Meanwhile in the Medium, before Kankri could enter it, Mituna woke up on his world, the Land of Brain Matter and Synapses (LOBMAS). His hive was situated on top of an alternating red and blue landscape. The ground was wrinkled, resembling the cerebrum of the brain. The sky was pitch black, with no stars. Transparent blue trees that looked like nerves dotted the land, and occassionally an electric current would run from the ground to the top of the tree and fire into the air like a synapse. Mituna looked out as his world in interest. He decided to tell Cronus about it, and perhaps ask him what his world looked like:

Unorthodox Advancement (UA) began trolling Critical Appearifier (CA)

UA: My world is very strange. It's like it's made of brains. I'm walking around right now (I prototyped my laptop as my sprite, so I can just say what I want to type) and it's like I'm walking on someone's brain and giving them a concussion or something! #8D

CA: sounds disturbing. vwhat's vwith the emoticon?

UA: Does nobody like it? Jegus...but to answer your question, no, it's actually quite beautiful. I think it's meant to reflect me somewhat. Quiet, empty, lonely, beautiful, forlorn.

CA: okay, novw you're just being a shovwoff!

UA: Heh heh heh...a shovwoff? Anyway, how's yours?

CA: a little more exciting. it's just vwhat i could vwant! it's some kind of upper class neighborhood, just like the one i liwved in back home. only less vwet and so much nicer! there are these things-i think they called themselwves consorts or something-called humans, and they like all the same stuff i like! vwell, the other seadwellers did too, but these people actually LISTEN to my vworks! and they hawve the best coffee and they all create this neat poems and songs and art and they're just avwesome! oh, and there seem to be cawves full of jade! i'm thinking on calling the place the Land of Jade and Prosperity (LOJAP)

UA: What did I tell you about this place? Screw Beforus, we have our own worlds now to rule as gods!

CA: hell. fucking. yes!

UA: Eight exclamation marks? You better get Aranea on here! Did you accidentally tell me your current crush?

CA: i dunno. vwhy don't you tell me why your last setence had 8 words, hmm?

UA: Damn, you got me! #8D Looks like I'm head over heels for Serket!

CA: as your friend, i'm teling you novw to ditch that emote.

UA: Affirmative! Now if you don't mind, I'm gonna go find Latula in her world. This place is all tons of depressing, now that I've looked at it for more than five minutes.

CA: good luck vwith that, bro. dB (it's supposed to be a fistbump! at least that's vwhat the humans said it vwas.)

UA: Oh, and my emotes suck, huh?

Mituna deactivated his sprite and alchemized some stuff for his journey into Latula's world. He combined his thermal hull and a disc of some old computer program he had installed sweeps ago to make the Data Freezer! This cold and lightweight bag froze any discs, whether for a game or a CD or whatever, in a protective layer of ice to keep them from getting scratched. They could only be thawed out with Mituna's next item: the Burnin Beam! He just combined his radiation rotary compound (microwave) and one of those goofy laserpointers annoying little kids always shine in people's eyes to make a laserpointer that would thaw out the discs for use. Both items were needed together. Mituna shook his head in amusement, wondering why he had made the items work in a pair. Was he about to get some sort of duality theme going on? His moirails nor his flushed crush would approve!

Using the Data Freezer, Mituna transferred all of the codes he could find related to Sgrub from a suspicious source (aka Rose's walkthrough, which was/is a temporal constant) and put them in discs. The weird language was difficlut to comprehend, but he simply translated the whole thing first to binary and then to Troll to solve the problem. After he had finished the translation, he sent it to all the other trolls to use. When all that was done he put the discs in the Data Freezer to give to Latula. There were so many codes and so many options with which to make items, she would have to be impressed. He would be her primary source of cheat codes! And what sort of girl didn't love cheat codes?

Mituna didn't need any weapons. He had his Psy Kind, and so he could just send psychic waves at the enemies, or toss them aside with his psychic powers, or overwhelm them with mental energy so that they just up and died! But that last move usually made him feel a little dizzy, so he wouldn't use that one often. Mituna jumped out of his hive from the balcony and sprinted across the plains, his lusus and sprite hot on his heels. He could inexplicably sense where the gate that led to Latula's hive was. (explanation not available!) Imps with wierd circles on their foreheads, purple shorts, and a gray t-shirt with a keyboard printed on it were coming at him from all directions, but Mituna simply focused his mind and delivered a powerful psychic blast to the imps in front of him.

Laptopsprite fired a few beams from its screen at the imps, and the two headed lusus plowed through the imps that tried to lunge at Mituna from behind. As Mituna's hive faded away in the distance, a few basilisks appeared from underground. Mituna's lusus got a hold of some and wringed their necks, killing them almost instantly. The Biclops helped picked up the grist where the dead bodies had been. Mituna finally saw the gate hovering above him. But of course, 3 ogres were just right there, ready to spoil everything. They were too big and too stupid to damage telekinetically, and they were all about Biclops' height. Mituna's lusus grabbed one of them and shoved it to the ground but the other two kicked Laptopsprite and stomped on Mituna, respectively. Biclops (Mituna's lusus, for clarification) acted fast when it saw that its troll was in trouble. It touched the damaged Laptopsprite to fuse with it and become Lapclopsprite! Basically just a yellow laptop with two cyclops heads on the screen. The powered up sprite fired twin beams of red and blue (of course) from its screen, and two of the ogres were killed almost instantly. Mituna hurled an unconcious imp at the remaining one to finally knock it out. Mituna collected the grist, and when he was done his new sprite suddenly transformed again into a pendant so that he wouldn't have to have it following around him 24/7. Mituna gathered all his energy and jumped into the gate, entering Latula's world.

. . . . .

Meanwhile, Latula herself was trolling Porrim Maryam:

Gamer Creationist (GC) began trolling Gender=Advocate (GA)

GC: yo, wh4t up m4ry4ms! (1'd h4v3 b3tt3r n1ckn4m3s 1f 1 kn3w how to pronounc3 your n4m3) :]

GA: Hello+, Pyro+pe. If yo+u're asking abo+ut the Amarzo+n video+ game yo+u were so+ kind in lending me...I never actually go+t the chance to+ play it.

GC: h3ll no! forg3t 4bout th4t, 1'v3 got 4 g4m3 much b3tt3r now! 1t's t1m3 to pl4y sgrub yo!

GA: I see. Kanny give yo+u any tro+ble?

GC: n4w. h3 just k3pt go1ng on 4nd on 4bout not tr1gg3r1ng 4nybody. but 1t's cool, c4us3 th3 pl4sm4 p1stol 1'm prototyp1ng's just 4 toy! 1t's tr1gg3r do3sn't work!

GA: O+h, I see wh4t yo+u did there. Hahahaha! Vantas will be so+ triggered by that!

GC: tot4lly! ;]

GA: But o+n a mo+re serio+us no+te, he is already in the Medium, co+rrect?

GC: r1ght on!

GC: Go+o+d. As much as he gets o+n my nerves so+metimes, with his deliberate disregard fo+r the o+ne type o+f so+cial justice I'm co+ncerned abo+ut while hypo+critically viewing all the o+thers so+ eagerly...I can't stand it when he's in a bad situatio+n.

GC: 4ww, th4t's re4l sw33t of you! do you h4v3, l1k3, 4 p4l3 th1ng for h1m :?

GA: Po+ssibly. But it's o+f no+ impo+rtance. I suppo+se my quadrants shall always be a revo+lving do+o+r. Darn my co+ncern!

GC: no, Porr1m, 1 th1nk 1t's gr34t you got m4d lusus worry1n' sk1lls! m1ght com3 1n h4ndy 1n th3 gam3, n3v3r know.

GA: As much o+f a stereo+type as that so+unds, I wo+uldn't be surprised if the game thrust maternal duties upo+n me.

GC: uh, y34h. t1p for y4: wh3n you'r3 us1n your qu1rk 4nd you w4nn4 s4y som3th1ng w1th "ot" 4t th3 3nd just s4y o+ 1nst34d of o+t.

GA: So+, stereo+ype instead of stereo+type? So+unds go+o+d to+ me. But to+ get back to+ the o+riginal discussio+n, is everything Meenah said abo+ut the game true? Ho+me will be go+ne?

GC: fr41d so. th4t's wh4t sh3 s41d to 3v3ryon3 but sp1d3rg1rl. sh3 d1dn't know how sh3'd h4ndl3 1t :[

GA: Well then, o+ur wasted time has just run o+ut. See yo+u so+o+n!

GC: k33p 1n touch on th3 oth3r s1d3, b4b3! ;]

After installing the disc, Porrim calmly rose searched her room for something that those chauvinist imps couldn't possibly use as a weapon. Aha! She found an old quilt that she had made for herself to add to her bed during the winter months. It was black with her astrological sign sewn onto it. How could the imps use something so peaceful and symbolic to various rustic works of literature to their advantage?

What she had forgotten was that where there was a troll, there was a way.

That's right. Now the imps (and all the others) were no longer just ordinary imps: they were super imps with plasma pistols!

Speaking of which, how were things on Prospit and Derse? How would the carapacians handle the prototypings? More importantly, how would Jack Noir handle the prototypings? Meh, we can figure that out later.

. . . . .

Kankri was in the Land of Temples and Ruins (LOTAR). He would've arrived earlier, but he ended up hours behind Cronus because it took him a long time to do just about anything, even if he was timed. By the time he had prototyped a harmless pair of reading glasses into the kernalsprite, Latula and Porrim had already prototyped their things and entered the Medium before him, even though he was supposed to have already gone in by now. (There; time shenanagins solved!) Luckily, his kernalsprite had taken an exceptionally long time to count down in order for him to scroll through the copy of Rose's translated walkthrough from Mituna, jot down a bunch of notes, and give an official farewell to all of his blog's loyal followers (all 2 of them.) The moment he arrived he saw that he was in a rocky land overlooking the ocean to the south, with forests to the east and west, and a mountain range to the north. In fact, the whole place looked almost exactly like another setting that was seen in another, now scrapped fanfic. Kankri hiked up his pants and stepped outside to explore his world. Across the beach there lay several stone structures that looked like they had once been part of a temple covered in moss that testified to an ancient (and Greco-Roman in nature) society. Kankri immediately noticed that there were a few imps playing around the destroyed temple. They didn't notice him at first, but then one of the imps did something that triggered him: it peed on the stone!

Kankri, not one usually prone to anger, unlike a certain other Vantas, went back into his hive and alchemized a weapon. He combined a blunt knife (sharp ones could trigger hiveguests with suicidal or homocidal tendencies) with a razor blade (sometimes Kankri's hair just grew so long to the point of triggering) to make the Sharp Knife! (Yeah, Kankri's not too good at the whole weapons-making thing. Maybe some other trolls could help him?)

"Excuse me! Y9u there! I usually d9n't res9rt t9 vi9lence, 6ut if y9u c9ntinue urinating 9n th9se ruins I will 6e triggered int9 d9ing s9!" Kankri yelled weakly. The imps went over to him, confused by his weird words, particularly the word "urinate".

"G99d. N9w that y9u are all gathered here, I 6elieve we sh9uld discuss pr9per etiquette regarding the care 9f ancient artifacts. If y9u will all wait f9r just a m9ment s9 that I can print 9ut an essay I have retrieved 9n the su6ject, I will 6e 6ack sh9rtly and we can 6egin the lecture. Please refrain fr9m asking questi9ns until I am d9ne." And with that, Kankri went to go print out his long, boring essay. But when he had gotten back from printing his 69 page essay on the topic of ruin desecration, he found that the imps had grown tired of waiting around and were proceeding to tear down his hive with their ugly claws. Kanrki gasped in shock and brandished the incredibly weak knife. Just before his battle began, though, he had a vision: He was yelling and screaming at the imps, but they were basically shooting the crap out of him with their plasma pistols. They didn't even have to charge up a shot! Then a basilisk's creepy and eternally smiling face came and swallowed the vision cloud (a totally real thing) whole. When Kankri came to, he saw that the imps had now reverted to a patient demeanor and were waiting on him. Ignoring the vision he had 5 seconds ago, he charged.

The fight basically went just the way I described. Except instead of digesting Kankri, the basilisk spat him back out in the middle of the woods so that the other enemies could finish destroying his hive while he wasted his time trying to find his way back. Since Cronus, his sever player, was too busy hitting on Aranea to notice, a certain hyperactive Felt member decided to step in.

heyanamesitchyiseeyouneedhelpwelljustletmehandleverythinforyagoforwardtakealeftattheappletreetakearightgopasttheriverandfollowthecoastlineandyoushouldgetbackbeforetheywrecktheplaceifyou'relucky!

Kankri was obviously confused by this rapid voice in his head. He didn't know that it was Itchy, a Felt member who had basically given him instructions on how to get out of the forest and back to his hive.

"I'm n9t entirely sure wh9 y9u are, 6ut I need t9 warn y9u that talking fast can lead t9 triggering 9f certain inviduals. Pers9nally, I have had n9 experience with tr9lls with this trigger, 6ut 9ne can never 6e t9 sure..."

boringchatandexpospedupcourtesyofitchy! Basically, Itchy fast-forwarded through time to ignore Kankri's speech about triggers and replayed his instructions a little bit more slowly. It was just slow enough for Kankri to comprehend, and he managed to get back to his hive. The reading glasses sprite had destroyed all the imps for him, robbing him of any progress he could have made on his echeladder.

Aren't you glad Itchy showed up, reader? Who knows how long that whole sub-plot could have taken if he hadn't been there to speed it up!