8-3

"Uh, Rich?" Collin began. "I really wouldn't do that.

Rich turned around to stare at Collin, and then flung out an angry hand to point at the great beast that was steadily becoming more solid.

"Do you want to fight that thing when it actually gets here?" He twitched his head back to the front and began marching straight through the strange geometries in the middle of the room without even waiting for Collin to answer.

Hal couldn't take his eyes off the giant monster. It looked like the biggest freaking elephant Hal had ever seen. Only as an armadillo: a metal armadillo. Hal imagined what he could do if he was that big.

And you know, made of metal. He bet he could stand up to Derek then, no problem.

Dimly, Hal saw Adrian run after Rich as he strode across the remaining feet to where the man was chanting.

"Rich, maybe we should-" Adrian began.

"No time." Rich responded grimly.

He took one strong step forward, and jammed the stun gun directly into the chanting man's ribs, flitching the switch.

The man twitched in surprise,s topped chanting, and fell to the ground instantly, spasming. Hal never really took his eyes of the beast. That's why he was the first to notice something-

The very second that the man stopped chanting, the giant creature suddenly became more real. The lines of unreality, of fading in and out that had rippled up and down it's body slowly began receding.

They began to be filled in by the real thing, like when you smacked a TV that was flickering with snow.

"Yo, Rich, I think you screwed up, dude." Hal said.

"Hey- I just did what no one else would do." Rich snapped, his eyes flashing. He turned to face Hal, which meant his back was to the monster. It's head became real now, and it was nearly as big as Hal's chest. One giant eye looked down at Rich.

"Yeah? Maybe you wanna turn around then, big hero-" Hal began.

In the corner of his eye, Hal saw Collin ran over to the fallen man, as the poor tazered guy groaned and got to his feet. That was pretty weird that he recovered that quickly.

"Simpletons!" The man screamed. "Do you realize what you've done?"

There was a deafening THUD, like something very heavy hitting the floor of the cave. Dirt and rock sprayed up into the air in a kind of reverse waterfall.

Hal saw Rich's eyes get real big as he turned around abruptly and saw what was happening. He was about to tell him exactly what kind of moron he was, when something happened in the corner of his eye again.

"Hey look, we're sorry." Collin said. "Our bad. We didn't realize that you were actually-".

"FOOL!" The man roared, and slapped Colin hard, right on the cheek. The kid cried out in pain, and Hal was confused. Sure he'd given him a good slap but it his hand had definitely been open. Biggest he'd get would be a red mark. Then Hal noticed something weird. He took his eyes off of the beast in front of him for a moment, and looked at the man's hand.

For a second he thought he'd seen- something there. But that couldn't be right, his hands had been empty when he'd been there twitching on the ground. For an instant though, Hal could've sworn he saw something impossible- a giant bee sticking out of th eman's hand. Then he saw Collin staggering backwards and sitting down.

There was a huge stinger in his cheek.

Hal suddenly saw red.

"What the hell was that for?" Hal bellowed at the man, and turned, beginning to march toward him.

The man gave Hal the briefest glances of utter contempt, and then turned his gaze towards the big creature, which Hal knew was beginning to move. But he didn't care. He stomped right towards this prick who looked like a reject from the 19th century with his frilly white shirt and ornate pony tail tie.

"What's wrong with you? It was a mistake, and it wasn't even his fault!" Hal shouted once again, challenging this jerk to say something, anything. Hal fingered the amulet wrapped around a hand in his pocket.

"I have no time, for the weak-minded." He said finally, almost in passing, as he ripped his eyes off of the giant monster behind Hal. And with that, he turned and marched right out of the cave.

Hal hurried to follow him, but right before he could get to the cave mouth, he heard someone shout his name.

"HAL! LOOK OUT!" Adrian shouted, and Hal turned just in time to see the Armadillo curl into a giant metal ball, and come flying right toward him like an enormous metal bowling ball. The ground churned up underneath it, and Hal saw Collin weakly throw flames through the air at the thing.

They hit the spinning metal exterior and winked out of existence, like tossing a match into the ocean.

Hal fingered his amulet and canceled his gravity, just as the spinning mass was almost on top of him. He leapt with all his might and shot at a 45 degree angle away from the creature. Those huge overlapping metal plates whirled right near Hal as he rose steadily away from creature's path. One of them hit the end of Hal's shirt, ripping it. But then Hal cleared the end of those plates, just barely, heading for the ceiling.

There was a massive crash behind Hal, as he let go of his amulet before he got too high. He rolled as he hit the ground, grunting under his considerable weight, and banging a knee on a rock. He winced but didn't cry out, instead looking up to see what had happened.

The giant creature was half embedded into the wall, chunks of cave falling all around it. Several of the chunks were coming from the cave's opening, and it quickly closed off under the rubble.

They were trapped inside.

The creature made a horrible howling noise, that sounded like what a train might say, if it could bellow in rage: like a giant nail scraping across a colossal iron sheet. Then it jerked free of the wall, walking backwards on legs as thick as Hal's entire body. Rocks fell off it as it jerked itself free, and slowly turned around to fix them with a bestial glare.

There was a popping noise as Paradox indicated its displeasure over the rule Hal had just broken by cuffing him hard on the back of the head. His vision danced with lights, and he tasted the coppery tang of blood in his mouth.

Hold on, 'dox, Hal thought. We ain't done breakin rules yet.