisted, frustration laced in her mechanical voice. “We have to finish this now, or at least try to finish this now, before he gets a chance to counter my plan.”
  1020. “Well, if he really is as powerful as I’ve heard, then maybe he already knows,” Lamni suggested, which only frustrated Beta even more, if only because how true it was.
  1021. “I agree with her,” Mephistis said suddenly, swirling about in the air darkly. “Let’s finish this now.”
  1022. Lamni let out a soft gasp as she felt cold air wrap around her and as she shivered, she couldn’t help but think the effect was slightly lost by the fact that she could smell cherry jello.
  1023. There were shouts and hesitated, jerky movements, but nobody could really do anything. So everybody just stood around, tense, as Mephistis lazily swirled around Lamni’s head. Strangely enough, the scientist seemed the calmest out of everybody.
  1024. “Well, I can’t say I’m the smartest out of all of you, but I still believe I’m quite clever, don’t you?” he said conversationally. “Don’t think I forgot, Beta. For whatever reason, you can’t let scientists go to harm, and I can assure you, I wouldn’t hesitate to poison this one unless you do what I say.”
  1025. Beta was at a loss. Whenever she was at a loss, she would always have to look towards a scientist. She looked helplessly towards Lamni now, who simply shrugged. “Let’s hear what he has to say,” she said calmly.
  1026. “It’s not much,” Mephistis said, smug slime dripping off his voice now.
  1027. ‘Are you going to ask her to dismantle’
  1028. “I only want you to dismantle yourself.”
  1029. ‘Ah, so predictable,’ Arthur finished, still going unnoticed. It was a tense situation. There wasn’t much time to read out a message on the wall.
  1030. Beta stood silently, waiting for Lamni to say anything to counteract this order. The scientist stared intensely back and said, “You don’t really have to.”
  1031. “But,” Selachi protested but fell silent when Vander clasped a hand over his mouth and brought it away quickly when he remembered the sharp teeth and settled for a tight grasp on his shoulder.
  1032. “The metal woman has to,” Mephistis urged, “Or you will die and she can’t let that happen.” Beta stood still. “If you really need help killing yourself, then we have a few hands on standby who can help,” he added slyly.
  1033. “No!” Selachi shouted, horrified, and turned to run because he had no idea what else to do, but was stopped by Beta’s sharp bark of “Selachi!”
  1034. When the shark boy guiltily turned around, she took off one of the new mysterious attachments and tossed it his way. It was hefty and big and he almost stumbled and dropped it, but managed to hold on. “I only need one hand free for this,” she explained smoothly. “I can do fine otherwise. Don’t move.” Suddenly, there was a drill, whirring, singing a morbid song, and Selachi couldn’t help but turn away again and bit his lip so hard that this time he bled and he held on tight to the whatever-it-was and looked down to see Arthur who had been swirling gently for his attention before forming the word ‘Look.’
  1035. Selachi raised his head again.
  1036. In a split second, Vander, covering his mouth, reached in past Mephistis and grabbed the sleeve of Lamni. The scientist quickly held her breath as she was pulled through the layer of smoke. Mephistis, his awareness having been set on Beta the whole time, now whirled around, enraged and confused and slightly desperate to get back his hostage before…before someone could do something.
  1037. Beta did something. She punched him. And somehow, he felt it. Looking down, he saw droplets of himself fall to the floor and sizzle before turning back to gas and rejoining him. He turned back to Beta, who now had a sizzling attachment to her arm. “I see I need to turn it colder,” she said casually and the machine hissed before it seemed the very air around her was slowing down, ready to freeze.
  1038. Mephistis felt the air grow colder around him and turned around for his hostage once more, with less rage and confusion and more desperation. He saw what he thought to be an empty hallway, but saw through the illusion when he noticed the movement near the end. Arthur, having never had to hold up an illusion for an entire hallway, snapped back like elastic as Selachi, Lamni and Vander kept running, having correctly judged by the chilling air that it was not a good idea to be anywhere near here when shit was going down.
  1039. Lamni stumbled, apparently still having fallen under some of the poisonous afflictions, and she looked back. “They can’t fight here! It’s too small a space!”
  1040. Vander, who was already feeling colder, was trying to stay awake so it was up to Selachi to say, “As long as they are fighting over there and not over here, I’m fine with it.”
  1041. Lamni thought for a moment as Mephistis started chasing them down. With the very air ready to freeze, he was finding it hard to move as fast as he was used to. “He reacts violently with chlorine gas. If we get enough of it, we can definitely get rid of him.”
  1042. “Okay, that’s cool, though I don’t really want to be anywhere near a violent reaction that involves explosion and possibly cherry jello,” Selachi breathed out in reply. “Besides, I sort of think Beta’s doing well…”
  1043. “No, it’s not good, at this rate, she’ll have to freeze herself too, or at the least, use up all her energy in order to actually freeze him,” Lamni said, blinking rapidly. “Let’s go to a lab, try to find some chlorine at least…”
  1044. Selachi looked back. “Robots can freeze?”
  1045. “She’s just not built for the cold,” Lamni explained. “Go this way. At least it’ll be a bigger room for them to fight in.” And they ignored the ‘DANGER: GAS CHAMBER’ sign that detailed with stick figures the possible ways to die by walking in carelessly.
  1046. The gas chamber was connected to the other side of the blast glass by a door. The three pushed their way through this now as Arthur just slunk in underneath. Vander slunk off to the corner, hoping to warm up, while Selachi helped Lamni search for…chlorine, he assumed. He stared at the strange vials and flask. Blood was still dribbling down his lip, but he clutched on to the thing that Beta had tossed towards him. “So wait, what does it look like?”
  1047. “It should be labeled Cl2,” Lamni muttered absent-mindedly as she rummaged through clinking glass. “Wait! Here!” But when she withdrew the flask and turned around, her face fell.
  1048. “What?” Selachi asked nervously.
  1049. “I…don’t know how to use any of this.”
  1050. “Are you kidding?” Vander shouted from the corner.
  1051. “I’m not a chemist, I’m a biologist!” she replied, now panicking. At this point, Mephistis drifted in the open door but couldn’t get behind the blast gas at the group. Behind him, the doorway grew frosty before they even saw Beta come in. She walked slowly and stiffly, as though her joints were frozen, which they probably were. A nice layer of frost was settling nicely over her whole body and she made strange hissing noises as the mechanisms within her tried, but failed to keep her at the optimal temperature for operation. Flakes of frost fell away as she approached Mephistis slowly.
  1052. Vander was barely staying conscious by now and Arthur was up against the glass, watching it all play out.
  1053. “Beta!” Selachi screamed, pounding against the glass. She turned, surprised, but never stopped watching Mephistis, who was having a hard time trying to escape. She didn’t seem to be able to understand what he was saying until Arthur started writing it out. Backwards, of course, so that she could actually read it.
  1054. ‘Jusht dishtrackt him ockay we’re gonna try getting him to reackt to Chklorine gash you don’t have to freeze him’
  1055. Beta read this as Mephestis struggled through the swampy air towards the open door behind her. Her mouth moved, but Selachi couldn’t hear what she said. But he was fairly certain she said ‘No.’
  1056. He pounded the glass harder and shouted some more as Lamni tried searching desperately for some sort of port to launch the gas safely in and some sort of button to actually activate the port or something like that. He shouted a lot about how she was going to die, or at least get as close to dying as a robot could, how she was going to kill herself, how this was cowardly of her, how she was supposed to be the one who would kill the Gatherer, how it would be impossible now, and then it all crumbled into a lot of cursing and obscenities. Arthur, more mature than Selachi, didn’t even bother to transcribe this and simply watched. After a while, the glass grew so cold that it burned, so that Selachi could only watch too.
  1057. Beta turned back to Mephistis, who had suddenly decided that, yes, he was going to die, but he might as well face it head on. When he turned back towards Beta, he started charging towards her in a surprising burst of speed and she stopped and raised her arms as if to catch him. They collided. If he could, he would have gritted his teeth.
  1058. The robot grabbed onto him, really grabbed onto him, for where she touched him, he crystalized, and he continued pushing back, as though if he held out long enough, there was a chance of survival. Ice was travelling down his body. His molecules were slowing down too much for him to retain that gaseous form. There wasn’t even time given for him to turn to liquid first.
  1059. The excess energy Mephistis lost travelled towards Beta as heat, but the cold was stronger. Her joints stayed frozen. She wasn’t even conscious anymore, or conscious in the way she had been before, as anything that wasn’t devoted to freezing Mephistis was deemed useless. The energy flow was diverted completely to her hands up until the last bit was used up. And by that time, what she had intended to do had been done. She stood there, clutching the light purple icicle that used to be Mephistis, looking immovable. Like a monument to the event. Lamni stared. And she was vaguely aware that she was now alone behind the blast gas.
  1060. -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
  1061. “Ah, hm, very exciting. Lovely. And two deaths at a time!” The voice paused as another scene faded into view before chuckling. “And Beta was the favorite too. Now everybody’s scrabbling to figure out how this will end. Of course, I don’t know either. Interesting isn’t it?”
  1062. The surroundings sharpened until it was solid. And even then, it was hard to see a thing. There was too much fog.
  1063. “When there’s fog about, it’s best to watch your step. Else you might fall,” the Gatherer said, sounding rather serious. “You may not be able to see it right now, but you’re on top of a…mountain of sorts. They’re flat at the top, though. What’re those called? Tepuis, right. Weather might change, though. Weather changes a lot here, actually. I don’t really know a lot about it. But you could probably stay up here to think about things. Though not for long, though, because there are actually a lot of people around and if you aren’t careful, they are sure to find you. Some might be nice. Others…probably not as much. Though sometimes they mean well, I’m sure.”
  1064. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
  1065. And Selachi was left alone in the fog. It was too thick to see through. He felt that he could almost swim through it. But that was probably not wise, so he stood still and stared down at what he could see.
  1066. The clunky device was still resting in his arms and he tried turning it over, looking at all sides. If he was right, then this was probably the dimensional ripper that Beta had been talking about before. He was amazed that he had kept it while he was transported here. But…then the Gatherer had probably noticed it, even if he hadn’t noticed Beta building it. And if it was such a threat to him, then why would he let him keep it? Unless it wasn’t a threat to him at all and he didn’t care if he tried to use it. Meaning it was useless to try to actually use it because it would just fail.
  1067. But he couldn’t just toss it. It was, after all, Beta’s last attempt to go against this stupid battle and the stupid Gatherer and there wasn’t even a good reason for him to still be alive he had just bumbled around the whole time and compared to the others, did he even deserve it? Sure, some of them were jerks. Mephistis was definitely a jerk. And though he sort of understood Mest, she was a jerk too and you know what thinking about Mest made him start shivering again so let’s not think about Mest right now. And he really wouldn’t have thought twice about the mirror, actually, especially considering that it was trying to get him killed and to be honest he didn’t really know what the bird was like and it was only a bird, no offense to birds, so really the only person he felt very bad for was Beta. She had been strong and he was weak. She had even been a bit kind at some parts. I mean, she didn’t kill him. He counted that as kind. And she had a tendency to save people’s lives, as far as he remembered. And she most likely wasn’t related to the underground like he was. And he felt sure that she didn’t actually plot against him the way…the way that he did against her.
  1068. And the ones that were left, they were good too. He couldn’t really…could he? Among the three of them, actually, he was the worst. Giant lizard was some sort of secret agent who probably, who knows, saved the world dozens of times. And Arthur…well, he was cursed, right? Killing a cursed kid, it was like pushing a cripple over. You just didn’t do that sort of thing because it was unfair. Killing the son of the mafia, that was okay. And he was okay with it. But…he was not okay with actually dying. Anybody who could stare down death, he almost envied them.
  1069. He continued standing around until he finally decided that first, he had to find Vander and give this weird clunky thing to him. Then, he could…figure something out. Somehow di…die and let them move on…or something like that. That was good, right?
  1070. No, it was cowardly, and that didn’t escape Selachi’s mind for one minute.
  1071. He told himself that he thought he saw a figure moving about in the fog and started walking closer to it, first very carefully, but then with strides that were confident they would find the ground underneath. The fog was starting to clear up now and he was happy to find that the figure didn’t seem too threatening, and even looked helpful, maybe…
  1072. And now he was close enough to see that the figure was of a man who was not much older than himself and actually looked a little younger. He looked very concerned behind his glasses, but didn’t even jump as the shark boy approached from the fog. He actually looked a little out of place.
  1073. He beat Selachi to the question. “’Scuse me, do you know where I am?”
  1074. Selachi snapped his jaws shut again and frowned. “I wash hoping you’d tell me.” He didn’t appreciate the stranger’s smirk when he lisped and let this be known by a scowl.
  1075. “Well, then, I suppose we’ll have to be lost together. Uh. I’m Scott,” he said, and slowly put out his hand to shake as though he were unused to the ritual.
  1076. “Shelachi,” the shark boy replied. Scott winced a little when touching his webbed hand, but it seemed to be out of a small shock rather than disgust.
  1077. Still, grinned a little and said, “Is that ‘Shelachi,’ or ‘Selachi?’”
  1078. “She--,” he automatically started, then scowled. “No ‘h.’”
  1079. Scott nodded. “What’s that you’re holding?”
  1080. Selachi glanced down at it, then back up. “I dunno.” That was another automatic response. Scott frowned.
  1081. “Right. Well. I suppose we should…start wandering…?”
  1082. “I guessh sho.”
  1083. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
  1084. This wasn’t exactly the best place Vander felt he could be. Already, the temperature had proved to change sporadically. Also, on top of everything that had happened to it, he didn’t want his suit to get wet. And yet, it was a remarkably wet place. And the ground was rough and rocky and sometimes it would fall away randomly into a hole that seemed to have been made specifically for him to step in it while it was full of water. He shook off his damp foot again with a sigh and continued to peer through the fog.
  1085. The whole place was strange. So surreal. Large, shadowy shapes rose up, rock, he assumed, shaped in ways he would have not believed rock could be shaped. And several of the things he tripped over as he walked and stumbled into water-filled holes were strange, exotic plants he had no idea existed.
  1086. After a while of walking and cursing as his pants continuously got soaked, Vander finally noticed some sort of movement. It was by chance, really, as his eyes swept across the ground in a vain attempt to avoid more holes. He saw something shivering near the ground. Or, as he found out soon enough, on the ground.
  1087. Arthur seemed very glad to see him. This might be because he was practically the only dry (mostly) thing on the whole tepui. He had apparently been cornered in by many wet puddles and couldn’t move, couldn’t even fit in the dry spot, and so had to let part of him wash away. It hadn’t been a very nice experience.
  1088. ‘Closer,’ Arthur wrote out, and as soon as Vander was practically standing on him, he crawled up his leg and wound himself up around his torso. Vander scowled now that his suit was ragged, torn, possibly a little damp, and now stained with a variety of color, until Arthur turned white to at least match the color of the suit.
  1089. “Okay, but I’m not really sure how we’ll communicate like this,” he said, trying to shake water off his foot again.
  1090. ‘I’ll write stuff on your arm then and you can read it like you’re reading a watch,” Arthur replied, writing small and neat on Vander’s arm. Though again, he only noticed this by chance.
  1091. “I suppose I should refrain from trying to dust my jacket, then,” he said with a light chuckle.
  1092. ‘Try it and you’ll find your suit a garish discoesque combination of color, among which will be puce, bile and a rather uncomplimentary shade of brown.’
  1093. Vander shuddered at the mental image, even though he knew it was a joke. Or at least he was reasonably sure it was a joke. Maybe it was a joke. It was very hard to tell. “You know, you are a very jaded and sarcastic…boy,” he said rather slowly. “How old are you anyways?”
  1094. Arthur didn’t reply for a while. ‘Do you mean how old was I when I ran into a witch or how old am I now?’
  1095. Vander shrugged. “Either one.”
  1096. ‘I don’t really remember how many years have gone by since then…’ he wrote out, and Vander could place a reminiscing tone to it. ‘But I do remember how old I was back then. I was ten.’
  1097. “…Ah,” Vander said, now feeling uncomfortable. What was he supposed to say about this? “I’m…sorry.”
  1098. ‘Yes, people tend to say this when they don’t know how to respond to tragedy that frankly has passed long ago and shouldn’t be dwelt on right now.’
  1099. “Right. Sorry,” he said as he twisted his arm around a little in order to actually read the long-winded message.
  1100. ‘There’s someone up ahead.’
  1101. Vander snapped his head up. And yes, there was someone there. He knew it was a living being and not the shadow of a rock because it was moving. It was moving towards him.
  1102. The figure came closer and Vander got a good look at it. It was rather lizard-like, like him. But it also sort of looked like a snake. It was jet-black and had sharp ridges down its back. It made up for its lack of legs with three pairs of arms. It had no eyes, but seemed to see him quite clearly. Vander knew this because it waved politely, if not confusedly, at him.
  1103. “This is a very strange place,” the black snake thing said conversationally. “And it changes too much from shady to sunny.”
  1104. “I…guess,” Vander said. “Is it really that strange?”
  1105. “You haven’t seen yet? Well, you’ll see soon enough.” The snake thing looked very thoughtfully at him for a moment (Vander was still not sure how it was possible without eyes) before adding, “I’m Syvex. I think you should know that this fog hides a lot more than you probably think.”
  1106. “I’m Vander Wells and…” The lizard quickly caught Arthur’s small ‘no’ and made a quick save. “…I’ll take your word for that.”
  1107. Syvex may have made an odd look at the long pause but it was rather hard to tell when the only part of the face Syvex had was the mouth. “Hm. I hope you don’t find this a weird question to ask, but have you been entered against your own will into a battle to the death with seven other…characters?”
  1108. He must have caught Vander’s shocked look, because he then quickly said, “Okay, then never mind, sorry to bother you…”
  1109. “No, wait, you’re right,” Vander blurted out. “Some guy called the Gatherer, he took a bunch of people, he called it a game, the ‘Magnificent Onslaught…’you mean there are other battles?”
  1110. Syvex nodded grimly. “Mine’s called the Phenominal Fracas. But I’m not sure what I’m doing here. And…I’ve been separated from an ally that I would like to find soon. What about you?”
  1111. “I…there’s one other contestant. I think we’re on good terms and I suppose I’d like to find him too because he may have something very important…wait. I think something’s happening.” Vander looked around as the fog swirled. He was suddenly aware that the ground underneath his feet was no longer wet, nor rough or rocky…or, rather it was rocky, but the wrong kind of rocky, the sort of…manufactured kind of rocky.
  1112. “Yeah, it’s happening again,” Syvex said, looking around.
  1113. “What? What?” Vander looked around as well and there were more shadows in the fog and there were definitely things that looked like houses and things were suddenly not at all tepui-like.
  1114. “I haven’t yet figured out if it’s…some sort of strange trick or not, but if you see it too…I suppose it isn’t a hallucination.”
  1115. The fog cleared. They appeared to find themselves on the cobblestone streets of the past, very far from any sort of tepui. Stately houses towered over them, nicely painted. Horses were clopping down the streets. Nobody seemed to quite fit in, but they bustled around anyways as though they belonged.
  1116. “We…where are we? We didn’t really…time travel, did we?”
  1117. --------------------------------------------------------------------
  1118. “Well, actually, I have a little experience in that,” Scott said as Selachi gaped at the new scenery they found themselves in. Nobody seemed to be walking about. It was all floating skateboards and flying cars. Theoretically, there was a floor for every building to stand on, but it was very hard to see, due to the fact that it was apparently hundreds of feet below. The two were now standing awkwardly on a balcony right outside a window of a building. Everything looked so sleek. It was weird.
  1119. “Wha?” Selachi said, still craning his neck upwards, wondering where this had been hiding a moment ago.
  1120. “Time travel,” he said a little nervously, fiddling with his watch. “It’s…sort of a thing I do…but never this far.”
  1121. Selachi finally brought himself to turn his head back to Scott. “Time travel,” he said very slowly, “Ish a thing you do?”
  1122. Scott shrugged. “It’s complicated. And you probably wouldn’t believe the story behind it. But I’ll promise you that if I ever get the chance, I’ll come by and prove to you—“
  1123. There was a tap on the glass behind them. They whirled around to find a guy who looked exactly like Scott, probably because he was. “Hey,” he grinned, opening the window to let them inside.
  1124. “What’s the—“
  1125. “It’s ‘password,’” Other-Scott said automatically, with a roll of his eyes. “In any case, I was around, so I thought I’d sorta…stop by. For one thing, it’ll make it easier for you to believe me, so stop being suspicious already. Also…” he trailed off a bit, staring off in the distance. “I’m not sure if I should really tell you this, but I remember being told this back when I was here, so I suppose I should. There’s something weird going on here.”
  1126. Selachi snorted. “No shit.”
  1127. “Seriously, you’ll see some familiar faces,” Other-Scott said, directing this towards Scott. “But they won’t recognize you…it’s the fog, maybe. Or maybe this place is fake and they’re just using people from any battle as the occupants. And no, I don’t know why we are different.” He paused to go over what he had said. “Oh yeah, you’ll also find yourself in an old Western town too. I was just there, actually. The keys are in the drawer.”
  1128. “What?” Scott said just before Other-Scott took out an air-horn and sounded it, causing Scott to jump in shock and disappear. Time travel, Selachi assumed. Other-Scott (henceforth ‘Scott’) stood around now, looking about the room they were in. It seemed to be something like a very large closet. Several strange, futuristic items filled the shelves. Every once in a while, Scott would pick one up, give a thoughtful ‘hm,’ and put it back. He stared meaningfully at Selachi, who was still trying to work out what had just happened.
  1129. “Wait, uh…what jusht happened?”
  1130. “I came from the future to here and past me just popped out of here to the future,” Scott explained patiently. “I think you’ll gain solace in the fact that you’re still alive a bit into the future.”
  1131. Selachi nodded. He still had the strange look on his face, one of trying to comprehend something that he was likely never going to be able to comprehend. “…Did you shay ‘other battlesh’?” he suddenly asked.
  1132. Scott nodded. “Mine’s Fatal Conflict. Run by a pretty insane guy.” He noticed Selachi looking down morosely at the hunk of metal in his arms.
  1133. If there were really other battles going on the same as here, then was there a point in defeating the Gatherer? There were a lot more where he came from. It was possible that they would just keep snatching him back. Or maybe take revenge for the sake of their fallen comrade. So even if this worked…it was pointless…
  1134. “Hey, look, whatever that thing does, there’s no reason to get so depressed. Getting depressed probably gets you killed, anyways,” Scott said, and he shook himself out of his mind.
  1135. “…You don’t know what this is?” Selachi asked, apparently having thought that people from the future probably knew a lot more than him.
  1136. “You wouldn’t tell me. Or will not tell me,” Scott added thoughtfully. Tenses could be tricky when applied to a time traveller.
  1137. “…So…I shouldn’t tell you now…?”
  1138. “Oh no,” he said very dismissively. “You simply didn’t tell the past me in the future. If you had told me before I time travelled back then, there would have been a problem, but since I’m not past-me anymore, even if this event is before I last saw you from a chronological point of view—“
  1139. “I don’t undershtand thish at all.”
  1140. Scott sighed. “Yeah, some people don’t.”
  1141. “I’m jusht not gonna tell you. Sho the universh doeshn’t ekxplode or shomething.”
  1142. “Alright. That’s always good.”
  1143. “Now what?”
  1144. Scott looked around the room again. “I dunno. Although, actually…a few minutes ago—or, I guess, several minutes ahead, you told me I warned you to get a bullet-proof vest of some sort. So I think we should try to find you a bullet-proof vest.”
  1145. “I what?” Selachi said, sounding quite worried. “Why do I need a bullet-proof vest?”
  1146. “Well, I assume you’d get shot at some time in the future,” Scott said much too casually for his tastes. He started looking around again. “What sort of building do you think this is, anyways? Maybe they have one.”
  1147. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
  1148. The street wouldn’t have looked too much out of place in 19th century England, if it weren’t for the fact that a lot of the people walking around were not entirely human. Still, they had apparently made an effort to fit in, wearing period clothing, strutting around (if they had legs) and politely greeting those they passed.
  1149. Vander caught the eyes of a strange, brown, fuzzy woman chatting with a stumpy, pointy-eared guy before Syvex dragged him inside a random building.
  1150. They were suddenly inside a tavern with dim lighting that was almost suggestive. It wasn’t really bustling right now, but the bartender was trying to look busy anyways. What was strange was that there seemed to be jazz music playing. The lizard was almost quite certain that jazz wasn’t a part of 19th century England.
  1151. ‘It seems that time is very unstable here,’ Arthur noted. If it was the 20th century in here and the 19th century outside, Vander would have to agree.
  1152. The bartender, a dark-skinned man, had bandages wrapped around his arms, which Vander was sure was not the fashion, in the 1800s or 1900s or any other time period. He wore a smart vest, so at least that made him somewhat bartender-ish. He eyed them suspiciously and Syvex cringed, apparently recognizing him but knowing that he didn’t actually recognize him back.
  1153. The jazz player was—and Vander had to blink to make sure he was seeing this right—music. Just that. There were no instruments. Just a collection of music, or at least what anybody would imagine a physical representation of music to be. The jazz was smooth and slow. He couldn’t help but feel a little jittery.
  1154. The two decided to sit down for now. At least they were away from most prying eyes. “Right, so—“
  1155. Syvex shushed him and gestured unsubtly towards the bartender. He was still cleaning glasses with a rather beleaguered look on his face, but the way he stood told Vander that he was definitely trying to listen in.
  1156. “Okay,” he said, whispering this time. “So what exactly is our plan?”
  1157. “I don’t really have a clue,” Syvex sighed. “This place is so disorienting. There are places here where there shouldn’t be places and people here where they are not, but they are and that’s the problem, and we’re here but at the same time we’re there, you know?”
  1158. Vander stared. “No.”
  1159. “I don’t know either,” the shadowy snake-lizard said frankly.
  1160. Vander glanced down at his sleeve and said, “Well…you said something about gathering up our allies. What else is there to do but look?”
  1161. Syvex threw up his many hands and shouted, “I don’t know!” This caught the attention of the jazz…singer…music and now the other two occupants of the bar were staring at them. The atmosphere seemed to lighten. “This place, it seems so unstable. I feel as though if we hit it in the right place, this whole…illusion, fog, mind trick thing will break apart. And trust me, that would make it easier to find people.”
  1162. A thought suddenly occurred to Vander. “So you’re saying we should rip this dimension a new one…”
  1163. Syvex sighed again. “I don’t even know what I’m saying. What the hell are you saying?”
  1164. “I’m thinking that we have even more of a reason to find my own friend now,” Vander said, grinning a little. “Finding him, we’ll get rid of this strange time travel hallucination illusion thing, you may possibly find your friend, and we might even be able to escape this ridiculous battle thing.”
  1165. Syvex thought about it for a bit. “Are you sure? And in any case, won’t it be hard to find your friend?”
  1166. “Well, who knows, maybe one of these contestants or figments of imagination or clones could help us. In any case, it’s become pretty important to find Selachi. It can’t get that disorienting out here…”
  1167. Vander was quickly proven wrong when he walked out the door. They were back on the rocky, damp tepui, except it was less foggy and more sunshiny. Whirling around, he saw Syvex and a complete lack of a 1900s bar in an 1800s world.
  1168. ‘Try not to get too wet out here,’ Arthur asked politely.
  1169. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
  1170. “Why…how did we get from here to a Western desert town…?” Selachi asked out loud. He didn’t really want to believe it, but there it was. The air was dry, so dry that it seemed to be sucking the water right out of his body, and the dirt blew in his face. He spat some out and turned around to see that there was no futuristic city anymore. It was sort of nice to not have to see the juxtaposition between the old West and the future.
  1171. “Can’t say I know,” Scott replied, equally as disconcerted.
  1172. “Wait, I thought…weren’t you just here?”
  1173. “Well, I never actually figured out how we got here,” he said. “I only appeared here. But in any case…someone’s coming over to us right now…”
  1174. Selachi had expected it with the future city, but he certainly didn’t expect a western town to have exotic species living in it as well. There was a posse sidling on over to them. Selachi hoped they liked strangers. Unfortunately, they didn’t seem to.
  1175. He was quite surprised to find that the leader of the pack appeared to be a little girl. Her eyes were obscured by her small hat and she swung an axe around leisurely and held a grin almost as sharp as Selachi’s. “And may I ask,” she started sweetly, “What you are doing here?”
  1176. “Uh,” both boys stuttered. “We…we jusht found ourshelvesh here,” Selachi explained as he searched the faces of the group, a little jittery ever since he had heard he would get shot. One guy stood right beside the girl. He was rather dreary looking. Oddly enough, he had red eyes and carried around one of those old-fashioned scales and a hammer. The other guy, also much taller and older than their leader, also looked a lot stronger than the other two. He looked uncomfortable with the hat and pulled on his red Rockmount shirt. He held both a sword and a gun, the latter which Selachi eyed in a very worried fashion.
  1177. The girl was now frowning at him. “…Is that a lisp?”
  1178. “Er,” Selachi replied, caught off guard. “…Yesh…?”
  1179. The girl scowled even more. “I see. And what is that you are carrying?”
  1180. “I…uh…it’sh nothing, really.”
  1181. The braided girl’s expression was steadily growing darker and finally she said, “You both are being arrested.”
  1182. “On what charges?” Scott had tried to say this a bit politely, but it came out a bit surprised and spluttered.
  1183. The girl dramatically pointed her axe at Selachi, who couldn’t help but notice that both her partners were rolling their eyes (red-eye guy) or looking even more uncomfortable with the situation (red shirt guy). “Lisping and carrying a foreign and possibly deadly object.” The axe swung towards Scott, who recoiled a bit. “Association.”
  1184. “That’sh ridikhuloush!” Selachi blurted out, which didn’t seem to endear him more to the girl.
  1185. “I should cut your tongue out right now,” she snapped as she stepped forward, and for a moment, Selachi thought she actually would, but then she calmed down. “But I guess you should stay a night in jail first…I’m pretty sure that’s how it goes.”
  1186. “I shouldn’t even go t’ jail in th’ firsht plashe!”
  1187. “Maybe you should’ve thought of that before going around making it hard to understand you!”
  1188. “You undershtand me perfeckly!”
  1189. The girl seemed to realize that it was starting to look like a childish spat and restrained herself. “Lock ‘em up, boys.”
  1190. Red-eyes went for Scott while red shirt approached Selachi with a look on his face that said ‘please don’t make this hard for me.’ He automatically backed up, a knee-jerk response when approached by any sort of authority figure, but glancing at the sword at his side and the gun in his hand, he decided it was probably not worth it. In any case, he remembered Scott mentioning a key and felt a little certain that if he got locked up, he would get freed again soon enough.
  1191. Scott wasn’t handling this well, though and Selachi watched as a look of panic crossed his face when red-eyes stalked up towards him with his hefty scale and hammer. He seemed to be hyperventilating, and then he vanished.
  1192. “Hm, a runner,” the girl said, though she didn’t sound as though she cared much. “You better go find him, then we’ll chop off his legs. In any case, little knight, why don’t we take our little sharky to the jail, hm?”
  1193. Both men didn’t respond, but did obey, and Selachi was pushed down the dusty road to a nearby, wooden building.
  1194. The bars rattled shut and he looked about in his cell, rather surprised that, under the strange sheriff’s strict regime, that it wasn’t full at all. He was the only one there. Then he realized that he hadn’t seen anybody else in the town and the implications made him pale. He sat down in a dingy corner and glared at red shirt from there. Well, at least it wasn’t so dry in here.
  1195. “Ckan I get shome water at leasht?”
  1196. The ‘knight’ looked back, but the girl had gone off to possibly harass someone else and so he nodded mutely and departed for a moment. It only took a few minutes for him to come back with a pitcher and a glass.
  1197. “Give me th’ pitcher,” Selachi said, reaching out through the bars, but this time the man shook his head.
  1198. “Conserve water,” he said, and he handed him the glass. Selachi sat back with the small amount of water he was given, feeling a little disappointed, but still seeing his point. He slowly started to drink, rationing what he had got. It probably wouldn’t take long for him to get out. The time travelling Scott knew where to get the key. Though maybe he should try to get the guy to leave first. Scott could definitely not fight him off.
  1199. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
  1200. “I think it’s dark enough,” Syvex said suddenly.
  1201. “What?”
  1202. Vander looked around the fog. It was indeed a bit shadowy at least, what with the cloud cover, and it was getting hard to see, but he wasn’t sure what this had to do with anything.
  1203. It started to rain all of a sudden, but it was only raining right in front of them, not actually on them, as though the storm cloud was too afraid to actually go and let itself wash right over them.
  1204. “I have some powers,” Syvex explained as what seemed to be dark energy swirled around one of his hands. “They work better in the shadows…”
  1205. “…What, you mean like dark magic…?” Vander said, backing away slightly.
  1206. Syvex frowned. “Mmm…no, nothing like that. I don’t think. I’m pretty sure the link would be strong enough and my field of awareness is getting larger…So I think I can get this search going faster.” With a flash of dark energy, a portal opened up in the air. Vander stared at it warily.
  1207. “So…you’re saying that we’re going to portal hop all over the place?”
  1208. “Not even that,” Syvex said a little smugly. “Poke your head in and look around.”
  1209. “I’m not sure if…”
  1210. “Alright, fine, just tell me what your friend looks like.”
  1211. “Well—“ Vander stopped as Arthur suddenly drew up a good depiction of Selachi’s head. “Uh. Like this,” the lizard said, turning his arm to let Syvex see.
  1212. If he had any eyebrows, he would have raised them. “Interesting. Why do you have a picture of him on your sleeve?”
  1213. “Special suit,” Vander replied a little tersely.
  1214. “I see.” Vander shuffled awkwardly. He certainly did see something, but he was very certain he wasn’t seeing the right something. “Anyways, I’ll go try finding him now. A lot of people I’m seeing, though, so it may take a while. Just sit tight.”
  1215. And so Vander waited while Syvex quickly poked his head in and out of the portal, never taking more than a cursory glance. He didn’t have to wait long, though, but that wasn’t because the serpent-lizard had found him, but because the fog lifted again.
  1216. “Ah, dammit!” Syvex spat as the portal shrunk before popping out of existence. “It’s too bright now, we need to find someplace dark.”
  1217. Vander stared around at the new surroundings. They had somehow ended up inside a huge, extravagant mansion. And of course, a golden chandelier was hanging over them.
  1218. ‘Try a closet,’ Arthur suggested.
  1219. Syvex had apparently seen this time. “Your ‘special suit’ certainly has some good ideas,” he commented dryly. “Know where we could find a closet?”
  1220. “Er,” Vander replied, glancing around again. All the doors looked equally rich and expensive. None of them seemed to be a door to anything other than a room full of exotic treasures. “I have no idea.”
  1221. “Well, let’s start looking, then.” And Syvex started opening doors randomly. Vander glanced about again as the sound of slamming doors filled the air, but soon joined the shadow beast.
  1222. But as it turned out, the sound did attract some attention in the form of a butler. Well, Vander assumed it was supposed to be a butler because of the suit. It was actually a vacuum cleaner. With skeletal arms. He was sure that it was a good and professional butler, but seeing a vacuum cleaner go up to you on its own waving about skeletal hands and some knives, it was a little disconcerting. Which was why he yelped in a possibly embarrassing fashion.
  1223. Syvex whirled around, ready to attack, but holding back. The vacuum cleaner appeared to look them over before intoning, “Good evening, gentlemen. I am Eximo Pulvis. Unless you are here as guests and can identify yourselves, you are intruding on private property and thus must be terminated. Please identify yourselves.”
  1224. “Uh,” Vander said, a little distracted by the random cover stories Arthur was suddenly writing up.
  1225. Syvex didn’t bother with any of this and instead launched some sort of dark energy blast at the machine. With a disgruntled whirr, Eximo Pulvis wheeled back to dodge the attack and, now having firmly established them as ‘enemies,’ moved forward, expertly spinning its knives around. Vander quickly retreated to where Syvex was. “You know,” he gasped as a knife suddenly embedded itself in the wall beside him, quivering. “That was incredibly reckless of you.”
  1226. “Sorry,” Syvex shrugged, and they hurtled down the large halls, making even more noise than before.
  1227. Despite having such tiny wheels, the vacuum cleaner easily kept pace and continued to launch a never-ending torrent of knives towards their backs. Arthur attempted to at least hide Vander from view, try to make it so that his back was instead the other end of the hall, but found that he just couldn’t shift quick enough to adjust for the constantly changing perspective and so gave up.
  1228. They turned a corner and Syvex suddenly grabbed Vander and pulled him into the first door they saw. Inside the cramped space, it was dark (which he liked) but still very much cramped (which he didn’t). They waited inside, though, and a sigh of relief filled the small room when they heard tiny wheels whizzing by.
  1229. “Right, this seems like a good place to continue the search,” Syvex said and there was the subtle sound of a portal opening. Vander just stood, his shoulders starting to ache and his tail already aching due to the strange ways it had to bend to fit. He was leaning against the door, which was why he fell out when it opened.
  1230. Luckily, it wasn’t the vacuum cleaner butler. It was a very tired-looking maid. Not the overworked tired, though, but the beleaguered tired. The sort of tired you find etched on a chain-smoking waitress’s face at three in the morning in a very disagreeable restaurant. She showed some surprise at finding two people shoved inside the closet. This quickly turned into suspicion.
  1231. “What the hell are you doing in there?”
  1232. Syvex looked up, a little frustrated that fate had once again deigned to bathe him in light, but his expression changed quickly. “Eureka!”
  1233. Vander first thought that there had been some sort of amazing insight that made itself known to Syvex. Then he looked up at the maid’s face again, which was back into a shocked position, and thought ‘Oh.’
  1234. ‘That’s actually a name?’ Arthur said.
  1235. “How’d you know that?” she snapped, more suspicious than ever, and Syvex’s grin dropped.
  1236. “I also know that you are a very distrusting person and you also control cloth. Or another you, at least. I think you’re a doppelganger. No offense. But in any case, you trusted me before, or at least trusted me a little more than the others, so I’m going to ask you to trust me now, at least a little, and also don’t give us away, okay? Just let us get back in the closet and shut the door.”
  1237. Eureka stared. “I suppose lizards have to get some somewhere.” The two stared at her as she sucked on the inside of her cheek. Then she sighed heavily. “I will pretend I didn’t see anything and I will also make sure nobody else goes near here. And I better not regret this.” And they were back in the darkness.
  1238. “Right. Now hopefully there won’t be any more interruptions,” Syvex sighed.
  1239. And there weren’t. Syvex scoured whatever area he felt he should. Time passed. Vander started wishing he could actually stretch his legs. And then suddenly, Syvex turned around, looking very serious.
  1240. “I think I found him.”
  1241. Vander almost smiled, but saw his expression. “I smell a ‘but’ coming on.”
  1242. “I think he’s in some sort of trouble.”
  1243. “Then why the hell aren’t we going to get him out of that trouble?”
  1244. Syvex looked down at the floor for a bit. “For one thing, it’s pretty bright where he is. I need to find a shady place to open a portal. In any case, I will most likely be useless. And there’s a guy guarding him. Big and tough but I’m pretty sure he’s not dumb. You think you could handle that?”
  1245. Vander hesitated and had to say that no, he couldn’t really handle that.
  1246. “Right then. So I think we need some sort of plan, because he’s sort of in a cell and if I know anything about jailbreaks, it’s that they should probably be well thought-out beforehand…”
  1247. The two became aware of a sound, a sound that was getting louder, as though the one making it was approaching them. Soon they were able to pick out words.
  1248. “…dammit…stop already…listen…it’s not…get away…”
  1249. Syvex listened a little more to Eureka’s ranting and said, “I think we should go.”
  1250. The door opened, but instead of the vacuum cleaner, it was Eureka, a little breathless. “You should—“ she started, but Syvex had already opened a portal and was pulling both Vander and Eureka in.
  1251. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
  1252. Western jails weren’t exactly very thrilling. Especially if you were locked up on your own. Selachi drew random figures in the floor with sand that had somehow managed to blow in while red shirt rocked on his chair a little, staring at a wall. The shark boy took some consolation in the fact that Scott had travelled out of this very time period and they would probably never find him, at least not until a few minutes later, when he would appear again.
  1253. And speaking of Scott, he would really like to leave now.
  1254. “Do you hear something?” Red shirt said abruptly.
  1255. “No,” Selachi said before actually listening. And now that he did, he had to say that, yes, there seemed to be some strange sound. It was a very muffled sound and he was pretty sure it was coming from the wall behind him. And, if he thought about it a bit, he would have said that it could possibly be the sound of several arguing people. But he was quickly distracted by something else. It was a smell, and that smell was of something burning.
  1256. He immediately jumped up and pressed himself against the bars, eyes searching for any sort of fire or something, his paltry glass of water at the ready, but even so, he was completely unprepared for the following explosion.
  1257. It blasted the wall open and brought up smoke and dust. Most of it got into his eyes and mouth (dammit) and he coughed and he heard red shirt cough behind him. The man still managed to find the time to splash a pitcher of water in the general area of the explosion, in case there was some fire to douse. And there was. Selachi saw it once he was pulled out through the wreckage and saw the small fires being smothered by a woman’s blanket thing. Vander looked him up and down as Selachi tried to stop coughing. “Where’s that…thing? Dimensional ripper?” he asked very quickly, which somewhat annoyed Selchi because he was still busy trying to expel several irritants that were lodged in his throat.
  1258. “Confiscated,” he managed to wheeze. “Taken somewhere.”
  1259. “Well, perhaps your guard would be nice enough to tell us,” said something that Selachi couldn’t recognize. Mostly because he hadn’t seen many creatures with six arms.
  1260. The serpentine figure slithered into the jail and the woman hesitated before following him. Vander stared after them before turning back to Selachi. “You okay?”
  1261. “What made you think it was a good idea to blow up the place I was confined in?” the shark boy hissed, sounding a tad ungrateful. This made him feel bad when Vander started shuffling, embarrassed.
  1262. “Well—“
  1263. “No, don’t explain it to me. Sorry. It’s fine.” Selachi rubbed his face, as though trying to rub that jerkish feeling out of him.
  1264. Vander stared at him for a while before saying, “Okay.” He then walked back inside the jail, where the man was now tied tightly to the chair. Judging by the random singed areas on the wall, he had put up some fight, but now he was just sitting forlorn in the chair while Syvex badgered him.
  1265. “Really, you’re only making it harder for yourself, okay? Seriously, I know it doesn’t feel great to betray your superiors, but looking at you, I get the feeling you don’t much like him. Her. Trust me, you can’t hide that from me. So what’s the point of keeping it away from us? Or are you really that afraid?”
  1266. “Loock, don’t be too hard on him,” Selachi sighed as he picked his way through the distended bars. “The girl’sh a pieshe of worck. I wouldn’t wanna upshet her either…”
  1267. The man started whispering something.
  1268. “What was that? Sorry, didn’t catch it,” Syvex said, a little more loftily than Selachi liked.
  1269. “…wrong sense of justice…” he muttered. “…used to be…populated…”
  1270. Eureka stared coldly at him and sighed. “Wonderful that we decide to interrogate the insane one, hm?”
  1271. “Wait, hang on, I think he’s gonna…”
  1272. “She usually locks up confiscated items in her office. I’ve never been in there. Be careful. She always somehow finds out about this sort of thing…” And then he slumped in his chair, as though the effort of sitting straight was just too much now.
  1273. “Right, but where the hell is her office?”
  1274. “…Just next door,” he replied tiredly. “Make sure she isn’t inside.”
  1275. And everybody left him tied to the chair. Selachi looked back before he closed the door. He couldn’t help but see a man who had started out as an idealist but had gotten crushed by the world…
  1276. But back to surviving.
  1277. This building was also made of wood. Selachi hoped this time they wouldn’t decide to just blow a whole open in it.
  1278. Syvex carefully navigated towards a shady area while Eureka just walked directly and peered through the window.
  1279. “See anybody?” Vander asked, walking slowly.
  1280. “Nnnnnnno.”
  1281. “You sound so certain.”
  1282. “Look for yourself if you want.”
  1283. Vander had to agree that there didn’t seem to be anybody inside and so Syvex opened a big of a portal as he could, slipped in as it closed, and opened the window from inside. Everybody crawled in. Eureka made a bit point to crawl in last, still inside her maid’s uniform, a dress that may have been nice for cleaning in, but certainly not nice for crawling into windows.
  1284. As Vander helped her down, Syvex glanced around. “Alright, so where would she put that thingy?”
  1285. “Maybe over there,” Selachi said, pointing over to a door that led to a side room. It was labeled ‘Confiscated Items.’ It was locked.
  1286. “Right, so portal time again?” Eureka asked, apparently completely bored with the whole thing. Syvex frowned in response.
  1287. “…I can’t, for some reason. I can’t even see into it.”
  1288. “Okay, then it’s time to find a key.”
  1289. Selachi almost jumped. “The key!” And he practically leapt towards the desk (which had been built to be small so that the sheriff wouldn’t look so ridiculous sitting behind it) and shuffled through a drawer. Then he shuffled through them all. “Dammit! It should be here!”
  1290. “What? How do you know that?”
  1291. “He said it a while back! The key should be here!”
  1292. “This key?”
  1293. Four heads turned towards the door, and there was the sheriff and red-eyes, glaring at them quite a bit. The girl had a key in between her fingers. “Did you really think that I would just leave this thing lying around for anybody to find?” she asked condescendingly as she pocketed it. Then she unshouldered her axe. “In any case, all of you shall be arrested for trespassing and attempted robbery. Your punishment will be the removal of your hands, effective…immediately.” And then they attacked.
  1294. It shouldn’t have been so hard. They were outnumbered. It was four against two, five, if you counted Arthur, but the two ducked and weaved and slashed and blocked. Not to mention both seemed to have powers that far out-classed theirs. They summoned things. They made walls materialize, and by the time those walls could be broken down, for they found that a lot of the time, the walls had some sort of weak point, they had moved somewhere else to gain some other sort of advantage to better kill them. It was no wonder they managed to take over the town.
  1295. Selachi dodged a swing of the hammer on his desperate way to the door. As he struggled to fight back, the door actually opened, revealing red shirt. He looked ragged and still tired. His arms were red from when they had tied him up. He held his gun tightly, and, for a moment, Selachi was afraid he was going to shoot him.
  1296. “Oh good, Arnold,” said red-eyes. “That brings us closer to an even number of fighters.”
  1297. “Oh kniiiight~” sang the sheriff as she chased Vander around, blocking any dark energy beams and random cloth bandage attacks directed towards her. She tore a bandage that managed to wrap around her arm. “It’s time to do your job and cut off these delinquents’ hands! Preferably before killing them!”
  1298. Selachi stumbled and fell to the floor as red-eyes advanced. “Wait—don’t—“
  1299. “Stop, Balance,” Arnold said softly, and yet his tone came out clear. “I know how you feel about balanced fighting, but think about it. Soft has been upsetting the balance of justice ever since she came here. I know it bothers you. It has been bothering me ever since I took the job. So do something about it! We can’t waste our time on these people when she’s the one to blame for everything! I know you like it when there’s equal numbers on both sides, but this is more important than that! Haven’t you realized she’s killed everybody in town and the drought still hasn’t stopped!? Didn’t you!?”
  1300. Balance stared at him and seemed to waver a little, but didn’t seem to be switching sides any time soon. Soft seemed entirely oblivious to this conversation.
  1301. “I don’t see any haaaands flying!” she called over to them with a hint of a warning in her voice.
  1302. And still Balance loomed over Selachi.
  1303. Arnold’s face contorted into an ugly snarl and he raised his gun. “If you’re not willing to help, then I will just handle this without you!” and Balance stumbled back, afraid that he was actually going to shoot him, but the end of the gun instead trailed over to Soft, who was still dealing with pretty much everybody else. Selachi took this time to slink away without being noticed.
  1304. Arnold fired once, and the bullet missed. He fired again and Soft, noticing her subordinate’s treachery, deflected it easily. This caught Selachi completely by surprise, but he still managed to catch the bullet. In his stomach. He was pushed to the wall and crumpled on the floor. Arnold’s face was a mask of shock and guilt and Soft sneered at him before descending onto Selachi. But the others were suddenly standing in her way.
  1305. She grinned a feral grin. “You can’t stop me at all,” she said, matter-of-fact, and indeed they couldn’t. It was hard to see, but there was some sort of sweeping motion and they had all been pushed to the side.
  1306. And Selachi was gone.
  1307. Confused, Soft approached the place where he had just been and noticed that there was one area that seemed to shift and warp a little as she moved. Instinctively, she kicked at that spot and felt her foot connect against something. Selachi rolled on the floor, clutching his arm and it looked as though splatters of paint were running off him.
  1308. “A witch too, hmm?” she said quite lightly as she nudged away his hand and stepped on it, raising her axe. “You’re supposed to burn for that, you know. I’ll give you a cremation later, hmm?”
  1309. She blinked and stumbled backwards suddenly, rubbing her eyes. Arthur, in another desperate attempt, had actually gone and spread himself over her eyeballs. It’s every bit as painful as it would seem.
  1310. But the eyeball is usually bathed in fluids, and any foreign object caught on it would usually be washed away with tears. And as such, Arthur was easily driven away. It wasn’t much water, but it was enough to hurt him.
  1311. Selachi was up again and noticeably not bleeding. As Arthur retreated again, having at least distracted her enough for everybody else to get back on their feet, she blinked away tears and glared at him. “Impervious to bullets?”
  1312. “Bullet-proof vesht,” Selachi said simply, though he felt that there was probably going to be a bruise there for a long time. “Lishen, you’re wrong about everything, we weren’t breacking and entering, sherioiusly, we thought we heard shomeone rummaging around in here. We thinck there’sh shomeone right behind that door.”
  1313. Soft stared at him. “You are such a liar. I am going to have to cut your tongue for that.”
  1314. “You were already gonna ckut out my tongue!” Selachi cried back in frustration. “For lishping!”
  1315. “Well now I’m going to doubly cut out your tongue—aha!” Soft whirled around, catching Syvex in the act of picking her pocket. “I’m cutting off all your hands for that! You want this key?! I’m not letting you have it!” The key in her hand suddenly disappeared. Apparently, she had decided to teleport it away. “And trust me, you’ll never find it.” She went ahead and gestured towards Arnold. “Seriously, I can’t believe you. I actually expected Balance to snap and go against me, but you? I wouldn’t have guessed it. And did you all really think that lie was going to work? ‘There’s someone inside the door!’ As if anybody could possibly—“
  1316. Scott suddenly opened the ‘Confiscated Items’ door, looking a bit disheveled (probably from bumping around in the dark). He had the key in his hand. “Um,” he said nervously. “I…sorta heard a gunshot…I think…a little while ago…Is, uh, everything okay…in…here….?”
  1317. He stared at Selachi. “…Are you wearing a bullet-proof vest?”
  1318. “Yeah,” Selachi breathed. “You told me to get one.”
  1319. “I see,” Scott said before everybody remembered themselves and it all went to hell.
  1320. “Get in there!” Syvex shouted and there was a sudden scramble to be the first to the door, causing Scott to gain a look of dread on his face as he watched everybody rushing towards him. Arthur arrived first, having nothing like an actual body to impede his speed. Selachi got there next, and Soft would have caught up if Syvex hadn’t used up most of his energy making a portal that led right outside the building under her feet. As she screamed with rage outside, the rest of the group rushed into the door and they slammed it shut. Outside, they could hear Soft ranting about Balance’s incompetence.
  1321. “Right, sho where ish it? Ish there a light here?”
  1322. “Does it look like a hunk of metal in a vague cube shape?” Syvex asked.
  1323. “Yeah, why?”
  1324. There were a few sounds. One of them, worryingly enough, was of an axe pounding on the door. Another was of Syvex shuffling around stuff before picking up a hunk of metal. “Right, I believe it’s this thing right here. So how do you—“
  1325. The scene changed and they were back on the foggy tepui.
  1326. While Scott, Vander and Selachi were busy being disoriented, Vander looked down and said, “Shit! Arthur!”
  1327. Due to the sudden change, Arthur had not been prepared for the sudden rain, for it was indeed raining. What made it worse was that he had landed right in a puddle. And he seemed to be trying to scrabble out of it, but now he was not lying on top of a surface, but suspended in water. He couldn’t get a grip on anything. The water turned murky as his color was diluted and dispersed by the water. Thinking quickly, Syvex tossed the device at Selachi, who caught it right when the tepui disappeared from sight.
  1328. -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
  1329. “Well,” the Gatherer said thoughtfully as everything went black. “It certainly has been a long trip, but here we are. The final round. Two left. One on one. Fight to the finish. So on and so forth.” There was a pause. No bizarre arena melted into view and the two were left standing in the darkness. “I have to say,” the Gatherer continued idly, “You all really surprised the others. Judging from the bets, my colleagues honestly thought both of you would have died long before now. I’m not very certain what that says about your abilities or your luck, but I must congratulate the both of you, overcoming all odds to get to this point. I can’t say either of you have fought well, but I suppose you have fought hard.”
  1330. This was an even longer pause, as though the Gatherer was actually getting philosophical. But then he suddenly said in an upbeat tone, “But in any case, one of you still has yet to die, so let’s get to it!” And both had to cover their eyes as a bright flash indicated the transfer to the next round.
  1331. When they opened their eyes again, they found themselves on a sandy beach. It appeared to be a dreary day, with grey clouds spanning the sky. The sand looked dull, the ocean, even duller, and both stretched on and on in either direction, an endless dull on both sides. No islands rocks dotting the sea, no signs of life along the coast. It was a beach of solitude.
  1332. -------------------------------------------------------------------------
  1333. Selachi enjoyed the waves splashing over his feet and if it weren’t for the mechanical thingy in his arms, he might have just jumped in the water and never looked back. But he at least felt some sort of obligation to see this through and to at least not destroy their only hope of getting out alive.
  1334. “The contemplative sea…” The Gatherer started, actually sounding rather poetic, if possibly a little melodramatic. “Sometimes it’s nice to just walk along the shore. Watching your footprints wash away behind you. Having the whole place to yourself. In any case, as you can probably already guess by the previous rounds we’ve had, this is no ordinary beach. On this beach, you’ll find that, well, your memories may haunt you. Maybe even interact with you, if they’re bold enough.” The Gatherer chuckled a bit and then the beach was quiet.
  1335. The shark boy wasn’t entirely sure what he had meant by that, but it didn’t sound too great. In fact, it sounded like a good way to confront all the things he didn’t really want to confront and so it was probably best to get out of here as soon as possible. He stared at the dimensional ripper in his webbed hands, wondering for possibly the fifth time how it was supposed to work, and then set off on the damp sand. As soon as he found Vander, he was sure they would be able to figure it out or something. He only hoped he was going in the right direction. It was already going to be hard to find him.
  1336. ------------------------------------------------------------------------
  1337. It played out in front of him like a movie. The first time he found how engrossed he was in the Hollywood ideal of his job. The first time he found that impossible odds sometimes really were impossible.
  1338. He watched solemnly. The sand hadn’t raised itself into walls, but everything else was there. The villain, the girl, the hero, the plans for world domination, the various death traps. Just as he remembered it, and even some things he didn’t. He watched the actors play out their roles and watched as he was given the choice to save the girl or save the world.
  1339. It was such an easy choice. He couldn’t remember thinking much about it. He went and saved the world. He never did save the girl.
  1340. He was supposed to value the lives of many over the lives of the few, but still, it was hard, especially when the faces of the few were right in front of you and the faces of the many all distant strangers.
  1341. As usual, he had bumbled his way through a job he had no right to be doing as the villain made his escape. He had been certain that he had plenty of time to save the girl after and that she wouldn’t be too angry at him for choosing the world over her, because really, she had some perspective too and somehow he had managed to work his way through a thingy that he didn’t quite understand. And somehow he had managed to keep working even as she screamed and even as she stopped.
  1342. He sort of wished that she could have at least seen him succeed. He at least wanted her to know that her death wasn’t in vain, though he was sure she would have preferred living thorugh the ordeal.
  1343. It occurred to him that he could probably step in and…change a few things. Work on rescuing the girl while the hero went ahead and saved the world. But somehow he knew that he couldn’t fiddle with the past. As soon as it stopped playing out in front of him, he moved on, his mind heavy with what ifs.
  1344. Was this beach really going to keep doing this to him? Bring up every horrible memory and replay it in front of his eyes until he couldn’t take it any longer and decided to just throw himself into the sea? He couldn’t help but think it a bit unfair. He almost felt as though he was being blamed for everything. He was being accused. But he had always tried his best, hadn’t he? At least he thought he did. He had good intentions at least.
  1345. But good intentions aren’t enough to save lives, now, aren’t they?
  1346. He really wished he would stop thinking like this because hell it doesn’t help anything at all depressing himself I mean, was he trying to prove to himself something? Like how much of an incompetent ass he was? He already had thought of himself as such. It was hard not to. But in any case, keep walking, keep walking…
  1347. The sea suddenly drew up into the form of the girl and she smiled a smile at him that wavered, not because of her level of sincerity, but because of the water. “Well, Wells, after all that, is there anything you want to say to me?”
  1348. He stopped on the shore and stared back and couldn’t help but say, as he had said so many years ago, “Well, the way I see it, we could either forget about everything or go off into the future together, if that’s what you’d like.”
  1349. She held out a watery hand. “Then let’s go already!”
  1350. Vander stood at the shore for a very long time before averting his eyes and shaking his head. “…I can’t,” he said, the words echoing against nothing, hollow and empty. When he looked back, the ocean was back to normal. No sirens to lure him in. And he walked on.
  1351. Thankfully, he finally came across company. Real company. Selachi had caught sight of him and was now running up, but carefully, not wanting to trip and damage the dimensional ripper. “Great! I found you! What do we do now?”
  1352. The shark boy also looked pale and ashen. Perhaps he had also run into some shadows of the past. Whatever he had been forced to confront, Vander couldn’t help but sympathize with him. He stared down at him in an almost fatherly way and said, “I’m not sure.”
  1353. Selachi seemed speechless for a moment, but then he started, “Well, shouldn’t we…I dunno…figure out how to eshkape or…shomething? I mean, we have thish thing. Shouldn’t we figure it out?”
  1354. “Does it even have buttons?” Vander asked, suddenly feeling worn out. He waited as Selachi fumbled around the cube. “Well?”
  1355. “No,” he said rather sadly.
  1356. “Then I have no idea what to do,” he said.
  1357. Selachi stood there. He could see that the young boy was not ready to give up. Slowly, he thought of something.
  1358. “Well, Beta wouldn’t uv given it if she didn’t thinck we ckouldn’t get it to worck, right? There musht be shome way…to…” More fumbling noises. The shark boy poked and prodded and lightly pulled parts of the strange machine. Still nothing really happened. Nothing dramatic like ripping a whole in the fabric of the multiverse at least. “I mean…maybe there wash a hint…or…shomething?”
  1359. Vander sighed, now getting even more depressed watching him hold on even when there was nothing to hold on to. “Look, there’s nothing we can do for now. Nothing we can really do about escaping. But I’m not letting either of us just stay here forever. And I’m pretty sure the Gatherer won’t just let us sit here anyways. So…”
  1360. Realization dawned. “No,” Selachi said forcefully, almost fiercely, as his face set into a serious scowl. “Nobody’sh doin’ that. I mean, we have a way out and nobody hash to die! An’ that’sh a ckoward’sh way out.” He neglected to mention that he had been thinking about the same thing just moments before.
  1361. “So what?” Vander sighed again. “We just wander around until by chance one of us dies?”
  1362. “Nobody’sh gonna die. Jusht let me thinck for a bit.” And Selachi started pacing on the sand, kicking up clumps as he did so. “Alright. Beta musht have at leasht known how to get it to worck, elshe it’sh totally ushelesh to her, y’know? Sho in that ckashe, we oughta ashk her.”
  1363. “But she’s—“ Vander started before he realized what Selachi was saying. He paused for a long moment, thinking it over. “So you’re saying that instead of wandering around aimlessly, waiting to die, we wander around aimlessly, looking for a memory copy of Beta and hoping it would be kind enough to tell us how to work this dimensional ripper if we ask nicely?”
  1364. Selachi nodded.
  1365. “She’s only supposed to be a memory, though. I don’t think she’s supposed to do anything else other than how we remember it.”
  1366. The shark boy’s face fell. “Yeah…maybe…but it’sh the only idea I got. Sho let’sh go. And no dying.” Vander almost laughed at that. Instead, he just dragged his tail along behind the shark boy, who was keeping an eye out for any strange sand memories. Or water memories. Or whatever.
  1367. He didn’t really have to look so hard, but apparently now that he had a reason to find a memory, he was afraid to pass over one. Vander just lazily scoped the area, very certain that if any memories would form out of the foam or the sand, it would form nearby. Just so that they could see it better. He stiffened and stopped as he saw the girl and the hero again, sharing a Moment and he swallowed down what felt like a lump of sand.
  1368. “What is it?” Selachi said, noticing that he had stopped. He looked out to the sea where the two were sitting and talking and laughing and his eyes softened. “It’s not Beta,” he said, trying to sound harsh but failing badly. “We should keep going.”
  1369. “Yeah…” Vander said, really starting to hate how this beach was acting towards him.
  1370. The beach was almost aggressive now, and as they tried to walk across it, so many memories just kept popping up, as though rubbing the misery in their faces. And it was always misery. It even used the happy memories to bring more misery. Vander was certain that his happy memories were fond instead of bitter, but he was too oppressed to really convince himself of that.
  1371. He was not so self-centered not to notice Selachi’s unhappiness as well. The shark boy’s memories kept popping up, some right in front of them too so that they had to peddle backwards to avoid running through it and spend at least a few seconds having to stare right at it before they went around it.
  1372. None of these memories seemed particularly happy either, in fact, probably just as bitter as Vander’s were. Selachi, still a young teenager, had managed to experience more of life’s hardships than Vander had when he was his age. Thinking about that made him feel even worse and Selachi seemed to really dislike the fact that he was having some sort of access to his private memories.
  1373. Most of them featured a man who he assumed was his father. His mother was eerily absent. Vander decided not to ask about it.
  1374. And more often than not, there was violence involved, or at least some very loud shouting. The boy and the father, arguing over something that he didn’t understand, red in the face. Every time, Selachi would just look away, blushing in shame. The shark boy also made a point not to stare at Vander’s own memories as they played out, making him feel all the more guilty when he caught glimpses of his. Dammit, he was the sort that hated it when people felt sorry for themselves, so why now?
  1375. “Hey,” Selachi said, forcing him out of his funk. “I thought…”
  1376. “Hm?”
  1377. “I thinck that wash Arthur there, jusht now, lichke, in the water.”
  1378. The reminder of the chalk being’s death sobered Vander quite nicely again. “How ironic.”
  1379. Selachi made a face and said, “No, sheriously, that’sh not what I meant. I mean, I thinck the memoriesh are getting more reshent.”
  1380. “Oh really?” He must have not sounded entirely interested because Selachi made another discontented face at him again and started walking faster. Vander at least made an attempt to keep up.
  1381. “If he’s drifting around somewhere, the other contestants can’t be too far ahead, so Beta should be around here shomewhere—“
  1382. He stopped suddenly, and Vander could see why. It was yet another copy of his father, except there was no copy of him around. His dad was definitely squinting at him hatefully.
  1383. “You can’t just leave. I won’t allow you to leave.”
  1384. Selachi was swallowing and seemed to be trying to get some words out of his mouth but only managed a small squeak.
  1385. “I’m your father, of course I can keep you here!” he shouted as though his son had actually said something. His voice was getting dangerously loud. “You think you can just leave? I raised you! I helped you grow! I gave you everything you would ever need! What? Do you hate your father? Huh? Do you hate me, Selachi?”
  1386. Selachi mumbled something like, “Dad, let me go,” and started backing away cautiously until his stout father grabbed his arm with his grubby hand.
  1387. “No, I told you, I won’t—“
  1388. Vander had seen quite enough. He punched the apparition right in the face.
  1389. It had been harder than he thought and he withdrew his hand to shake it, as though it would help shake out the pain, and cradled it when the pain didn’t leave. The father seemed shocked at the sudden intrusion of the fight before he dissolved back into sand.
  1390. Selachi was shaking again. His arm was held rigid. “C’mon, kid, we better keep moving,” Vander said, staring out to sea. The waves seemed to alternate between forming portly mafia bosses and slender lizard women and no, it was a bad idea to look, so he looked away and started dragging Selachi down the beach until the shark boy could just walk on his own. They sped up. Sand rose around them and they didn’t give it a chance to show them what it wanted to.
  1391. Then sand erupted right in front of them and Selachi started biting his lip nervously when he recognized the form of Mest. Or at least the form that Mest had before he had killed her. And again he stiffened. And strangely enough, she grinned sharply at him and said something he didn’t really remember her saying before.
  1392. “So, sharky, why did you go and kill me, hm?” she said, giving a little coy flip of her hair. “You aren’t selfless. You know that. You’re a spineless worm.”
  1393. Vander set a hand on Selachi’s shoulder. “Ignore her. C’mon, we’re supposed to find Beta, right?”
  1394. But when the lizard stepped forward, Mest lashed out, scratching him across the face. He held his cheek and tried wiping off his blood on his jacket. It was too dirty to really worry about the stains anymore. “I’m not done,” she snarled, baring her own sharp set of gnashers.
  1395. “Sh-shut up already!” Selachi babbled out, stumbling back. Vander followed him, a little protectively. “You’re dead!”
  1396. “Would you like to see how ‘dead’ I am?” she laughed maniacally, advancing even faster now until she leapt towards them.
  1397. Vander stepped back one last time. “Kid, we’re gonna have to—“ But the lizard turned to see that Selachi was no longer beside him. Apparently, in a panic, he had opted to just run off to the most familiar place he knew. The sea. And a blur that sped by him as he stared told Vander that Mest was following.
  1398. He stumbled after her but ended up tripping in the sand and when he managed to get back up on his feet, spitting out grains of the stupid stuff, he saw that he was quite alone.
  1399. And under the waves, Selachi swam. It was the one thing he knew he was good at. But he had never swam in an ocean of memories. It caught him entirely by surprise when he found that the sea around him seemed to go solid and there were faces everywhere, faces of his father and his goons, his mother, his dear little sister, and there were scenes playing out in front of him, and the one scene that was the most prominent was the time where he wasn’t there for his dad and then everything went horribly wrong. He blamed himself because he couldn’t blame anybody else, well, maybe the ones who had actually shot him, but maybe they wouldn’t have even gotten to him if he had stayed there. It wasn’t exactly reasonable, but guilt wasn’t reasonable and he felt like he was being strangled. In the water? In his own turf? Unthinkable. He shouldn’t die in the sea. He had to die somewhere else. Get out get out get out….
  1400. Another hand gripped his shoulder and turned him around and it was Mest, now made of water, as sand didn’t exactly hold well together in the water. She had another insane grin on and she had her hands caressing his neck, almost lovingly, and she leaned towards him, still smiling evilly. She looked like she was moving in for a kiss, a full on kiss, like in the movies, but as their lips touched, she seemed to push herself into his mouth and into his lungs and he couldn’t push her away because she was water and dammit gills didn’t help at all with this and he couldn’t believe he was actually drowning this was ridiculous no shark ever drowned but here he was.
  1401. Then Vander appeared, grabbed at him and dragged him up easily. Selachi didn’t even kick at the water. He didn’t bother moving until they were out, still pursued by the ghosts of their memories and as the two fell gasping to the sand, their memories clawed at the shore and screamed at them and snapped at their feet, forcing them to scrabble even further up the shore. Selachi crawled on his back and then crawled back on his stomach when he found that he had a great need to cough up all that water he had swallowed, onto the dull sand. The water didn’t spring up again like he had almost expected, but instead got absorbed by the sand like normal water. Then he rolled onto his back again, breathing heavily next to Vander.
  1402. They couldn’t say anything really if they wanted to. So they just listened to the other, their breaths slowing down at almost the same time. They watched the figures waiting at the water’s edge, staring at them.
  1403. “At…at least…” Vander slowly gasped, propping himself up on his elbows. “You had the sense…to leave the…thingy…on the sand…”
  1404. Selachi looked around and then saw it, a silver cube partly sunken in grey sand. It looked as okay as it ever was. Just as enigmatic as well. He would have gone to pick it up, but he couldn’t motivate himself to stand up again.
  1405. And then he noticed something potentially worrying.
  1406. “Vander? Uh…ish that…it’sh not jusht me, ish it?”
  1407. “What?”
  1408. “The water,” Selachi pointed and Vander looked.
  1409. “I don’t see….oh. Oh.” Dangerous realization dawned on his face as he saw how the water seemed to be getting closer. It was, apparently, high tide.
  1410. Both immediately jumped to their feet and got ready to run, but then Selachi suddenly turned back. “I gotta get th’ thingy! Go on!” Vander shouted something at him, but he didn’t listen and continued on his way. Vander sighed and ran with him, to maybe at least help him in some way perhaps, as soon as he thought of a way.
  1411. Someone grabbed Selachi’s leg as he reached down to pick up the hefty machine and he kicked at them, which didn’t really have much of an effect until Vander ran up and punted its arm and in that moment, the hand fell away so that he could start running. But then there was a noise that forced them to turn around. It was a strange crackling noise, and after that, it was silence. No howls of torment intent on piling guilt onto their shoulders. The cause for this sound, they found, was the whole ocean turning into ice. Figures clawed the air and were frozen in twisted, disturbing forms. And in front of them stood Beta, or at least their memory of her, picking up the arm with her temperature…thingy. Whatever the hell it was. And she turned to them and smiled.
  1412. “It’s been a while,” she said simply.
  1413. Selachi’s mouth turned dry. “Yeah,” he managed.
  1414. “I don’t think I’m supposed to stay here though,” she said rather sadly and his heart dropped along with her smile.
  1415. “Yeah,” he managed again.
  1416. She turned towards the frozen sea again, and although she was sandy brown, he thought he could at least see some sort of metallic sheen.
  1417. Vander nudged him but he barely noticed, and with a sigh, the lizard brought it upon himself to speak about more urgent matters at hand.
  1418. “Well if you have to leave soon, then can you at least tell us something?” he asked very quickly. “It’s just, it’s very important that we know it and we think you’re the only one—“
  1419. “How to work the dimensional ripper?” Beta finished. “I barely even know that. They explained it to me though…” and she took a worryingly long pause and looked out to sea again.
  1420. “Okay..sooooo…?” Vander said in a way that would hopefully incite her to divulge these secrets.
  1421. Beta glanced at them again before bending down to pluck a bit of ice from the ocean. It started melting in her hand, but she still held it tight (could you hold water tight?) and walked slowly towards Selachi and, staring intently at the shark boy, she let the water drip into a hole in the machine that neither of them had seen before. The machine took this in with a whir and, as they stared at it, mystified, Beta disappeared. Gone with the wind.
  1422. The machine was actually growing hot, so Selachi had to drop it and it shuddered and shook on the sand. “Uh.” And then things exploded.
  1423. Vander was about to say “Uh, is this thing safe,” but considering that there was a hole In the sky and the sand was suddenly swirling away and the ice was back to water and was being sucked into the hole and actually they were being drawn into it too. The dimensional ripper was now red hot and blasting out some sort of strange ray which they presumed was the cause of the whole thing. And the two of them stared at each other with wide eyes and they jumped up for the hole in the sky at the same time because, well, this was what they asked for. Might as well go for it.
  1424. Darkness, everywhere, a crippling darkness, a place that it was almost impossible to move in, but not because the darkness was a strange, treacley thing, but because the darkness was so oppressive. It invited them to just stop moving, lie down, have a nap, maybe forever.
  1425. Sand danced around in the non-existent air and there was a general feeling of floatiness, or maybe the floor was all around them, suspending them inside it, which might be why Vander thought he was having trouble breathing.
  1426. Selachi looked like he was trying to talk to him, but he couldn’t hear a thing. But he was slowly pointing at something and Vander immediately saw what it was. The dimensional ripper, which was now apparently shut off and spinning gently in the (not) air. He tried to swim towards it and though he made slow progress, it was at least progress.
  1427. There were also shards of ice spinning around and as he passed one, he grabbed it. It was cold and he felt cold, colder than he should, but hey now he was right where the dimensional thingy was and he grabbed at it and it was still warm and that sort of canceled out the cold I guess. Slowly and unintentionally dramatically, he pressed the ice into that hole that neither of them had noticed before and then tried to push it away as quickly as possible.
  1428. The machine rumbled for a second time, shaking so hard that it seemed to jostle the entire place (or lack thereof) and it shot out another beam and that seemed to destroy the atmosphere of jello or nougat or whatever it was that was surrounding them and so without that, they were falling, but they were falling up, up into the new dimensional hole in the sky (if it could be considered a sky).
  1429. And they were back on the floor, coughing and gasping, right in front of a man’s dark feet.
  1430. It was definitely the place that they had started in. It had the same feel, anyways, and there were the spotlights, and the man’s feet were recognizable, if feet could be recognizable, and in any case, when he spoke, it was definitely the voice of the Gatherer.
  1431. “Found your way here, did you? I can’t say that this was a very smart move, though.” He retreated into the dark again as Vander and Selachi forced themselves back on their feet. “You don’t challenge a grandmaster on their home turf,” he said, the most threatening he had ever been.
  1432. Sand continued to fall from the hole and the dimensional ripper clunked in as well, only to be picked up by invisible hands and fall right into the Gatherer’s. “I didn’t think this would actually work, though. But hey, this is interesting too, I’d say. You really want to duke it out here? Well, I wouldn’t want to disappoint you or the audience, hm? I’ll take it easy on you guys, even.” And though they couldn’t quite see the floor, it wrapped up around their legs, immobilizing them and making it appear as though part of them had just dissolved into darkness.
  1433. “Hm? Still too hard for you? Not surprised,” the voice said quite cheerfully.
  1434. “Dammit!” Vander shouted. “You, you cocky…cock!”
  1435. “Work on that a little more, Vander Wells,” the Gather replied calmly. “Witty repartee is essential for a budding secret agent, don’t you think?”
  1436. He chuckled as Selachi flailed his arms wildly, clawing at the direction of the Gatherer while also trying to wiggle out of the trap. “Oh, little Selachi. I’m not surprised you’re still trying. In any case, here’s what I think. I think you should stop this silly attempt to kill me and go back to the round and put up a good show for our viewers. They certainly like devastation and carnage, you know. Well? Not that you have much of a choice, actually…”
  1437. “Here’s what I think,” Vander snarled before spitting right at where the dimensional ripper was floating.
  1438. The Gatherer didn’t have much time to react when the dimensional ripper tore a hole right through him.
  1439. His scream was long and loud. As Vander and Selachi watched, the dimensional hole somehow managed to illuminate his figure, a strange dark, horned animal in a suit, before it turned him inside out and tore him in half and put him together again and stretched him out.
  1440. The dimensional ripper disappeared through the hole, as did the sand and ice. Vander and Selachi were also being pulled in, but they struggled against the current as much as they could. But the Gatherer had somewhat composed himself now and though he had a hole in his innards that went to a completely different dimension, he was walking steadily towards them, screaming in anger now, not pain. He was really pulling them in it was impossible to escape oh crap crap crap.
  1441. Vander turned to Selachi and suddenly pushed him forward, losing his footing in the process. He turned around, glaring fiercely, and as he got dangerously close, he spun around and used his tail to knock the Gatherer down. As he turned to get away, however, the Gatherer grabbed his arm, pulled himself upright, and after that, Vander disappeared.
  1442. Selachi watched, wide-eyed as the hole suddenly closed up and the Gatherer straightened his suit, no longer even bothering to hide his form. “Well then, I suppose I let my anger…control me there for a bit. Sorry ‘bout that. But on the plus side for you, Selachi Shortfin, you won.”
  1443. The implications of this slowly seeped into the shark boy’s mind. “No…No, he’sh not dead, you didn’t…”
  1444. “Oh, yes I did,” the Gatherer said cheerfully. “It’s hard to avoid death when I want you to die. But hey, at least it wasn’t you, right?”
  1445. “Dammit!” Selachi cried and he pounded on the floor.
  1446. “Oh come on,” the Gatherer sighed, now beside his crouched figure. “Don’t do that. It’ll be embarrassing for everybody. Look, as the winner, you get a prize! C’mon, make a request, grandmasters can do most anything, you know.”
  1447. Selachi glared up at him. “Die.”
  1448. And the Gatherer sighed again, as though he had heard this plenty of times before. “Just because we can do these things doesn’t mean we will, kid.”
  1449. “Don’t ckall me kchid!” Selachi roared, jumping to his feet. He was hoping the Gatherer would at least react to this, but he stood, unimpressed.
  1450. “Okay, I’ll give you time to think about it. Maybe a trip home would cool you down and, mm, make you realize your heart’s desire or whatever.”
  1451. “No, we’re not done! Don’t—“
  1452. Selachi lunged at nothing and fell to the pavement of the city Chondrishire. He jumped up, looked around wildly for the Gatherer, noticed all the odd stares he was getting, and self-consciously wiped at his face.
  1453. There was nothing he could do now. He knew that. But he also knew he would have to meet the Gatherer again, maybe even the next day. But for now, it was time to live this life.
  1454. He started walking to the hospital. He was sure that his dad would be happy to see him. And he would joke and complain about being crippled and Selachi would smile faintly and nod…
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