Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-27324808-20160708020658/@comment-27324808-20160809151423

  The door suddenly fell apart into its individual gray brick elements, which clattered and shook as they fell to the floor.  Intrepid quickly spun to face the opening, Kate and Shadow stood up as well, and he had just equipped his staff when the first items began to pass through the doorway.

  First a tin pail slid through, filled with soapy water that sloshed and threatened to spill over and out.  Then the end of a broomstick appeared, held in rubber gloved hands connected to the thick, burly arms of an otherwise lanky man in a faded red T-shirt, and on his legs he wore white, blue and gold amored pants that resembled those of a sanitation worker.

  Or an astronaut.

  Or a Space Ranger.

  "Don't mind me, I'm just cleaning up." the man said as the door rebuilt itself.  He had short light brown hair on top of his head, which was tilted down, nonthreateningly, at the floor, as the broom head on the end of his stick mechanically folded up along its aluminum circumference, and out of its hollow interior came a bunch of straggy gray ropes attached to their own folding spreader, which folded out to become a wide mop head.

  Or a janitor, Intrepid realized.  He relaxed and let his staff tip to the ground.  The end of it touched the linoleum.

  "AAAARGH!" a loud scream filled the air, and suddenly Intrepid was falling backwards.  He didn't know what hit him, before he hit the ground painfully and saw stars.  When he regained his vision, it was to the janitor screaming at him, and he was also sitting on him.

  "YOU SCRATCHED MY FLOOR!" the janitor was wailing.  "MY BEAUTIFUL FLOOR!"

  A thought came to Intrepid's head out of nowhere.  Is this guy insane? he couldn't help but wonder, trying but unable to budge under the janitor, who quickly shifted to pin his arms.

  Obviously the janitor had tackled him, but he'd moved with amazing speed and given Intrepid's current situation, he evidently knew how to subdue a target.

  Intrepid craned his head to at least comprehend the icon on his shirt.  It was of the pirates' skull and crossbones flag, but with a forbidden sign over it.  Under it was the remains of an iron-on sticker, faded and worn with twenty years of washing, the text: "No Pirates!"

  Oh.  So he was a ninja as well.

  "Get off!" Intrepid groaned.  "My dimensional counterpart is your boss."

  "Dimensional counterpart, eh?" the Ninja Space Ranger Janitor chuckled.

  Thinking of the fingerprint scanners, Intrepid said, "I can fire you with a swipe of my hand!"

  "Well with a swipe of my modified Magical-Broom-Mop-Sword-Zipgun-and Arrows Combo Katana Staff that was originally an Energy Sprok, you won't have any hands!"

  "Chill, Skill." he heard Red say.  "Let him go."

  The janitor proceeded to fluidly stand up, thankfully without any poking jabs, off Intrepid.  "As you wish, my lady!" the janitor said, and he even extended a hand down to help his previous captive up.  Intrepid took it begrudgingly.

  "So you're the janitor?" Strange Odd Shadow asked.

  "Skilled Honored Ninja at your cleaning service!" the janitor said, turning around to face Shadow and giving a bow.  "The best janitor in the galaxy."

  Shadow folded his arms.  "Maybe second best." he declared.

  Skilled Honored Ninja straigthened.  "And who's the first?"

  "He's in this room!" Shadow hinted.

  "Why, he's me!" Skilled said.

  "Didn't you hear what I said?  If you're second-best, and first-best is also here, then it can only be-"

  "Everyone stop!" Red shouted.

  Intrepid, who wasn't quite sure what to say about all of this, let his mouth shut.  He glanced at Kate, who's jaw had also dropped at the exchange.  They shared a glance and shrugged, when suddenly Skilled turned to Red.

  "Might I ask what are you doing here?" he asked.  "The boss called for a meeting in Briefing Room 1 five minutes ago, so with that one off-limits for cleaning, I came here instead... and you're all in here."

  "We didn't hear anything." Intrepid said.

  "It was on the private channels." Skill said with a smirk, tapping the side of his head.

  Red brought her hand to her ear and fiddled with her earpiece.  "I didn't hear anything."

  Intrepid couldn't help but listen.  He didn't hear anything out of the ordinary.  In fact, he didn't hear anything at all.  The ambient light suddenly seemed especially dim in the room... not just dimmed, but unpowered.  As for the ambient sound...

  Leek Works was powered by generators, massive, loud, thudding, but scarcely audible due to their placement tens of feet underground.

  He didn't hear them now.

  "Someone's bamboozling us." Intrepid realized with horror.  "We're in trouble."  He ran for the door, Kate, Red, Strange Odd Shadow, and Skilled Honored Ninja behind him.

 

  They split up as soon as they entered the spiral hallway.

  “I’m finding Cyclone!” Kate called, dashing down one direction, while Shadow, Red, and Skilled headed the other way.  Intrepid spun around, debating who he should be with.  Kate could take care of herself, right?  But Red wanted him to keep an eye on her.

  Fate chose for him when the section of corridor between him and Kate collapsed from the ceiling downwards, and the walls fell inwards.  Concrete slabs crumbled and fell in, blocking the path and the air filled with dust.  Through the falling rocks Intrepid made out Kate’s running silhouette still departing farther, but now they were seperated.

  By who?

  Out of the new hole in the ceiling descended a rope, and then two familiar people slid down.

  “Oh no,” Intrepid thought aloud.  “Not you again.”

  Cailan and Crimson Crateris stepped out of the rubble.  They did a double take upon noticing their company.  “I knew you should have detonated the next section,” Cailan stated.  He assumed a defensive stance and his weapons whirred as they charged up.

  “You two were transporting a Maelstrom Shard before?” Intrepid queried.  His eyes darted between them.  He could fight myriads of Stromlings in a day.  These were two, evidently combat trained, minifigures.  He didn’t risk a glance behind him, but he didn’t hear Red and the others.  So he was alone with these two psycopaths.  He took a step backwards. “Where’d you drop that off?”

  “With our client.” Cailain replied.  His sister slapped him, and they both began to advance.

  “So what are you getting now?” Intrepid asked, stalling.  He imagined the rest of his Bat Lord gear in his backpack, ready to be equipped.  He could don them in half a second, but it would take less than that for the sibling duo to rush him.

  Cailain showed a sidelong glance at Crimson, but they both kept walking steadily to Intrepid, and with the spiral shape of the hallway, he was bound to back into a wall soon.  “It’s a surprise.” Cailain said.

  “How’d you get here anyway?  Red said all the Transdimensional Devices were remotely disabled.”  Intrepid began to turn his feet, and move a little bit faster.  The Craterises sped up, maintaining an equadistant relative position to him as before.

  That brought a smile to Crimson’s face as well, but it was a malignant one.  “Silly Red.” Crimson said mockingly.  “We’re outside of the Nexus Government’s jurisdiction; Overbuild’s dimensional kill switch can’t touch our tech.  Your dimensional counterpart is probably mighty cross at how much power they have over his, supposedly, own organization.”

  “I can still hear his anger from the last time he chewed us out.” Cailan said with a fake shiver.

  “We recovered and moved on to better things,” Crimson whistled, sounding reminiscent.  Sounding distracted. “-but our father didn’t.”

  “That’s why he quit.” Cailain said with a nod.

  Whatever the two were thinking about, it made them slow their walk, and Intrepid added half a feet to their distance.  But he needed them to maintain their lack of focus.  “Oh, and who’s your dad?” he prompted.  One foot.  Two feet.

  “The one and only Luke Mercury!” Cailan said, looking up and back at Intrepid.  He noticed that increased gap that had amassed between them.  He began to run, but Intrepid had all the space he needed.

  In half a second Cailan was halfway to him, but Intrepid’s Bat Lord gear flew out of his backpack and equipped itself to him. He felt his increased imagination power amplified by the suit. He pulled his right arm back and prepared to deliver a striking blow, poking Cailan right in the chest and the bat wings grabbed, stunning him, and he swung Cailan into the wall.

  Then Intrepid bumped into the wall that was behind him.

  “Bricks.” he muttered as Cailan’s body armor lit up, and a repulsive surge pushed Intrepid’s staff away.  Then Cailan ducked, and over his head appeared Crimson, poised in a flying kick.

  Intrepid speed-dove to his left and the girl’s boots, from the soles of which portruded spikes, smashed into the wall.  The tiling shattered and she launched off, twisting in the air to land on the ground.  Both stood up and aimed their weapons at Intrepid, but it was too late.

  Running towards them, Intrepid activated his shield slam and swung the shield ahead of him.  The imagnation within expanded its impact zone beyond its physical dimensions, catching both Craterises and sending them flying down the hallway.  Crimson skidded on the ground while Cailan bounced off the curved wall, back towards the rubble.  Intrepid quickly speed boosted and turned tail, running at a speed of several meters per second back into the computer room, where Red, Shadow, and Skilled were.

  “Where were you?!” she shouted.

  “We have company!” Intrepid shouted back, and turned around to face the doorway.

  He didn’t take into account that with a transdimensional maneuverability device his targets could attack from anywhere.

  This time they came from above.