Chapter 4: Run

"See? What did I tell you? No one's here." One of the Tom-Toms looked at his buddy exasperated. "All this talk is making you hear things. Let's go." He turned to head out, but his partner stopped him.

"It can't hurt to look around," he said as he walked over to the pile of Fast Forward crystals. A team of Sweepers were hiding there, but everyone remained frozen and would be until they left, or we got out. His friend walked over to the Rewind crystals. He stuck his hand in the pile, up to his shoulder. And jumped back in surprise. I knew what he touched, as I saw Team Night Kings duck into that pile. Why did you have to do that? I thought.

The world tinted purple, and everything went backwards, except us. Team Night Kings took the opportunity to move to the Retry pile. The control ended, and the last ten seconds played again, except the Tom-Tom didn't jump. I sighed inwardly, but we weren't out of it yet. The world turned blue and everyone ran towards the door. We made it out just as time started flowing again. And then someone hit a Pause again, and we kept going undetected.

"I'm out someone take over." We looked at our sweepers, and no one had a Pause control, except me. I hit the control, and we had another ten seconds of cover. But the control ran out just before we made it to the exit. Skidding to a stop, we looked for a hiding place. Unfortunately, there are few places that you can hide twenty Sweepers. And there wasn't a vent we could enter. I started to walk over to the door to check the guards, and my foot hit a loose floor panel. I was able to wedge open the panel, and the hole was big enough to fit half of us. But looking closer, it had a tunnel in the back. I couldn't see where it went.

"Guys, in here," I said. I slipped into the tunnel and Blinx followed, then everyone else. Crawling along, we could here the boots of Tom-Toms moving around above us. But they weren't running, so they still didn't know we were here. The tunnel sloped downwards. Trying to be as quiet as possible, I slid down it, it was too steep to crawl. But there wasn't an even surface at the bottom. Before I knows what was happening, I crashed into a vent and fell to the ground. Something landed on top of me, hard.

"Sorry, you okay?" I recognized Blinx's voice. Looking up, I saw him holding out a hand to help me up, but someone was behind him. I grabbed his hand and calmly acted like I didn't see the guy, and reached for my sweeper. I recognized the figure and I didn't like him standing right behind Blinx. Unfortunately, I was a bit too slow, as he grabbed Blinx and twisted his arm behind him. "Behind you!"

I was able to jump out of the way of another Tom-Tom behind me, and hit a Rewind. The control ended just as Benito released Blinx, and we took off. But we didn't get far. Blinx fell to the ground, and then I felt a sharp pain in my neck. I tried to fight of the wave of nausea that came over me. But I fell and don't remember hitting the ground.

-XxXxX-

"Y/n, wake up. Y/n, come on wake up." Someone was nudging my leg, and I groaned. The last few events before getting knocked out came back to me, and I snapped me eyes open. Looking around, I saw Blinx next to me, his hands handcuffed around a ring on the wall, suspending them above his head. My arms were in a similar position. We were in a cell with steel walls, and no window. Other than the light that came under the door, it was dark. Neither of us had our sweepers.

"Are you okay?" I asked.

"I'm fine. What about you?"

"Good. Though, I could do without the chained-to-the-wall part, but I'll live." Just then the door opened. A Tom-Tom walked in and came up to us.

"See you two are awake. What were you doing in our ventilation system?" He asked, clearly the interrogator. Neither of us spoke, until I decided to push his buttons.

"Nothing. We just decided to see how nice it was. It's really cosy in there, you should try it sometime." The Tom-Tom was not amused. Blinx remained silent, but I saw the flash of humor in his eye. He was probably thinking the same thing.

"You're not going to play this game. Now tell me what you were doing, or I'll have to-" he didn't get to finish, as a boot came out of nowhere and kicked his face, effortlessly knocking him out.

"Bandit!" He turned to us and smiled. He turned on his communicator.

"Guys we found them. Find their sweepers and let's get out of here fast. We don't have much time," one of his team mates said as he .handed Bandit a hair pin. He started on Blinx's handcuffs. "We need to get out of here. The crystals are becoming unstable and soon will explode or cause another Chronohorn like monster. Or something worse." Bandit finished on Blinx and came over to me.

"What can be worse than a time golem?" The thing that nearly got Blinx in B1Q64, and almost destroyed the world. What else can do that?

"Never ask that," Blinx said. "There's always something worse." We were able to get into the vent above us, the room wasn't that tall. We made it to the end of the vent, and ran down the halls of the structure. We met up with the other teams, one of which handed us our sweepers and communicators. We put them on as we ran. Just then, and an explosion rang out. We stumbled, but kept going. We burst out the doors, and saw the Tom-Toms running up ahead. But a tremor shook the ground, and everyone fell. None of us made to get up, as we turned and a time monster, one no one could identify, stood over the ground. It looked like a dark rainbow dragon of death. It was tall enough to block out the afternoon sun.

"Oh goddesses. Run! Someone yelled. But the monster had other ideas. It roared, and a force field separated Blinx, Team Night Kings, and me from the others. They tried to get back to us, but couldn't get through, only watch. For some reason I will never know, the dragon turned to the six of us on the ground, and roared. It spit time energy at us in six colors, and I felt a rush of energy before the world turned black.

You may not think rainbow dragons are scary. But when they tower almost as high as a skyscraper and aren't neon colored, they can be frightening. Hope you all have a good week. Go get 'em fey!

-ThinMintE