A/N: This one's one's pretty much pointless. Yeah.
Face-On
Four walls, a floor and a ceiling make a room. Four walls make an enclosure. Four walls and no opening...invoke terror.
Inside this particular room was a blue monkey and a cockroach in a plastic take-away box. Those that don't know, you should learn now that Mr Hal was a bit overly frightened of cockroaches. Suppose that's an oxymoron, isn't it? Gibson was afraid of anything with more than two legs, really. At the moment the blue monkey was facing one of the walls, hugging himself and refusing to look at the box sitting on a raised platform in the middle of the room.
Gibson had a simple goal. Kill the cockroach. It was meant to be easy. Gibson silently cursed his friends' insistence to help him get over his fear. He closed his eyes and lifted his right drill. He fired without turning to face the cockroach, its feelers innocently brushing the wall of the container. Firing at such close range to the wall, the metal wall deflected Gibson's shot. He had no idea precisely what he fired, only ducking just barely in time as the shot ricocheted off the wall, over his head and into the one opposite, leaving a large splatter of a pale green substance on the metal.
Gibson opened his eyes as Nova yelled at him from outside the training room. Oh, he thought worriedly. Cooling gel. So that was what he had fired. Nova looked down at the blue monkey from the high window, screaming that she wouldn't be cleaning that up. Gibson berated himself, muttering at his feet. Really, firing a shot without checking where he was firing and what? It seemed more like something Sprx would do.
The blue monkey turned back to the wall. Maybe he was onto something here. The corner of the wall, maybe? It was worth a try. Gibson swept his eyes around the room, checking where the shot would travel to at each contact with the walls. Eventually he had to look at the cockroach in the centre of the room, and the sight of it crawling around the box nearly made him horrendously regurgitate what was left of his lunch. Gibson changed the matter of his shot into the most rubbery and elastic material he could find, taking a few deep breaths. He quickly faced his wall again, firing a shot at the decided top corner of the wall.
The effect was rather impressive, causing Gibson to curl up into a ball on the floor and Sprx and Nova to let off a string of shocked yells and curses. Gibson's shot ricocheted off many points in the room, but when it came to the time when Gibson thought it would strike the cockroach container, the shot only skimmed the top. The box moved a bit, a corner hanging over the edge of the platform.
This was not working. The blue monkey considered a simpler approach. Gibson drew a straight line from the container centred in the room to his wall. He pinpointed a spot, took aim and fired his third shot. The rubber-like substance bounced off the wall and in a line to the cockroach. It knocked the plastic box off the platform and cracked it a bit, but otherwise did no harm to the animal inside.
That was all the cockroach needed. It turned on its side and wriggled through the largest crack and out onto the training room floor. Gibson screamed at the sight while Nova screamed through the glass window. Gibson knew that his previous technique wasn't working and never would.
"Dangit Gibson, just face it! Face it head-on!" Nova called to the blue monkey. "DO IT!"
Just do it. Face facts, face the music. Face your fears. Do it face-on. Maybe that's good advice, Gibson thought resignedly. The cockroach was crawling closer. Gibson screwed up his eyes, but then opened them again. Not looking wouldn't help him, he realized that now. He changed his drill shot to a laser. Alright, little cockroach. Time to die. He fired, and there was nothing left of the beetle save a dark smudge on the floor and a damaged take-away box.
Gibson shuddered. "Nova? Can you let me out? I'm starting to feel like that cockroach inside here."