<AWE'rr3sted GamB'lur3s _/#

"How's that?!" Gutt lamented, eyes darting out of his skull in disbelief, then down at his wristwatch. "Rats, normally we'd have a solid 10 minutes left. Must have horsed around too much." He glanced down at the remaining spoils. "Ah, hell! We forgot the flamethrower y'all wanted."

A ferocious surge in my circuits told me to streak to the exits with what we had. I could feel my legs twitch, rabid dogs bucking in attempt to wrest free from their cages and chains. But I resisted. "Do we absolutely have to have the Flamer?" I shook the sack. "We already have plenty!"

He made sounds under duress, trying to hammer out a course of action. "Don't Panic…" He churned with a vigorous expression. "They shouldn't give out for a spell."

Of course. Never lose thy composure. How could I forget basically the first advice he'd given today? Don't indulge any fears by letting them tiptoe past the ability to reason, and hike the pressure to ill-measured action.

Gutt smashed my train of thought saying, "We should thrift probablyyy, for jellies or plasmas: Let's sift the PJ-boxes!" And he went stumbling over a couple mythical Assault items, filing away for the categories.

Fidgetingly, he checked the nearest shelves first: "H I… J K…" he trailed off looking quite a ways down the row. Everything was pretty well alphabetized in clusters - the bad news was the way that the Facility had Tiers where the lettering order repeated, or even reversed stream of direction - so we might be forced to climb if we were to locate a Flamethrower.

I flicked a nervous glance back at the final Spinal. Gutterson sped across the aisle and I ditched our Loot sitting alone to join the search. With veins bulging upon a forehead of fervor, scanning through J contents he sounded off, "Pee is across the aisle right down there boy, make yourself useful!" without even looking in my direction.

I had been hovering over his shoulder as useful as an inflatable dart-board. "What's this... alternative name for a Flamer s'posed to be??" I prompted.

"Sayyhomm-thin, to the effect of Plasmudtoastir!"

"Stat," I confirmed, and split away like the nose of a dart. As I neared the N O P segment stock when I felt a pop towards my sinuses. My ears readjusted & nose silently stung. Weird, my airways just opened—wider than they had ever enjoyed. Have I been gathering restricted breaths all my life? Time was suddenly a bit drowsy in step to my newfound vacuum buzz of incoming oxygen to the brain. It felt like the pistons had been introduced to some state-of-the-art oil, pumping with unpolluted agility.

My line of sight dove right into the P's like a needy Predator, and managed to easily track to the "Pla" label which might reveal the desired Plasmachine. Swiftly it became apparent, however, that at no place did S follow the placement-chain to signal any plasmas were residing there.

My sternum sank. I exhaled in frustration and decided it was probably best if we simply abandoned the pursuit and high-tailed outta here. But like a scrambling animal, a gimmick flew up my sleeve. My neck tilted up at the Rising arrangement of levels, and zoomed in. My head panned from right to left, drifting out to ends that seemed to soar like a horde of vultures dotting the horizon.

As my vision swirled and roamed across the plethora of Bridges, I snagged the word NITRO & got glued onto the N region in the middle 3rd Deck: I pandered back slightly along that section to where a sign read Nitro BlisteRide It seemed to throb at me amidst the pounding of my Temples. Cogs rolled together as an imaginary clock hiked to a pronounced 'tick-tock'. A grated ramp at the end of the aisle offered the nearest ascent toward the area. I ran like the finish line was less than fifty meters away and second place was breathing down my neck, but my galoshes made it all a rather cumbersome effort.

"You think it's up way High?" I heard faintly as I serpentined around the railing of the zig-zagging Ramp, over an artificial wind which my sprint was producing.

"I spotted some Nitro..." I huffed. "Now do me a favor Gut! The M's are right beside you. Can you scrounge up anything Magnet-related!?!"

More than anything, I was hedging my bets that M stood for miracle.

As i weaved along the ramp I could glimpse the crescents waning; all blue hues had dwindled to lazy campires as they wobbled, sheets of glass in a strong earthquake -- now curdling into slurping sounds. The lunar cycle that normally played out over two weeks, seemed it may not even have 2 minutes to falter. Our chances were eclipsing with each stride.

From below I heard boxes being ripped from their nesting places, and metal pieces clanging into the floor as they overturned. My colleague was spilling their guts, sifting through innards. "Good idea," drifted to me from below. "I take it you want something Polarizing!"

Yep, that was the Big idea: as a small boy, I recalled magnets seeming capable of inducing mind-boggling feats; these were the memories anchoring my leap of faith. A magnetic Field might gain some sort of property over the portal's life & reverse its will to die. I would be content if the prescription could just slow the ebb, salvage any scrap of time. I just didn't know whether that kind of Element was included among these furnishings.

Gutterson wasn't having any luck. "MVP's, Moatwhiff... Aww, this is a needle in a haystack! You oughtta just come back here & we'll jet!"

"No keep at it!" I encouraged, wilting of breath. About that time I was at least 30 feet in the air, and I needed to cut over to a certain catwalk. But it was detached about the length of a man from the current ramp beneath my feet. I grit my teeth & crouched for lift-off.

My chest collided like a baseball bat on the other platform -- clinging to the exterior rails. I pedaled my feet and squirmed until able to haul myself over the safety features. A heavy ache seeped along my ribs as I steadied my feet and continued toward the rack that was holding my goal. The concrete ridge that went around the room's perimeter had held a dark blue stripe in the vicinity of the point I had seen from below, & was trying to relocate.

My feet clanged & clattered atop the narrow metal passage: Body began to feel faint and flimsy ~ began to Wonder if we even escaped this conundrum, whether I was going to develop chronic headaches or bone-fractures intense as the pangs of death itself.

"Hey, this could be do the Trick!" I was so high-strung that when Gutt yelled, thought it was the sound of something disintegrating. "It has Mag in the name at least," he reported. "Ever heard uh something called a..." there rose a struggling to sound out the name, "Magneo'quiTrophase??"

"Just check it out!" I snapped. "Don't need a syllable count."

Shifting down two gears from full throttle, I closed in on the proper area I had earlier identified. I checked to see how much longer we had to pack up camp and ditch this hole in the wall. Crap. From here I couldn't tell how much shrinkage had undergone, but it was enough to frighten me. At least both moons were still bobbing along the wall.

"Let's seee," I swiveled back to investigating the shelf. N-Velope Leg…. Nude Screen... Norse-peck Plate. What a bunch of impractical names… And each one probably had a whole file to itself in some classified drawer at the back of a pitch black room down in the recesses of some basement. Something hot better be heeerrre...

Aha! Nitro BLISTERide! I leaned out with relief to embrace its storage box. As I cradled it against my chest & rested for a couple extended recovery breaths, I peered through a footlong gap divorcing the catwalk and the rack. I couldn't help but notice the drop straight down. Gently as one would coddle a baby, I hoisted the long box and crouched around it. Then I proceeded to Claw away at the stapled Flaps, raking through Styrofoam packing to feel around at the bottom. My skin grazed something cold and in such pristine condition that it almost seemed wet—then above the Terror, my hand resurrected an oblong Torpedo from a snowy grave.

"It's called Nitro Blist-!" I accuSingly exulted.

But in the next instant there sounded a buzzing like a thousand wings. (All I could think was an army of drones were gearing up to take aim.)_#

I whipped around in all directions to find if there was any kind of undesirable movement occurring. In the process, my foot connected with the empty box, and it tumbled over the railing with an explosion of pearly styrofoam effects. This caused me to look down, to which I realized the sonic Source was actually a solitary, heavy contraption.

Malibu swung a fist through the air. "This baby Sounds like the real deal!"

We had to shout over the ongoing motor of whatever it was that he was testing.

I looked down my nose upon him. Gutt was beaming next to a cantankerous device that had enough arms to be a submersible. "I thought we were being blitzed by a secret Department for a second!" I yelled, head swimming.

"Nope, the voltage is all homemade buddy!" Malibu sang.

The object of interest was pointed back down the Warehouse in the direction of deteriorating Gateways. The hunky machine seemed in desperate need of medical attention. It had three main pieces: a cylindrical & suspended Centerpiece, a jet turbine of a generator, and from beneath it arose what looked like inflatable tubes, unlike any nature found at your local Depot.

Three arms loosely W-shaped in structures, waved frantically like castaways signaling to a search plane. There was something akin to billowing coat motions jerking among them. The tubes supported pyramid knobs of mayhem, which instead of straight edges, displayed bubbly seams. Wires of all different heritage formed a thick web on the backside; a portion of this tangled mess of coils was being batted around every so often by the flailing Process - like members lodged in the bed of snakes Medusa claimed was hair.

"Wicked cool! Is it windy down there?" I poked at my Leader. "All I care about is if it can save our ass, so have you figured out how to work the dials yet??"

Gutt inspected an area between the Turbine and wires, where I thought I could make out the yellow of some sticker pasted. "Not in great detail! But it's got eight settings," he howled. "Do we want to distort, transport, align, collide, supervise, levitate, dispel, or collapse?"

Collapse stood out as a definite NOT among that boatload of options. The rest were viable. I was thinking maybe Supervise or Align, but then drew in a sharp breath, worried Gutt may have skipped an essential step somewhere.

"Well, first of all," I grilled. "Can you Aim the beast?"

When no immediate response ascended, my vision swung down over the Twin Portals, & one was just an outline at this point. I was too far off to discern if it was shrinking yet, which may have been a blessing because I might have come raving undone could I tell how far it had dwindled away. But I could see flashes. Quicker than a literal second now. I stood up. I knew I wouldn't have near enough time to run back all the way I'd come. Life is like that; sometimes you have to move on, find an alternate route.

I freaked like a cat that climbed too high in a tree and was afraid to come down: "I need a trampoline!"

"It's under control," Gutt muttered. "All I have to do with this Gizmo is adjust the space between the two front wavy things here," -(it seemed he was reading from the manual)- "Close to the approximate size of the target…"

Without a scope that was going to involve a lot of guesswork - He should've broke out a Magni*fier too, so we could view our shot through a whopping lens and become keen-sighted eagles.

"Well that Blows, cause it is a moving target if you think about it!"

"Ehhh!" he waved me off with a hand. "We forgot the staple-gun, too; Quit slamming your sarcasm button! I'll aim a little smaller than the current position the Spine is right now, taking into account how fast it's diminishing!"

We were butting heads again, this round more pressing than the last. I shook the flamethrower over my head like a savage. "Fire solve this one, chief! Fire sacred, always do trick!"

He snickered. "Oh, primitive man." He fiddled with the knobs, and the arms moved correspondingly. "We do our best to follow instructions or improve things. And at times we make progress." The arms gradually moved closer, until they came within inches of touching at the closest point of their entire range, their empire of motion. "But we get situated, and I think iiii can read a lot into familiar methods."

He twisted another knob. "All too often, we see it as we'd like to see it. We get cocky and refuse how things are meant to function; lie to ourselves, dash in excuses here and there. The prevailing preference of the mainstream, the sweet tooth of the Day becomes fashionable. But know, son, true law is set since one beast ever gazed upon another; those haven't changed. We're too pompous to admit how Potent it is & how delicate we are, how temporary our command is, not only over each other, but even ourselves." He cocked a lever. "Until we get reminded: still our methods & tools, are not precise and efficient as we need."

I brushed a hand to my temple, then screamed, "Time to choose a setting, Teach?"

He fired off the list again: "Distort, transport, align, collide, supervise, levitate, or dispel."

Crud, tough choices. I tossed *Distort & collide* out from the get-go. Dispel? No, that sounds weird & dark. Transport… Okay, stand by. Align? sounds rewarding. Supervise, oooh, quite enticing. Wait, even though it sounds like control, would we know how to pull the right moves during the supervision? Were we crafty enough to pull that one? Levitate... Meh so many better options.

"Throw me a line please; I'm leaning towards Align!"

"Getting there!"

I shrank back into my reasonings. Align sounds nice, but maybe pointless -- There isn't anything to line up. Then there's levitate again.

Errrggh! Supervise is likely best, But each is still appealing. "Supervise sounds okay," I offered.

"Whatever you say." His hand rested precariously on the trigger switch. "Sounds like that might require extra manual input."

Crap. I'd intended to say Levitate, but my wires got crossed. "No No!" I protested. "How bout Levitate!?" Mid-protest I heard the cold, hard click as the switch was flipped.

Then all the lights went out.

Suddenly just a single glow remained. It was coming from the far side of the room, faint orange illumined by the oppressive Darkness. It was just a narrow slit; A mere fraction of the crescent it used to be. It couldn't have been more than the average width of a baseball bat, its appearance disgustingly slender and shimmering maybe a distorted 10 feet high. It was jiggling in limbo.

A few moments of whirring sounds Boiling Louder, there was a concise flash of hard Gold that illuminated the entire Vault. Streaks of the same color zipped away too fast truly to glimpse from the Phaser arms -- but I can say I did see multiple triangle streaks burned into my retina as it detonated. Each bent only at one point, and then fled, curling like a flag in a breeze. They hovered for an imperceptible moment right before sinking down into the pyramid structures. The strings were absorbed into these Crowns at multiple tips, and sent out on the warpath for the Tap. This redirection scattered Two streams into a pale shade of purple.

They mirrored each other as they swirled, accelerated together against their will. The force driving them together was so intense that it almost brought them together. One rose atop and one diverged below as they wobbled alternatively, as if doting upon each other from afar, afraid to unite. And then, as if rediscovering their purpose, they departed from their entanglement, wrested out from the fondling somersault rhythm, and divided toward either side of the waning passage which had turned to thrashing. These triple glitters of hope converged like crazy figments of lightning, as their resources pooled amidst what seemed to be a murky Abyss. And then all light withered as if suffocated by layers of smoke, and evaporated with the hushed memory of a dream:

Poof.

the remains of a candle's flame...