The poor boy slammed into a rock walls, bones cracking, and had begun to slide down when the hammer caught up with him, crashing into the wall with a thud. When it departed for another pendulum swing, what had been Jake continued on its path to the ground, now accompanied by a small avalanche of displaced rocks that entombed him. Soon only his glittering blade stuck out of the rubble.
"Positions!" Winnie called out urgently. The Battlefront immediately sprung into defensive postures, Hannah crouched, knives out, Emmanuel bent his knees, fists ready, and Richie scanned the tunnel ahead, his shotgun aimed.
"Get down," Harry urged from beside Mike, forcing him onto his knees.
"What's going on?" he hissed, looking around the empty tunnel.
"It would appear the Guild's Anti-Angel traps have been activated," Elliot noted testily.
"The Guild has a system of vicious traps to deter Angel, kept all throughout this tunnel system. They were supposed to be deactivated for our visit today. If the Guild members have seen fit to reactivate them, it can mean only one of two things. They're trying to kill us…"
"Let's not even go there, okay?" Luke moaned.
"…or, it could mean something else. That Angel is down here."
They were silent.
"Do we leave?"
"No," Winnie declared, suddenly striding on ahead. "We can't. If we do, we risk Angel uncovering the Guild, and that would mean the destruction of our weapons. We have to intervene. Come on!"
They trekked for a number of minutes along the ramrod straight passage, their tension building every foot.
At the front of the group, Hannah sprung from spot to spot with a cat's grace, occasionally stopping, head cocked, to listen.
"So… just what kind of traps are there?" Mike asked quietly, his hushed tone bouncing off the tunnel walls like a waterfall.
From beside him, Elliot replied in confident tones. "We have the capability of creating any sort of thing we can think off, and the Guild members are quite creative. So there are a lot of traps, of a variety of designs. Most of which are extremely deadly. But don't worry, we should be perfectly fine."
At that moment, Luke stepped down on a floor board, and it sunk in with a barely audible hiss.
Hannah froze immediately, ears quivering. She whirled around.
"It's coming!" she cried. "Move!"
She began to sprint down the passage, the others struggling to keep up. Mike pumped his arms, attempting to figure out what was going on through the roar of their pounding feet, and, and some other roar, growing louder.
He glanced behind him, and his eyes bugged out.
A colossal round stone bore down on them, rolling down the hall with a crunch of shredded wood, its behemoth mass ripping through the floor as it sped, catching up to them every second.
"GANG-WAY!" Emmanuel cried, as they fled, arms flailing, legs spasming.
The stone killer bore closer, until the heat of its movement could be felt on the back of Mike's neck. Ahead of them, he saw Hannah duck into an alcove on the side of the passage, pull Luke in with her, and urgently gesture for the rest to follow.
Mike panted, seeing the escape draw closer and closer. But the stone felt literally feet behind him; wood chips peppered his back. A little bit behind him, Elliot was sprinting as if his life depended on it. A good assumption, as the death of him was inches behind him. They weren't going to make it, Mike realized.
He felt someone abruptly grab him around the waist. He and Harry tumbled down, rolling in their momentum to the far wall of the passage. Eyes clamped shut, he felt the whistle of wind as the stone rolled right over them, their lives only spared by the inches given by the curvature of the sphere.
They lay, gasping. He faintly heard Elliot's cry of panic over the crunch of the death ball, and nothing but more crunching.
Harry helped Mike up.
"Thanks," Mike gasped. "I really thought we weren't going to make it." He looked around. "Is everyone else okay?"
As the surviving members of the Battlefront peaked out, Harry nodded in welcome.
As Harry wiped the last bit of grime of his cheeks, their eyes met. "Honestly, I'm just really glad that you're okay," Harry confessed, smiling at Mike. "I don't know how I would have felt if you'd been hurt."
Mike raised his brow. "Uh. As a matter of curiousity, what is your romantic alignment?"
"WHAT!? Come on man, stop looking so far into this-"
"Come on you dufuses," Winnie called, waving from the alcove. "We need to get moving. Maybe if we take this shortcut, we'll run into fewer traps."
As they walked through the dark passage, Winnie elbowed her way through the group, until she came to Luke's jittery figure. She stared at him ominously.
He smiled back at her, uncertain. "Anything I can do for you Fred?"
"Oh yeah. You helped the Guild design these tunnels, right?"
Luke's smile shrunk. "Uh, kinda." He ran a hand through his thick brown hair. "Well, actually… they just used me as a crash test dummy for the traps. It was horrible."
"Excellent! In that case, you should know where they all are, right?"
They entered another hallway, one that apparently ran parallel to the one before. But instead of resembling an abandoned mineshaft, this one would have better fit an episode of Star Trek. They looked around, brows raised. Glowing wall panels illuminated smooth chrome walls, and a steel floor.
Luke hesitated as he considered the question. "Um. Actually Fred, I kinda… tried to block out those memories, but-"
"Well un-block them," she insisted immediately, striding confidently alongside him. "That's an order."
Luke laughed in a small voice. "Ok. Ok, I think I got it-"
"WATCH OUT!" Hannah yelled from the vanguard. As they came to stumbling halt, the objects that had been concealed in the walls finished extending.
"WHAT THE HECK!" Emmanuel howled in panic, as the air suddenly came alive with lights. Laser blasters rapid-fired shots of heated death in all directions. The Battlefront members hopped to a sort of frenzied dance, skipping and leaping to avoid the blasts.
"We're coming off the wheels of the crazy train!" TK cried out happily, soaring from spot to spot, evading the attacks with ease as he spiraled in some convoluted waltz.
"BB-ZAP!" With a hiss, the attacks suddenly lessened. Hannah's knife flickered again as she deflected another beam, taking out the other blaster.
Everyone slowed to a stop. Harry stared wide eyed at a blast mark inches from his head. Richie the fifth frantically tried to quench a flame that had sprung up on the side of his wide pants.
Winnie narrowed her eyes at Luke. He looked back at her miserably.
"I'm sorry," he apologized, a lock of his hair burning cheerfully. "I'll remember the rest of them, promise."