*****

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

Toby's eyes slowly opened as his thoughts fluttered back into existence.

He was surrounded by pink fur again. Zinc had been spot-on about this place being cozy. In that moment, the only thing Toby knew, or cared to know, was just how comfortable he was. His whole body was surrounded in snuggly warmth. The kind of fuzzy heat that makes you drowsier by the moment. He thought he wouldn't mind staying here for the rest of his life.

He was tempted to. Extraordinarily tempted to. But there was a note a few inches away and it was nibbling at his curiosity.

He tried to remember how to make his arm work. Like a sleepy fat snake, it lolled out from under the covers and his hand failed three times to make contact with the paper. When he held it in front of his eyes, it took considerable effort just to blink away the sleep dust and focus. Wrangling the letters to stay in place so he could read them was just enough of a chore to bring his consciousness fully to the surface.

	Dear Toby,
	You looked so cute, I decided to let you sleep in. Me and the others are gonna
	go have breakfast at a place Zinc says is just across the street.
	Swood's Food. Meet us there! And good morning!
			-Piffle.

Toby smiled warmly. She was so sweet.

Blinking a lot, he forced himself to sit up, then yawned exactly five times. He briefly panicked as he wondered where in the heck his normal clothes were. Then he remembered he'd worn nothing but his pajamas for several weeks now. From there it was just a matter of retrieving his bracers and pouch from where he'd left them last night, figuring out how to work the tube hatch, then screaming a bit as it suddenly sucked him up.

He'd been FOOMPed headfirst, so he had no idea how the machine managed to land him on his feet in the lobby. He appreciated it though. Mr. Roosman was there, having fallen asleep at the front desk. (Or rather he seemed asleep, since his 'headlights' weren't on.)

He stirred and noticed Toby. Both said good morning to each other. Toby asked where Swood's was and Roosman pointed directly across from the hotel. Toby could even see it through the door glass.

Just before he left, the mouse gently inquired about why the proprietor happened to be a cloud of ash. Roosman chuckled like he'd gotten used to the question years ago. He said he'd been traveling through Cachexy when a nightmare had eaten him and excreted him into this form. He soon realized how handy it could be and stayed that way. "It really helps with the dusting."

Roosman told him to have a nice day and Toby thanked him. Then the mouse stepped out, alone, onto the evermoving walkways of Ectopia Cordis.

He was very glad his destination was directly in front of him, because even just crossing the street felt daunting. 'This city probably never stops being busy,' he thought. It was still night out, as always, but lights from the ferris wheels above created a decent impression of dawn. Scads of citizens were bustling to and fro. Some looked like the kind of fursons you would not want to accidentally bump into. Like the bobcat over there whose teeth were so huge they literally overflowed his face. Or the leggy penguin packing a submachine gun.

Plus there was the carpetwalks themselves to contend with. Each one was a different speed and they weren't all traveling in the same direction. Toby did some dance moves that probably amused the hell out of the more experienced residents. Some of them slid across the street as smoothly as if they were ice skating. Toby looked like a frog on a hot plate. Though he was kind of proud of himself for leaping completely over the fastest-moving middle path, landing on the other side without falling over.

The others had chosen a table near the big window in Swood's Foods, so Toby was relieved to see Zinc's big wrench waving him over.

It was a cramped little fast food joint. Or more accurately, a fast-imaginite joint. No need for a menu. His friends all had mostly-empty plates in front of them, indicating they'd been sitting for a while. Toby felt bad about having kept them waiting. Though when they beckoned him over, he held up a 'waitaminnit' finger and headed to the counter.

"Two pounds, please," he asked the morbidly obese canary behind the register.

He even challenged himself to pay for it. Despite waking up feeling well-refreshed, there was still a rumbling layer of unease in his belly from last-night's unpleasantness. The dream and his subsequent soul-searching were mostly blurs now, but he remembered the emotions from them clear as day. He remembered the feeling of his guts tied up in knots, of being reacquainted with heart-stopping, blood-freezing fear. He remembered the shame, frustration and hopelessness of his insights about himself. And he channeled all this into the willwell. He made the red line 'ding' after a perfectly-respectable 49 seconds.

Returning to his friends, his cheap plastic chair screeched against the tile as he seated himself. He plopped his tray down in front of Zinc.

"Hey there, dustbunny. You're lookin' like you slept pretty hard." Zinc reached over to adroitly smooth down Toby's cowlick. "And thanks for the offer, but I'm already full." The canine indicated he'd already buzzsawed through a corned beef omelet. George was pecking at the crumbs.

Toby realized he had forgotten to comb his fur and ran his paws over his face a few times. "Actually, I want you to activate my breakfast for me, if you don't mind."

"By the by, good morning Sire Toby!" George added.

He gave the temporary-bird a smile. "Good morning too! Oh, and thanks for the note, Piffle."

She nodded. "I woke up hungry last night and was gonna get some cookies, but I found you instead. I don't know how you slept in that position! But you looked like you'd had a nightmare or something so I tucked you back in and let you snooze some more."

As soon as she said it, it occurred to him he'd had no idea how he'd ended up back between the sheets after his nocturnal interruption. "Thanks for that!" he said, and reached across the table to hug her.

Needless to say, this pleased her immensely.

Junella was still picking at her onion rings. "G'morn, Tobe," she slurred, fingers barely glancing the grooves. She looked like half her brain was still in bed.

"Didn't sleep too good?" he asked. "How was the hot tub?"

She smiled a bit at that. "Oh, it was wonderful," she purred. "Too good, akchally. I melted and went down the drain. When I finally woke up I was halfway to Bigwheel Six. I had to climb outta a fuggin' faucet in somebody's house and ride that slap-thing back up here. Crawled into bed and only got about three more hours."

"Sorry to hear that," Toby said.

She shrugged. "Kinda worth it. Imma make Piffle buy me one of those hot tubs when we get home."

When the night's recap was finished, Zinc asked again what Toby had meant about his breakfast.

Toby had made the decision completely on a whim and now was a little hesitant to mention it. "Um, can you turn that into what you ate last night? Minus the beers, of course."

Zinc arched an eyebrow. "Doth my ears deceive me? You want yourself a Piffleburger? I thought eatin' people grossed you out."

Toby made an 'au contraire' gesture. "Yes, but that's not a person, it's imaginite. It'll just be what you remember Piffle tasting like."

Zinc grinned at the logic of it. "It'll still be rocks though."

"Rocks I can deal with. That's less weird than people. And I'm in a weird mood this morning anyway. All I know for sure is, I'm hungry, and I realized I probably haven't eaten a big fat cheeseburger in a decade. I'm overdue."

Zinc was shocked to hear this. "Betcher ass you are!! No burgers for ten years!? That's positively unpatriotic! Of course I'll help you!" Toby pointed out he wanted two root beer floats to drink, and Zinc willed the plateful of crystals into a perfect replica of the double bacon hamsterburger he'd had at The Gastroworks.

Toby had trouble wrapping his hands around the thing. He bit into it and the flavor practically blew his brains out. Meat juice dribbled down his chin. He moaned obscenely. Suddenly he was even more in disbelief that he'd managed to live so many years on the most flavorless foods in the world.

Piffle was quite happy to see him enjoying it so much. "Maybe it'll inspire you to try some of me for real sometime!"

The others chatted about various subjects while Toby's focus was far away in Hamburger Heaven. The crunch of the bacon! The freshness of the lettuce! The smoky thrill of flame-grilled flesh! Toby demolished half of it before he even remembered he had two drinks.

After he finished and his tummy felt taut as a basketball, Toby waited for a pause in the conversation and asked what the day's itinerary was.

Junella sang out, "We covered all that before you got here. Unless you have any objections, the plan is for us to first go pay a visit to RB&WB's survival supplies." (She pronounced it 'rub and wub'.) "Piffle has graciously offered to foot the bill, so we're gonna clean the place out. The Fearsleigher's gonna wind up the badassest goddam tank this world has ever seen." She grinned with gusto. "That reminds me, Piff. Cough up the car."

Piffle felt around her internal storage space, then daintily sneezed into a napkin. There in the center was the little black jellybean they'd stored the Fearsleigher in. "Good morning, Doll!" Piffle shouted at it, not sure whether her friend could hear it.

"You; that; pocket," Junella ordered Zinc. He saluted and tucked it away safely in his jacket. Junella pointed to Toby. "After shopping, I guess we can all go someplace together if you like. Knowing Zinc, he'll probly drag us to some noisy shit like Luxyland."

Zinc's eager grin told them that was exactly what he'd planned.

Toby had inferred by now that this was a local amusement park. He took a sip of root beer. "Do they have a ferris wheel there?" he deadpanned.

Junella wasn't sure for a second whether Toby was serious, but then guffawed.

Zinc did too. "Actually, yeah. Dinky little thing. They call it, for real, 'Total Pointlessness'."

Toby snorted at that.

***

"Are there any elevators?" Toby asked. "I'm NOT going on the slap-thing again."

"Aw, but they're fun!" Zinc wheedled.

"NO."

"Psssht, daintypaws. There's elevators, yeah. But they're slow and mostly for freight."

"Fine by me!"

***

Back on the street, Toby's attention was drawn to something he'd first noticed in Stoma, had seen again in Coryza, and had been seeing all this time in Ectopia without being fully cognizant of it. There were far, far more children and teenagers around him than there should have been. Normally, especially on a street this busy, he would have expected to see 70-80% adults. But instead it was nearly the opposite. It was the sort of thing that was so plainly in front of his nose he kept forgetting to notice it. But he remembered again what Piffle had said, about this world reducing people to that pure state of fear only children experience. Toby took a moment to spot a few adults and marvel again at the fact they'd been forced to spend that long coping with a land like this.

The elevators turned out to be enormous. Birdcage-like platforms which fifty or so people could all fit onto if they squeezed. The cages trundled along, upwards and downwards, on a pulley system similar to a ski-lift. And, what a surprise, the pulleys were turned by more ferris wheels. Piffle steadied Toby's arm as they all hopped onto a rising cage. Toby wasn't sure whether he wanted to stand in the middle where there was nothing to hang onto, or wrap himself around one of the bars, which meant he'd inevitably see over the edge to the several-hundred-foot drop.

George asked permission to fly on ahead to try out his wings some more. Toby said that was fine and managed a little smile at the former horse's caw of pleasure as he corkscrewed up and out of sight. Then Toby resumed trying not to look down. And trying not to think about last night.

Junella and Zinc discussed the various things they were hoping to buy at the survival store. Piffle noticed Toby's faraway, troubled expression and guessed it wasn't entirely caused by vertigo.

"You okay, Toby? What's eatin' ya?"

"Oh, I don't know," he moaned. "I'm mixed-up. I slept good and my breakfast was excellent-" She beamed at that. "-but last night... I really went through the wringer."

"Bad dream?"

He nodded. "An awful one. And when I woke up, I was all full of doubt and depression. I tore myself up, questioning everything about my life and myself. I didn't know what I was even doing anymore and..." He paused. "Am I boring you?"

Her antennae shot up. "No, Toby! Why would you think that?"

He ran a paw through his headfur. "It feels like all I ever do is complain."

The hamsterfly came close and patted his shoulder reassuringly. "You've been through a lot. It's understandable. And I know that getting it off your chest helps. I don't mind being your listener."

"Thank you. You're a very giving furson."

She bounced a little.

"But yeah... I'm more jumbled-up than normal this morning. Plus, now that I think of it, and this is gonna sound really weird... I almost miss waking up feeling terrible all the time."

Piffle cocked her head at that.

"Like... back when I was alive and sick nine mornings out of ten I'd feel like someone with bad breath had been chewing on me all night long. But here, I don't have any of my old symptoms anymore. Not the muscle aches, the nerve spasms, the eye-crusts. It's... unsettling. I mean, I'm glad for it! Don't think I'm not! I'll even say it's the one solidly good thing about this place. But still..." He fumbled for words. "You get into a routine, even a horrible one, and you feel uncomfortable when it changes."

She nodded at that. "And do you feel worried? Like the symptoms are gonna come back again?"

"Exactly!!" he shouted. "I'm on edge sometimes. Every cough, every little muscle ache, I'm worried what it'll lead to. Things like that. I feel like it's just too lucky for it all to have gone away. Like it's all just waiting to pounce back."

She squeezed his paw. "There are still diseases 'n stuff here. But it's mostly from being bitten by nightmares 'n stuff. Everyone I've talked to says the same thing: when you first come here, your new body's a clean slate."

Toby was glad to hear it. He held Piffle's warm, soft paw and felt slightly ashamed at how often she was there to help or comfort him. What had he given back to her? "Piffle... I barely know why I'm doing this anymore. Why do you stay? What's in it for you?"

She laughed. "Are you cuh-razy? I'm on an adventure! I might get to see Anasarca! I'd hoped to scoop some action when I left home, but I never expected all this! Excitement! Danger! Good friends!"

He liked being referred to as a good friend, and hoped he could do more to live up to that description.

Toby was about to reply when Junella slipped over, looking sheepish, and asked Piffle for the dozenth time, "Are you sure you're still okay with this? Y'know, paying for our shopping spree?"

Piffle handwaved her worries. "It's fine. Really! I like helping out. Plus, maybe I wanna see all the crazy doodads you're gonna add to the car, huh?"

Junella nodded. "Allright. Still, I'm not someone who's used to taking charity. Feels weird."

"Well, it'll be a fun challenge for me. I've never met a willwell I can't fill." She smirked bashfully, hoping that didn't sound like bragging. "Don't know why! Just lucky, I guess."

"Now, see, that attitude I can't get my head around. If it was me that could do what you do, I'd be the greediest bitch alive. I'd buy a hundred-foot-tall throne so I could look down on everybody else an' piss on 'em while I laughed my ass off. But just giving it away to somebody else?" She shook her head, chuckling. "This'd be so much easier on me if I was tricking you into this."

Piffle chuckled too. "I can pretend if you like!" She twirled around. "La-la-la! I am an innocent, naive girl with no idea I am about to be taken advantage of by scoundrels!"

Zinc busted a gut. "Thanks, though, for bankrollin' us. It means a lot. I've been beyond EC with Juney a few times. There's some real bad times out there. I'm gonna feel a lot better if we're heading Hellward fully stocked."

"You're very welcome," Piffle replied, curtseying.

Zinc bowed and lifted her paw to his lips for a gentlemanly kiss. "The lady is a gracious benefactor."

Piffle squirmed in delight. "Oh you kid!"

***

Toby was unsurprised to learn that the further up you went in Ectopia Cordis, the ritzier the buildings got. It made sense, height equating to status. So when Zinc told him that their destination was on level Forty-Eight out of fifty-two, Toby expected some serious fanciness.

He was not disappointed. They only had to walk a few blocks from the elevator before they turned a corner and beheld the majesty of Rippingbean & Woofingbutter's: Ectopia Cordis' largest and most legendary survival goods supplier.

Toby had never seen a building look so much like a chandelier. Wide rather than tall, it filled two city blocks' worth of real estate. The top was frosted with a pyramidish structure of twisting, twining silver curlicues. It reflected as much light as a miniature sun, and even the walls gleamed with white marble and diamonds big as pickup trucks. The name was stretched across the front of the building in fourteen-foot-high fourteen karat letters. And beneath it was the simple slogan: LIVE FOREVER.

Toby mentally compared it to Dorster's shop, which was dingy on the outside, letting the merchandise speak for itself. RB & WB's was the polar opposite. Its exterior bludgeoned passersby with opulence. Toby was almost too starstruck to enter the place. Junella had to grab the gawking mouse by his upper arm and drag him forward. He was mesmerized like a deer in the headlights. He didn't even notice George fly up to perch on Piffle's arm and start rhapsodizing about his flight.

The front entrance had two massively intricate window displays. Everything inside was carved from precious gems. Two scenes of well-dressed Phobiopolans smiling and laughing casually as they fought off unspeakable nightmare beasts with ease. A hail of little onyx bullets hung suspended in the air on their way towards a crystal horror that looked like the result of mating buses with bulldogs. On the other side, a thousand ruby drops of blood sprayed from an otherworldly cephalopod that had fallen into a sawblade trap near an expedition's campfire. Toby looked around at all the glittering stones and tried to guess their weight and worth. But then he reconsidered that maybe all of this had just started out as imaginite. Maybe, if precious materials were actually worthless here, their only use was sheer ostentatiousness.

Inside, imaginite or not, the store's interior decorator had done a stunning job of making everything scream elegance through a megaphone. The floors were obsidian, polished into a perfect mirror sheen. Everything else was silk white, honey gold, or flowing silver. The architecture tried to be as curvaceous as its desired customers. There was a grand staircase to the upper levels that looked like a waterfall of milk suspended in time.

Toby also noticed that customers around him were dressed in equal grandeur. Several of them had looks of offense or disgust on their faces to see the ragtag batch of misfits that just walked in. A mutt in ripped jeans and a leather jacket, a hamsterfly in a sailor suit, a toy talking parrot, a mouse in his pajamas, and a skunk wearing nothing but a scarf. Toby felt somewhat ashamed of his shabbiness until he saw the gleaming confidence in Junella's grin. She didn't give a fraction of a shit how they looked. That helped Toby not care either.

The skunk sang out as she marched forward, "I want it all! I Want It All!! I WANT IT ALL!!! AND I WANT IT NOW!!!"

This invited even more stares. Toby shrunk down into his pajama collar, but kind of admired Junella's verve.

"Oh hey, there they are," Zinc pointed out.

Toby figured out for himself that 'they' must have been the eponymous Rippingbean and Woofingbutter. And when he laid eyes on them, his own group of weirdos seemed to stand out less.

The duo were dressed to the nines in suits that recalled both a ringmaster and a carnival barker. Both outfits blazed with metallic black, apple red, and shining bronze. Both had top hats. One of them was a short, agile-looking fox. Most of him was normal (and his tail was groomed so impeccably it sparkled like gold leaf), but his face was an unspeakable trainwreck. Whether by accident or birth defect, the vulpine's facial skin looked like it had been punched with an acid fist. The left side wasn't too badly marred, but the right was a tangle of drips and strips of skin, with one puffy, sightless eye barely staying put in its socket. The fox's partner, in contrast, was at least twice as tall. And either he was an invisible being supported by a crablike clockwork exoskeleton, or he was the exoskeleton. It reminded Toby of old photos of polio kids in leg braces, but an entire body's worth of them.

Rippingbean and Woofingbutter had placed themselves in the main foyer of the store, greeting and welcoming customers. The fox lit up with recognition when he spied the approaching group.

"Mish Juhneggha anf Miftuhh Vingk!" he cried happily. His deformity impaired his speech profoundly. "Izhh beng 'uite a 'uhile!"

"Yes it has," the exoskeleton said, his accent so crisp and deep it reminded Toby of George. And yes, this furson must have been suffering from transparency, because now Toby could see a monocle floating in the air where his right eye would have been.

"Jesus, Mister Woofingbutter, what happened to you since last time!?" Zinc burst out.

The tall one chuckled. "Nothing but a minor infirmity. I assure you, I am still a gorilla, even if I don't currently appear that way. I was hit with a faceful of invisibility venom on our last venture to Drapetomania. Stubborn stuff! I've been too busy to head to hospital, but for now it's been a treat spooking customers more than usual." He chuckled like a bass cello.

"Any progress on the face?" Junella asked the fox bluntly.

He took her paw in both of his and shook his head with an air of steadfast acceptance. "I'be neaghly gibben ufp. Ah 'ardwy nowdizh ihd eddymaur. Plus, 'uhen 'un ish cuhwsed by Zkhhfehhhish Derrrarrr 'uhzehwf, 'un duz tengd to wemaywn cuhwsed. Lukkuhwee, ish haggun't 'urt bizhneggs zho fauwr," he joked.

Toby thought he understood a portion of that, though mostly through inflection. Mr. Rippingbean's teeth moved in different directions unsettlingly when he spoke.

Woofingbutter asked, "If that was your golden tones I heard just a moment ago, then am I to infer that you're planning quite a large purchase this morning, Miss Junella?"

"You got it," she returned. "We're headin' up the mountain this time! Which means we're gonna need at least two of everything you got."

Toby could practically hear the gorilla's eyebrows going up. "Is that so? I take it then, you have come into considerable more wealth since your previous visit?"

She grinned bashfully and nodded. "No more scrapin' the bottom of my wallet or offering odd jobs this time."

"Guuud to 'eahr," Rippingbean said. "Fohchun shmilez un buhf uff uhzz."

Junella turned to Zinc. "Where to first, partner?"

He seemed surprised she'd give him first pick. She was in a good mood! "My first thought was auto parts, but let's save that for the grand finale. For now, how 'bout we scope some popguns?"

"Sounds satisfactory," she cantillated.

Woofingbutter had already wrangled a sterling silver shopping cart for her. "Here we are, my dear."

She nodded her thanks. "I intend to fill it to the top and ask for another."

Rippingbean clapped his little black paws. "Exxzhewennt! Hannpy shawwpengg!"

As they walked off, Toby poked Zinc's shoulder. "I'm a little surprised they know you by name."

The canine chuckled. "Yeah, we're not their typical type. But we came up short on a bill once and agreed to pay it off by helpin' 'em out with a bit of an after hours rat problem."

"Rats? Here?"

"Big as wheelbarrows. Don't tell nobody I said nuttin' about it. It's the kind of thing a place like this wants kept outta the papers. But we handled it quietly without breakin' too much merch and now we're all palsy-walsy. Reciprocity. Keep in mind, Clyde."

"Good idea."

***

Being an only child, Toby had never experienced the feeling of sitting and doing nothing while you watch someone else open their birthday presents. Now, he was getting a taste of that.

George on his shoulder, he followed passively behind Junella and Zinc as they plowed through the store with hungry eyes and sharkish grins. Their glee was nearly tangible. It was obvious how much they wanted to pounce on everything they laid eyes on, but they had just enough restraint to take a look-see pass through the departments before getting down to business.

Piffle's head was rotating back and forth, ogling all the shiny things. Toby's did too, but it was hard to 'Oooh' at things that mostly filled him with confusion. Here were endless products you could find in any military surplus or outdoorsman store, but a heck of a lot of them were stylized or Phobiopolis-tailored to the point of unrecognizability. Endless shelves gushed with shovels, knapsacks, pitons, boots, carabiners, hats, coats, gloves, rations, etcetera, etcetera. And the abundance of things to look at included other customers. Oh look, I've never seen a bluejay with stegosaurus spines before. How does his shirt stay on?

Junella and Zinc kept a running commentary on everything they considered buying, ostensibly to fill in Toby and Piffle, but mostly just to taste the words in their mouths. Their voices oozed with the giddiness of someone who has wanted something for so long they'd nearly given up hope of having it. "Boxes and boxes of bullets! Every caliber!" "Lookit that knife over there! How many points can you fit on a blade!?" "Those are some damn fancy boots." "Hey! It's As-Much-Rope-As-You-Need! I've been wanting one of those." "Firework flares! Holy shit! They got the ones that'll hit the Veil Of Tears!!" "Anti-transformation potions. Gonna need a buttload of thems..." "Maybe I'll get a cornucopia. See if I can empty it." "Any of you want your names embroidered on a bulletproof vest?" "Wouldja lookit that four-barreled shotgun? Mmmm, baby! Stop me from humpin' it!" "This thing has a Wotafa Technical Level of eight point NINE!?"

Something else Toby noticed as he followed behind the two blabberers was a constant theme of pairs. Each department was headed by a duo of some kind. Either they were out in front helping customers, or were featured in a photo portrait of them somewhere nearby. Two sisters headed the grocery department, and likewise two brothers handled climbing gear. Footwear was staffed by a hand-holding couple; an ostrich and a shark. The pattern was only semi-broken by the single feline who ran the automotive department. He'd been split up into a half-dozen small copies of himself, like what sometimes resulted from hitting a toon on the head with a big enough mallet. And over by the perfumes and nightmare musk oils, Toby saw a humongous wedding portrait of Rippingbean and Woofingbutter themselves. It made his eyebrows go up, as he'd thought they were just business partners. But he found nothing objectionable about the idea. The portrait had obviously been done by the same artist who'd made one for Mr. & Mrs. Xenoiko. Mr. Woofingbutter was quite a handsome gorilla when he was visible, and Mr. Rippingbean was smiling luminously despite his melted appearance. Toby only wondered if RB had to stand on a stepstool when they kissed.

Just past the camping stoves, Zinc and Junella ground to a halt in front of their holy grail. They'd reached the gun department, and right at the front was its shimmering centerpiece: a hand-cranked brass gatling gun. It rotated on its own podium, under its own spotlight, like the Best In Show. Cherrywood handle. Fourteen barrels. Hundreds of little rivets like candy dots. It looked like it had been plucked out of time from 200 years ago. Both the mutt and skunk stared rapturously, their faces reflected in the honey-colored metal.

"Do we dare, Juney?" Zinc breathed.

"You bet your fucking balls, partner. This was half the reason I came here."

Zinc turned towards Toby and Piffle, tail wagging and eyes misting up. "You don't even understand! This beauty's been here for years and no one's bought it. We keep thinking it's gonna be gone next time we come. The price tag's through the stratosphere-"

"And we hadda lose almost a whole bounty just to pay for that roof turret," Junella interrupted.

Piffle nodded, accepting the challenge. "Then I'll do my best to nab it for you and make you happy!"

Zinc bit his lip and nearly burst into tears.

***

It was a wonder Zinc's tail didn't catch fire from air friction. With the big brass gun weighing down their cart so hard it bent the metal, he pranced about introducing it to its brethren. A shotgun here, a boltthrower there, a sprinkling of saturday night specials. Aside from the gatling gun, Zinc chose mostly cheaper models. He knew that on a trip through the badlands, one was likely to lose all one's gear in the heat of battle. Buying things with disposability in mind was the mark of a smart shopper. Though he'd carry that brass babymuffin on his back a hundred miles if need be.

Once they had enough guns to qualify for "up the wazoo" status, they decided to head back to automotive. They'd planned to save it for last, but Zinc was itchy with anticipation. He'd spotted something that looked like a nail-encrusted snowplow and was eager to get a better look at it.

Along the way, Toby noticed a large bin full of old ratty, dingy stuffed animals. They looked incredibly out of place among the store's refined stock. He was even more surprised to see Junella start piling handfuls of them in the cart. Piffle had heard about this though. Plushies, she explained, were nightmare repellent. But only ones that had actually been used and loved and filled up with a child's pure faith. People scoured the garbage heaps to find ones containing the right energy. Even the deadliest nightmares would shriek and hiss in pain in their presence. Junella said she was going to string a bunch all around the car to keep undesirables from poking their noses too close.

Sensing that Zinc and Junella would be quite a while looking at car stuff, Piffle got an idea. "Do you mind if we split up? I saw they've got a tailor here and I thought I'd take Toby on over and get him some new duds." She nudged him with her elbow. "Betcher getting' sick of having to wear those jamjams all the time, huh?"

"Actually, yeah." He looked down at the fabric. It was self-cleaning and self-repairing, but not too insulating. And his feet were getting tired of being bare all the time.

"Sounds good," Zinc said, looking up from a display of headlights that could be focused into a laser point to burn enemies alive. "We're gonna be here for hours. You'll probably finish up before we do."

Toby nodded. "Allright then. C'mon, George! Maybe we can get you a beak-warmer," he kidded.

But before George could register disdain at that notion, Junella reached out and grabbed the parrot off the mouse's shoulder. "My word!"

"Nuh-uh-uh," she singsonged. "I've got a crazy stupid idea in mind. I'll need him for some measurements."

Both Toby and George looked worried at this. Junella's smile was devious.

"Should I be afraid?" George asked.

She petted the little tin birdie's head. "Oh, I ain't gonna hurtcha. Just maybe... stretch you out a little." She flashed a grin. "You'll see. Zinc's gonna flip when I tell him."

"I suppose anything's better than being a bird," George said. "And I trust enough in my own indestructibility to know you can't mangle me too badly."

Slightly unsure of that, Toby waved goodbye as Piffle dragged him off.

***

He'd passed by the custom clothing department before but didn't recognize it as such. In fact, at the time he'd thought it was some kind of bulk candy shop.

Piffle tugged Toby to a corner of the store where an incredible amount of glass tubes hung from the ceiling; each one large enough to house a furson, each full up with a different liquefied color. Hoses dangled below like teats. 'Inks? Dyes?' Toby guessed. Below was a small garden of shrub-shaped accessory racks: hats, scarves, gloves, etc.. The department's center was a well-lit wooden stage, oval, with a blue curtain in the back. Also a pair of tall, gleaming gasoline-pump-ish machines at either edge.

Piffle became entranced by hats, giving Toby time for a closer look at the tubes. To his bewilderment, he realized they weren't all solid colors inside, but patterns too. Stripes. Dots. Plaids! This was too cartoonish to be believed.

Before he could ask Piffle what they were, two identically-dressed minks came prancing by, hand in hand. Brown of fur and sleek as maple syrup. When they saw they had two customers, they bolted forward and began apologizing profusely. Toby and Piffle were beset by a fluttering swarm of hands all shaking their own and patting their shoulders.

"A thousand pardons, Madame and Monsieur," the one on the left said. "Simply no excuse!"

The one on the right nodded. "We were just on break. If we'd had any idea-"

"ANY idea!"

"-that we had waiting customers, we'd have hurried back as soon as impossible!"

They were dressed so similarly, it took Toby a moment to realize one was male and the other female. Their outfits could be described as cyberpunk chic. Work overalls from ankles to ribcage, but in a pearlescent blue fabric that nearly glowed. Royal purple tops with the sleeves rolled up. Golden goggles with red glass lenses. The pair's voices were nearly identical, and each one's underwaterlike movements tended to be mirrored by the other at any given time.

Together they hugged and flourished with their hands towards the sign above their department.

"If you hadn't read already, we are Kay Burdock-" said the male.

"-and Kaye Burdock," said the female.

"Tailors extraordinaire!!" they completed the introduction in perfect synchronicity, with a clap at the end.

Piffle was absolutely delighted with these two. They had such high energy and presence, she wondered if they were about to leap into an acrobatics routine.

Instead, with many back-pats, the mink duo began herding their customers towards the stage. "Now if you're here, that heavily suggests you're in the market for some new accouterments," Kaye said.

"And I can't blame you," Kay added, feeling Toby's pajama fabric with a withering wince. "No offense intended."

"None taken," Toby said. "I hadn't realized till now how much I want out of these. They're all I've worn since I've been here."

Appropriate gasps of horror from the two minks.

Piffle giggled. "And I'm thinking about getting some new glad rags m'self. We're on an adventure!"

"Oh? Holiday or expedition?" Kaye inquired.

"Anasarca," Piffle replied. "We're gonna try to get my friend here home."

Eyebrows were raised. "Indeed!" Kaye exclaimed. "Then if we do say so, nothing but the very best will do. You have my word-"

"-OUR word."

"-that you're in exceptionally good hands. Now young miss, do you have any particulars in mind?"

Piffle swiveled her foot back and forth. "Naw. Heck, the idea just came to me a minute ago. I'm gonna need a while to think up ideas. And anyway, this is mostly for Toby. Help him first."

With a double nod, the two minks turned to the mouse. Kaye reached out a paw to encourage him up onto the oval stage. Toby stepped carefully around the footlights. The wooden boards creaked as his paw made contact. Kay swished the blue curtain closed to give them some privacy from the other customers.

A dainty paw landed like a feather on his shoulder. "Now then, shall we get undressed?" Kaye suggested.

Toby turned pink. "Um... Could we not? Is that a possibility?"

Kay chuckled. "Nonsense! If it's embarrassment you're feeling, banish it. We've seen every type of todger and taco from here to Teratoma."

Kaye nodded. "And we need to take a gander at the bare canvas to know how best to paint it."

Deeply cringing, Toby tried to muster up his courage for this, reminding himself of the many, many times he'd gotten naked for doctor's visits before. But a doctor was different. Here he was in the middle of a bustling department store. On stage, even! What if someone came by and poked their head through the curtain?

He felt like he could do it on one condition. "Allright, I guess. But not in front of Piffle." He gave her an apologetic look. "Sorry, but, well..."

She snickered and bounced over to hug him. "Pish tosh! Nothing to worry about. I understand if you're skittish."

"And we have a comfortable waiting area just over here," Kaye said with a swish of her hand. She pulled back the curtain on the far side of the stage to reveal some bulbous armchairs, a table full of magazines, and a TV set.

"Neat!" Piffle toddled over and took Kaye's hand. "Um, I just wanted to say, I kinda envy you two. I wish I'd had siblings growing up. I was an only child."

"Oh, we're not twins," Kay replied, as if he'd made the correction a thousand times before. "Dissociative identity disorder. When I was little my mother used to drive herself up the wall trying to get me to stop talking to my "imaginary" sister."

"They locked him up twice for it!" Kaye concurred.

Kay gave her a 'the customers don't need to know that' look.

She put a hand to her mouth. "Pardon!"

Piffle giggled.

Kaye sighed. "But yes, you can't know how happy we were when this place finally gave me my own body at last!"

"It's a queasy sensation," Kay said thoughtfully, "to find yourself suddenly in a strange land, terrified and confused, yet at the same time overwhelmed with joy at finally being able to hug someone you've known all your life."

Piffle's expression showed absolute fascination, a desire to hear more, and then the realization that Toby couldn't strip until she was out of sight. "That's wonderful for both of you! I'm really glad to hear it! Anyway, do a good job on Toby! Impress me!" she said, and ducked behind the curtain. (She promised herself to only peek once.)

"We will!"

"It's our specialty!"

As one, the pair turned to face Toby. "Off with those dull things!" Kay playfully commanded.

"Comfy as I'm sure they are, they're no clothes for danger," Kaye concurred.

Sensing the mouse's reluctance, the minks began unbuttoning his top. Toby squeaked and swatted their hands away, then shakily finished the job. He folded his shirt and pants neatly and placed his pouch and bracers carefully on top. When it was over and he was standing there in nothing but fur, he curled his tail around to cover as much of his unmentionables as possible.

The minks tittered at his bashfulness and began to circle. They looked him up and down, taking his measurements with practiced eyes. "Function before fashion," Kay said with a finger resting on his lips. "Tell me, what sort of things do you think you might get up to on the long road to our equivalent Emerald City? Combat? Fisticuffs? Hunting?"

Toby almost laughed. "None of those, hopefully! I admit it, I'm a puffball. I plan on running and hiding as much as I can get away with."

"I admire your honesty," Kaye said with an approving nod. "You would not believe the amount of customers we have who come in all filled with bluster and bravado, demanding death-proof suits that we know will never see a scratch."

Kay snarled agreement. "One prefers to see one's work fulfilling its destiny." To his other half he said, "Lightweight, emphasizing maneuverability. Not too flashy-"

"-but of course we wouldn't be us without giving it at least some."

"Oh, obviously," he said, as if that was a given. "Colors, young man?"

Toby thought for a second. "Um... I like blue. Something like your overalls would be nice."

"Terrorbunny wool," Kaye suggested to her counterpart.

Kay immediately concurred. "I'm thinking vest and shorts would suit him."

"Wouldn't I get cold up in the mountains?" Toby asked.

"You'll see!!" they sang out simultaneously, and laughed. Leaving Toby alone and in the buff, they suddenly dashed to the two large machines at the stage's perimeter. Like a pair of pianists, they began keying in a flurry of commands. Toby heard a whirr from above, and looked up to see big machines in the ceiling circling through dozens of those big glass tubes, finally selecting two blue ones and notching them into place above Kay & Kaye's workstations.

From either side the minks came at him holding nozzles that looked exactly like airbrushing guns. The minks pulled their goggles down and tapped the sides to change the colored lenses.

"Now, we're going to need you to stand spread-eagle and keep perfectly still while we work," Kaye requested.

Toby tried to take his tail away, but his nervousness just made him clench up harder.

"Need some help?" she asked.

Bashfully, he nodded.

Her expression assured him his reluctance was nothing out of the ordinary. She glanced at Kay, who reached into his pocket and touched a small device to Toby's neck.

"YEEK!!" It was not painful, but it was as cold as an ice cube! Toby's arms, legs and tail shot straight out and stuck there. He was a mannequin from the neck down. "How the heck-!?"

Kay held it up: a tiny, silver, remote-shaped object. "From our electronics department. No good for nightmare constructs, else they'd sell like hotcakes, but just dandy for use on muggers."

Toby's mild annoyance at having it used on him vanished as he realized how handy owning one might be. "How long does it last?"

"Only a few minutes. Long enough for us to do our work," Kaye reassured.

With that, the pair went into action. Kaye tapped a panel on the floor and some unseen mechanism hovered the mouse up a few feet so he was closer to eye level and they could rotate him as needed. Toby felt like he was floating on top of a magnet.

Moving in time to the soft music coming through the P.A. above, the minks shook their nozzles, then began to spraypaint Toby blue. Except, to his amazement, it wasn't paint. Somehow, those glass tubes were filled with fluidized fabric! The nozzles were airbrushes. The minks were drawing new clothes right onto him! "Wow!!" Both their tails wiggled at hearing his appreciation.

They hummed to themselves as they sketched in the lines of his new outfit: Kay doing the vest, Kaye taking the shorts. "Lots of pockets, inside and out," Kay said.

"Always a good idea," Kaye concurred.

Toby found he was rather glad for the paralyzing ray, since he would have been fidgeting enough to cause an earthquake with all the teensy touches from their nimble little fingers. Especially around his tail! It was a huge effort to keep from 'Eep!'ing every few seconds.

"Remaining barefoot, my dear?" Kaye asked him.

"Uh, n-no," Toby gasped out, trying not to show how ticklish he was. "I'm sure along the way there'll be plenty of stuff I don't want to step in."

"Sensible," they said simultaneously.

"What kind of footwear are we thinking, Demi?" Kaye inquired.

"Moccasins, definitely."

"With this ensemble? Sandals, all the way!"

"They'll fall off! You just said 'function over fashion' a moment ago!"

Toby noticed they were inching closer and their volume was going up.

"Gladiator style, you nitwit! With calf straps!"

"They're still not as good for running as moccasins!"

"Sandals, damn it!"

"Moccasins!"

"SANDALS!"

"MOCCASINS!!"

The pair of them pointed their airbrush guns at each other's temples and bared their teeth.

There was a moment of excruciating tension where Toby wondered if they'd both murder each other as simultaneously as they did everything else.

Then both of them blinked and their eyes popped open in epiphany.

"Roman-styled sandals with moccasin soles!!" they exulted.

Their feud ended instantly as they sprang to their machines and began typing up deerskin and leather. A moment later Toby was gnawing the inside of his lip to keep from screaming with laughter as they tickled his feet without mercy. He couldn't quite see what they were doing, but their nozzles were fizzing and pooting up a storm.

After that ordeal, they went back to the vest and shorts for finishing touches: sewing on pockets, adding belt loops for his weapons pouch, plus a few purely fashionable flourishes. Kaye had the idea of adding two vertical lemon-yellow stripes over Toby's shoulders. Toby thought it was a fantastic touch. Just a bit superhero-y.

As he was starting to feel a bit of wiggle in his limbs again, Kaye re-tapped the floor panel to set him back down on his feet. His new sandals felt amazing, like walking on fuzzy butter. Kaye brought over what looked like a hairdryer and pointed it at his vest. "Observe."

She turned it on and Toby felt a beam of focused coldness chill him. The machine did the exact opposite of a hair dryer! But just as the shivers were starting, his vest fluffed up in that spot. It went from a smooth softness, not unlike his pajamas, to the mass and feel of a heavy sweater. "How does it do that?"

"Terrorbunny wool," Kay said. "Amazing stuff. They're rotten little nightmares. Terrified of you if there's only one of them, but in packs they puff up and attack like piranhas. Their fur has a fantastic quality of condensing and expanding."

Toby ran his fingers over the spot where the fur was returning to normal density. "Seems like a lot of stuff is made from nightmares here. Kinda like, 'If life gives you lemons...'."

"...Make everything!" Kaye agreed.

The minks picked up Toby's pouch and bracers and repositioned them for him. Kay cupped his hand to his mouth and shouted towards the back curtain, "Your companion has finished his transfigurement!"

"Not quite," Kaye reminded him.

"Ooh yes, Demi," Kay remembered, and they both leaned in close to sign their latest artwork with a double 'KB', each letter mirrored back to back by the other.

Piffle popped out and squealed at seeing her friend's new look. "Oh, Toby!! You're the tops in that! The camel's pajamas!"

He blushed a bit, but from his reflection in the various mirrors set up around the stage, he did have to agree with her. His new outfit was a deep, gem-like blue. Cargo shorts and a sleeveless, open vest. The yellow stripes on his shoulders color-balanced the tan, crisscross-strapped sandals on his feet. Overall, his new duds looked like a fusion between the present day and a few centuries prior. And he looked faster now. Like a speedy little courier. 

Piffle buzzed around him, mumbling compliments and brushing her fingers over the fabric. Toby blushed more. The Burdocks were always happy to see their work being appreciated, but also eager to get back to creating more. "Your turn now, dear buggy beauty," Kay said, taking Piffle's hand. Both of them giggled.

"Thank you so much," Toby said to K&K as he walked towards the back.

"You're very welcome!" said Kaye.

"Tips are always appreciated!" said Kay.

"Let me know how the trial ended!" said Piffle.

Toby had no idea what she meant by that. He ducked behind the blue curtain and plopped into one of the big armchairs.

***

The TV was on. Toby got settled, then looked up to see a young vixen reporting live from elsewhere in the city. She had a grey dress with big shoulders. Everything about her expression, mannerisms, and speech suggested she was super unhappy about having been de-aged by her not-very-long-ago arrival in Phobiopolis, and was trying very hard to be taken seriously as an adult despite looking nine-ish.

"-apprehended just a moment ago, which will hopefully bring relief to Bigwheel Fifteen's many business owners. I'm Jamais Dreamsicle with your Channel 909 Mid-Morning Minute. Tune in tonight at 6 for Jeff's recipes, evening traffic, and our special report on the pesticulo virus: why it's difficult to catch, difficult to spread, and altogether not something most of us have to worry about."

Toby blinked. He'd sat in bed and watched lots of local news back in his other life, and usually their reports on scary new diseases tended to have the opposite message.

After Jamais, there was a handful of commercials. Surprisingly normal stuff for a city like Ectopia Cordis. A local hang-glider dealership, a chicken restaurant, a pain pill, a movie trailer.

'A movie? Huh. I haven't been to a theater in years. That might be something interesting to do later if we have time.'

Then a great big logo slammed onto the screen: LUXY'S COURT.

'So that's what Piffle meant.'

The camera swung in across a hooting, bouncing audience that looked more like the crowd at a rock concert than a trial. Standing room only. They were waving lighters and toe tags back and forth, screaming when the camera lens passed overhead.

After this quick swoop, the focus went to a pear-shaped hype man in a black suit with shades, daggers piercing both lenses (Toby hoped that was a special effect). The prairie dog was clutching his microphone like it was his life. "ALLLRIIIIGHT! We're BACKladiesandgentlemen! Back with rrrround TWO of this heinous, shamous, intravenous trial! An unspeakable crime has been committed here, folks. Or has it? That IS the question our main man is here to determine!

"You've heard testimony from our plaintiff-" The camera panned up to the courtroom itself: an actual basketball court retrofitted with desks and podiums and such. There was a box of onlookers who were behaving themselves much better than the screaming flock below. Stationed around the room were several curvy plastic mannequins with TV sets for heads. They creeped Toby out and he had no idea what they were there for. On each side of the midcourt line were two tables. Sitting on one side was the plaintiff, an extremely-nervous rabbit woman. She looked relatively normal for Phobiopolis standards, besides a third ear and a somewhat rattish muzzle. She also looked on the verge of a nervous collapse.

"Now it's time for the defendant to have his say!" the hype man continued, and the camera switched to the other table. Seated there was a rather large buffalo in a guardsman-type uniform, with metal armor that somehow simultaneously appeared to be cloth. As opposed to the rabbit woman, he looked supremely confident and unconcerned, arms crossed over his barrel chest.

"Take it away, Luxy! Court is back in SESSHAOWN!!!" the prairie dog exploded.

From behind the judge's podium, Luxy Bleeder rotated into view, swinging on one foot like a door hinge.

To say he was not dressed like a typical judge would be an understatement. The charismatic 'coon was sporting tight black jeans with silver rivets, a white t-shirt so full of holes it looked like swiss cheese, and one sock. He chewed on the unlit cigarette between his lips before popping it in his mouth and swallowing.

Toby's eyes were glued to the raccoon's nonchalant, undulating, reptilian walk. Toby also wondered, if this guy was the mayor, how did he find time to both run the city and a courtroom?

Luxy ambled over to the defendant's table. It was impossible to tell from his expression whether he was deep in thought or as vacant as the empty air. He sat on the edge of the hardwood and tipped his head upside-downedly towards the buffalo.

His slender muzzle opened and, "Hi, cuz," fell out.

"Good morning, sir," came the prompt reply.

Luxy's tone was lazily unconcerned. Possibly stoned. "For the record, your name is Gibraltar E. Powell, kerrect?"

"F. Powell, sir," the buffalo immediately corrected. "F for Fredric."

Luxy nodded absently. He repositioned himself on the table: braced upright with both hands. "And you've been with the citywatch for... oh hell... seven years?"

"SevenTEEN!" came the proud correction.

"Thassright, thassright. All these details, y'know? Like flying bugs around my cereal. Anyway! You're here because SHE-" Luxy stabbed a finger in the general direction of the plaintiff, who visibly startled, "-has made the accusation that on the evening of the 26th of somedamnmonth, after arresting her under false pretenses, you did willingly and quite rudely rape the living shit out of her in an un-monitored area of your police precinct. Is any of this true?"

The onlookers behind them seemed uncomfortable at Luxy's blunt language. Toby felt the same.

Mr. Powell smiled politely, completely unruffled. "Not a word of it. As I have stated before and continue to state, our department has not once had dealings with Mrs. Nevarez. Otherwise, there would be paperwork showing otherwise. I personally saw to turning over all relevant documents, and they clearly show no record of her name, photo, anything of the sort."

"Mmmyes," Luxy said, looking up at the ceiling. "I had my crew look through those. So you're saying your department hasn't had any dealings with her. How about you? Personally-like? Ever encountered Mrs. Nevarez? Met her on the street? Looked up her skirt?"

"Nothing of the sort!" Gibraltar said sternly. "Right here in this room is the first time I've laid eyes on her."

"Good to hear. And of course, I can have your assurance that, as a proud member of this city's elite protectors for seven yea-"

"Seventeen."

Luxy smiled patiently. "Seventeen, yes. -that you have never engaged in such morally horrific acts as the plaintiff is accusing you of?"

The buffalo actually laughed. "My complete assurance, sir. We did have a woman in that night who looked a bit like her. But without the, uh..." He mimed a third ear over his head.

Luxy nodded, understanding.

"Brought in on suspicion of breaking and entering. But we cleared her quick enough and sent her home. Not the same footprint as our suspect's."

"Too big or too small?" Luxy interjected.

"Too big, actually."

"Fas-cin-a-ting," the raccoon drawled. He leaned back until he was actually lying down across the table. He tucked his arms behind his head to rest his neck on. "Anyway, yes, I seem to remember that was in your records as well. Now, it would please the court if you wouldn't mind speculating on why, if what Mrs. Nevarez claims is untrue, she would have made such a scurrilous accusation?"

At the edge of the frame, the rabbit woman could be seen to visibly sob.

Toby frowned. Wasn't that hearsay, or something like that? Why was no one objecting? It was then that he realized there were no lawyers in the court. No jury either. There was a growing tension in his belly as he realized the entire case was in the hands of this one reclining raccoon.

Gibraltar shrugged and snorted. "Can't say. People lie about all sorts of things. I forgive her, I mean, since I can't think of any reason why it'd be personal. Hell, maybe she's trying to manipulate her boyfriend. Or get attention. Who knows?"

Luxy nodded. "True, true." His eyes and teeth seemed to flash. "Good god! Don't you just love that word, scurrilous? Scurrilous! Scurrrrrrilous..." He played with it in his mouth like a kitten with a ball of yarn.

The rest of the court's attendees had gone silent. There was an unpleasant tension in the room. A silence that was growing louder.

Like a jack-in-the-box, Luxy suddenly sprung himself vertical, pointing in the air. "I've seen this before, you know! Oh, sure, you saw me talk to her gently just a moment ago, and she cried in all the right places. But I could tell. You can smell a liar, can't you? Smell it on their breath? On the way they twitch at certain words?"

The buffalo nodded. "Absolutely, sir!"

Luxy began circling the defendant's table. "It boils yer blood, don'it? To think of a man who's selflessly devoted seventeen- I remembered this time- years to this city's welfare, risking his life for the greater good, and his reward for it is this!? To be dragged before me under false charges, his good name dunked in the dirt by a scurrilous accusation!? There's that word again!!"

Gibraltar nodded so hard his head looked like it might fall off.

Luxy's tone was rising in volume and intensity. "It boggles the mind and sickens the guts! No good deed goes unpunished, eh? Here's a man just trying to do his job in this thankless city when this, this, this DISSIMULATOR, this PREVARICATOR, jumbles up his life with her see-through sob story!!"

Gibraltar's eyes were shining with adulation for his commander in chief.

Mrs. Nevarez's eyes reflected horrified despair.

Luxy swung around and poured himself onto the buffalo's shoulder, putting an arm around him and poking his finger at the man's lapel to emphasize his syllables. "You see it all the time, don't you? Lies passing through those ruby lips? Lies. And why? We both know why, don't we? To cover up missssssdeeeeds. Scandals. Their own wanton ways. Why else would they make up such salacious stories, with such dark details? It comes from within their own imaginations!"

Toby's jaw was hanging open. 'He's a monster...' was all he could think.

Gibraltar's expression one of stunned camaraderie. "You know!" he breathed. "You know too!"

A reassuring pat-pat on the head. "I do indeed. Now let me tell you a far more realistic story of that night's events, shall I? Mrs. Whatshername is dissatisfied at home. Her partner's not ful-FILL-ing her needs, if you acquire my drift. More is what she needs. So, whether then or later, she acquires the knowledge that another certain furson has been detained in your department that selfsame night. Oho, an alibi begins to form! She can go whoring herself out around town and have the big mean copper to blame for it in the morning!"

Several gasps from the onlookers. The camera briefly showed Mrs. Nevarez with her face in her hands, weeping.

Teeth gleaming, Luxy went on, his every word oozing like oil from his lips. "She wants some no-strings fun, isn't that right? So she heads out on the prowl. Face all painted up, body poured into a little red dress-"

"A white one, actually."

"Right, thanks. A little white dress. And she goes down to the lower districts, the shady places, searching out that big hot sausage that will provide what her boyfriend cannot. The little vamp GETS her heart's desire that night. And the next day, there she is on my doorstep, pouring on the crocodile tears, and fabricating an elaborate web about her harassment at the hands of a protector-turned-menace. A citywatch guard who bent her over a table in a bare-bulbed room and took whatever he wanted from her. A citywatch guard who has in reality never seen her before in his life, and therefore could not possibly know the color of the dress she was wearing."

Luxy finished, and the light in Gibraltar's eyes died.

Toby's jaw dropped.

Luxy Bleeder metamorphosed. He peeled himself off Mr. Powell's shoulders and stiffly distanced himself to the front of the table. He seemed to grow in height until he loomed down over the defendant, the eyes in his dark fur mask glowing white with hatred. "Thank you so, so kindly, for being so godawfully stupid," he whispered.

The buffalo's mouth fell open to speak.

Luxy's hand shot out to shut it. In his paw was an open safety pin, the sharp part pushing up into the man's bottom lip.

"Need I button this up for you?"

Mr. Powell's eyes said, 'No, no, no!!'

The raccoon's new demeanor could not have been colder. It could have frozen lava. "I think you've said enough for now. I think it's time to listen. How you've lasted seventeen years, I can't fathom. I'd like to hope you started clean and became corrupted over the years, because the thought of a parasite like you hiding amongst the protectors of my city makes me sick enough to vomit down your collar. Rest assured though, my behind-the-scenes crew is investigating every case you've ever handled, every form you've ever filed, every toilet you've ever shat in. For the sake of your soul, you had better hope this is your first offense."

Luxy looked up. "Girls! Assistance please?"

The mannequins came to life. Moving fast and slick, two of the TV-headed artificial women appeared on either side of Mr. Powell and held him in place. Two thin fiberglass hands clamped over his mouth. They must have possessed incredible strength, because it looked like they required barely any effort to keep the burly buffalo planted in his seat and silent despite his thrashing.

"My crew investigated your precinct. We found the unmonitored room. That alone is a very big no-no, because cameras keep cops honest. Your sergeant will be hearing words from me very soon. But, as per this case, that evidence alone was not enough to find you guilty. I needed certainty. I needed to hear it from your own lllllips. And yes, I remember you well. I remember everything. I remember your annoying little habit of butting in to offer corrections. 'Can I use that?' I thought to myself. 'Yes, yes, I believe I can.'"

A thin, venomous smile creeped across Luxy's lips. "I pronounce you guilty, you vermin. You cannot possibly know how much I want to kill you, Mr. Gibraltar E. Powell. But that's too good for you. Insteaddies, I think about two hundred days in The Pipe will do you a world of good."

At the mention of The Pipe, the buffalo's struggles increased dramatically. His scream was loud enough to make it past the mannequins' hands, and he kicked the chair and table nearly to pieces trying to make a break for it. But it made no difference. Their grip on him might as well have been a steel shackle.

"Take him away, my lovelies!" Luxy commanded them. Their faces changed from static to little cartoon hearts at being given orders from their master. They lifted the squirming, shrieking buffalo up with ease and began walking, steps perfectly synchronized, towards the edge of the court.

In Gibraltar's eyes, Toby saw a bottomless depth of terror. The mouse had no idea what in the hell The Pipe was, but knew he never, ever wanted to find out.

Luxy grinned towards his onlookers and took a moment to bask in the cheers, applause and general screaming that had erupted after the verdict. His expression said, 'Did you really think I'd gone off the deep end like that? Tut tut!'

He sashayed over to the plaintiff's table. Mrs. Nevarez looked shaken to the core. "You're free to go home now, of course. Counseling will be made freely available at your immediate request. The court, myself, and the entire city of Ectopia Cordis thanks you for doing your civic duty and helping to remove that pustulent scab from our streets."

She reached out a trembling hand to very weakly shake his offered paw. Her eyes were glued to the empty defendant's chair. "You didn't have to say such mean things about me."

Luxy went rigid. His expression flattened. His smile fell.

Mrs. Nevarez looked up at him, suddenly terrified at having offended the second most powerful man in all Phobiopolis.

Luxy's mouth opened, but he couldn't find words to speak. He gesticulated wildly, trying to find a way to convey, 'Did you not SEE what I just did there!?' Until finally he rolled his eyes, said, "Talk about ungrateful!" and stamped off in a minor tantrum.

Toby had absolutely no idea how to feel about this man now. Obviously crazy, but also perhaps a genius.

Then, on his way out of the courtroom, Luxy suddenly stopped. The camera was to his back. The slender raccoon put a finger to his muzzle in a moment's thought before deciding.

The prairie dog hype man was just leaning into his mic and taking a deep breath to announce court adjourned when Luxy came whooshing back into the room. Several people who were on the verge of getting up out of their seats to go home or to the bathroom paused. Mrs. Nevarez, who was already at the exit door, had a gut feeling that she didn't want to be here for whatever was coming next, and bolted.

Four of the TV-headed plastic girls came over to stand beside their boss as he positioned himself in the center of the room, addressing the gallery. A mad grin was on Luxy's muzzle.

"Changed my mind, everybody!"

He tapped his wrist. "In two minutes I gotta be somewhere else. Until then, anyone who manages to kill me gets a million Luxybux! En garde!"

There was a fraction of a moment of bewilderment at this proclamation, which Luxy took full advantage of.

His wiry arms reached up and back to scoop off the heads of his two closest assistants. TV sets popped off shapely necks, revealing the hilts of twin daggers. In a perfect bowling motion, Luxy swung the two televisions in an arc and hurled them towards the gallery. Their screens changed to an image which Toby only saw for a heartbeat: a bouquet of hand grenades.

The explosion was extraordinary.

Splinters of wooden banisters and benches flew in a thousand different directions, tearing through flesh with the ease of popping soap bubbles. Dust and screams choked the air.

Luxy giggled. His eyes bulged with joy at the destruction: a boy at play. Without looking back, he plucked the daggers from his assistants' throats and brought them down in a flawless mirrored motion, into the upper thighs of the two other mannequins. The knives caused each leg to crack open. As each TV-girl began to fall sideways, Luxy deftly tucked the daggers into his belt and whipped his hands back out to pluck, like a magician's trick, two pump-action shotguns from the hollows inside each mannequin's leg. All of this took mere seconds. It took only the smallest fragment of time longer for Luxy to swing both guns out in an arc and blast away the handful of gallery survivors who'd managed to start scrambling towards him.

The images flickered over Toby's unbelieving albino eyes. Luxy still hadn't moved a step from the center of the room and had killed dozens in less time than it takes most people to yawn. The hype man was leaping up and down, jabbering into his microphone, giving a frenetic play-by-play of events, but Toby heard none of it. He was fixated on seeing.

The expression on Luxy Bleeder's face was unfathomable. A kind of warm, cheerful glow. Blood and shrapnel surrounded him, and he looked like he was decorating a Christmas tree. His delight only grew when he saw the tidal wave of audience members trying to claw their way up onto the courtroom floor. Laughing merrily, the raccoon peppered their grasping hands with buckshot, sending them screaming to the pit below.

In the brief moment before the crowd was upon him, Luxy handed the guns to his two standing assistants and snapped off one's free arm. He waited until just the right moment, then swung it like a major leaguer at the skull of the closest audience member, who was running full-tilt at him with claws extended. The man's forehead came off in a hockey-puck-like chunk and sailed over the crowd. Luxy pivoted and his next swing collapsed someone's eye socket.

The crowd of hundreds swarmed towards him and Luxy began to have fun. He moved with a fluid grace, seeming to exist in slow motion. As if he were listening to a ballet on headphones, drowning out everything else. His hands were like darting, swooping birds. Every move was improvised on the spot and yet so perfect it appeared choreographed. He used everything as a weapon. Everything. Buckshot tore away dozens of faces and the rifles themselves were employed as bludgeons just as many times. Luxy pirouetted with his knives, slicing through fingers like water. At every spare moment, he dismantled his assistants some more, revealing a mind-boggling array of hardware hidden inside each one. Most effective of all his weapons though were the ones the crowd had brought. Every bullet meant for him went into someone else. Every knife jab was diverted or ducked under, then utilized to open another's pelt. Luxy never moved more than a few feet from his original spot. Most times his feet stayed planted and he simply gyrated his arms and torso to wherever they needed to be. This man was a maestro of murder. A grandmaster. This was not magic he was performing, it was a skill honed from ungodly amounts of practice.

The calm, happy smile on his face persisted as he spilled gallons of blood and stopped countless hearts. It was a look of pure, joyful satisfaction, from someone who is doing what they were born to do, and seeing it appreciated.

But the most surreal element of it all was how the faces of the crowd mirrored his. Sure, some of them looked maddened with rage. But most were grinning the same grin as Luxy. This was not a massacre, it was sport. A friendly competition. They knew they had no hope against their beloved town mayor, but they tried anyway. They gave it their all. And they fell in squirming heaps at his feet with awe and laughter etched onto their dead faces.

Luxy Bleeder, king of Ectopia Cordis, loved his citizens. This was him showing his love. A woman in the horde drew a socket wrench from her purse, intending to cleave his skull down the middle. He limboed beneath it, caught her arm like a dance partner, and embedded the wrench in the sinus cavities of the fellow with the revolver behind him. That man's hand constricted, sending a bullet into the woman's intestines. She was almost-instantly trampled to a stain by the feet of the crowd. Her last thoughts (for the moment) were: 'I've never been so close to him before!'

It took Toby a few moments to realize that a mink was jostling his shoulder, trying to tell him that Piffle's outfit was finished.

*****

Part THIRTY-THREE

Try to imagine the most outrageously girly safari outfit you possibly can. Go on! Try! It almost certainly cannot compare to what Piffle was standing center stage wearing. Both Kaye and Kay were red-faced from tittering the entire time they'd been creating it.

Piffle struck a fashion pose. "So, Toby, mind tearin' your eyes off that TV long enough to throw a gander my way?"

The cartoonishly-impossible amounts of violence he'd just witnessed still lingered in Toby's brain, so it took some effort to push it out of the way and concentrate on making visual sense of this explosion of pinkness before him.

Strawberry milkshake was the dominant color, with occasional highlights of kitten's ear and candy fuchsia. There was a khaki-style jacket and skirt, popping with pockets and decorative ruffles. A belt. Assorted shiny buttons. Fringey shoulder epaulets. Massive waffle-stomper boots with bows on the toes. Plus a pith helmet with holes for Piffle's antennae, a jellybean-print hatband, and a clear dome up top which her ponytail poked through (and which Toby didn't remember her having before now).

This visual had done the impossible: driving Luxy's Court right out of Toby's mind. Which was good because Toby was perfectly happy blotting that massacre out, thankyouverymuch. He blinked at all the shiny fluffiness before him. "It... looks ridiculous," he said without thinking, and immediately clapped his hands over his mouth.

Piffle beamed. "Oh good! Exactly what I was going for! I figure, I'm probly only gonna get one chance to have my very own custom-made safari outfit, so why not let let loose my wildest dreams?" She let her fingers roam all over the jangly, fluffy decorations, wiggling in joy.

"It does suit you," Toby was able to say truthfully. "Seems kinda... noticeable though. Junella is going to throw a hissy fit."

Piffle nodded like she'd planned for that all along. "I'll just tell her, I'm the bait! Anytime you guys run into trouble, I'll fly out and be real distracting. 'C'mon, you big dum nightmare! Eat me up! Do all sortsa terrible stuff to me, and don't notice my friends over there who're sneaking up to bump you off!'" She giggled into her paws.

"But what if something catches you for real?"

She flexed a bicep. "I'm tuff. I can take it."

Given her fortitude in mentally recovering from the lairs of both the octospider and Dr. Dacryphilia, Toby figured she was right. "Allright. You wanna go find her 'n Zinc?"

"Yup. And you can show off your new look too. But first..." The happy hamsterfly tossed herself at both Burdocks and crushed them in a hug. "Thankyouthankyouthankyouthankyou! I love everything you made for me! Even if it gets all ripped up and torn to bits on the road, I'll remember it forever and recommend you to all my friends!"

The minks were bowled over (nearly literally) by such praise and hugged her back while wishing her luck in her journey. Toby noticed Piffle's skirt had a great big magenta bow over her tail.

***

Junella and Zinc were nowhere to be found in the automotive department, but a helpful clerk told them the duo had gone downstairs to the garage. Toby wondered how the heck you could have a basement floor in a building that was resting on the spoke of a perpetually-moving wheel. The answer was not as bad as eating at The Glass Triangle, but still pretty bad.

The garage section of Rippingbean & Woofingbutter's hung below the aboveground section, dangling beneath the massive spoke like the gondola of a zeppelin. The spoke itself was so thick, RB&WB had carved out the inside for warehouse space, making the garage actually a sub-basement. When Toby and Piffle emerged from their elevator ride, Toby took one look through the ten-foot-high windows and barely kept himself from falling to his knees and hugging the floor for dear life. Standing on the 'ground' of any given Bigwheel does not give a sense of how high up the next one is. All those circling, circus-colored lights below made Toby feel like he'd eaten too much Halloween candy.

Thankfully, Junella, Zinc and the car were easy to find. The Fearsleigher was up on a hydraulic lift with several dozen more copies of the man from the auto department attending to it. George, however, was conspicuously absent.

At the rustle of Piffle's approach, Junella's head turned. Her expression stayed neutral, but her eyebrows went up.

Piffle beamed and posed for her.

"You just volunteered yourself for bait duty," the skunk said bluntly.

Piffle bounced like a ping pong ball. "Oh good! Then we're in agreement!"

Junella reached across to grab her own wrist to keep from replying. Her expression said to herself, 'Stay calm and just roll with it.'

"Hey hey, that's kooky with a capital K!" Zinc said when he saw the safari outfit.

Piffle clapped her paws and twirled. "Glad you like it! Didn't they do a swell job?"

The canine gently brushed his right wrench over her sleeve, feeling the material. "Mmm, soft." He looked over her shoulder to Toby. "Looks like you got all duded up too, kemosabe. Not what I expected you to come back wearin', but nice threads nonetheless."

Junella tilted her head at Toby's outfit. "I'm surprised you didn't choose a suit of armor," she teased.

He chuckled and ran his hands over the vest. "Armor's not so good for fleeing and cowering."

She laughed. "'Least you're honest about it."

Toby noticed a whiteboard behind them with a sketched Fearsleigher and scribbled ideas for improvements. He tried to peek past Junella and Zinc's shoulders, but they closed ranks around it, grinning.

"That's for us to know and you to find out, squirt," Junella tinkled.

"That's okay. You guys built it in the first place, I trust you know what you're doing. Where's George though?"

The skunk and mutt exchanged a glance. "Ditto."

Zinc clapped his wrenches (startling several people around them), and did the closest equivalent to rubbing his hands together in a 'let's get down to business' way. "Since we're all here now, how 'bout we make some quick plans? I'm thinking, first we go take care of the bill together. That'll still leave the cost of tweakin' the sled, but Juney 'n I can bang that out. Afterwards, someone's gotta babysit the car until it's done cookin', but until then, you two might as well go kill a few hours amusing yourselves."

Toby glanced at Piffle. She did not seem to mind at all the thought of spending a while alone with him. "Um, I'd assumed we'd all be together."

Piffle's smile drooped a little.

Toby noticed and tried to reassure her. "It's not that! Just..." He looked back to Zinc & June. "This is a huge city, and you guys are sposto be my bodyguards, and..."

Zinc nodded. "Ah. I get it. Jitters. Don't worry, Sunny Jim, this particular Bigwheel's safe as milk. Well, comparatively. Wherever high-class cats congregate, the surroundings are a little nicer, dig?"

Toby shrugged, still a bit nervous.

Junella rolled her eyes. "If you're THAT scared, we'll be right here. You can wait with us."

Toby involuntarily glanced towards the window and felt a wave of quease. "No thanks!"

"Figgered." She reached out to put a small azure scarab in Toby's pocket. "This'll beep when we're done and ready. We'll all meet back up at the hotel. You copy?" Toby nodded.

Zinc sidled up to Junella. Wincing like he was about to borrow money, he poked her shoulder. "Um, I was meaning to talk to you about that, babe. This 'we' business."

A 'What?' look.

He shuffled his feet. "I, uh, was thinkin' of going topside and takin' a stroll to Millie's place. I mean, we're in town... I don't get this opportunity very often..."

"What's Millie's place?" Piffle asked, curious if it might be somewhere she and Toby could visit too.

Picking up on that, Zinc laughed nervously. "Ha ha! Millie's is a 'who' actually. Old flame of mine. We knocked around a bit back when I lived here. Nothin' serious, but we like each other's company. Whenever I pass through, we hook up again, spend a pleasant afternoon catching up on old times and trying to destroy her bedroom." He smiled nostalgically.

Piffle got quiet. She pursed her lips.

Zinc reminisced further, oblivious to the hamster. "Oh, she's a dynamite chick. Lives in a bad neighborhood on Bigwheel 14, but she gets by." He tried to be a bit gentle to Toby's naive ears. "She's 'self-employed', you see. Selling, uh, 'goods and services'. Does a fair bit 'a business too. Not too many people stupid enough to give a hard time to a half-squirrel/half-alligator."

Toby's eyebrows went up.

Zinc grinned. "She'll scare the pants off ya at first sight, but wotta hunka woman! Only problem is," he held his hands about a foot apart, "that mouth of hers can make a man feel mighty inadequate."

Toby had no idea what he meant by that.

Junella was not exactly thrilled to be left on her own with the car while the others had fun, but she sighed like she'd fully expected this. She remembered Millie. Zinc fidgeted in place like a little boy asking his mom's permission to sleep over at a friend's house. The skunk gave him a look. "I don't own you. Get your ass outta here if you want to."

"Hot dog!" Zinc practically started panting. "Then let's scoot upstairs and get the bill over with now! My feet are on fire!" He started heading for the elevator.

Piffle said nothing, and her face was blank, but she reached over to Toby and held his hand. He wasn't sure why.

***

The garage sent a wire upstairs to the main register, where two stuffy conjoined pandas tallied everything up. Their four paws pranced about back and forth over dual keyboards. Toby, Piffle, Junella and Zinc all stood in trembling anticipation before the white marble counter, waiting to see what the total would be.

One half of the pandas held up a scanner that sent a red beam over everything piled up in their carts, plus Piffle and Toby's new clothes, plus the Fearsleigher's alterations. Zinc spoke up to mention that Toby's pouch of weaponry was from another store, thus not part of their total. This got him got twin sneers of, 'Do we look like idiots, sir?'

When all of their purchases had been combined and the final number flashed, even Piffle looked worried. Junella paled to a thin grey. Zinc, despite having dealt with a humongous bill at Dorster's, was nevertheless in disbelief at just how much he'd miscalculated their goods. 'Serves me right for doin' the math in my head.'

For this, the pandas would need The Big Willwell. They wheeled out a royal purple box the size of a refrigerator. The bill was presented in gold-lit digits above the familiar dial.

When other customers started noticing the number, some of them actually stopped shopping to come over and stare at it.

"Sorry 'bout that," Junella squeaked to Piffle.

"We might have gotten carried away," Zinc acknowledged.

"So, how much are we going to have to put back, mmm?" the pandas asked with one voice.

Piffle composed herself. She'd pledged she would do this, and by golly she was gonna do it! "None of it!" she proudly declared. Joining hands with Toby and Junella, she stared at the red line and started to shove.

To the pandas' astonishment, it actually moved.

Impressed with Piffle's resolve, Junella added her own willpower to the push. She grabbed Zinc's wrench and soon he was cramming his mental strength into the big purple box too. Toby didn't think he had any hope of contributing, but a squeeze from Piffle convinced him to try his hardest anyway.

The battle which then ensued at the main checkout of Rippingbean & Woofingbutter's was re-told for years by the shoppers that had been there to witness it (and several who hadn't). Here was a bill that, normally, only another business buying in bulk could have racked up, and four grunting, sweating, straining weirdos were trying to conquer the whole damn thing themselves. The pandas were incredulous. The other customers buzzed and hummed amongst themselves. Toby was writhing and grimacing and not having the faintest idea if he was contributing anything. Junella's glare was a laser that could have cut the moon in half. Zinc was unconsciously drooling on the floor, his focus so fixed on the willwell and nothing else.

But Piffle looked like she was ascending to a higher plane. Her ruby eyes shone with determination. Her mouth was set in a calm smile. She looked like a monk about to attain nirvana. With the help of her friends to strengthen her already-extraordinary talent, that red needle was zooming like a runaway tricycle towards its finish line. It was nowhere near as speedy as when she'd paid off the hotel bill, but it was fast enough. Droplets of sweat beaded on her forehead fur, but she felt like her internal gas tank was nowhere near empty.

By now a crowd of dozens had gathered around them. Some were clapping in rhythm. Even RB&WB themselves passed by. "Maargnishifennt!!" cried the fox.

Toby was on the verge of a migraine. Junella's hand had partially melted in Zinc's grip. Spots were dancing in front of the canine's eyes. Piffle heard nothing, saw nothing else in the world but that little red line.

And when it hit home and the big box 'ding'ed, all four of them fell over backwards. Applause burst from the crowd like fireworks.

Struggling to her feet, Junella gave the pandas a derisive grin for not believing, looked towards the willwell, and added a nickel for their tip.

***

Afterwards, the thought of sitting down for two hours sounded pretty good to Toby.

Junella checked first to make sure he still had their pager-scarab, then thanked him and Piffle both for their help. Reluctantly, she even shook Piffle's hand. This resulted in a sudden hug-pounce, which made the skunk growl a bit.

Back out on the street, Toby suggested his movie idea and Piffle said taking in a flick sounded just ducky. She shot up in the air like a bottle rocket, scouted around, then descended and happily announced there was a theater just a few blocks away. Together they braved the moving sidewalks and let the high-speed carpet whisk them to their destination.

They passed under another Luxy Sez billboard:

	I'D RATHER BE SHOT IN THE GUT THAN STABBED IN THE BACK.

Toby wasn't sure he understood that one.

The Gwynplaine Bijou was trying its heart out to evoke Hollywood's golden age. Lights and ornamental architecture encrusted the place, making it look a bit like a pirate's treasure chest covered in bioluminescent barnacles. Since making movies is not exactly easy in Phobiopolis, Toby was not overwhelmed at the marquee. Just three films to choose from. One was a romantic comedy about two furs who'd been heavily cybernetically altered. Another seemed to be a slasher film for kids (Toby's brain boggled). Last was a mystery thriller set on Earth. That fascinated Toby, as he realized that, here, that would be as difficult to film as setting a story on Mars.

Piffle had been more spaced-out than normal on the glide over, and had to be snapped back to reality when Toby asked if she was okay with his choice. It was fine, she said. She dared him to handle the tickets as she tossed him a small smile and pranced towards the snacks. Put on the spot, Toby thought he did fairly well, as the volume of the grumbling patrons in line behind him wasn't too loud by the time he willed the well.

Since there were so few films available at any given time, most Phobiopolan theaters compensated by showing lots of reruns or having lots of showtimes. The Gwynplaine chose the latter, and Toby was happily surprised to find that Erased Against Time was starting in just twelve minutes. Tickets in hand, he went to find Piffle. The interior of the theater was just as bright and cluttered as the outside, making the snack bar a little difficult to locate amongst all the plastic plants and giant advertising props. Piffle's antennae and overall pinkness helped. She was loading up on popcorn and taffy. Toby decided to be bold and request a stick of bloodbacon (Zinc had gotten him curious about it). His first bite made his face constrict at how salty it was, but his mouth got used to it soon enough. Overall verdict: not terrible.

They had plenty of time to locate the theater and their seats. Toby was looking at all the weird posters and didn't notice that Piffle had gotten quiet again. Inside Theater 4 there were ushers cleaning up the mess from the last showing's patrons and empty seats in abundance. The usher's brooms were actually ravenous little amphibian-looking creatures on sticks, which would vacuum up any spilled soda, popcorn or wrappers they came across.

Piffle requested the two seats in the back directly under the projector's booth, saying that offered the best view. She got herself and her outfit squeezed in comfortably enough and piled her snacks on the seat beside her. Toby, being so twiglike, found the seats rather roomy.

They'd arrived before the previews started, so the only thing on screen now was a kaleidoscope of colored oil drops sliding around. 'Kinda nice,' Toby thought as he took small nibbles from his bloodbacon. He turned his head and noticed that Piffle looked fidgety. She kept smoothing out her skirt in front, lips set in a frown.

"Something on your mind?"

She looked up at him, then back at her lap. Then she tapped her fingertips together pensively. Her mouth kept trying to form words and she kept stopping herself.

Finally though, she let it out. "Toby, would it break your heart too terribly if I didn't love you?"

He almost wished for a mouthful of soda that he could have properly spat all over the place. "WHAAT!?"

Several ushers and patrons turned around.

Piffle jumped in alarm. "Oh NO, Toby! I didn't mean it to sound like that! I didn't mean 'not love you at all'!" She whimpered and wrung her hands together, furious with herself for upsetting him. "Oh sniff it!" she swore. "Dirty shoes!"

Toby had less than no idea what was going on. "Piffle, uh..." He put a paw on her shoulder. The ruffles crinkled.

"I'm all mixed-up, Toby. Let me start again?"

"Please do. I'm totally lost here."

She fiddled with her skirt hem some more. "It's all about Zinc, really. Y'see, I... I think..." Her cheeks were getting redder. "I think maybe I might sorta have a teensy little crush on him." She looked quickly back at Toby, as if to ask, '...If that's okay with you?'

He blinked blankly. "I guess that's not unexpected. He is sorta handsome. In an Erector set kinda way," he kidded.

A smile finally bloomed on Piffle's face and she snickered into her paws. She sighed in utter relief. "Chee Toby, I was really makin' myself worried there!"

He thought he finally got it. "That I'd be jealous?"

Vigorous nodding. "Uh-huh! See, I'd thought that since, y'know, I do like to flirt with both of you- even though I'm like that with everyone just 'cause it's fun- it occurred to me that maybe you might've thought you 'n me were an item. Since we are kind of on an adventure, and the hero usually gets the pretty girl at the end of an adventure."

He chortled. "I'm amused you think I'm the hero. Heck, I'm more like the macguffin that Junella 'n Zinc have to drag around."

Piffle wasn't sure what that term meant, but gave Toby a playful shoulder-shove. "Don't be so hard on yourself! And I hope you understand what I was worrying about."

"I think so. That I'd be assuming you and I'd end up together, and I'd be angry at finding out you like Zinc."

"I'm glad you're taking this so well. It's a big weight off my wings."

"I guess it's just not that big of a deal to me." He shrugged a little. "...Not that you're not worth being jealous over," he hastily added.

That made her smile for sure.

"It's just..." He looked down at his lap. "You are definitely adorable, let's get that straight. And you make me blush when you hug me."

She beamed gratefully, and squoze his arm.

"But to be honest, I've been too scared and worried and confused all this time to really think about romance. And since my whole goal here is to get home, maybe part of me's been subconsciously trying to keep myself from caring too much about anyone. You, Zinc and Junella, Doll, George... Because I don't want it to hurt so bad when I leave."

She nodded solemnly. "I don't blame you. That makes sense. But still, thank you. I didn't really realize it myself until just now; how I feel about Zinc, I mean. I thought he was cute 'n scruffy from the start, sure, but when I got my new duds I was eager to see what he'd say about them. And he liked them! That made me so happy! But then right away he switches to talking 'bout some other ladybird." She squeezed her popcorn tub. "I felt my heart burst like a gum bubble. Then I got real jealous. I didn't understand why I was feeling so strongly until a lightbulb popped on: 'You like him, ya Dumb Dora!'"

Toby smiled. And felt a bit of relief as well. He actually had been thinking himself that Piffle's affection might have been more than filial, and had worried that he'd be breaking her heart to admit he didn't feel the same. To be completely honest, he still wasn't fully through his 'girls give me the willies' phase. He hadn't spent much time among females (other than his mom and various medical professionals), and they were mostly an enigma to him. Pretty, but confusing. He feared making a fool of himself around them. Though oddly enough, Junella didn't elicit this feeling in him. Probably because she was such a commanding presence, anything he did around her made him feel like a fool regardless. It was at least comfortingly predictable.

He noticed Piffle was lost in her own feelings again, just as he'd been. "Is there anything I can do to help?" he asked.

"Um? Huh... Well, don't tell him anything for now. I wanna be sure first. Like, maybe I'm just momentarily twitterpated. Maybe he doesn't feel the same way. Maybe he has stinky burps."

"Further research necessary?"

She nodded.

"I'm okay with whatever makes you happy, Piffle," he said sincerely.

A smile as warm as melted chocolate was the response. "You're a real swell fella, you know that, Toby deLeon?"

He blushed. "Thank you. I don't often think of myself like that."

At that she just had to hug him. She set her snack down and reached across to give him a gentle squeeze, causing much rustling. Her pith helmet bonked his forehead, making them both giggle.

*****

Part THREE-THIRTY

The film was utterly captivating to Toby, for a variety of reasons. Making it all the more annoying that he was interrupted halfway through it.

Performances were good, direction was solid, though plot-wise it wasn't anything he hadn't seen before in any number of edited-for-TV afternoon dramas. What really grabbed his attention was what they'd gotten right, and wrong, about Earth. It was easy in every scene to sense something 'off' about the location, even though the filmmakers tried their best to compensate. It looked like they'd taken advantage of Phobiopolan locations that mimicked ghost towns, like Scrofula and Phlogiston. He wondered if they had indeed used Junella & Zinc's neighborhood for some of the internal shots, and if so, how had they kept Tinder Fingers at bay? Other scenes had been shot in Coryza. A lot safer, but you could tell right away from the look of the buildings.

Beyond the little background details that gave away the illusion, Toby also couldn't help but notice a fixation all the characters had on death. Specifically, a constant fear of it. Even the main hero guy, all muscly and invulnerable, seemed a lot more afraid of injury than normal. Weirdest of all, the film wasn't calling attention to this quirk, leading Toby to guess that maybe all movies here were like this. Maybe this was a common assumption people here had about those still living. And Toby had to cringingly admit, he'd been like this himself. But was everyone else? He at least had a reason for it. Were other people always so on edge?

Not long after the car chase, but before the protagonist could figure out who'd set up his best friend to take the fall for murdering Mr. Runka, a firefly leapt out of Toby's pocket and started whizzing around his head, whining like a teakettle. He was so startled, it took him a second to realize this was the scarab Junella had given him.

Piffle gawked. "It's not supposed to do that!"

Toby was out of his seat, frantically grasping at the high-speed bullet that would not stop circling or screaming. "How do I turn it off!?"

"Catch it!"

"I can't!"

"You fuggin' better!" someone in the next row snarled.

Piffle made a lunge for the shrieking beetle and its orbit slid a foot away from her. She tried again; same thing.

Quite a few angry-looking people were swiveled around in their seats, glaring.

Toby held up his hands. "We're trying!!"

Piffle grunted and sprang at the scarab, but once again it eluded her fingers. That's when she noticed a pattern. "It keeps moving closer to the exit! It wants us to follow it, Toby!"

"Then let's go before these people string us up!"

There was scattered applause as the mouse and hamster ran after the buzzing annoyance and out of the theater.

The blue scarab kept darting away from them, always circling, but it wasn't difficult to follow. It was leading them straight through the lobby, back to the street. "I'm guessing this is some kind of emergency alert," said Piffle.

"Junella and Zinc really want us back quick. Hopefully, all it means is that the car's done."

Piffle gave him an 'I don't think we'll be that lucky' look.

Toby acknowledged and concurred.

The still-wailing bug led them outside and took on an elliptical orbit, pointing towards the direction they were supposed to head next: down.

"But the store's over that way," Toby argued.

The bug paid no attention. It was just an inanimate object relaying information.

"I think it wants us to go down a level."

"Just great. So where's the nearest elevator?"

"We might not have time for that." Piffle gave her wings a flex. "Toby... do you trust me to fly you?"

He blanched. He looked to her, then the insistent beetle, then towards the edge of Bigwheel 48.

"Only if I can keep my eyes closed the entire time, and you don't mind if I scream."

***

He certainly did.

Toby had hoped that the scarab would just instruct them down to the next Bigwheel below. But life wasn't being so nice to him. It seemed like he and Piffle spent hours descending, and at a velocity that made his bloodbacon want to make a return appearance.

Piffle held Toby's wrists tight in her paws. He dangled below her like she was his parachute. He was impressed at the strength of her grip and told her so several times. The mouse kept his eyes nailed shut the whole way down. Occasional peeks were just a sickening blur of tumbling lights.

Over the whoosh of wind, Piffle shouted periodic updates on their progress. She said the scarab was shining brighter than ever, making sure they could still follow it as it plunged further downwards. Finally though, it took a right turn. Piffle followed, keeping her eyes peeled for signs of where they were headed.

"Looks like Bigwheel 14!" she called out.

Toby had a lucid thought slip past his terror. "Wasn't that where Zinc said he was going?"

"He did," Piffle said, tight-lipped. She wasn't too keen on running into this Millie person, but she altered her trajectory and headed into the city nonetheless.

Now that they were flying level, Toby dared to open his eyes. As Zinc had said, Bigwheel 14 really was a rough neighborhood. Lots of industrial buildings. Factories and storehouses. Sandwiched all around were innumerable tenements, lines of laundry strung between them. The rooftops were a universal dingy brown, but down below in the streets there was a lot more color. Pushcarts, street games, graffiti murals. At least this place seemed to have a thriving community spirit. There were no carpetwalks down here though. Just hard asphalt.

Up ahead, Toby noticed a ghastly little detail. A huge smear of blood on a sidewalk. Like someone had kicked over a red paint can.

His heart sunk as he realized that was exactly where the scarab was leading them.

Getting even closer, Toby could see, even before they landed, that something was seriously wrong.

There was Zinc, slumped on the front steps of a brownstone. Junella stood beside him with a comforting paw on his shoulder. At his other side was a green-and-brown lass who could only be the storied Millie.

Piffle didn't even mind her presence. All she cared about was the fact that Zinc was covered in blood. A deluge of it, from his neck down to his soles.

Blood everywhere. Except for his newly regrown head, and his bare, furred arms.

*****

Part THIRTY-SEVEN

"Where's your wrenches!?" Piffle called out in alarm as she swooped Toby in for a landing. She set her mousefriend on the sidewalk and alighted beside him.

Zinc looked like hell. Not just the fact that he was so slathered in blood he stank of it, but the canine's eyes bulged and swam on their wires. His lips were stuck in a grimace of panic. He was slumped on the stairs with his head in his hands.

"Stolen!!" he screeched.

Toby was completely paralyzed. Still dizzy from the flight, he was having trouble keeping his balance on solid ground, and all that red was making him even more nauseous. But more than that, he had never seen Zinc so distraught. Even when they were being chased by Hell's Bozos, the mutt had still been able to temper his clown-aversion with humor. Right now, he looked like a car crash. Grabbing at the tufts of fur on his cheeks, rocking back and forth. And somehow worse, Junella was quietly comforting him. Not making her usual sharp jokes or bugging him him to snap out of it.

"They're gone! Snatched! Those were my ARMS!! What am I gonna do!? Who the fuck steals a guy's ARMS!? Who would DO that!?"

Junella was giving her panicked partner a shoulder massage. She whispered a soothing tune to him.

Toby finally had time to notice the furson to Zinc's left. She'd obviously been in Phobiopolis awhile, despite seeming the same age as any of them. Millie looked like a squirrel who'd superglued various alligator parts onto herself. Sort of the inverse of Piffle. Her body was mostly normal (apart from a ridged yellow tummy that showed through her tanktop), but her hands, paws and jaws were bumpy, green and gatorish. There was also a path of green that ran up the center of her tail like a skunk's stripe.

"You're his otha friends?" she asked, indicating Toby and Piffle.

Toby managed to nod absently.

Piffle put her personal feelings aside and extended her paw for a shake. Her annoyance that Zinc had been fooling around with this hot tomato was outweighed by her concern for the handsome lug.

Millie accepted the gesture. She tried to shake with Toby too, but the mouse was too busy staring and wondering what the hell had happened here. "I was too late ta stop it. I didn't even get a good look at the pissant what done it. Zinc and I'd just gotten through, uh, 'reacquainting ourselves'..."

Piffle snorted.

"...and I'd left him good and dazed and wobbly. I was feelin' proud of that until I hoid the shot. I blame myself now. He wasn't payin' attention to his surroundings and so he got bushwhacked. His head was blown clear to smithereens like a casaba melon, and the bastid got away with his wrenches before I could run down the stairs ta help."

Toby echoed Zinc. "Who would do something like that?"

Millie shrugged. "It's the neighborhood, sugar. You got somethin' unique? Someone else'll want it."

Toby guessed that her abundance of teeth and claws were a self-chosen, functional alteration.

Thus filled in, Piffle turned to Zinc and rustled the fur on his skinny arms. He didn't even seem to feel it. "Zinc? You okay? Toby and I're here now. We'll help you."

The inconsolable canine stared holes through the sidewalk for a few more seconds until her voice penetrated his black mood. His head snapped towards her. The plethora of pink bewildered him for a few seconds, then he actually chuckled.

Piffle was incredibly happy to see that.

The ridiculousness of her outfit helped to knock him out of his bummer. "Piffle! Whoa, I forgot you bought that stuff today. Zowie. Um... Glad you're here."

Junella gave Piffle a glance of acknowledgment with a touch of resentful gratitude. "Thanks for comin' on the double. Nothing I was doing was getting through."

"You're welcome, Junella," Piffle said, smiling quietly.

Toby felt like a fifth wheel as he hovered around the other four fursons. "I don't know what I can do to help, but I'll offer it. I'm assuming you want to go find whoever did this to you."

Piffle had pulled Zinc out of his funk, and now Toby's words gave him purpose again. His head snapped up, "Goddammit, that's right!" He tried to resolutely smack his fist into his palm, but missed. He was used to the length of his wrenches. He looked down at the bony, branchlike limbs growing out of his shoulders in disgust. "How the hell did I ever get by with these ridic things? I want my arms back! My REAL arms!!"

Junella was glad to see his fire reigniting. "Right with you, partner. We'll find him. I'll hold, you pummel."

"We'll ALL kick his ass till it's nothin' but a wet streak on the asphalt, Juney," he corrected.

Zinc stood up and stepped forward, looking at the gush of drying crimson that had once been his head. "No one totals my dome and gets away with it. And especially no one STEALS MY FUCKING ARMS!!!"

This last part came out in a roar like a supercharged V8 spitting flames. People in the neighborhood who'd been idly observing this little drama now fled for their doorways or gaped in shock.

Seeing nothing but red, Zinc reached into his jeans pockets and dumbfounded the new toys Dorster and Alfonzo had made for him. He realized how lucky he was that he'd put them away earlier. The cups of the silver shoulder mounts popped into re-existence, followed by a foot of chain and a heavy spiked sphere on either side. They clunked in unison against the concrete. "He didn't take these..."

Toby had a feeling he knew what Zinc was about to do with them. He turned away, eyes shut.

The sounds were bad enough without visuals to go with them. Metal piercing flesh. The crack of bone. Zinc's grunts of pain, interspersed with mad giggles as he started getting high off his own adrenaline.

And then the thunder of two bloodpowered engines screaming to life.

Zinc balled his meager flesh-fists and looked down at the two metal ones Dorster had given him. Eyes that had been bulging with helpless anguish were now two glowing jack-o-lanterns. His grinning lips revealed a zipper of teeth. He whispered to his weapons, "You wanna punch somethin', babies? Want daddy to let you out to play? Allright, chillun, let's go play..."

Toby made a mental note to never, ever piss off Zinc.

With a shake of his head, Zinc throttled his engine back to idle. He hopped back up the steps to plant a smooch on Millie's green snout. "Thanks a million, babycakes. You were turbo-charged. And don't worry. If letting my guard down and gettin' blackjacked was the price for what we did today, it's a bargain."

The squirrelgator giggled and gave her off-again-on-again paramour a hug. "You're sweet, Zinc. I'd come along and crack this guy's ass in half witcha, but I'm already late for some client appointments."

"No sweat, doll. No rest for the entrepreneur."

"What I can do though is get on the horn 'n talk to some neighbahs. I'll get a description for ya. In fact, lemme get started on that right now." She gave him a last smooch and turned around to head for her telephone. She couldn't resist a glance back though. "You stop by again next time you're in EC. I'll make up for today. Maybe invite your skinny friend. He looks like he'd be fun to chew on."

At this she tossed a wink at Toby that almost knocked him backwards.

Zinc guffawed and watched her go, her tail slinking back and forth with every step. He turned back to the matter at hand, too set in his goal to notice Piffle's pout.

The hamsterfly decided to set her feelings aside for the moment. They had a mystery to solve: The Case Of The Hijacked Wrenches. "So, how do we find who thumped you?"

Zinc rubbed his chin. "I'm not clear on that. I'm too focused on how much I'm gonna tear 'im up when I get him in my sights."

Toby tried to be helpful. "Do you have any kind of Phobiopolis-y stuff you could use? I dunno what kinda technology you guys have. Maybe something you bought from the store today?"

Zinc took inventory. "Nothing comes to mind."

"I could fly up high and see if I spot someone carrying two big wrenches!" Piffle offered.

"In a city this tall, you kidding? He could be anywhere by now," Zinc said. "Thanks 'tho."

Toby snapped his fingers. "Could you try to 'sense' where they are?" he asked Piffle. "Like when you found me again after getting away from Dr. Dacryphilia?"

"That's clever thinking, Toby, but I told you it takes a long time. I could circle all around and it might take days for me to stumble onto them."

"Darn, that's right."

Junella had been listening to all this and facepalmed. "Zinc, you goddamned dunderhead, have you forgotten you're a DOG!? Sniff the pavement, meatskull!!"

"Oh. Right." He grinned sheepishly. "Sorry, Junebell, my head's not on straight. I've only had this particular one a few minutes."

Together they gathered around the spot where Zinc's former noggin had been rendered into tomato paste.

"Shotgun blast, point blank," Junella guessed from the size and shape of the bloodstain.

Zinc got down on all fours, his shoulder flails clanking loudly, and asked for quiet so he could concentrate. The smell of blood overpowered everything else, so this would be like trying to blindly locate a mandolin amongst bagpipers. Thankfully, no rubberneckers had come in too close to the scene of the crime. That meant all he had to do was detect his own footprints... and ah, there they were... then find the ones belonging to the furson who'd stood... "Right here."

"Got the scent?"

"You bet your fur. Our new friend has rubber-soled Fenchurch Blue workboots. ...Size nine," he kidded. Now that he'd locked onto that smell, it stood out amongst all the others around him. Like tuning in on a radio station. He headed off abruptly in the direction his attacker had fled, letting the others catch up to him.

Toby, having a relatively unskilled mouse nose, found Zinc's ability fascinating. "What if he went up an elevator? Or one of those slappy-spatula things? Or jumped down to a lower wheel?"

Zinc grunted, knowing that was a possibility. "Then we wing it. Until then, I'm on his trail. Definitely a he. Rodent too."

"Another mouse like me?"

"No, and I'm actually glad you're here. For comparison." The sight of Zinc's dangling chains did all the work for him in keeping other pedestrians out of their way down the sidewalk. Zinc's nostrils flared, weighing the scent he was after. "Not mouse, not rat. Vole maybe? Lemming? At least I have an idea of what he'll look like when we catch up to him."

Zinc stopped in his tracks, an idea lighting up his face. "Walking's too slow. He's already got a head start on us. Piffle, let's do your idea. Be my little whirlybird. My eyes in the sky."

She saluted. "Roger wilco!"

"And take Junella with you."

"What!? Me go with her!?" the skunk sputtered.

"Naturally, partner," he said with a grin. "If you two spot him first, then you can swoop down like the angel of death and pin him in place with that pet toothpick of yours," he jerked a thumb at her cutlass.

She made a tiny grunt of acknowledgment that this was a good idea. She was also impressed to see her normally-ambitionless partner coming up with a plan for once. Normally he let her do the thinking and just went along to smash whatever she pointed at.

"Also," he told her, "I'm gonna need my skates." She nodded. He'd let her hold onto them because she was better at dumbfounding, and he so rarely used them. The last time they'd been needed, he'd forgotten what they'd felt like and had been slapping at his pants pockets for five minutes before they popped up. Junella simply recalled the feel of the metal and the heft of their weight: there they were in her hands.

"Nice cookin'," Zinc told her as he took them. They felt annoyingly heavy in his puny meat hands. He cocked his head at Toby. "I caught you castin' eyeballs at the holes in my soles. Wanna know what they're for?"

The devices Zinc was holding looked an awful lot like furniture casters. Two metal mounts, each affixed to a free-spinning wheel about a hand span in diameter.

"I think I can guess."

"Lend me your shoulder," Zinc asked. Toby stood next to his friend as the canine lifted his left foot and jammed the skate onto it. There were spikes in the mount that he slid into his foot, making Toby whimper in empathy. Zinc chuckled. "It don't hurt, Tinkerbell." He braced himself against the mouse as he finished screwing down the skate and put his weight on it. It always took a moment to get used to, especially balancing on only one. But he got his other foot in the air and hastily hammered the other skate home. "There we go! Been a while since I've taken these for a spin, but like a bicycle, you never forget!"

Toby was amazed as the canine let go of his shoulder and twirled around. Zinc held his legs slightly akimbo, wheels at an angle. The mouse made an educated guess that the skates weren't too good for standing still, but could help Zinc build up a steady speed and keep it.

"You're with me, Toby," Zinc commanded, gesturing for the mouse to climb on, piggyback style. He indicated his hands: "These things are useless as tits on a shopping cart. Yours'll be better. Hold on tight, try to keep your limbs away from the chains, and grab what I tell you to, okay?"

Toby liked exactly none of this idea. Especially not trying to clamber up Zinc's shoulders without toppling both of them over. But the girls helped, bracing the canine on two sides while Toby did his best to nimbly scale his friend. The feel of canine blood squishing against his palms was revolting. Sooner than he expected, he was peeking over Zinc's head and holding on for dear life.

"Good grip, sport. Mind lettin' me breathe?"

"Sorry."

Meanwhile, Piffle held her arms out for Junella to grab onto.

The skunk eyed them warily, then took hold. "Keep the in-flight chatter to minimum, got me?"

Piffle giggled. "I'll try!" She gave her wings a flex and pushed off. With that huge vinyl tail of hers, Junella weighed quite a bit more than Toby, but was still well within acceptable freight limits.

"You just follow behind me, eyes ahead, and call out if you see our man," Zinc said to Piffle. He was rotating in place, getting used to Toby's weight before putting on the gas.

Toby really wished the Fearsleigher wasn't in the shop. But then remembered that it wouldn't have mattered, since Ectopia Cordis wasn't built for vehicles anyway.

"Ready, co-pilot?" Zinc asked over his shoulder.

Toby nodded. "I will try my hardest not to puke on your head."

"Good enough!" Zinc said, and took off gliding.

***

Zinc didn't even need to engage Alfonzo & Dorster's inventions. The sight of a red-drenched, metal-faced canine streaking down the street with fury bleeding from his eyes like lightning was more than enough to make even the jaded citizens of Ectopia Cordis jump out of his way. Zinc's wheels sparked as they passed over sidewalk cracks and curbs, the mutt taking the bumps as instinctively as he did everything else. All that mattered was the scent in his snout. The trail of the thief's molecules. All else was blanked out. That thin thread of odor, nearly invisible amongst all the others, was all that mattered.

(Though it did occur to Zinc, he needed a name for these things on his shoulders. Maybe he'd delegate that to Toby, seeing as he'd already scored a run with 'Fearsleigher'.) 

Toby was turning out to be a surprisingly great help. If the pair's looks alone didn't scare people away, the mouse's near-constant screams gave them plenty of warning to clear a path.

Tears puddled at the corners of Toby's wide-peeled eyes as the wind whipped at them. The mouse's head snapped back and forth like a tennis spectator; every couple of seconds they averted a near-crash. Toby could feel his heart trying frantically to bash its way out of his ribcage and escape this insane situation. "I'm sorry!" he blurbled. "I'm trying not to make so much noiYAAAH!!!"

The hot dog vendor jerked his cart out of the way just in time to give the pair a hairsbreadth clearance.

Zinc chuckled. "Not a problem! You're like a built-in siren!"

Toby whimpered, then shrieked again as Zinc ducked an awning.

He forced himself to trust Zinc's driving and look away. Behind and above, Piffle's wings were a silver blur as she fought air friction to keep up with them. Junella, hanging by her wrists, looked none too pleased with the situation. Her eyes were so bulged Toby could see the little orange record labels from a block away. He took a tiny bit of comfort in that. At least he wasn't the only one feeling queasy about this.

And that was exactly what occurred to Zinc just then. He didn't stop, but he slowed. "Actually, um..."

"What now? Did you lose the scent?"

Zinc swiveled one of his eyes around 180° to check on his passenger. "Nah, still strong. But it just hit me that, well, this is-" He whipped his eye back around, needing depth perception to steer through the pack of idiot teenagers who were too busy gawking to dodge. "What I mean is, I just realized this is kinda selfish of me."

Toby cocked his head. "What?"

Zinc ramped off the luggage cart a bellhop was trundling. "You're the client!" he said after hitting ground again. "This isn't your problem. I can drop you off somewhere safe and deal with it myself."

The rest of the world faded in importance for just a moment as Zinc's words made Toby pause. He hadn't even thought about that option. Zinc had just told him to climb on and he'd done it. Maybe it was his usual conformist streak obeying whatever orders he was given. But he could have refused. He could have. He hadn't though. Because, looking back at that moment, he had been thinking of something other than his own safety. He was angry that someone had stolen from his friend.

Toby gave a small squeeze to Zinc's shoulder. "I'm probably gonna complain and cry like a baby the whole way, but I'll still keep holding on."

Zinc did not expect to hear that. A smile crawled across his lips. "Good to hear, chief. And glad to have you with me."

Toby nodded. Then bit back another shriek as Zinc leapt over a barrier of garbage bags.

The canine guffawed. "Man, I am outta practice on these! I shoulda cleared that by an extra foot."

"Maybe I'm weighing you down?" Toby fretted.

"Nah," Zinc waved it off. "You weigh a bunch less than Junella." He blinked. "...Don't tell her I said that."

A short laugh.

"Then again, with my wrenches, I coulda just bulldozed through those bags. Goddamn, I am itching like hell to get 'em back!"

A sudden flashback to Rither. "What do you think you'll do to whoever took them?"

"Nothin' fancy, Toby-old-boy. I'm just gonna pound him flat as a nickel. A buffet of knuckle sandwiches. I'm gonna beat on him till his pinks come out the tail end. Then I'm gonna shove 'em back inside and, and if he can stand up after that, I'll tell him to run off and stay the fuck outta my sight."

"That's about what I expected."

"Juney's apt to spend half an hour talking someone to death first. Me? I'm an old-fashioned kind of guy. They already know what they did, so I get right to work. You keepin' your puke in up there, Tobe?"

"Barely! Also, PAYPHONE!!!"

Zinc swung around it with inches to spare.

***

The scent trail dead-ended at an elevator, leaving them with the fifty-fifty choice of up or down. Zinc had a few moments to ponder this while he was rotating in place, waiting for the car to reach his level. Every few seconds he jammed his finger into the call button like whipping a slow rickshaw driver.

Once the doors opened, Zinc whooshed inside, then convulsed so hard Toby nearly fell off. "Smellquake," he explained dizzily. He'd been following the thinnest thread of their quarry's scent for a handful of miles now, and suddenly he'd stepped into an ocean of it. Zinc could smell the guy's clothes, fur soap, everything. Even the metallic tang of two wrenches with his own blood inside them. The thief (now confirmed positively to be a muskrat) had spent a while in here. Which meant he'd either gone many levels down, or many levels up. Zinc leaned in and drew in a sloppy, snorting inhale of the button panel. His nose drooled boogers on the numbers. Then he guffawed in triumph and stabbed his finger into number 52. "Hot shit, Toby! Top of the sky!"

They had plenty of time to talk on the elevator ride up. Toby also had plenty of time to realize how squirmingly uncomfortable it was to remain balanced with his legs wrapped around his friend's waist, hands braced against the sides of the car. The elevator's nauseating yam-orange and diarrhea-brown color scheme did not help much. Neither did the thin window inset in each side. Streaks of light shot by at a terrifying pace. Toby did not want to imagine how fast they were going.

Zinc was babbling, the words falling out of his mouth like rubber balls falling down stairs. Their thief had gone all the way up to level 52. Fifty-fucking-Two! The penthouse suite! The literal top floor of the city! Zinc couldn't fathom what the guy's motive was for heading there, but he let Toby know the mouse was in for a treat. If there was anywhere in Phobiopolis closer to paradise, he'd never seen it. Fifty-Two was the playground of those so rich they were untouchable. Even in a world made of nightmares, there will always be people with enough wealth to bend everything to their own comfort. Toby just hoped he wouldn't have to look over the edge at anytime. Realizing how high up they were would probably make him pass out on the spot.

The elevator dinged. The bright smears outside the window coalesced into a solid image. Considering they were almost literally scraping the sky, Toby expected to be hit in the face with an arctic wind when the doors opened.

Instead, he was pleasantly surprised to be greeted with a balmy 72 degrees, and the exhausted faces of Piffle, Junella and George.

"Sire Toby! Sir Zinc! Good to see you both again!" George boomed. "Miss Brox summoned me with a scarab to join in the chase." Toby was amusingly startled to once again hear that great, resonant voice coming out of a little toy bird.

He and Zinc had entered the elevator in a sparse, graffiti'd sidewalk of Bigwheel 14. They had now emerged in a polished little indoor lobby. It was small, but every inch of it looked expensive. And not ostentatiously so. The way you can sometimes just tell, even without seeing gold or jewels, that something was made to be the finest.

"We've got news," Junella sang, sounding halfway between hopeful and bitter.

Piffle waved a scrap of paper. "Millie sent us a message! While you guys were scooting around, a mouse crawled outta my pocket and gave this to me." She read it off, unaware she was mirroring Millie's accent: "'Zinc honey, I called around to all the girls. Best description I can give is that he's short, got gray fur, and no one noticed his clothes. But that doesn't matter because you'll know him when you see him. His eyes are on sideways'."

"What does that mean?" Toby asked.

Piffle shrugged.

"But wait, that's not all," Junella added in a grim parody of a commercial announcer. She stepped aside to point out the guard.

Toby flinched.

Heck, it was so bad, Zinc did too.

This was Bigwheel 52. Home to the crème de la crème. Naturally, the residents would not be welcoming towards filthy commoners coming up to mingle. So while anyone was perfectly free to take the ride up, there would be armed guards ready to send you right back down again if you didn't fit the bill. Though in this case, their thief had been prepared. The man lying on the slick black marble floor was dressed immaculately in a tan watchman's uniform, with shiny white boots and gloves, a sidearm wand, and no head. As in, not just removed, but vanished. There was barely any blood, suggesting the thief had used something with more finesse than a shotgun this time. Yet the man was somehow still alive. Into his twitching neck had been inserted something similar in appearance to a meat thermometer.

For Toby's benefit, Junella explained. "Want to kill someone and keep 'em from coming after you? Jam one of these things in. Keeps 'em from dying too quick. No death, therefore no resurrection."

"That's awful," the mouse said.

Zinc was staring at the sleepstopper, worried at the implications of it being there. "Luxy's banned 'em. Says they're unsporting," he mumbled. "This is bad. Him having one of those couldn't be an accident." It began to gnaw deeply at him that maybe he hadn't been mugged by accident. Maybe he'd been the pawn in someone's plan. But for what purpose?

Toby really wanted the guard's body to stop flopping like a fish. "Pull it out and let's tell him what happened. Maybe he can help us."

Zinc nixed the idea with a shake of his head. "Ain't got time. Besides, he'd just tell us to clear out. We're not supposed to be up here either. In fact, we've probly only got a short window to get the hell outta here before more fuzz show up and throw us over the edge."

"I got an idea about that, partner," Junella said as an impish smile crossed her face.

Zinc grunted in a 'Lay it on me' way.

The skunk turned to George, petting his metallic feathers. "How's that nose of yours?"

He was puzzled. "It is currently a beak," he replied straightforwardly.

"What I mean is, could you follow the same scent Zinc was on?" she cooed. Her tone and touch made it clear she'd be very grateful if he could.

"Oh, indubitably. My senses are quite keen."

That was just what she wanted to hear. "Then if the bouncers are gonna come kick us out, our only chance is to outrun 'em. George, baby, how'd you like to stretch your legs again?"

Zinc got wise to Junella's idea and guffawed. The thought of tearing ass through the ritziest part of EC on the back of a literal nightmare was mayhem of the once-in-a-lifetime variety.

From the way George's eyes lit up, he liked it too. "I admit I shall miss flying, but I have certainly been thinking about how nice it would be to slip back into my old body again!"

Piffle's antennae twitched. "Might wanna do it soon, Georgie-porgie."

Just then, two more tan-and-white guards stepped around the corner. Rough-sounding voices had drawn them near. What met their eyes was Fred Keyton lying like a guillotine victim on the floor, and four weird sonsofbitches standing around him.

Their wands were out, tips glowing, in seconds. "FREEZE!!"

George's little clockwork head swiveled around towards them with a 'click, click, click'. "I deeply apologize, good sirs, but we simply haven't the time."

And with that, he was back to his old self again.

Spreading his wings, he leapt from Junella's shoulder and shook off the transformation potion in mid-leap. Shards of his metal self were sheared away as his bones exploded into existence beneath them. His beak split into splinters as his black skull rammed through. His wing feathers shot out like shrapnel and gouged the walls as his forelegs kicked out from within them. Gears clattered against the black reflective floor as charred, glowing ribs took their place. In less than two seconds, a specter of onyx menace had landed in front of the two stricken guards. And if that wasn't enough for them to get the message, George lowered his head and swept a plume of cracking flame towards them.

Wisely, they started screaming and ran away. Rogue tourists they were prepared for. This thing? Fuck no!

"Oh, I have missed that! Really most enjoyable!" George brayed, clopping his hooves happily against the marble.

"Super job!" Piffle cried out, running over to hug her equine friend, back to his former boniness.

"They're gonna call in the national guard in about thirty seconds!" Junella rang out, taking charge. She planted her boot between George's ribs and swung herself onto his back. Pointing behind her, she ordered Piffle, "You take bitch seat."

"That's naughty language," the hamsterfly said, but hopped on anyway.

Junella didn't recall when, but at some point earlier Toby had mentioned to George's ability to grow flesh over his bones. She patted the horse's crest. "I need you to pop out a tail. Somethin' for Zinc to grab hold of."

"No trouble at all," he replied, and pushed. His bony appendage in back wouldn't offer much grip, but as the nightmare concentrated, he was able to create a thick cascade of greasy, scraggly hair. More than enough length for towing.

Zinc reached out for it, then realized the strength in his flesh-hands was pretty pathetic. "This is exactly why I needed your help, Toby."

The mouse sighed. Just when he thought he might've been able to hop down off Zinc's back... Though, as he reached out to grip handfuls of George's godawful-feeling tail (A fully fleshed-out George would probably look like pestilence incarnate, he thought), he felt a sticky pull from his vest and realized he was very likely glued onto the canine from all the dried blood. He threw up in his mouth a little.

Zinc tried not to laugh. "If you're gonna pull a technicolor yawn, let it out now before we blast off! I'm not too keen on you showerin' my eyeballs!"

Well, now that he had permission...

Toby caved in to the pervading urge in his guts and created a modern art masterpiece on the black marble floor. He was sure he hadn't eaten this much. His vision tipped back and forth and he spat to rid himself of the taste.

"Better now?"

Toby had to admit, "Yeah, actually."

"Here ya go," Piffle said. She leaned over George's tush and popped a mint candy she'd dumbfounded into Toby's mouth.

"Thanf 'ou," Toby mumbled around it.

Meanwhile, Junella was describing their thief to George. "Got all that? Can you smell him?"

George drew in deeply through his nostrils. "Ignoring the odor of Sire Toby's antiperistaltic ejection, I do believe I can trace the path of a male muskrat in rubber-soled workboots."

Junella grinned. "I like you, George. You're turning out so fuckin' useful, I might just sell Zinc to the Kasheesties and keep you instead."

"Hey!!" the canine piped up.

Junella slapped her steed's shoulder. "Yaaah! Giddyup, hoss!"

George winced a bit at such crude parlance, but obediently put the hammer down. Getting up to speed on a marble floor wasn't the easiest thing he'd ever done, but considering the pack of reinforcement guards he'd crashed through like bowling pins when he turned the second corner, he did pretty well at it.

***

It's amazing what a difference throwing up can make.

Toby couldn't believe how clear his head was already. Letting his stomach do what it wanted instead of trying to fight it had removed a sickly fog from around his perceptions. And this was immediately useful too, because he suddenly found himself with a whole lot of things to look at when George charged through the doors of the elevator station.

Bright, BRIGHT sunshine!!!

Toby had nearly forgotten what it looked like. Everyone flinched (except George) and squinted a lot.

Light and color resolved into images that Toby could hardly process. Zinc had not been kidding about paradise.

What surrounded him now was a pastoral utopia. He was immediately reminded of stories about Mount Olympus, where the Greek Gods played. While it was still the same five-spoke construction as any other Bigwheel, number fifty-two had been transformed into a perpetual verdant summer afternoon. How could there be so much grass up here? And trees! Great big beautiful flowering trees! Some of the branches drooped with the weight of ripe fruit. The sky was as blue as the sea, perfect cotton clouds swimming through it like lazy whales. Sparkling white waterfalls poured out of thin air around the perimeter. High above, the blazing sun kept everything warm and cheerful. Citizens were well-dressed, colorful and carefree.

Not to give the impression that Bigwheel 52 was just a nature preserve. The elite are accustomed to living in luxury, after all. Architects had been allowed to let their imaginations run wild designing livable works of art in every direction. Rich, mouthwatering colors. Soaring arcs. Gold and silver to dazzle the eye. It was almost too much beauty. Like stories about monsters so hideous they'd drive minds mad, this was the extreme inverse: perfection in such abundance it made the senses overload.

This resplendent vista was spoiled a bit by the sudden chorus of panicked screams from citizens who had come to use the elevators and were now suddenly face to face with George.

These were not people who had daily experience dealing with the horrors that lurked in Phobiopolis below. That was what they paid other people to do. Quite a few of them passed out, or were struck dumb on the spot like gawking turkeys. Junella wouldn't have otherwise cared, except that it meant these moonheads were now blocking their path.

Piffle suddenly got a really good idea. She jumped up, standing on George's hindquarters, and flourished her arms wide open. "The circus is in town!!" she cried.

Her four companions rolled with it, trying to grin cheerfully.

This ruse did not exactly turn the crowd in their favor, but it did sow enough confusion for George to trot past them. Ahead was 52's equivalent of a carpetwalk (cobblestones instead) and he made a beeline for it. Many shrieks followed wherever he went. Though Piffle was doing her best to diffuse them via a variety of ringmaster-like poses and shouts.

Junella leaned in close to George's ear-holes. "Still smell our guy?"

"There are quite a considerable number of other odors to contend with, but thankfully his boots have a particularly pungent quality. I can 'see' his trail without difficulty."

An encouraging pat. "Go git 'em. Focus on the stink. Let me take care of the putzes in our path."

"Understood, Madam Brox." George sped up to a decent clip. Junella flinched a bit at the loud circus tune Piffle started singing, but it did seem to give people on the cobblewalk advance warning that they might wanna get the hell out of the way. George tried to add to the effect by belching out little puffs of black smoke, thinking people might then assume he was mechanical.

Since all he had to do now was hold on tight to George's tail and be their caboose, Toby took the time to appreciate the scenery. The sheer amount of prettiness reminded him of Coryza, but what it might've looked like with an unlimited budget. Things were way more spaced out here, too. Coryza had been as compact as a stuffed suitcase. Here there was plenty of breathing room. Rolling hills and parks; places simply to be seen and enjoyed. Buildings were any height they wanted to be. And there were some amazingly huge wheels up here. Skyscraper ferris wheels. Shopping centers and apartment complexes. As if a giant's jewelry box full of bracelets and rings had spilled out onto a grassy meadow. (He saw only one Luxy Sez billboard up here. It read: WHATTAYA NEED MY ADVICE FOR? YOU'RE RICH!)

Though the longer he looked, the more Toby began to sense the seams of an illusion. His mind knew they were thousands of feet in the air in a land of perpetual night, so the breezy afternoon temperatures had to be manufactured somehow. And the sun, he realized, wasn't painful to look up at. It didn't seem to be the source of the Bigwheel's warmth either. Rather the atmosphere had the slight stuffy twinge of air conditioning. Was this all indoors? A giant dome with the sky and clouds projected onto it?

No... Squinting, he could swear he saw tiny pinpricks of light behind the blue. The stars of the true sky. "Is this all a hologram?"

"Not quite, but I'm impressed you noticed," Zinc replied. (Toby was slightly startled, as he'd been talking to himself.) "S'more like a spell. A shared belief. Like... Okay, you know how you gotta concentrate on your imaginite to make it a meal? All this nice summery stuff up here is what happens when you get a buttload of people to all agree that this is what it's gonna look like. So the blue sky and sunshine are there 'cause everyone cooperates and agrees they're there, dig? Everyone, believing just a little bit, all the time, equals the same as like when we paid off the big willwell."

Toby was fascinated. "Like crowdfunding..."

"What?"

Toby fumblingly explained the concept while trying not to stare too much at all the pretty things they were passing. Especially the people. Holy heck, whatever the Phobiopolis equivalent of plastic surgery was, these people must have indulged in it as often as going out for groceries. Intimidatingly perfect faces surrounded him. Sculpted cheekbones, luscious eyes, full lips, immaculate fur. Bodies sculpted purely of feminine curves or masculine might. These were not people, they were works of art.

And quite surprisingly, this was the first place Toby had come across where there were more adults than children. It made sense. It'd take serious time to get rich enough to afford this place.

Toby also noticed that almost all the families he saw were mixed-species. Two cats carrying a penguin baby. A ferret mother, goat father, and bat daughter. Of course, they tended to look a bit horrified when George zoomed by, but otherwise they all seemed pretty happy together.

Toby mentioned this observation to Zinc, who nodded. "It's the afterlife," he replied. "Can't have babies down here. Spark's missing, I guess. So everyone adopts."

The mouse nodded.

It briefly crossed his mind that maybe he could find someone to adopt him.

***

Uncountable Ectopians scattered out of the way at the sight of George and the sound of Piffle. The hamsterfly was having a blast, dancing on his butt and singing her heart out. The combination of rampaging nightmare and voluminous pinkness succeeded in confusing a great many living hells out of the citizenry.

It wasn't too long before George's nostrils led him to the gated entrance of Bigwheel 52's second biggest apartment complex. Like the hovering name of Lady Xenoiko's inn, two immense words floated over the property, carved intricately from jade: PRAXUS PAMMER. Toby had no idea what that meant.

It sure was a neat-looking place though. The gilded gate allowed non-residents to look (but don't touch) at the four humongous side-by-side ferris wheels that made up the housing conglomerate. A sixty-foot cylinder of living space. Each car of each wheel was the size of a whole floor of apartments: twelve rooms per car. Each wheel had at least twenty slabs of roomage by Toby's count. The four wheels were set so closely together, little tube airlocks would pop out to connect neighboring areas, and elevators within the spokes allowed intra-wheel travel as well as access to the main hub and ground floor. The whole thing dazzled with color. Gem green, brick red, ivory white.

The doorman had a bazooka.

The blocky malamute in the bell-shaped leather coat calmly hefted the weapon onto his shoulder and paused in chewing his gum long enough to tell them, "Allright you lot, clear off. You're not gettin' in here without residency cards, and I'd bet me mum's wig you ain't gottem."

Zinc leaned out from behind George's posterior. "Think you could give us some assistance, ol' chap?"

The two canines regarded each other, Zinc trying to pleasantly plead; the malamute looking bored as could be. More chewing from him. "Depends wot."

Zinc grinned ingratiatingly. "Have you seen a muskrat guy swing by earlier? Sideways eyes, maybe? Probably carrying two gigantic wrenches?"

The doorman showed the slightest expression, curious as to how this motley bunch could know about that. "Yeh, actually. Maintenance man came by 'arf an hour ago. Wrenches, like yeh said. 'E was goin' up to Two's main 'ub to tighten things. How d'y know 'im? Friend a' yas?"

Zinc looked directly into the other man's eyes, saying calm and persuasively, "He's the guy that killed me and stole my arms."

The doorman's eyebrows raised.

To Toby, Zinc whispered, "Inside front pocket. Laminated. Whip it out if you please."

The mouse reached down into Zinc's jacket and felt around a bit. He found a wallet with a waterfall of ID cards and photos inside. He held them up so the doorman could see that, yes, those wrenches had been attached to his friend's shoulders just recently.

The doorman squinted, so George pulled Zinc and Toby a little closer. The malamute's trigger finger twitched at this. George tried to smile harmlessly.

"Never seen a pet one before," the malamute marveled at George. He scrutinized Zinc's pics and chewed his gum pensively.

"There's a whole bunch of people coming up the road toward us," Piffle pointed out.

The malamute looked, saw the approach of guardsmen, and made a decision. He spoke fast; "Right. Make this quick-like. You shoot me in the 'ead so I don't get into trouble for lettin' you loonies do this. Promise me you'll be IN and then GONE, got me? I let that squeaky minger in earlier despite me better instincts. 'E 'ad a card 'n all. But I ain't fond o' thieves. Get your rightful property back and get the fuck out. Good luck."

"Thank you for being so understanding, sir," Junella sang pleasantly, as she drew her revolver out of the air and put a well-placed bullet between his frontal lobes. Perfectly painless.

Toby looked back. A considerable amount of tan-and-whites were charging towards them. A purple lightning bolt from one of their wands streaked by.

"Think you can jump this fence?" Junella asked George.

"With four passengers? I have no idea!" The novelty of the challenge seemed to amuse him.

"HOLD TIGHT!" she screeched, and dug her needles in.

A second purple bolt zinged so close to Toby's ear it made the hairs inside stand up. He doubled his grip on Zinc's waist and George's tail.

The equine made some calculations based on his heightened nightmare senses, then backed up a few steps. A determined grin on his lipless face, he dug his back legs in and cocked them like a clockwork bullfrog. With a ratcheting pop of scraping bone, he jolted up into the air.

Toby yelped. A moment later he was thrown off Zinc, still glued to his jacket, and did four somersaults before coming to rest in the grass.

They were successfully over the fence, though everyone landed rather ungracefully. Piffle had managed to spread her wings and control her descent enough to merely bounce on her tushie. Zinc was now holding back a wail as he'd ended up doing the splits. Junella had the worst of it though. The others had landed in the grass, and she'd splattered onto the cobblestone entrance. The impact had basically sanded off half her head. Grumbling in irritation, she felt around for her face, realized this was too complex to will herself normal from, and got out her cutlass. She swung hard in an arc, decapitating herself (showing obvious practice with the move). A moment later she was shimmering into normalcy again. She spat a pebble out of her mouth.

A massive black crater suddenly appeared in the grass beside them, tossing Zinc and Piffle into the air like candy wrappers.

Of course, the other doormen had bazookas too.

George went into action. With his teeth, he swung Junella up into his driver's seat, then did the same with Piffle's dizzy form. He caught the next incoming rocket in his mouth. The doorman who'd fired it went slack-jawed. George spat it out while looking him dead in the eyes, daring him to try again.

"...I'm sorry..." squeaked the doorman.

George turned to where Zinc was groggily getting up and flopped his tail down in front of him. Toby, reacting on blind instinct, frog-hopped onto Zinc, grabbed him with his legs, and grabbed George's tail in his hands.

His passengers secured, the nightmare horse impersonated a missile himself as he aimed right for the nearest clump of doormen and head-butted his way through. The remainder retreated in several different directions, one of them tripping and firing his weapon into a bicycle rack.

It wasn't hard to find building two, since there was a great big emerald "2" on every car of its wheel. Of course, calling it a  'wheel' or a 'building' was too commonplace, so instead each section of Praxus Pammer was labeled a Gyre.

"How do we get inside?" Junella called out to George.

"Let us try the direct route," he decided. "Dig in, my dear friends!!"

George charged at the wheel, staring hard at the nearest block of apartments slowly revolving into view, carefully timing everything. His leap over the gate was so much easier than he'd expected, he'd overpowered it which resulted in their poor landing. Never again would he allow such sloppiness.

Residents inside block 2F gawped in horror as a snorting nightmare came running full-tilt towards them.

George kicked off, scattering divots of concrete, and landed with pinpoint accuracy on the roof.

His passengers were a bit rattled, but otherwise 100% unharmed. George smiled in satisfaction. "I am certain there is a more comfortable path to the main hub of this wheel, but that would undoubtedly require entrance inside. I'd wager I would not do well in such close quarters. So, for the sake of simplicity, I shall simply ride this car up as if upon an ordinary ferris wheel, then jump down to the hub when the trajectory is right."

Junella dug her claws in a little deeper. "I trust you, George, but I hope you won't feel insulted if I keep my eyes shut the whole goddamn time."

"No offense taken, Madam Brox. Perfectly understandable."

On the ground, the doormen were swapping their bazookas for sidearms. In most cases, the big guns tended to intimidate trespassers away without having to be fired. And right now, any shot at George would be unnecessarily imperiling the residents. They wouldn't be happy with that. So the doormen took useless .22 potshots at the onyx intruder as he pranced back and forth, merrily avoiding their fire. Soon the doormen were joined by Bigwheel 52's guardsmen, who were in a similar pickle. They had their wands pointed upwards, but the more the wheel rotated, the more 2F itself was now blocking their line of sight.

George was feeling bouncy. He hadn't caused mayhem like this since before his burial. It tickled his old nightmare instincts. And he was finding it most gratifying to know that he was performing such impish actions in service to a helpful goal. This was not the same as his old ways of mindless fright delivery. Now he had a purpose, and a consciousness to appreciate it with.

He kept a careful eye on Gyre 2's main hub. Since the wheel itself was so gigantic, the center structure was the size of a small factory. Through the windows in its steel surface, he caught glimpses of its inner workings. There was a counter-rotating inner wheel for workers to stand on and service the mechanisms in-motion. And there, just for a moment, he saw a flash of grey fur and silver metal. "I've spotted the miscreant!"

"Great news, George," Zinc said with a quaver in his voice. "How 'bout we pounce his ass posthaste? The top of a moving wheelcar is not a great place to be on skates!" Toby nodded fiercely.

"Just give me a moment, Sir Zinc. If my timing is not precise, we will likely slide off the edge and hit several things on the way to the ground. That would be undesirable."

Junella grit her teeth. "Didn't need to hear that."

"Could I help you steer?" Piffle offered, flicking her wings.

"Much appreciated, Madam McPerricone. But no, I think I shall do just fine on my own..." George's sentence trailed off as he switched his focus to his eyesight.

The brain of a nightmare is a marvelous thing. Since they come into existence without need of conscious thought, their energies are devoted almost wholly to attack and ambush strategies. They have incredible spatial awareness. So it was only mildly difficult for George to calculate the rotation of the main hub, the sway of block 2F, wind speed, weight of his passengers...

And then without warning, sprint at top speed for the edge of the roof.

Screams in four-part harmony.

George grinned in triumph as his jump sailed him dead center through the largest window in the hub. As a basketball player would say, nothing but net. Glass shattered from the force of his mighty hooves, shards filling the air with sparkling sharpness. George swiveled himself sideways at just the right instant to dig in and come to a four-point landing, bracing himself against the guardrail of the main hub's maintenance walkway.

"Splendid! Couldn't have gone better!" George allowed himself to brag.

Toby (when he was able to pry his eyelids open) had a flashback to Dr. Dacryphilia's domain. They were now within a doughnut-shaped enclosure crammed full of machinery and noise. Thick smells of grease and friction lingered in the air. Harsh lamplight and inky shadows. They'd landed on a diamond-plate walkway, part of an interconnected series. Imagine a skyscraper's fire escape curved around into a beginningless loop. Toby couldn't see how in the world it stayed suspended above the pounding, grinding cogs at the heart of Gyre 2. Maybe it orbited in place? Magnets?

Everyone disembarked from George, and Zinc was much relieved to yank the skates off his feet. They would be worse than useless in here. He sighed happily and flexed his toes on the metal floor.

Junella took the skates and disappeared them with a flick of her wrist. She cast her eyes all around. "Where'd you see him?" she asked George.

"Hard to tell. I was paying more attention to our entrance. Please forgive me."

She made a 'don't sweat it' noise. "If he's in here, whatever direction we pick we'll run into him soon enough."

"Split up?" Zinc suggested.

The skunk concurred. "We converge on 'im. Thief sandwich." She headed down the closest stairs, motioning for Piffle and George to follow.

"Looks like you're with me," Zinc told Toby.

"I kinda don't have a choice." He flapped the arms of Zinc's jacket, which was still hugging his chest. "I feel like I'm in a glue trap."

Zinc started up the other stairway. He fiddled around in his pants pocket and found his switchblade. He rarely had a use for it, but it wasn't just the Boy Scouts who could be prepared. "I'll take point, second banana. You just worry about getting yourself unpeeled."

Nodding and following, Toby writhed himself back and forth, trying to free himself from the bloodstained leather.

One thing was certain; they would not have the element of surprise on their side. The metal stairs groaned and whined at the lightest step. Zinc took practice swings with his knife. If stealth was out, he'd simply need to be the faster man. He was looking forward to popping this guy's eyeballs out and lacquering 'em for a keychain.

Toby was almost glad for the sticky jacket because it distracted him from looking down (as if 'down' had a meaning here). But the steps below him had see-through slats, giving glimpses of the machinery below that would chew him up like bubblegum if he slipped. He sent a mental thanks to Kay and Kaye for his new sandals, since these stairs would not feel pleasant on bare paws.

Carefully, both parties progressed along the zigzag walkways, heading towards the opposite equator, hoping to snare their quarry in between.

It was Zinc who spotted him first.

The canine peeked up over the current landing and saw someone with their back turned. Someone in a garbageman-green uniform, with a pair of familiar silver implements mounted on his shoulders.

He was WEARING them!

Toby could practically hear Zinc's tendons constrict in outrage.

The platforms for each walkway were perhaps twelve feet wide by four feet across. Room enough for a takedown, with a little bit of wiggle room. Zinc held a hand out behind him to tell Toby to halt. The mouse misinterpreted the gesture and handed Zinc his jacket back. The canine glanced at it. Stained but washable.  He slipped it back on, figuring it'd look more intimidating than just his tattered t-shirt. Practice and Junella had taught him that in a fight, one's appearance and attitude could do half the work.

Toby craned his neck, matching his footsteps to Zinc's. The stairs creaked, but the thief showed no sign of hearing them. As they got closer, he was revealed to be a very... well, there was no better word for it... a very buttplug-shaped individual. Squat legs, pear-shaped torso, and a head that tapered to a rounded point. His fur was the color of sludgy snow and his undoubtedly-stolen maintenance uniform was splashed with the color of violence. 'More blood. Just great,' Toby thought as he tried not to inhale the smell. Thankfully, the reek of grinding metal from the mechanisms beneath them more than drowned it out.

Zinc's ears twitched. His eyelids narrowed to slits. Muscles taut as piano strings. Was this guy deaf? They were standing less than a dozen feet away from him. He had to have heard them coming, right? And yet he was just standing there, staring intently at the panel in front of him full of dials, buttons, and levers. Occasionally he'd push or pull something. His demeanor was calm. He gave no indication he'd just recently killed at least two people and looted the arms off one of them.

Then suddenly, with no outward sign he'd been aware of them this whole time, he sang lightly under his breath, "Be right wiiiith you..."

Zinc recoiled like he'd been spat on. He clanged up the stairs and positioned himself like a gunslinger at the end of the walkway. "Eyes up here, skidmark. You got something you didn't pay for."

The muskrat glanced away from the controls as if he could barely be bothered. "Hmm?" He regarded Zinc standing there. Tilted his head. There was no recognition in his eyes.

His eyes. Toby flinched and suddenly understood what Millie had meant about them being sideways.

Their thief was an otherwise unremarkable man. But his eyes, instead of being on either side of his muzzle like any normal orbs ought to be, were instead stacked on top of each other. It was skin-crawling. Like a totem pole of facial features: mouth, nose, eye, eye. A double-decker cyclops.

Zinc didn't care. He'd seen weirder. And right now, he was much more interested in why this sonofabitch wasn't pissing his pants at the sight of him. Zinc took a step forward, holding the switchblade up to catch the light. "Buddy, do you need a net to catch my drift or what?"

The muskrat held his gormless expression a second longer, then his face went, 'Aha!'. "Right. You. Yeah, I didn't recognize you at first. I only saw you from the back, remember?"

Zinc felt his internal furnace shoot up several degrees. What the hell!? The guy's voice was nasal and grating, but held not an atom of fear. He was chatting like they were next door neighbors discussing the weather. "I remember! When you snuck up behind me like a chickenshit and blew my top off with a shotgun!!" He felt his blood surge into his shoulder devices, and revved their engines threateningly. "You stole my goddamned ARMS, you screwy-eyed fuck!!!"

Again, the muskrat registered no fear. At most he looked slightly annoyed at being distracted from his work. "These? Sure, you can have them back. I'm done with them."

With that, the man simply shrugged and grew his own arms out from his shoulders, spraying a fresh splash of blood onto his uniform and sending Zinc's wrenches clattering to the floor. The sound was as loud as a gunshot in the echo-primed room. Toby clenched the guardrail to keep from toppling back off his step. Zinc just scowled harder to see his personal possessions treated with such disrespect.

The muskrat gave his new limbs a test wiggle, then walked away from the wrenches, turning his attention back to the switches and levers. He flexed his fingers and smiled slightly. This delicate part was much easier now.

Zinc needed a moment. He'd been prepared for anything but this, to be ignored almost entirely. For this pissant little prick to not even raise an eyebrow at him was unthinkable. If there was any one thing that could have stopped the outraged canine in his tracks, it wasn't a gun or a grenade (or more fucking clowns), it was this sonofafucking muskrat's complete lack of reaction.

He knelt to pick up his right wrench, never letting his eyes leave the thief. Keeping an unblinking stare was what they were made for, after all. He let his shoulder devices ('Swingballs?' he thought to himself. 'Naahh') idle down to a slow chug. Though he was ready to dial them back up to 10 at a moment's notice and scoop out this muskrat's guts.

The thief didn't even look in the canine's direction as he asked, "Anything else? I'm busy."

This was the flint to ignite Zinc's black powder. In a heartbeat he crossed the space between them. Then his switchblade was buried in the control panel between the bones of the muskrat's hand. Zinc snarled like a throaty gasoline engine.

The muskrat had flinched at the pain, but nothing else. Slowly, he turned his head to Zinc. His misplaced eyes had changed from an expression of dismissal to an arctic-cold contempt. "Can I help you with something?" he hissed out, low and quiet and condescending.

Zinc was vibrating with restrained rage. "You. Stole. My. Arms," he said again, grinding out each syllable. "Do I look like the forgiving type?"

A quick up-and-down flick of the eyes. "You look pissed-off. And why not? I'd be. I'm not denying that. I'm just unclear on what more you want from me. I never expected you to follow me here. Congrats on that, by the way. But I gave them back. There they are. Our business is concluded. Now do you mind taking that little toy out of my hand?"

Zinc paused for a moment to clear his head from the crashing waves of fury that this scumnugget was rising up in him. Then, nice and slow, he locked eyes with the other man and turned his blade.

The muskrat blinked. His lips drew back slightly. "Yes, you can cause pain. Big deal. I have shit to do, sir." He could not possibly have saturated that last word with more sarcasm.

Dumbstruck, Zinc pulled out the knife and stepped back, just staring at this freak of nature. "Do you not dig what I'm gonna do to you for stealing from me? That stab wound was a kiss on the cheek. I'm gonna make a Halloween mask out of your assfur and nail it to your face. Do you comprende, amigo?"

The muskrat toggled a few more controls, then stepped slightly back and looked satisfied. He turned to the minor distraction standing beside him. "Yes, yes, I get what you're saying. It's just not very important right now."

Zinc's eyeballs nearly boiled at that.

He held up his hands. "Let me explain, Krakatoa. You see, I'm in the middle of something much bigger than you and your grabby-clampies. You weren't even part of the script. You were just someone I saw and thought, 'Those look useful', and I took them. Your part in this was only to alter my timetable from the day after tomorrow to today. And like I said, how you tracked me here in such a short time, I don't know. Kudos for that. But your role in all this is..." He held up his fingers, millimeters apart. "...thiiiis big. Understand? Pour on the threats, little pup. They don't matter to me."

Zinc felt an ice shower descend upon him. The hot blood in his veins turned to cold snake venom. He was letting this speck of dirt get to him. The other guy was keeping his cool. Well, Zinc could do that too. "Do you mind if I ask, Egghead," he said emotionlessly, "why they don't matter?"

At this, the muskrat finally smiled. His tail twitched, almost a wag. "Because this whole building is just moments away from being referred to in past tense."

Zinc blinked.

"Was that too highbrow for you? I almost feel bad pointing out that you're literally brainless. Feels like a cheap shot."

Zinc smiled a poison little smile, reaching up to scratch the empty space between his ears and eyeballs. "What was that? Sorry, my mind was elsewhere."

"Ha-HA!" the muskrat laughed. "Touché! Okay, so maybe you can comprehend a fraction of what I've accomplished here." He clapped his hands together. "Picture this: your wrenches allowed me to more efficiently sabotage some key structures within this facility. From there it was just a matter of fiddling with the core to send it into a death spiral. Haven't you noticed it's been moving faster all this time?"

He hadn't. Zinc glanced behind the thief and noticed that the walls of the hub's enclosure were gaining speed from when he'd entered. That meant the rest of the wheel was too. That meant very bad trouble. "And what if I cleave your furry little dome in half right now?"

The muskrat shrugged, still smiling, still immensely pleased with himself. "It won't matter. I finished up the sequence while we were talking just now. Maybe you should have acted a little quicker."

Zinc's muscles tensed. Mentally, he gave himself a good, hard kick in the crotch.

"It can't be stopped now," said the grinning little man. "I've been planning this for months."

Toby had been riveted to their words, but remained so quiet he'd escaped the muskrat's notice entirely. Now he couldn't stop himself from blurting, "But whatever happens to the building, you'll be trapped here when it does!"

The muskrat showed slight surprise at the mouse's presence, then his grin seemed to triple in width. "WORTH! IT!" he thundered, over-enunciating each syllable like he was biting them off.

The muskrat looked back to Zinc. "I suppose I owe you one for letting me borrow your wrenches. Handy things. So I'll give you this: you have about three minutes until this thing speeds up to cataclysm. Better take your friends and start running."

The canine twitched his gaze towards Toby, apologizing for this choice. "Thanks, but no thanks," he growled, a feral smile of bloodlust coming to his snout. "I think maybe I'll stick around and use that three minutes to cram your head up my ass and shit your face inside out."

"No you won't," the muskrat said simply, and flung himself over the rail.

Zinc and Toby rushed to the edge of the walkway, but they only saw a red flash as the man disappeared into the mammoth gears of Gyre 2's core. Safely dead and out of reach.

"THAT FUCKEYED SON OF A BITCH!!!" Zinc exploded.

"Do we run now?" Toby asked, hoping the answer would be yes.

Zinc looked up. Junella, Piffle and George were two walkways above, where they'd been waiting and watching, letting Zinc direct the show. He nodded to them. "Yeah, we should do that."

Below them, the gears were spinning faster and faster and faster. Their thief was even less than a smear.

***

Did our heroes make it out in time?

Of course they did. Three minutes was plenty. Junella leapt down from her perch and, without needing to communicate her intention, took two cutlass swings up through Zinc's armpits. He thanked her for being so skillfully disarming. She, Piffle and Toby helped screw his wrenches on, then skewered the shoulder devices in place. To take Toby's mind off of having to remove them from his floppy, severed meat, Zinc asked the mouse to name the things. Toby blanked and syllables tumbled out, until, without conscious thought, he called them 'doorknockers'. Zinc thought a moment and said that sounded just about right. George, meanwhile, had factored in the increasing revolutions of the core, the speed of the windows blurring past them, and when all four of his friends were once more astride him, he recalculated for Zinc's new weight, and jumped.

A perfect trajectory. Straight through the window he'd broken before (he felt guilty enough about having to smash just one) to land hard on his hooves on the ground below. His impact pulped concrete and sent it spraying up like a fountain.

Toby managed to find a bit more up to throw.

*****

CHAPTER
FORTY

Mid-flight, Junella's mind was whirling around the problem of the sea of guards and doormen they'd inevitably land dead center in. The wheel solved this problem for her. When her eyes unclenched from the impact, she saw that none of 52's protectors had any interest in apprehending anyone. They were much more interested in getting the hell away in time.

Praxus Pammer's courtyard was a madhouse. People poured like floodwaters from the other three apartment buildings. They fled for the exits, and the gilded gates that had once made them feel safe now bottlenecked them in. People who would normally never lift a finger's worth of effort in an average day were now pummeling their neighbors out of their way like pro wrestlers. Their shrieks of panic were overpowered by the howling, agonized wails of Gyre 2's metal as it strained to keep itself in one piece.

From his perch on Zinc's shoulders, Toby looked back. He could not imagine how George had sailed them through. Gyre 2 was whirring like a top. Compared to the rotational speed of the wheels on either side, it was almost a blur. And getting faster. Through the windows in each doomed apartment block, Toby could see furniture flying and tenants tossed around like toys. The wheel's hub was already starting to glow and smoke from friction.

Even Junella was momentarily dumbstruck by the sight. But she'd had enough practice keeping herself alive in a catastrophe to know when to rip her eyes away. She raised her cutlass like a general and brayed, "Get moving, George!!!"

Zinc was yanked off his feet and Toby clung to him like kudzu as George did indeed take off. "Where to, Madam Brox?"

Her eyes scanned the courtyard for any place that wasn't clogged thick with people. Behind her, Gyre 2's scream rose in pitch. "There! The fence!" she pointed out.

"You intend for me to jump it?"

She raised her volume enough for Zinc to overhear: "No. I intend for my partner to smash the fuck out of it."

The canine perked up. "Heck yeah! I just wish it was that muskrat's face!"

"Exactly my thoughts."

Junella had picked a spot along the fence equidistant between two exits. Some tenants blocked their way, but not many. George's presence made them reconsider their position. The nightmare skidded to a stop and swung Zinc into position. Zinc shook off his dizziness in a second, shook off Toby in another, and felt his blood surging within his metal. He revved up his devices. Time for them to do some knock-knock-knockin'.

But just as he was about to, Gyre 2 came loose.

The sound was like a clock's mainspring tearing itself free, but deepened and amplified to the point it nearly burst the eardrums of everyone in proximity. Steel struts turned to curly fries in an eyeblink. The sky rained white hot metal slag. Gyres 1 and 3 were shoved sideways, tilted like the Tower of Pisa, by the force of the explosion. The main hub's core had accelerated until it shattered, becoming a multi-ton shrapnel grenade. It blew the giant wheel straight off its supports. And for three seconds that seemed to last an eternity, the entire building was airborne.

It hit the courtyard with such force it made George's landing look like a raindrop's splat. The ground buckled, sloshing like a waterbed. Anyone in the courtyard still on their feet was sent flying. Our protagonists, however, were so close to the gates they merely got facefuls of bars and a quartet of bloody noses.

Gyre 2 did not stop when it hit the ground. It was a sixty-foot yoyo, bursting with kinetic energy. As soon as it hit, it bounced. It was block 2A that happened to touchdown first, and everyone inside its twelve suites died instantly. A hailstorm of concrete divots peppered the air as the wheel skidded and hopped like a runaway tire. 

Toby looked up to see the mammoth structure, crammed full of one hundred and sixty-five residents, sail above his head.

Its shadow blotted out the artificial sun.

It was only due to the endless parade of impossible terrors he'd endured already in Phobiopolis that the mouse didn't simply switch off in shock and go catatonic.

None of the five saw Gyre 2 land. But they heard it. Another reverberating WHOOM that knocked them off their feet again and sent shockwave echoes ringing through the whole of Bigwheel 52. Zinc recovered his senses first, his head popping up to see the runaway wheel take another small hop and start rolling.

Where it had hit, everything was obliterated. Everything. Ornate street lamps lay fallen like toothpicks. Busted water pipes rained over the debris like reared-up snakes. What had once been two restaurants, a craft boutique, and a bookstore was now a massive dent filled with rubble. Grass and dirt sprinkled everything for a circular quarter-mile. Ectopians ran in circles, screaming.

Soon there were enough citizens with their attention diverted that the sky began to flicker. The calm blue shifted. Starlight began to leak through. Also the night wind. All it took was for the illusion to falter this much, and in an eyeblink the bubble burst. All of 52 was suddenly exposed to the elements, over a thousand feet up in the air. The wind ripped fruit from trees and residents off the edge into the void.

Zinc pulled himself to his feet. They had to get out of here. People who'd died in the courtyard would be reanimating soon, and some of them would remember seeing a skeleton horse and four misfits jumping out of the wheel just before it went berserk. Zinc revved up his doorknockers and they bled through the bent gates effortlessly. "Come on!" he shouted to his friends. "Let's tear ass!!"

Piffle had to help Junella up, who'd had her head smashed (again) by falling debris. She took only a moment to reawaken and slap the hamsterfly's hands away reflexively. Her eyes widened at the devastation around her. The ongoing devastation. Because the wheel was still rolling.

It came upon another apartment building and gave it a hug. Gyre 2 tore through the smaller structure with pathetically little resistance. Homes were ripped open and residents scattered to the sky.

It cannot be imagined what it must have been like for the residents still inside Gyre 2. No matter how many times they died, they kept reviving, trapped within a spinning hell. A few of the most alert ones were able to maneuver towards their busted-out windows and leap to safety. Of the few that tried, a handful actually made it.

Each apartment block was like a gigantic rectangular boot, leaving gigantic rectangular footprints behind. Each section was already encrusted with dirt, debris and blood. The wheel was still in a business district, so shoppers fled in all directions while boutiques burst like water balloons.

The wheel approached a well-known salon called The Butterfly. Inside, some customers were still under the roaring hairdryers, or floating without a care in sensory deprivation tanks. Everyone else scrambled, leaving these few unaware of their fates. Some of the women under the dryers looked up in alarm when the building they were in suddenly acquired a much lower ceiling. They had only moments to react before their bodies were smashed up into the hairdryers like stuffing a broken egg into a thimble. Those in the deprivation tanks burst from the pressure a split second before their bodies were flattened.

Toby, meanwhile, was covered head to toe in scrapes and bruises, same as everyone else. He was staring at the wheel as it continued its rampage. Bigwheel 52 was more than wide enough to give it plenty of room to play in. How many more buildings would be destroyed, homes lost, and people splattered, before it stopped? It would have to roll off the edge sometime, right?

Zinc extended a wrench to gentlemanly escort Piffle through the hole he'd made in the gate. Junella and George were already through. Zinc looked back to see his client still standing there, paralyzed with empathy. "Yo, amigo. We gotta move feet, I'm sorry. No time to hang around here and rubberneck."

Still staring, Toby unconsciously followed Zinc's voice over the little pile of rubble to the grass outside.

"We have to stop it," he said.

The others turned to look at him.

"We can't!" Junella burst. "What do you expect? I'm gonna just stand in its path and give it a stern look!?"

Toby wasn't aware until Junella's reaction what had actually come out of his mouth. It was something his conscious mind never would have decided. And for good reason. What chance did four mortals and a nightmare have against a cataclysm that was already well underway and clearly unstoppable?

But Toby was a mouse who had read many stories, and watched many movies, and he understood on a reflexive level that this was what good guys did. When there was trouble, they ran towards it, not away.

Of course, now all his worries were dogpiling him, telling him he was more than insane for thinking such a thing. This was beyond him. Beyond all of them. They could do nothing but make it all worse.

Yet his gut would not let him believe that. Even though it had been the man with the sideways eyes who'd flipped the switch, they were there when he'd done it. They could have stopped him. They should have. They were obligated.

Sounding like no one wanted to hear it less than him, Toby insisted, "We have to try."

Junella lunged at him. Behind her, Gyre 2 took out a power station and a grand fire sprang to life in its wake. "You want us to pull some crazy-ass comic book shit!? Fine! YOU try! Got any suggestions, Cap'n Fantastic!?"

Piffle tugged on the skunk's arm. "Hey! Don't be so mean to him!"

Hearing Piffle defend him gave Toby a tiny surge of confidence. And it was enough for an idea with a somewhat-plausible chance of success to pop out of his brain. He snapped his fingers. "The resizing window!"

Junella blinked. Her rage at her client's naivete vanished and her own brain latched onto his plan. It was terrible, of course. But it was something they could try without a great deal of personal risk. She nodded, deciding, then vaulted up onto George's back and one-handed-snatched Toby onto the seat behind her. "Not bad, mouse. We'll try it. But if it doesn't work we get the fuck gone, you understand? You're paying me to get you home, not save the world."

"What is the plan, per se?" George asked.

Junella patted his shoulder. "Navigate us in front of it. But not too in front, got me?"

"Got you, Madam Brox."

"Piffle, can you fly with Zinc?"

Before she could answer, Zinc did. "No need. I'll run." He had some rage to burn off.

***

Gyre 2 was paving a trail of screams through downtown. Millions in property damage. Dozens of stores squashed. Hundreds dead, or wishing they were. Another bookstore had been crushed a moment ago. Shreds of paper pages fluttered through the air like ash after a volcano. Sirens split the air as emergency crews in snakelike vehicles (made for navigating Ectopia's narrow streets) drove around frantically. Some stopped to coup de grâce the wounded. It was all they could really do. In a moment of valiant stupidity, one guardsman parked his vehicle in the path of the runaway wheel. It was swallowed under block 2J without so much as a shudder.

In the wheel's path now was an elementary school. Children trampled each other getting to the exits. A demented few stayed behind, just to experience the most awesome death of their lives. When Gyre 2 sheared their school in half like parting a hairdo, some kids cried, others cheered. Desks, tablets, trash bins and innumerable worksheets littered the ground where the wheel ripped through.

It demonstrates just how pissed off Zinc still was that he managed to keep pace with George. Not many people can match a galloping nightmare for speed. Zinc rhythmically clamped his wrenchtips, getting a feel for them again. They'd been missing for less than an hour, but he'd felt skinned without them. He tested every micrometer, caressing them internally, integrating them back, reintroducing them to the doorknockers, making sure his body was whole again, as he was sure he'd have need of his brute strength soon enough.

The wheel was not especially fast, but it was relentless. It showed no sign of stopping until something forced it to. So its path was easy for George to predict. He noticed something else about its trajectory, but kept it to himself. It was possible their plan could avert it.

He arrived at a spot where, he predicted, the wheel would appear four blocks away in approximately twenty-nine seconds.

"Piffle, gimme the window!" Junella barked.

The hamsterfly's antennae shot up. "I thought you had it!"

Junella looked back at her, eyes blazing. "I do NOT need this shit right now! Stop playing around and gimme!!"

"I don't have it!" Piffle wailed, wringing her hands apologetically. "We must've left it in the car!"

Toby, still gripping George's rump for dear life, felt another idea poke through. "Junella, can you dumbfound it?"

"Maybe," she said. "If I can remember what it feels like." She was aware that concentrating on mindfucking something was one of the best ways to fail at it.

The street was shaking. The roar of the Gyre was getting louder. Stampeding people were starting to clog the path in front of them, much more concerned about several tons of rolling death than a nightmare horse.

Junella was flicking her hand by her hip furiously, but nothing was jumping into her fingertips.

Toby saw the frustration curdling on her grooved vinyl face. He remembered something else: Piffle was better at this. "Piffle! Do it!!" he whirled around and shouted.

She was so startled, she handed him the resizing window without a single thought or hesitation.

"Great job!" Toby told her.

"Oh wow, I did it!"

Toby quickly put the window in Junella's hands. "Here. You know how to make it do the shrinky thing."

It was good timing too, because the wheel was in view now. They had a comfortable few seconds left to get their asses out of the middle of the street before it ran them over.

Junella fumbled with the little flimsy thing before getting it held up correctly in front of her. She fixed the wheel in its center. Hoping desperately, but expecting failure, she brought the corners together.

Toby's idea was a good one, it just didn't happen to work. The wheel was simply too big. And the window worked best on stationary objects. All that happened when Junella tried to shrink it was that she managed to reduce several fleeing pedestrians to doll-size.

"Well fuck," she said.

George did not need to be told that moving his friends out of the way was now a priority. He swung around, scooped Zinc up on the bridge of his nose, and plowed blindly through the fleeing crowd. "Sorry! Sorry!" he cried out to anyone he trampled.

Piffle took flight and landed with the others just a few heartbeats before the wheel rolled by. The noise was so loud it almost wasn't noise at all, just a skullshaking vibration that whited out all other sound. Gyre 2's apartment blocks were getting battered to hell and back, but each one was constructed for safety and durability, double reinforced. So while the brick facades were long since chipped away, each block was now a box of skeletal metal. And from the screams, there were still plenty of tenants trapped inside, dying over and over and over.

"It failed..." Toby whispered to no one.

"Not yer fault," Zinc said with a pat on the shoulder. "I wouldn've thought to try that. Hell, I was just planning to run off and not come back to EC for a few decades."

"...Which is what we should be doing right now," Junella sang sternly. "You had your shot, Toby. Pure luck it didn't work. I don't blame you. Now we flee the scene."

George hesitantly spoke up. "There is some information I think you all should be aware of first," he said, an ominous worry in his voice.

Junella did not like how he sounded. "What now!?"

"I am quite certain of this," he prefaced. "From my observation, I have concluded that the wheel will not, as would be best, roll off the edge and fall into the parking lot. When it hits that large white building over there, it will have slowed enough that it will turn. Its course will be diverted. It will fall down through the spokes."

Zinc's eyes bulged. "JESUS!!!"

Toby was about to ask why that was so bad when his mind filled in the image. Ectopia Cordis was a giant cylinder. Each Bigwheel was supported by five spokes around a central axis. If Gyre 2 tumbled over the outer edge, the worst that would happen is that a lot of people's cars would be pancaked. But if it fell down instead, through the spokes, there was no limit to how many more homes and businesses it would destroy. Maybe it would crash down to Bigwheel 51 and land flat. Or maybe it would keep on falling, gathering momentum, bouncing all the way down. Fifty levels of city property. Bigwheel after Bigwheel. The already-unfathomable damage to 52 would be only the beginning.

The horror was almost too much for Toby to bear. He could feel his brain bulging at the seams, threatening to burst his skull. Normally, his fear would have turned him into a stone icicle by now. But it is a strange thing, how sometimes colossal tragedies affect us differently than small ones. The octospider had sent Toby into a screaming panic. Amaurosis Fugax had nearly driven him insane. But this... this was so big his brain just seemed to give up. A bizarre kind of jittery calm enfolded him. It was like when runners hit the wall and keep on going. Gyre 2 had crushed the limits of Toby's panic. He was now a hair trigger away from passing out, but until then, he found himself in a state of floating, urgent lucidity.

"We can't leave," he said resolutely. "There has to be something else we can try."

Junella felt her anger flare. But she put a lid on it and simply clutched Toby's arm. "No."

He swatted her hand away. His movements felt like swimming. He looked straight into her fierce eyes and replied, calmly, "I make the decisions. I'm the client. We're going to stop that thing because I say so." Toby would later have almost no memory of anything he said or did in the next few minutes.

It took incredible restraint for Junella to not backhand this idiot mouse's face straight off. Instead she bit her lip and decided to humor him. "Allright, Sarge. We'll play it your way. But we are going to DISCUSS THIS later," she tempested. "Do you have any more ideas?"

George stepped in to give Toby's malfunctioning brain a rest. "I do. But it will require re-transforming into my bird form, so I can see the whole city from a wider angle."

"We're out of potion," Junella said, making a turning-out-her-pocket gesture.

"Can we get more?"

Zinc traced through his inner map of the city. "Any survival store'll have some. I've only been here once before, since 52's not my kinda party, but I know exactly where the potions are in ol' Rippingbeany's place if we can get back to 48 quick enough."

"Then let us not delay." George picked Junella up in his teeth and planted her in his saddle, then did the same with Toby. The stallion looked around for a nearby elevator or slapstation, saw none, and decided to improvise. He took off running for the nearest spoke-edge. "I shall explain on the way!"

George's prediction was perfect. At the end of the street was indeed a very large white obelisk-shaped building. It was an imaginite storage silo. Needless to say, such places are heavily reinforced to deter robbery attempts. When Gyre 2 smacked into it, the silo cracked like an egg. But doing so ate up a hell of a lot of kinetic force. And now, just like George had warned, Gyre 2 was jolted out of its linear path and onto a new one. Headed right for the edge of Spoke Five. It must be understood that, as enormous as an apartment-building-sized ferris wheel is, it is nothing compared to a Bigwheel. Picture dropping a coaster on a slowly rotating wagon wheel, and you will have some idea of scale. The spokes were thick enough to house many, many stores and houses, but the gaps between easily allowed Gyre 2 to pass through. Downward and downward, causing unthinkable chaos with every bounce.

***

Ectopia Cordis is far from defenseless, and Luxy Bleeder, like any good leader, anticipates and plans for incidents like this. The mammoth cranes Toby had seen scuttling up and down the sides of the city were already en route to intercept Gyre 2. Their mighty steel snouts had special hooked lines designed specifically for wrangling runaway architecture.

Alas, the nearest of them was way down at Bigwheel 8.

Every forty hours, the cranes docked near the base of the city to receive supplies and fuel. It was part of Mr. Muskrat's devious design that Gyre 2 had come loose at just the right time for all four cranes to be as far away as possible. Until their operators managed to race them up the city's scaffolding, there was nothing that could be done about the destruction. Nothing but to stare and hope and wait.

*****

CHAPTERFORTYONE

It cannot be understated how acutely aware the residents of Bigwheel 51 are that they are just one thin level away from the penthouse. Consequently, they try everything possible to outdo 52 in terms of glamour and finery, and the whole of their Bigwheel reeks of trying too hard. Case in point: the thing Gyre 2 was just about to crash into next.

Thousands of faces looked up as a huge spinning coin fell out of the sky,. Debris, ash, and limbs showered down. Directly below was one of the most outlandishly ostentatious fixtures of a city already famous for them. The Gold Fountain. This fountain was not made of gold; the "water" in it was. Superheated molten gold, spraying 24 hours a day into a sparkling plume that dazzled citizens year round. Yes, there were occasional complaints about children crawling up into it and getting burned alive in seconds, but que sera sera.

Gyre 2 was about to introduce itself to this gilded amusement, swooping in like a loud drunk at a baptism. The crunch sent a shockwave through 51's Spoke Two that knocked hundreds off their feet. Those who hadn't started running soon enough now howled in agony as molten rain poured down upon them, turning them instantly into golden screaming statues.

The apartment building bounced again, batting a private helicopter out of the sky like a shuttlecock, and came back down to reduce even more of the city to smears of dirt and metal.

Back on 52, Zinc swiveled his eyes around 360, looking for... "Great, they do have 'em up here!" He dashed down the street, letting the others follow, headed for a hovering screen a few blocks away.

To help Ectopians navigate their constantly-shifting environment, Route Finders were placed all around the city. The ones in 52 were fancier, but still worked the same. Zinc was happy to realize this as he skidded up in front of it. Like in a mall, it showed a map of the immediate area with 'You Are Here' indicated in yellow. Zinc plunked about five seconds' worth of willpower into the slot and the map lit up.

"Rippingbean & Woofingbutter's!" he shouted. He was panting a little, finally realizing how hard he'd been running a moment ago.

Various routes to elevators and slapstations appeared, along with the prompt for 'Edgejump'.

Zinc stabbed the option so hard his wrench went right through the holographic screen.

The others arrived in time to see a glowing red line, like a liquid laser, pour out of the bottom of the map and go running down the street. Zinc's wrench grabbed Toby's shoulder. "C'mon! Hate to do this to you, but nothin's quicker than an edgejump."

Toby wanted to pretend he didn't know what that was, but the term was too unmistakable. And he couldn't argue with it. What could get them to their destination faster than gravity? For a moment he was surprised the map would offer such an option, but then he thought that, in a city that didn't believe in guardrails, why not? "So do we just jump to our death or will there be something to land on?"

"Nothing any softer than concrete," Zinc said.

Toby replied honestly, "I don't know if I'll be able to make myself do that."

Junella was right behind him, still remembering how he'd bossed her around a moment ago. "Nothing to worry about, Fearless Leader. My boot on your ass'll make the choice for you."

Below came sounds of carnage. Block 2C was now dented and splashed with shining gold. More crimson was added to Gyre 2's color scheme with every pass over a slow pedestrian. The wheel had landed in a bad place: another shopping district, far more crowded than the last. The little coffeeshops and shoe stores offered no resistance to Gyre 2's tonnage. Even Guard Station 17 folded like a house of graham crackers. One guard stood in the middle of the street firing round after round from his sidearm at the onrushing wheel. Whether he was trying to make it stop or just taking out his anger on it, no one knew, because he was squashed like a bug seconds later.

Oh my, was there ever looting. Not only were dozens of people already scavenging the rubble on 52 and carrying away jewelry, phones, magic items, and weaponry, but back at the cracked imaginite storage silo, people were going insane. Hooting, maddened Ectopians were filling their shirtfronts and purses with shimmering chunks, scattering in all directions so the guardsmen couldn't nightstick their skulls in. One feline fellow somehow managed to acquire a wheelbarrow. The guardsmen ensured he did not get far with it.

As if drawn in highlighter, the red line from the Route Finder streaked onwards towards the edge of Spoke Five. Toby was staggered by the sight of the expanse between spokes. It was one thing to be told this city had no guardrails, another to see proof of it. Grass and sidewalk reached right up to touch the nothingness. The drop seemed to suck him in. Just the twelve-foot-thick arm of metal he was standing on, several tons of air, and then a counter-rotating Bigwheel ninety feet below. With 52's illusory atmosphere gone kaput, high winds were let in that tried maliciously to shove him towards that plunge.

The red line stopped at the very edge where similarly-colored numbers were counting down: one minute and four seconds left. Zinc called out to Toby. "See that? When it gets to zero, we jump. We'll sail clear down to 48 and either land on Rippy 'n Woofy's roof, or the sidewalk next to it. Quickest way down. You understand, Toby?"

The mouse nodded. "Understanding it, and wanting to do it, are two different things."

Zinc did something wholly unexpected and hugged his client. Toby blinked as he felt his face pressed into his leather jacket. "But you will. I can already see it in your eyes, Toby. Goddamn, you impress me. I thought you'd have run back to the car by now to go shove yourself cowering in the glove compartment."

"I want to. I very much want to."

Zinc pulled back to look in the mouse's coral-colored eyes. "But you won't. You're a fraidy cat, Toby, but you're fully stocked on loyalty. I admire that. Really. I didn't expect it from you at first."

The mouse was speechless. He couldn't express how much it touched him to hear that.

But the screams and fire down below reminded him of why they were doing this in the first place.

Having a purpose outside of himself helped to distract from the terror. The buzzy, soupy, unreal feeling in his brain was holding out, but not for long. It was giving him the false courage of someone convinced their actions are merely a vivid dream. And knowing that more people would suffer as the seconds ticked by unless he and his friends did something about it helped to squeeze a bit more longevity out of that faux-valor.

Toby watched the red seconds count down.

Piffle came up behind him to squeeze his shoulders. "How's tricks, 'cuz?" she asked gently.

"Couldn't be better," he said, voice cracking.

05...04...03...02...01

Junella Brox did not make threats idly. She raised up her booted foot and sent Toby sailing over the edge. She allowed a giggle at his scream, then hopped off after him.

George, Zinc and Piffle followed. Good thing too, since the few guardsmen that had recovered their wits enough to start chasing the terrorists who had been seen fleeing Gyre 2 would have caught up with them in another few minutes.

The Route Finders were popular because they were programmed so damn well. They calculated time, place, rotation and velocity so precisely that, if you followed the countdown exactly, there was a 99% chance you would splash down at your desired destination. A longer fall sometimes required a stopover in another wheel, but as soon as you revived, the red line would direct you to your next jump. Comparatively, going down a mere four Bigwheels was a piece of cake. On 52, the red line blinked out of sight, but not before spelling out, 'Have A Nice Day'.

Falling. Plummeting so fast it felt like the air was peeling off his skin. Toby's eyes watered as he kept them clamped shut. His whole body was clenched up like a packed snowball. He had no idea when the impact would come. Toby's brain was like a trunk full of broken china tumbling end over end. His rational mind tried to shout down his instinctual panic, which was difficult because, boy did it ever have some volume. He tried to tell himself he was in no real danger, that people died here all the time and it was no big deal, that he himself had died at least three times and was still around to tell the tale. But when panic wants its way, sometimes it gets it no matter what.

George tucked his legs in, streamlining himself, to catch up with his falling master. "Would you like some assistance, Sire?"

Toby made a gurgled yelp.

"I shall take that as a yes." Carefully, he stretched out his neckbones to take Toby's collar between his teeth. The wind was pummeling both of them, and the onrushing colors were not helping his aim. But still, George looked ahead for an opportunity.

The 'whoosh' of onrushing air changed in pitch every time the five plummeters passed by another spoke, sometimes by mere feet. But soon enough, up ahead, the glittering crown of Rippingbean & Woofingbutter's Survival Emporium sparkled as if to welcome them.

Teeth clenched tight, George swung his curled up master back and forth, building up momentum. At just the right moment, he snapped his head and let go, sending Toby tumbling straight up.

It was enough to cancel a nice amount of his downward energy. Toby had no idea what the hell was going on, until he landed, still alive, on something surprisingly soft.

George had about three-quarters of a second to appreciate his fine shot before smashing into the silver pyramid atop RB&WB's roof, making lightbulbs explode and sending chunks of splintered black bone in every direction.

Zinc landed on a fire hydrant. The results were too gruesome to describe.

Junella stared ahead at the onrushing asphalt with her eyes held open, a rictus of defiance on her face. Ready to face physical annihilation for the umpteenth time. And then, just a few feet from the street, something yanked her ankle. She looked up through her legs to see Piffle holding on with both paws, wings a-blur.

"Gotcha!" she said with a great big smile.

'Damn. Now I have to thank her,' Junella internally grumbled.

Toby dared to peek at his surroundings and found himself in a dumpster behind the store. Simple fear of germs knocked his fear of falling away as he scrambled to get himself out. His feet weren't making too much traction on the squishy, soft bags he'd landed on. And the smell confused him. Shouldn't it have been worse? He looked down to realize he'd landed on half a dozen trash bags full of freshly baked bread. Some of them had split open and the loaves were spilling out. He didn't have time to guess what the heck they were doing here, because strong vinyl arms gave him a yank.

"No time for a nap, o valued client," Junella sang acid-sweetly. "And don't expect me to apologize for kicking your ass."

Toby flicked crumbs off his clothes. "You did give me fair warning." He wondered why he wasn't a gibbering mess after falling four levels and inexplicably surviving via bread, but that disconnected fog around his perceptions let him know he was still firmly in the land of shellshock.

Junella and Piffle guided him around to the front of the building just in time to see Zinc's foot kick open the front door hard enough to shatter it. The canine barreled out of the building with five or six security guards chasing after him. Their tazersticks were brandished and sparking.

"I'm really sorry!!" he hollered. "Put it on my tab! The door too!"

George picked a really good time to get himself together and drop down from the roof, because the sight of his sudden landing made the security guards shriek and retreat like panicked penguins.

"Nice timing!" Zinc complimented.

Junella ran up. "Got the potion?"

Zinc held up two glass bottles, each held delicately between the clamps of his wrenches. "And a spare just in case!"

Not wasting any time, Junella snatched both of them out of his grip and tossed one immediately to Piffle. "Make those pockets useful. Might need it later."

"Aye aye!" Piffle replied.

Junella whirled around to George, "Normally the effects of these are random. So you gotta concentrate on what you wanna be as hard as you possibly can, got that!?"

"Absolutely!

Then she chucked the bottle at him hard enough to shatter, figuring he wouldn't mind.

And he didn't. The magic liquid took hold of him and, within moments, his calcium and marrow were replaced by copper and tin. The potion ensnared him, remolding him like a pair of giant play-doh-crushing hands. It only took a second. Once again he was a mechanical parrot. But this time, he'd managed to maintain enough force of will to keep the transformation from affecting his size. Larger wings meant faster flight. 

Toby blinked at seeing a horse-sized toy parrot appear in front of him.

George wriggled his new body around, getting used to it again, as he addressed his friends. "My plan is to fly out past the city and observe the apartment wheel. It may simply stop on its own, but we cannot count on that. I will look for anything we might be able to place in its path to divert its course."

"What do you mean, 'place'?" Junella asked.

"I think he means we're gonna have to drop a building in front of it like a penny on the tracks,"  Zinc replied.

George nodded. He spread his creaking, clanking wings. "If I calculate a course of action, I will return to you and relay instructions."

Zinc knew there was no time for that. Luckily, he and Juney had tried this trick before: he reached up and ripped off one of his own ears. "Catch, Georgie."

The parrot speared it on one of his talons. "Sir Zinc?"

"Now you've got a walkie talkie."

"Oh? Oh! That's very clever, Sir!"

Zinc heard the nightmare's response through both ears, even though one was currently detached.

Needing something to do to feel useful, Junella assumed a pose of leadership. "Allright, everyone! George, get airborne. Just do whatever it is you're gonna do and tell us where to be. I'll make sure we're there. For now, we'd better start running again before those store guards make us pay for the door."

Piffle looked towards the store entrance. The only thing holding back the guards was the tangle of gawking, confused customers. "Good idea!"

Junella drew her sword. "CHARGE!!" she rumbled, picking a direction at random.

With a mighty burst of wind, George swept his considerably-improved wingspan down upon the air and pushed off into the sky. His new brass eyes did not change his nightmarish vision, which was good. He would need his senses performing at optimum capacity for what he was about to do. He hoped he had not oversold his ability. If he had, he knew he might be landing his companions in even more trouble than they were already in.

***

Meanwhile, back on 51, a much-beloved chandelier store was being reduced to a glass sandwich by Gyre 2's unceasing footsteps. It all happened in an instant, bulbs shattering, sparks showering, sculpted metal flattening. The owner knelt on the sidewalk and beat his fists bloody against it.

Gyre 2 was not slowing despite the dozens of little toy buildings in its path. They burst like concrete piñatas. An army of looters was now trailing behind it, scavenging in the wake of its passage. Guardsmen herded shoppers, families, and children out of the way. A massive cheer broke out when it became clear the wheel was heading for the edge. But of course, this only meant it was now someone else's problem.

At least the residents of Bigwheel 50 had some warning. Gyre 2 charged over the edge of Spoke Two, sailed across the gap, and ricocheted hard off Spoke Three. It sent up a ringing CLANG that turned every head for a half-mile in its direction.

Then a frozen, silent moment as it fell. And hundreds of citizens held their breath.

Being a round number, Bigwheel Fifty was less a resort for the wealthy, more of a tourist hotspot. Ectopia Cordis' version of Hollywood and New York rolled into one. An arts and entertainment mecca. It was sometimes called the Lighthouse Bulb, since even from the ground there was a noticeably stronger glow than any other level. It was also the Bigwheel with the greatest total population at any given time.

The sea of people turned into a sea of blood as the wheel touched down. It bounced. It slammed. It bounced again. Cameras flashed like twinkling fireflies as world-famous landmarks were clobbered into rubble. The Tenwing Theater. Doreo's Chophouse. The Globe Gallery. The Celestilogicon. Even Saul's Bowling Paradise. All gone in seconds.

Johnny Baba And The Scoundrels were playing to a sellout crowd in Cogsbody Arena. Screaming fans let the pounding drums and sizzling guitars reverberate their guts into rock 'n roll nirvana. Johnny Baba himself looked up past the lip of the open-air stadium and saw Gyre 2 rear its dented, blood-soaked head. He kept on singing, kept on shredding his guitar, and merely glanced between his bandmates. They could have stopped the show, sure. But what fun would that be? Instead, they played harder, louder, drowning out the looming growl of onrushing destruction. As Gyre 2 smashed through the opposite edge of the arena, the band had exactly enough time to come to a blistering, finger-bleeding crescendo. "Goodnight everybody!!!" Johnny Baba bellowed, an instant before he and everyone in rows C through J were churned into raw gore. Those who attended the concert that night said it was the greatest show ever.

***

Soaring, gliding, swooping. Rising over rooftops. Laughing in gravity's face. In his old life as an ordinary nightmare, George had experienced a deep primitive satisfaction from the feeling of control. From his body moving just as he commanded it to, from herding his fleeing prey and teasing them into ambushes. Flight gave him a feeling of control richer than any he'd ever experienced before. To be unrestrained by linear motion, free to move in any direction he chose, was magnificent. If he were to be honest with himself, he was in some small way grateful for the cataclysm of Gyre 2 for giving him the need to drive this strange metal form to its limits.

Ectopians can be a pretty jaded bunch. But still, a parrot the size of a small airplane, flying fast enough to make the air ripple behind it, is something worth a look. Upturned faces swiveled to George's path as he rocketed above the streets of 48. A woman leaned out the window of her revolving apartment and chucked a beer bottle at him. It missed, of course, but George wished he had time to stop and sink his beak into her brains for such an offense.

The everpresent noise of the turning wheels. Down here, these poor people hadn't heard the booms and shouts from the tragedy unfolding above. 'It may be too late to save them,' he thought. But perhaps 46 or 45? He could hope.

He was outside the city now. The night was cold as the ocean, but clear. Good visibility. And the innumerable bright lights on every Bigwheel helped immensely. He flew far enough beyond them to get a good overview of where Gyre 2 was and where it was headed. It wasn't hard to spot, he just had to follow the line of smoke and fire. George's metal eyes focused in. He let his mind take hold of the whole structure of Ectopia Cordis, let himself feel every moving part, foresee the runaway building's path...

The small scrap of skin and cartilage was still held protectively in his grasp. He spoke into it. "Sir Zinc, can you hear me?" He paused, feeling foolish. "...Why am I asking questions? You can't respond."

The ear wiggled.

"You can! Oh, that makes this much easier! One wiggle for yes, two for no. Am I coming through clear?"

A good strong wiggle.

"I am approximately one mile out from the city. I can see everything. I had hoped that my worries would be for nought; that this situation would resolve itself and we need take no action. Not so. Based on all factors, I can see the wheel is gaining momentum. I project it will continue on deeply through the levels, not stopping until the low thirties unless something completely unexpected occurs. If you trust me, I believe our best course of action will be to intercept it on Bigwheel 46, but we have only a short time to act. Am I understood?"

One wiggle.

George plunged back towards the city. "I'm heading back now. Meet me at a point equidistant between the large library and shopping mall on that level. We shall make our decision there."

***

Rolling on, unstoppable.

Tourists clogged the street, scrambling over top of each other to escape the wheel, trampling fingers and faces in their panic to get away. Like crabs clawing over one another to escape a bucket, most of them only succeeded in getting themselves ensnarled and stuck in place. Able only to watch as that circular shadow came closer, closer, closer, until everything was black and the pressure made their skulls into a smear.

Amid all the fire and screams, a little girl sat bawling in the street, still holding her father's hand. The rest of him, and her mother, and her sister, were stuck to the bottom of Block 2E.

***

A glint in the sky. Zinc turned around and started waving his wrenches back and forth above his head, signaling in George for a landing.

Junella had gotten them here just as promised. Waving her cutlass around like a rum-drunk pirate, she'd scared enough people away from the nearest slapstation that she and the others were able to ride it down instead of making another edgejump.

How do slapstations work in reverse? To go up, as you’ll remember, a giant spatula flicks the platform heavenward. To descend, each platform free-falls onto a nozzle which, at just the right time, vents a gout of superconcentrated air: the exhaust of the city's inner workings put to good use. How did Toby like this form of travel? Do you even have to ask?

46 was a moderately well-to-do area, mostly residential. The quartet had positioned themselves, as instructed, between two of this Bigwheel's largest structures. To their right was the Walter Rourke Historical Library. It stretched up almost tall enough to scrape the bottom of Bigwheel 47. It was the largest repository of Phobiopolan literature in all the realm, functioning similarly to Earth's ancient library of Alexandria.

Ten blocks away stood the grand Panjandrum Mall. Somewhat shorter, but also somewhat wider. Acres of commerce, open 24 hours a day. So many shops it would be impossible to see them all in one visit. Some selling only such odd specialties as french toast, popcorn, refrigerator magnets, and glow-in-the-dark objects.

Our heroes were far enough away from the guards to take a breather. They were resting against a wall at the far edge of a barbecue restaurant's parking lot. The smell made Zinc wish they had time to stop in for lunch.

George landed in front of them with a blast of wind and a hearty THUMP. Before anything else, he extended a clawed foot with an ear on it. "Thank you for entrusting this to me, Sir Zinc."

"No sweat," he replied as he clipped it back on.

"What do we do now?" Toby asked George.

"We have a choice," the equine said gravely. "In six minutes, give or take some several seconds, the runaway wheel will fall this way. Onto this approximate area. We are lucky only in that either of these two behemoth structures, if tilted properly, would "catch" the falling wheel and send it skidding either to a stop, hopefully, or off the edge and into the parking lot. Either is preferable to its present course of mayhem."

Junella looked at George with a pinched mouth and a flat, cold glare. "You said, 'tilted properly'." Her tone demanded further explanation.

"Yes, well..." the horse looked to Zinc. Specifically his wrenches. "I had hoped you would have some idea on how to accomplish that."

Zinc's mouth fell open. "Me? Tilt a whole building!?" He smacked his forehead, forgetting he didn't have one, and nearly knocked his eyeballs off. "I mean... I've smashed big shit before, but..." He paused. His mind whirled.

...Could he?

Toby stepped in to take over and let Zinc think. While waiting for George, Zinc had been blowing off nervous energy, telling him and Piffle about their two options. "There's not really a choice here. It has to be the mall," he said.

"Oh really?" Junella said, challengingly. She did not like to be left out of decisions.

For the first time, he looked at her with not a speck of fear or deference in his posture. He thought about his precious bookshelves at home. "People come back to life here, but not property, right? We are not going to destroy all those books. They're important."

He said it with such complete, total, 100% ironclad end-of-discussion finality that Junella simply regarded him a moment, then nodded.

"Mall it is then," Zinc said. He let his eyes travel all the way up to the top of the wheel of capitalism. All that metal. All those tons of concrete. His wrenches felt like q-tips in comparison. "Shame. I like the place. Bought some nice gloves there once."

Piffle walked over to his side. "Can you really do it?"

Zinc's mouth moved and some near-syllables fell out, as he ran through all sorts of things he could reply. "I don't know," was what he finally admitted. His voice was very small.

Toby slugged him on the arm.

Needless to say, this hurt the mouse more than the canine, but it got his attention. "Toby? You got any fingers left after that?"

"Nyehhffffff," Toby hissed as he cradled his paw. "I was trying to give you a motivational punch. Like in locker rooms, on TV."

Zinc giggled.

"Hey, I'm trying to help!" the mouse insisted. "I remember seeing you standing on that table in Dorster's back room, looking like the scariest thing in the world. You looked like some kinda invincible werewolf god! You nearly scared my pants brown! C'mon, you can take on a mall!"

A goofy grin spread across the canine's face while Toby spoke. For a moment there, the enormity of the task had overwhelmed him, made him feel small. But what was hanging at the end of each chain dangling from his shoulder? A little metal ball. Small enough to hold in your hand. And each one could hit with the mass of a white giant sun. At his command.

Zinc roared his engines to life. Blood exhaust sprayed the wall behind him. His fangs glinted.

"I think you're onto something there, Toby-my-boy."

Piffle jumped and clapped to see him in action. "Go, Zinc!"

Junella didn't care about throwing a wet blanket on things, she needed to be sure this was not a fool's errand. "George, how the hell do you know where that wheel's gonna land six minutes from now? How could ANYONE know that? There must be a zillion factors to consider! All the things it could bounce off 'n whatever. It could fall flat and stop in two seconds!"

George disliked being impolite to his friends, but he held a greater dislike for being disbelieved. "Madam. In my past, I have, on many occasions, instinctively calculated the reactions of groups of dozens of fearful, panicked, fleeing people, in order to taunt and catch and murder them. A sentient mind is only moving parts if you can perceive it that way. So is a falling wheel. If I can handle one, please do not doubt that I can handle the other."

The nightmare had spoken softly, but Junella still backed up a step. Internally, she was throwing a roarer of a hissy fit at being dressed down by both George AND Toby within the space of a few seconds. But Junella Brox was a furson who had spent a long time practicing at putting the lid on her tantrums. "Allright," she sang quietly. "What do you need me to do?"

"If I may, partner," Zinc stepped in, emphasizing the importance of that last word, "I'm gonna hafta hammer like hell at that mall's supports. People will probly try to stop me. I'll be in need of some crowd control."

A smile came to Junella's face. Her hand squeezed her sword handle. "That I can do."

George scooped Junella up by the back of her neck and planted her between his wings. "Then we have not much more than five minutes remaining."

"Gotcha, George." The skunk raised her steel high. "ONWARDS!!!"

*****

Chapter Forty-Two

Down below, the operators of the city's four maintenance cranes pushed their machines to the limit. Ectopia Cordis' wheels spun around a central axis, but there are also five support poles at the edges of the Bigwheels. This is the infrastructure that holds the city together. All five beams are criss-crossed with internal struts and tied together with a series of riblike rings, one for every Bigwheel. It is upon these poles and rings that the cranes crawled upwards. Their motors chugged like booming thunderclouds. Smoke vomited from their pipes. Sweat beaded on the foreheads of the operators. All of them could see the black clouds bellowing from the top levels. All of them knew they'd never make it in time.

Gyre 2 had made mincemeat of Bigwheel Fifty. Behind it lay a grey, flattened rut of devastation. Survivors walked around aimlessly, unable to comprehend the magnitude of what had happened or what to do now. Some citizens and guardsmen were already helping the dead return to wakefulness, or digging through pancaked buildings for those trapped. One restaurant owner, possibly delusional or possibly enraged, was starting to reconstruct his pride and joy already, putting bricks on top of other bricks. Everyone, everywhere, was dusted with ash.

As has been said before, the brain of a nightmare is a marvelous thing. Taking in all relevant factors, George had predicted Gyre 2 would take a diagonal path across Bigwheel Fifty, coming near the edge of the city limits but not rolling those crucial two thousand feet more. Instead it would drop to 49, leave it comparatively unscathed by making a lateral beeline across Spoke Three and dropping off again. Here was where they'd gain some time to prepare. Because, if all went as foreseen, it would roll from the outer edge of 48's Spoke Four, past the main axle, all the way to halfway along the length of Spoke Two. This would take a terrible toll on 48's many, many residents. But since it was largely a residential Bigwheel, there were simply no structures tall enough to bend into a ramp. And no time to create one either. There were several Supercolossal-class wheels on 47, but none in the path of Gyre 2. Forty-Six was a lucky miracle. Two Supercolossals, right in the projected spot where Gyre 2 would land after falling off Forty-Seven. If all went well.

What George had not told his companions, what he did not dare tell them for fear they would hesitate instead of acting, was that he was only seventy-to-seventy-five percent confident in his prediction. Junella was right; the amount of factors to consider was impossible. This was George's very best educated guess.

Needing to make up time, he picked up Toby and Zinc in his claws as he took off at top flightspeed towards Panjandrum Mall. Piffle followed behind, valiantly trying to keep up. It was a good thing the construct remained in parrot form, as it meant he could give Zinc an aerial view of their target and let him know which direction to shove it.

The canine rhythmically clashed his wrenchtips together as he peeled his eyes and surveyed the mall's supports. It was an A-framed building, and that was excellent. A triangle frame would be the worst. But obviously, the mall's owners would want everyone outside to see as many of the shops as possible. Two great big solid triangular slabs holding the wheel up would be bad for business. Instead, the circular shopping center was held aloft by, literally, an immense capital 'A' made of intercrossing steel beams on either side. This meant four points of connection to the ground. This meant Zinc only had to take out two of them to get the whole fucking thing to lean like a limbo dancer.

"Set me down right there!" he called to George. He revved his doorknockers again. This was just what they'd been made for. To eat through anything too tough for his wrenches alone. This would be a trial by fire. He hadn't practiced with them nearly long enough to be confident they could do this. But emergencies rarely have the patience to wait for a convenient time.

Zinc's feet hit the grass and he was already running towards the north apex. Malls are typically crowded places, and there were hell of a lot of people in the way. The doorknockers snorted, spraying aerosolized blood on anyone close. Zinc hammered the ground, sending up divots, and howled, "MAKE WAY, FOLKS!!! I GOTTA SAVE THE GODDAMNED WORLD!!!" He threw in a banshee scream for good measure. Shoppers scattered like pool balls.

The apexes of the A-frame were the mall's entrances. Customers rode escalators to the main hub and chose their spokes from there. Entrances have guards. And two of them already had their tazersticks pointed at Zinc as he rushed towards them like a mad bull. "What the hell do you think you're doing!?" screamed one of them.

"I'm real sorry about this," Zinc said sincerely, as he blocked her tazerstick with a wrench, and a whack from his doorknocker sent the guard flying fifty feet in the air. Her partner had exactly half a second to gawk before he was given a free air travel vacation as well.

Wasting no time, Zinc clamped onto the closest corner of the structure and dug in.

This would not be easy. His first swing shattered the cement facade but barely dented the metal underneath. Plus, it nearly rebounded and plowed through his lungs. He was going to have to concentrate, let his mind go, and just run these things on pure instinct. He could not spare an iota of headspace on who might be trying to stop him from doing something so very, very illegal. He let himself trust his friends. He swung harder.

George dropped Toby into the crowd of screaming, bumbling shoppers, then did a swell job of dispersing them by changing back to his horse form in mid air and THUDding to the ground on his hooves. Screams rose in pitch and civilians scattered.

"Any second now this place is gonna become a cop convention," Junella blared. Her sword was already up and eager. "Toby, get that hammer of yours out right this fucking second!"

The mouse was too scared to disobey. Gleaming steel filled his hand in an eyeblink.

She welded him in place with her glare. "No excuses. No pussying out. We are Zinc's only line of defense, understand? You wanted all this damn fool hero bullshit, and here we are. I will do my best to keep the pigs away and let my partner do his work. You will do your best too. And you will die trying as many times as you need to! Am I crystal fucking clear, mouse!?"

Unable to speak coherent words after that verbal barrage, Toby just sputtered a bit and nodded. He looked over the crowd. Everyone was running away for now, but from the second leg of the A, he could see the sizzly lights of tazersticks coming closer. Toby glanced at his bracers, opened his pouch of throwing knives, kissed the head of his hammer, and tried not to think about what he was about to do with it.

Piffle landed a second later, panting. "Jeezum crow, George is fast!"

Junella's cutlass pointed at her. "Remember when I told you to buy yourself a weapon at Dorster's? Let's see it now."

The hamsterfly giggled. "Oh right! I nearly forgot! Thanks for reminding me, Junella!" With that, she pulled up the front of her shirt.

Junella thought nothing Piffle did could surprise her anymore. She was wrong.

Piffle had swallowed one of Alfonzo's sheath-pills too. Just like Toby, her weapon was conveniently stored and ready. Although in this case, it was in her bellybutton. She held out her paw, light flashed from within her tummy, and then she was holding a five-foot-long golden fork.

"A... FORK..." Junella exploded.

Piffle double-handled it like a poleaxe and spun it around. It was light but strong. It gleamed pinkish from her outfit. "Yeah! Ain't it the cat's meow? He practically sold it to me for a song!"

Junella's inner ichor was boiling. "That's probably because he knew it's fucking useless!!!"

Piffle just grinned smugly. "Au contraire," she said simply.

A security guard was forty feet away and closing. Piffle beat her wings to give her a jet-propelled start and met him halfway. He swung his stick, but it missed her by a foot. He grunted a bit as Piffle's fork sank straight through his midsection, four gold tines glinting red on the other side. Piffle swung and flung the dead guard off like kicking a rotten pumpkin off a porch. 

Junella's jaw dropped.

Piffle flitted back to where the skunk stood. She held her bloody fork in one hand while smoothing out her skirt pleats with the other.

"Where in Hell below did you learn how to do THAT?"

Relishing teasing her, Piffle reached out to tickle the skunk's chin. "There's a lot you don't know about me," she bubbled.

Junella pistoned her arm out past Piffle's shoulder to dumbfound her revolver into her palm and blast away another guard getting close.

"I try to be upfront about myself, personally," the skunk replied.

Most organisms are instinctively hardwired to feel revulsion at the very thought of harming another of their kind. Toby felt exactly this as he watched a security guard come closer and closer to him. A taut rubber strap holding back his arm. But what helped him overcome this feeling was the carved-in-stone fact that, right now, violence was a necessity. This was bigger than the pain caused by one weapon to one man. Zinc needed him. And even though they didn't know it, the thousands of Ectopians on the Bigwheels below needed him too.

"I am so sorry about this," Toby said, as he swung his hammer around to obliterate the guard's cheekbone.

The man fell at the mouse's feet, spasmed in pain, then reflexively scrambled up and away, wailing. Toby stared, still feeling the impact echoing in his arm. His mind was nothing but soup now. No coherent thought. Just lightning bolts of adrenaline, mixed with every ecchy emotion possible.

No time for reflection or regret. More guards were coming.

***

Zinc, meanwhile, was in a world all by himself. Nothing existed. Not even him. The entirety of the universe contained only his wrenches, his doorknockers, and the metal he had to get through. It fought him. This was not like cutting through a car. This was dense stuff. Top-level stuff. This stuff was meant to hold up over thirty dozen stores and an unthinkable amount of shoppers, all of whom would want a ride as smooth as mousse. No trembles or jostles could distract their minds from bargains. So the supports of this mall had to be godly-solid.

He was a single mutt who had to cleave through all of that.

But he was making progress. It was more than just dents now. The metal balls were white hot from friction. With each impact, they were denser than any sane world's physics could allow. They were starting to gouge away chunks of melted metal, like scooping out butter with a spoon. But each sphere was still only the size of a softball, and he had to somehow carve up this big bastard bad enough to make it buckle. Then he had to do it all over again on the second support.

He didn't let his mind think about this. He had to go blank. He already heard no sounds, and his vision was nothing but smears of color. He had no idea what was happening behind him, but had perfect faith in Junella to give him room to do his thing. They'd been through plenty of tight scrapes together. Nothing was heavier than today's platter of fuckety-hell, true, but some had come close. His wrenches alone had knocked down a hell of a lot of impossible shit through the years. Now they were supplemented by some brand new toys, eager to prove themselves. He could feel his lava-hot blood flowing through his shoulder-engines. His blood, his will, animating the metal. They were not additions to his body, they were his body. And his body was nothing more than a vehicle for his will. It was the car; he was the engine. He forced more power into his motor. More. More. He felt his sanity slip away into the fire. There was nothing else but the metal in front of him, and his will pounding through it.

***

While Zinc was achieving a state of pure zen, all hell was breaking loose around him. Once people realized that some nutball was trying to wreck the mall, he attracted quite a lot of attention. It was the duty of Junella, Piffle, George and Toby to deflect that attention.

Junella was finally having fun. This was her element. This was her chance to regain her confidence and remember why she'd earned it. Before her were the twitching corpses of a dozen security guards, diced just right to make regeneration take a good, long time. Her cutlass sang in the night. At her feet lay a small but growing pile of spent revolvers.

So far she'd been able to hold her ground. The others too. They made up a semicircle around Zinc. She'd been directing the others on how much area to handle based on glances and body language, since having both hands full meant her voice muted. She'd given Toby the smallest area to deal with, and his back to a wall to boot. To her pleasant surprise, he was doing well for a complete amateur. Mostly reacting on pure instinct, but he'd clobbered four or five guards by now. Plus he was quick to block with his bracers, as rodents are naturally twitchy. Piffle was a giggling demon with that fucking ridiculous silverware of hers. Goldenware? Why the hell had Dorster even made a thing like that!? Whatever the reason, Piffle was twirling it like a cheerleader's baton, turning it into a whirling, flashing blur of gore. And George... Oh, her heart went out to George. He was reveling in nostalgia; the good old days of remorseless wholesale slaughter. And he was laughing the whole time. Like a kid playing with toy soldiers. Except George was eviscerating them with his unholy-powerful hooves and teeth. Junella snatched glances towards him occasionally. When their eyes met, they shared a single thought; 'We shouldn't be enjoying this so much, should we? But we are.'

High up above, Jamais Dreamsicle was covering the whole event from the Channel 909 auxiliary news helicopter. The main pair of choppers were already up at the top, covering the runaway apartment building story. That creep jerk shithead brown-nosed asshole Michael had jumped on the scoop before she could. He was probably jerking off right now at having one-upped her. But she'd show him. She'd have something to roll his smug little nose in. Because she'd kept her ears pricked for any big developments, and had pounced the instant the scanner said some kook was trying to knock down the Panjandrum. Coincidence? That this was happening within minutes of the terrorist attack on 52? Impossible. She'd wrangled Cameron's camera and ignored Bicep's warning that the aux chopper wasn't exactly in the best shape for acrobatics. "I don't give a silver shit if we crash, so long as we bump Michael off the live feed," she had told him. The snarl on her pretty muzzle punctuated her sentence nicely.

So now Cameron was hanging off the side of the doorframe like a reluctant skydiver and she was right there with him, wind blowing her hairdo all to hell. But that wasn't important. 'KEEP TALKING.' That was all that mattered.

Jamais was known for two things. First, that an unfortunate magical accident had left her with all her bodily joints turned clear, like glass. So her head, hands, feet, etc., always appeared to be floating an inch or so away from her. She could have long ago treated this, but instead had made it her trademark. Secondly, she was also known for being a damn good reporter. "As you can see, the guards are trying their hardest to get to the main terrorist and subdue him, but there is some kind of mercenary group protecting him. Things are not going well. This is an unprecedented tragedy. I can't even count the number of people they've killed. Mall shoppers are being directed to the other three exits, but there are still many, many people trapped inside."

"Do we know how many?" Diana asked through the headset.

"That is unknown at this time," Jamais replied. She hated having to shout over the roar of the chopper blades; her voice sounded naggy at this volume. "We are as close as we can get to the action down below, and we are beginning to get a clearer picture of the criminals, these insane lunatics whose motive is not yet known. There is an albino mouse, male, some kind of plus-size female rodent with wings, a dark-furred female who is moving too fast to identify species, and most unbelievably, what looks to be a nightmare, yes an actual nightmare, working alongside them. Specifically the type known as a bonecuddy. How this is possible is still unknown. They may have some kind of mind control spell on it, or it's a remarkably good mechanical fake. Irregardless, it is tearing through the crowd. The carnage is unbelievable. I hope you have a disclaimer warning our viewers to keep children away."

"We certainly do, Jamais," said Diana.

"We can't quite get a good look at their leader yet, they're circling him pretty tight. But from the glimpses we've caught here and there, he appears to be heavily cybernetically altered. Specifically, some kind of robot prosthetic arms. The support pillar is taking a pounding. If he keeps this up, I- Wait! Wait! Cam, swing the lens over there! Diana, it looks like the city's police force is taking over from here! The terrorists should be apprehended shortly!"

***

Of course Ectopia Cordis is protected by more than just guardsmen. For the really nasty work, they send in the robots.

These are metal beasts designed to cause such fear in normal souls that pants become soiled in their presence. Each one is a massive titanium cylinder, thick as a refrigerator. They are incredibly maneuverable and fearsomely fast. Three treaded wheels support them on independent shocks. Long arms snake out from their armored torsos, each ending in a cluster of grabbing claws and pacification implements. Their heads are bundles of sensors topped with three high beam headlights. If they spot you, they will catch you. And if they catch you, they will cram you inside their holding-cell chests and take you to face judgment.

At the sound of their sirens, Junella's ears perked up. At the sight of their searchlights closing in from all sides, a smile of boundless joy came to her face.

Because now she could really let loose.

As much as she'd been enjoying spearing the security guards, there was always that pesky pang of conscience in her heart. She'd been holding back. These were just guys trying to earn a wage, after all. They'd done nothing to deserve her fury. Heck, if she and Zinc had been normal terrorists, they'd be heroes. So yes, she'd killed oodles of them without hesitation, but she did try to make it swift and painless. She kept her cruelty in reserve.

But now... Now here came the tin pigs. No souls, no pain sensors. She could unlock the unholy depths of her black heart and feel nothing but the thrill of ruination.

Civilians and guards scampered out of the way at the growl of the policebots' engines. They were a wall of white-painted silver. Dozens of them, all identical, all with their arms up and ready to ensnare. Their eyelights painted the surrounding buildings red and blue, red and blue, red and blue. Their sirens shrilled. "CITIZENS MOVE ASIDE. POLICE ACTION COMMENCING."

Junella threw her revolver down to speak, but her sword hand may as well have been melted in place. "Toby! Piff! Don't try to take them on, they'll rip you to ribbons! Just keep your eyes open for any more guards and keep Zinc working!" She was glad to see them nodding in unison, and even gladder that Zinc looked like he hadn't even heard her. He was still head down, steadfastly sending up sparks and squirts of liquefied metal. "George! You ever fight fuzz before?"

He surveyed the approaching tank-like enemies. "Not like these."

"They're dead simple, but deadly as fuck. Aim for the eyes first, but watch out for the hands too. They can still hurt you when they're blind. And be prepared to dodge a LOT of bullets."

"Bullets, I am familiar with," George replied, digging in his hooves.

She turned to face him, locking eyes. "First though, I need you to stay put until I give the signal. Trust me on this."

He bowed. "I cede to your greater experience with this particular foe, Madam Brox."

Zinc was aware of precisely none of this. He was on fire. Sometimes literally, as his work was filling the air with drops of molten slag. But he'd hit his stride. He'd figured out the rhythm. His doorknockers were swimming through the metal in a crisscross pattern, and would cut through the support in just a few more minutes. How he was going to get over to the other one, that was a problem for the Zinc fifty seconds in the future. But he was confident he could get that rhythm back once he got there. He had this.

The civilians had mostly cleared out, leaving a large empty area where Zinc and the others were conducting business. Jamais was still high in the sky, narrating everything while Cam lived up to his name. Viewers tuning in saw the quintet of criminals trapped like rats as cop-bots swarmed in from every street. Thirty or forty units. They closed in, creating a circular perimeter around the perps. When they were all equidistant from one another, the policebots ground to a halt, forming an impenetrable wall. Together, a hundred or so headlights all focused on a single point: one sword-wielding skunk.

Junella felt the heat from all those lights. But she stood firm, squinting back at them. Teeth grit. Readying.

"UNKNOWN AGGRESSOR, YOU ARE ENGAGING IN CRIMINAL TRESPASS AND IMPERILING THE PROPERTY AND GOOD TIMES OF ECTOPIAN CITIZENS. STAND DOWN AND YOU WILL BE COLLECTED WITHOUT HARM."

All their voices had spoken as one. Toby was reminded quite strongly of the Cold Coven. But as he and Piffle cringed side by side, their weapons seeming puny in the face of all that robotic might, they also remembered what Junella had done to the Cold Coven.

In the blinding glare of police lights stood one vinyl skunk. Her posture was tense as a cobra. Her tail was up and ready to strike.

In the palms of each one of their multi-tooled hands, each policebot had a minigun. Each minigun was all spun up and ready to fire.

Their opponent had a sword.

Junella had played with these toys before, and was counting down the seconds in her mind, knowing exactly how long she had until they were programmed to start spitting up tear gas and tanglewire. She didn't want that. Non-lethal weapons were harder to get around. She wanted a good old fashioned gunfight.

She raised her cutlass.

They reacted predictably. "YOU ARE DISPLAYING AN AGGRESSIVE MOTION. YOU ARE ORDERED TO LIE DOWN FLAT ON THE GROUND SURFACE. YOU WILL NOT BE WARNED AGAIN."

Junella put her hand over her heart. Her needles found the grooves to tell them just what she thought about their warning.

"I AM JUNELLA FUCKING BROX! MY BREATH IS FIRE, MY HEART BEATS THUNDER, AND I AM BETTER THAN ALL OF YOU COMBINED!!!"

The instant the last syllable escaped her resonating chamber, her feet were dashing across the grass, top speed towards the cop dead center in her sights. Her sword came down in front of her like a thin shield.

And the air rippled with bullets.

Every cop fired at once. Gun barrels flashed like firecrackers. A thousand black bees filled the space between the constables and the criminal as she charged. Reality itself seemed to pulsate with the sheer amount of firearms all roaring at once.

Toby watched, eyes wide, as splashes of melted vinyl went everywhere. Chunks of sizzling black plastic burned the grass. A half-liquified lump made a desperate leap for one cop's sensory cluster, and uncountable bullets tore through. It landed like a wet pancake across the cop-bot's headlights.

Toby's heart shattered. Junella had failed. They had all failed.

And yet... the blob of black sludge was still holding onto its sword.

It stirred.

Something like an arm gushed out and grabbed onto the cables in the sensory cluster. A head-like mass emerged. And then two orange eyes flashed, containing all the fury and madness of Hell.

The mouth shaped the words, 'Nice try.'

And then the sword flashed and the policebot was dead in the space of a heartbeat.

The drumbeat of bullets started again, and the liquefied shadow sprang out of reach.

George took that as the signal and thundered in to join the fray. Head down, hooves thundering, spraying a tidal wave of nightmare fire before him. The policebots' attention was successfully halved by this. More bullets flew, and a cloud of bone splinters haloed George. But their weapons merely tickled. And his booming laughter told them so.

Junella was regaining form with every metal body she landed on, slashed through, and leapt from. Like she was stealing their health to regain her own. Her cutlass glowed white-hot, superheated from all the bullets that had struck it. It looked like a chunk of pure carved sunlight. It was now the perfect silverware for carving pork.

More robots fell. Their slashed wires puked out sparks as they topped backwards or rolled in senseless circles. Junella's hands were too busy to speak, but her face radiated joy. Vicious, silent laughter. Her blade damn near set the air itself afire. Flitting like a flea from bot to bot, she disarmed them literally. Gun barrels and other implements were sheared to bits. Their grasping arms were cut up like hot dogs in mac 'n cheese. Their eyelights burst and went blind. The cops poured on more bullets, but by now were more likely to hit each other than their quarry. Ricochet shots went in every imaginable direction and did some pretty nasty things to nearby civilians. But the bullets didn't slow Junella, this demonic jet angel. For every scrap of flesh they managed to tear off, she willed more.

And they might have wore her down to soup eventually if not for the addition of a one-horse cavalry. George's hooves slammed into a cop's chest, sending it skidding backwards and domino-ing several of its comrades. George churned out fire like a blast furnace and kicked with all his might. Bullets rained down on him. He clung to life for as long as he could, like holding in breath, then exhaled and expired in one mighty eruption. But he was back on his feet again soon. He planted his front legs and turned his back end into a machine gun turret, blasting out cannonball-strength kicks that made bowling pins of the policebots. Their optics melted under his flamethrower breath. Their hands snatched chunks of rotting flesh that sloughed off as fast as George could grow it.

The policebots converged on the two dark monsters, trying to pen them in, to make a corral of their own metal bodies. They were programmed to account for fast-resurrecting enemies. The goal was to smother them in sheer numbers. For every one of them that fell, there would always be more deployed from around the city. An inexhaustible supply.

Junella could see them closing in, and that was all part of her plan. The more they bunched together, the less distance needed to jump around from body to body. Tarzan-swinging off one flailing metal arm, she ran horizontally across a row of metal chests with her cutlass slicing through eyelights on one side and her revolver making holes through the other. Her tail whipped around to cram their 'faces' full of shards. The name of the game was keeping one step ahead. She knew their reaction times. So long as she could act quicker than their processors could react, she was sailing smooth.

At this point the combatants were all so fixated on pummeling the shit out of each other, it seemed nothing could have torn their attention away.

Well, how 'bout the earsplitting groan of a two-thousand ton mall taking a sudden, violent lurch sideways?

Imagine a cow's bellow amplified through the speakers of a heavy metal concert. There was no ignoring the sound, or the instinctive tremor of panic at seeing something so huge jerk so suddenly. Heaving towards the ground like it'd just spotted a penny.

Even the cop-bots paused, calculating whether the mall was about to fall and flatten them. This gave Junella and George a much-appreciated two-second timeout.

But Zinc's work was not done. He'd been metalworking merrily along a moment ago and had completely forgotten that sometimes you don't have to cut all the way through something to reach its breaking point. Gravity had finished his work twenty seconds early, and the whipcrack recoil of the remaining metal snapping outwards might've reduced his torso to red jelly if he'd been standing a foot to the right. Instead he sat down hard on the grass, brainstunned for a second, then looked way up at the mall leaning towards him. As if looking down accusingly. 'Why are you hacking away at my foot? I need that.'

Zinc's jaw fell open and he shouted to his comrades, "I finished this side!!!"

Junella's head twitched in his direction but she was in no position to help. She had to keep the cop-bots' attention cemented far away from him.

Piffle realized this too. She sucked her big fork back into her tummybutton and dashed over to hoist Zinc onto his feet. "Don't worry, darling! I'll fly you on over and you can get right back to work!"

Zinc didn't even notice her pet name. His senses were still blind to everything but the reverberation in his wrenches and knockers. He had the groove, and he had to get back to business soon before he lost it.

Piffle got her arms around Zinc's chest and prepared her wings for takeoff. "Toby?"

The mouse appeared at her elbow. "Yes?"

"You gotta run on ahead and scare away anyone who might wanna stop us landing there."

"Me!? What!? I can't-"

"There's no time, Toby!" she urged. "Look up! The wheel's almost here and the mall's not leaning enough to catch it!!"

Toby did look up. She was right. Gyre 2 was almost at the edge of Bigwheel 48.

***

As George had predicted, the apartment building had withstood its many bumps and tumbles to continue on causing chaos. It was no longer 'round' exactly, but gravity and momentum were keeping it going. And it had torn an almost perfect diagonal across Bigwheel 48: from the east of one spoke all the way across to the west of another.

Uncountable homes had been crushed in its path. Uncountable screams of pain and tears of panic. Gyre 2 was a skyscraper-sized Grim Reaper, walking amongst the unfortunates, uncaring how many of them ended up splattered beneath its tread.

But the damage was not limited to just what Gyre 2 touched. When the wheel had drawn near, employees and even some customers at Kingdom Spinners had rushed like mad to scoop the rarest, most precious albums off the shelves. They dropped to the floor and shielded them with their own bodies as the nightmare rumbled past. When the shaking stopped, the shelves were bare and the floor was littered with shattered chunks of music. They'd saved only a fraction of the collection.

Moments later, attendees at an autograph signing for Lambretta Corazon were jostling and clambering for the exits. And, to his credit, the pampered, preening actor displayed rare heroism in helping his fans get out first. Then tremors rocked the building's foundations, bringing the roof down on all who remained inside. And though he was trapped beneath several tons of beams and tile, Mr. Corazon smiled. His fans would dig him out in no time at all, and would worship him all the more afterward.

As mentioned before, hospitals in Phobiopolis tended mostly to deliver the injured to a merciful death, or to reverse unfortunate magical effects. But there was another function they served. Psychiatric help. And considering the wealth of things in Phobiopolis itself to torment the mind (not to mention how battered a mind must usually be to end up in there), the wards were always full. Doctors and nurses were scrambling to empty Cleckley Hill's beds. The massive mental asylum lay straight in Gyre 2's path. Swarms of bewildered patients stood safely away in the courtyard. Some of them shivered at the feel of real wind blowing through their fur again after so long. Some of them took the opportunity to escape. Some of them were clawing to get back inside again, to the safety of normal routine. The staff held hands of the walking bewildered. They threw the least-ambulatory patients onto gurneys or dragged them on mattresses down the stairwells like toboggans. Anything to get everyone outside doors any way they could. One guard on the first floor had even shot out the rec room's windows so the patients could crawl through.

You cannot choose to work in such a place without a deep, defining commitment to selflessness, so it likely pained Cleckley Hill's staff much more than most when they realized their task was simply impossible. The wheel was too close, and the hospital wasn't two-thirds empty yet. Some stayed, shoving as many warm bodies through the doors as they could until the shadow descended over the building. Others rushed outside, waving their arms to try to get the convalescents as far away as possible before impact.

Gyre 2 ate up Cleckley Hill like a light snack. Windows exploded into glass confetti. Beds, equipment, and patients alike were churned to pulp in seconds. Nurses looked up with tears in their eyes, unable to stop imagining the hopeless ones left trapped inside, and wondering if dying yet another death might break them permanently.

There was nothing that could have been done to save them. And Gyre 2 was still rolling, still falling.

***

"This is impossible!!!" Jamais screamed from high in the sky. "The lead terrorist is on the move! Not only have our city's protectors failed to stop him from destroying one strut of the Panjandrum, but he's actually brazen enough to move on to the other!! This can't be happening!!"

The vixen clamped a paw over her mic so she could whisper to Cameron, "It's all still going out live? No problems?"

"Not a one, Jammy."

Her eyes shimmered. There was practically a neon sign above her head saying, 'GOODY GOODY GUMDROPS'. "Michael is going to shit a brick shithouse when he sees this! I scooped him, finally! Runaway wheels happen every year, but this! This is what people remember!! I can smell my raise from here!" she hissed with a giggle.

"What was that, Jamais?" Diana said over the earpiece.

"Just... just overwhelmed for a moment, I'm sorry. I can't help but think of all those poor citizens, still trapped inside the mall. What must they be going through as this tragedy unfolds?"

***

It all came down to this: Zinc was in Point A at the moment. He needed to be at Point B, or else everything they'd done would be for nought. George and Junella were distracting the cops. Piffle had her hands full. Zinc was too far in the zone to do anything helpful. So it was all up to Toby to clear a path for him.

The mouseboy was running before he could let this sink in. Running towards the second apex of the Panjandrum Mall, and also running away from thinking too hard about the pickle he was in. There would be guards at the second entrance. They would see him coming. He would have to make them go away somehow. If he didn't, they would swarm over Zinc and stop him from tearing through the other support leg. If that happened, the mall wouldn't catch the apartment building. If that happened, there would be further death and destruction. If that happened, he and all his friends would be locked up tight by the police. All this, and the clock was still ticking down the seconds they had left. It might even be too late already.

Toby's mind fractured. One part of him was drawn into dwelling on all these what ifs, yet his primitive side paid attention only to his senses. Wild nonev mice had simple minds. Minds that ran almost wholly on instinct: when to run, when to bite, etcetera. This part of his ancestry was still present in Toby, domesticated as he was. So his feral side had to give his rational side a few kicks to get his whole mind to register the group of security guards he was racing straight towards.

Half a dozen grey and black uniforms. Mall cops. Not an elite fighting force, but any one of them was still physically fit and armed enough to kick the ass of one mouse.

There was a moment when panic reared up in him and clutched at his heart like an electrified hand. He felt himself wrestle it back. There was simply too much at stake for him to fail now. He knew there was a danger of his own fear sabotaging his efforts, so he could take the easy way out, screw up, and have a self-pity party later. No. People were counting on him.

Toby's hand was at his pouch and he emptied it in seconds, flinging every last one of his throwing weapons out at the group of guards. They recoiled as sharp metal tore into their thighs, palms, and eyes. Toby clanked his bracers together like a shield and bulldozed through the rest.

Or at least he tried to. He didn't weigh much after all. He bounced off, and only his tail kept him from falling on his ass. One guard, after taking a shuriken in the cheek, came to his senses quickly enough to aim his pistol at Toby. The mouse's coral eyes widened and a steel hammer swung down to shatter the guard's fingers. Toby wasted a split second on being amazed. It was like his weapon had acted on its own. But more guards were turning their attention to him now, so he let his hammer fly again and again. It was hard work not descending into random, panicked swinging. He had to keep alert, see everything, anticipate the nearest threat and smash it. He was doing pretty well actually, until the bullet slammed through his ribcage.

There was no pain at first, oddly enough. Only a kind of watery numbness that suddenly punched him under the armpit. He was too focused on swinging his hammer to notice. Then he became aware of a searing sting, like a cigarette burn. He saw blood in his peripheral vision. He could feel it pouring out of him like a water faucet. He realized then, if he looked down at what had happened to him, he would pass out and be no use to anyone. So he held tight to his adrenaline and let it drag him along in its wake. His hammer went up and down like an oil pump. He didn't care where, or even look to see. So long as that impact of steel on bone traveled up his arm each time. Although his arm was getting all funny on him now. Bright yellow strings of pain kept shooting up his nerves on that side. Almost as if his arm shouldn't still be working, yet he was forcing it to. Then he heard another loud boom and something bad happened to his leg. He dropped to one knee.

The gunshot was so close that all he heard was a sudden high-pitched whine that drowned out everything else. He was deaf now, only able to see the tangle of guards that never seemed to thin out no matter how many times he hit them. Dark blobs kept darting in and out at the edges of his vision. He could no longer feel his arm. Just the weight of the hammer in his hand. Everything was going all rubbery...

Then something interesting happened. Three of the guards' heads exploded like party balloons. As they fell to the ground with a trio of splats, Toby saw past them, only for a brief instant, to Junella in the thick of the policebots, pointing her revolver his way then tossing him a nod.

He nodded back.

There were only two guards left now. Toby thought he could manage that. He was a mouse without anger in his heart, but he could definitely feel desperation. And he could disassociate the two fursons in front of him into simple problems he wanted to solve. With a hammer. He forced his legs to leverage him up, then swung as hard as he could. Another numb, burning place appeared in his neck. He kept swinging. His arm sizzled, the nerves feeling like they were covered in biting flies. But he kept swinging.

And then there was no one else in front of him.

Toby looked up and there was a ring of horrified, screaming shoppers around the mall's entrance. But they were all moving away. No one else was moving towards him.

He felt sticky all over with something wet and warm. Something in his mind told him he probably shouldn't ask what it was. He wasn't even sure where he was. 'Disoriented' was a very good word for Toby in that moment.

Thankfully, it was only a few seconds later when a pair of wrenches slammed the ground beside him, and Zinc hauled ass over to the apex to start the second half of his Magnum Opus Of Pounding On Things. Piffle alighted beside Toby, and gasped in shock at his condition. She had no idea how he was still standing. "Gloriosky, Toby!!" she shouted. "Doesn't it hurt!?"

He blinked. His head swiveled around towards her. Her facial features seemed to be swimming around in lazy circles. A perfectly lucid thought appeared in his mouth before his brain could examine it. "You should probably kill me now, Piffle."

Being the good friend that she was, she didn't even pause to nod. Toby saw a flash of gold, then a giant fork went straight through his face. The top of his head came off like a beanie.

Seconds later, a much-less-bloody Toby appeared next to his newly-vacated corpse. Piffle immediately squeezed him silly. "You did great!! You knocked 'em into next Tuesday! I don't even know how you held on for so long!"

His eyes seemed frozen open. Like he couldn't close them even if he wanted to. His body trembled with the aftershocks of the pain his adrenaline had kept him from feeling. "I don't know either," he said truthfully. "I just did it... because I had to."

She kissed him on the cheek, and didn't mind when he was still too rattled to notice. She looked up. "Good grief, we don't have much more time..." she whispered in horror.

Gyre 2 was falling towards Bigwheel 47 already.

And Zinc had just barely started work on the second support.

Toby's muzzle boinged upwards at the sound of the titanic crash ninety feet overhead. Debris rained down from the underside of the Bigwheel, and a cloud of birds who'd been nesting there took to the air all at once. Even from below, Toby could hear the crunches and booms of Gyre 2's insatiable appetite.

He turned to yell encouragement at Zinc, but Piffle put a finger over his lips.

"We can't distract him. He knows. We just have to let him work."

Toby looked past her shoulder to the rigid, unflinching form of Zinc. Hunched over and swaying back and forth in time, letting his doorknockers swing in the necessary pattern. His tail was frizzed up to maximum, and his fur showed the scars and singes from a hundred drips of melted metal falling on him.

"Go Zinc," Toby whispered in awe.

Piffle nodded, then arranged Toby back-to-back with her. Weapons at the ready in case anyone else stepped in to interfere.

***

Cops are trained to ignore distractions and focus on their primary objective. Robot cops doubly so.

The policebots only flinched for a scant moment when the Panjandrum first shuddered and leaned (although the shockwave knocked a few of them over). And they certainly did not turn around to gawk when Gyre 2 hit the Bigwheel just above them. Their sensors only cared about two things: one skunk and one horse.

The pair were both skilled fighters with extensive hours of practice. But everyone has their limits. They'd fallen into a strategy of George remaining mostly in one spot to draw the policebots' focus, while Junella danced around the perimeter, incapacitating tinmen by the score. The cops' advantages were many. The robots could not feel pain, could not feel fear, showed no remorse at seeing their brothers in arms fall, and their numbers were seemingly infinite. Junella had made piles of their useless bodies, snowdrifts of them, but there were always more. Streaming out from the streets and alleys in all directions. Lights flashing, sirens squealing, all the time bleating their repetitive prerecorded bullshit about how she should surrender or else they would be forced to use deadly measures.

They had tried like crazy to put her down. But Junella would not die until her task was accomplished. She kept herself in a very particular state of mind. She thought fluidly. She moved like a wave, a splash, a river. She curved her body around their shots. Maximizing their misses. And even when they hit, she let herself believe unquestioningly that every chunk the bullets tore from her was expendable. She could grow it back. Her body would handle it. Her mind was fixed on chopping up arms and heads. She knew for a fact that if she died even once, she'd lose her grip on her sword. If she dropped her sword, it'd cool down. And if it cooled down, it'd no longer be any good for cleaving through cop-metal. She could afford no mistakes.

These pigs were relentless. But they had no imagination. That was their most exploitable weakness. They were programmed with various scenarios of criminal action and reaction. All Junella had to do was keep on confusing them. Which was not difficult if you know what confuses a robot. The challenge was in keeping it going. Already, just hopping from body to body was something they weren't prepared for, and their minds couldn't learn how to defend against it properly. But she still had to keep one step ahead of those flailing arms. Even a blind robot could still clamp down if it caught hold of a piece of her. So she just had to make sure that never happened. She used every weapon in her arsenal. Her sword cleaved, her guns ripped, her tail smashed, her musk blinded, and her speed dazzled.

George was a nightmare, and nightmares do not experience fatigue or fear. They do however experience irritation. George did not like to feel boxed in. And the endless, endless, ENDLESS robots crowding in from all sides were steadily driving him berserk. No matter how many of these galvanized trashcans his kicks sent flying, two more would show up. It was like fighting a hydra. With every clasp of their rotten grabby claws, with every bone chip their bullets blew out of his body, he had to fight his primal rage from overwhelming his rational mind. He must not let that happen. There were other factors to consider more important than himself. Whenever he had a spare fraction of a second, George kept glancing towards Sir Zinc, Sire Toby and Madam McPerricone. He had to keep them foremost in his mind. No matter how much the policebots vexed him, he had to remain a flashy, attractive target. A lure. Keep the action away from that second strut. George glanced to the sky. It might not matter anyway. The Gyre was right on schedule, but it might have been simple physics that no force in the universe could cut through metal fast enough to bring down the mall on time.

Zinc knew this. And he knew that if it were true, then he would simply have to work harder and faster than any force in the universe ever before.

It was impossible work. He had to trust completely in his own body to heal itself from all the slag scorching his flesh (plus the occasional stray bullet), and to keep stuffing the pain back down so he didn't feel it. He had to maintain complete faith in his friends that they wouldn't let anyone through to mess with him. A single paw on his shoulder would be all it would take to fuck his concentration up irrevocably. He was doing split-second calculations of tremendous delicacy. Dozens of them with every passing second. His doorknockers worked like a dream, and if he ever got out of this mess he'd have to introduce Millie to Dorster in thanks. These puppies were the pinnacle of craftsmanship. The ultimate proof that nothing beats good old-fashioned bare-handed hard work. Controlling the density of the two metal balls was as smooth as shifting gears on his old convertible (which was really saying something, as Zinc had built the transmission himself). And they had to be. He had two supernovas' worth of density constantly whizzing past his head and he had to keep them both in perfect harmony. He'd already improved the efficiency of his crisscross pattern. With every swing, he changed the arc a little, widening or tightening the parabola. Maximum efficiency. He'd gone beyond the point of letting his self recede until nothing was real but the metal in front of him and his arms shaping it to his will. Now, it was like that part was on autopilot. Muscle memory. He could step back and cast a critical eye on his progress. Tweak it here and there. With every swing of his doorknockers through the support leg, the next swing got a little sweeter and did a little more damage. This was like painting. Zinc was attaining a state of calmness that normally only heavy drug use could produce. He was smiling. Even as flecks of white-hot steel pelted his eyeballs, he was cool as a cucumber. He hummed in time with his swings. Timing them to the beat of a good song. Keeping up the rhythm. THIS was the groove, oh man. This was IT, baby! The Gyre was forgotten. His purpose was forgotten. His body was forgotten. He was just one far-out cat, digging his job. Enjoying his work. Everything was cool.

Did I mention how you don't always have to cut all the way through metal if other factors are already working to weaken it?

In this case, one such factor was the several thousand tons of retail space that gravity was trying very hard to make horizontal.

Before Zinc was even halfway through working on the second leg, it buckled exactly like the first one had. Except a little more forcefully this time. The steel reached its breaking point and burst outwards, turning poor Zinc into beef stew. It happened far too quickly for him to even register surprise.

Toby looked up and screamed loud enough for both of them, as the already-leaning mall came hurtling towards him.

Along with several heaping boatloads of shoppers, guards, and onlookers, Piffle and Toby skedaddled the hell out of there. The Panjandrum's shadow loomed longer and larger over them. It moaned in protest as its acres of steel were yanked in directions it was never made to withstand. The entire south side's windows finally gave in and shattered into a glittering waterfall of broken glass. Quite a lot of it happened to pelt the rotors of a flying-too-close news helicopter, sending it into a death spiral. Merchandise and customers (both alive and dead) poured through the mall's broken windows to clobber the ground below. It was an unthinkable amount of property damage. Totaled up, it would probably make our heroes' bill at Rippingbean and Woofingbutter's look like a minor expense. And of course, here came the looters. Even some of the people who'd fallen out of the broken windows got themselves reanimated and started looking around for unbroken merch.

Chairs, computers, pianos, pretzel kiosks: it was raining everything. Inside the mall, floors that had moments ago been tilted but still navigable suddenly became funhouse slides. Shoppers shrieked and grabbed hold of anything they could. Some were knocked loose by heavy products and went tumbling out into space. The food court turned into the ugliest mess you have ever seen. Shelves of disc media regurgitated their contents like a drunk leaning over a toilet. A herd of hot tubs came loose from the jacuzzi dealer's and chased down fleeing customers like stampeding rhinos.

While he was running across the bike lot with his heart beating so hard he could feel every vein and artery in his body, Toby glanced back and wondered if their plan was going to fail for an incredibly stupid reason they hadn't even anticipated. What if the mall fell all the way over and hit the ground? Then it'd just be one more thing for Gyre 2 to bounce off of and go on its merry way. He squeezed Piffle's hand so tight it was surprising no fingers got broken. 'Plus, I'll end up squashed beneath it. Flattened like a bug under an entire mall. Even if I come back to life, I'll still be flat as a pancake and I'll just keep dying over and over forever until they dig me out and put me on trial for terrorism!' The poor little mouseboy started laughing crazily. Piffle joined in, thinking he was celebrating their victory.

The cops hesitated again, to calculate their own safety in case of structural collapse. This gave George and Junella just enough time to look up and see the mall taking its final bow. They too had the same thought Toby had. But the mall was still anchored solidly on the opposite side. And despite some loud protesting, it held. The structure ended up at a fifty degree angle.

The wheel had stopped spinning. Shrieking customers held on to curtains and carpeting, dangling over the drop. But the mall stayed put.

"It is done, Madam Brox!" George shouted as his hind legs dented yet another cop-bot. "There is nothing more to do now than hope and see!"

"Good," she replied, emptying another revolver (there were probably hundreds of them littering the ground below her). "Mind if we just ease off and let these cops beat us into submission?"

"At this point, that sounds almost relaxing."

And so the pair of them took a well-deserved break. They gave their well-worn bodies slack, and let themselves die peacefully under a hail of thousands and thousands of bullets.

***

As if to reward him for all his hard work and dedication, fate gave Zinc a front row seat.

He came to his senses several yards away from the destroyed support. His wrists and doorknockers had scorched ruts in the ground from where they lay beside him. He looked up and blinked at the sight of the Panjandrum leaning over him. "Sheeeeeit," he mumbled. "Lookit all those poor saps hangin' out the windows. Don't they know that's dangerous?" He giggled airily.

Zinc was drunk off his own brain chemicals. Flying high on euphoria and endorphins. Nothing could have possibly bothered him in this state. The thought occurred to him, as it had to Toby, that the mall just might fall over and trap him under it indefinitely. "Oh well," he said, and giggled some more. Everything just seemed... okay.

So Zinc watched passively, enjoying the grass under his back and all the pretty colors, as a gigantic blood-streaked apartment building fell out of the sky towards him.

Gyre 2 had not spent much time on 47, but it had been just long enough. The Panjandrum was firmly in place, with almost twenty-seven seconds to spare, once the giant wheel finished up decimating another batch of shops and rolled off the edge towards Bigwheel 46.

To Zinc, the building seemed frozen in time for as long as he wanted it to be. The moon was full behind it. One big ol' circle illuminating another. Gyre 2 glittered as it fell, tumbling end over end like a flipped coin. Chunks of concrete, sheets of glass, bodies and other detritus followed after it. Like sprinkles.

It was beautiful.

And though there were innumerable screams of horror all around him when Gyre 2 and the Panjandrum finally kissed, Zinc could only smile.

"Cool."

The two wheels smashed into each other with a sound that defied description. Like a few hundred thousand electric guitars being dropped into a car crusher. Like all the world's whales singing one synchronized out-of-tune note. Like several kazillion tons of metal falling and impacting another several kazillion tons of metal. Nothing comes close. But the impact's shockwave sent debris airborne for miles. And the closest batches of gawkers instinctively raised their arms to shield themselves. As if that would do anything.

Many onlookers watched the mall bend and wondered if the weight of the apartment building would snap the other side and lay it flat. And for a few hideous seconds, that's exactly what it seemed might happen. Zinc was lying on his back beneath the two stupendous structures with his arms crossed behind his head. Resting in the shade.

But the mall's two remaining legs held. And considering how much they'd survived already, it should serve as an illustration of just how much Zinc had needed to do on the opposite side.

As planned, Gyre 2 began to slide.

More windows exploded. As if the survivors inside the mall hadn't had enough to deal with already, now sheets of razor sharp glass were raining down upon them like a nightmare typhoon. More people and products fell through to splatter on the ground. But as horrific an experience as it was for them, the important thing was, they were among the last to die in the day's long cataclysm.

It only took seconds. Gyre 2 slid in a fireworks show of grinding sparks down the length of the Panjandrum, flipped like a coin when it hit the surface of 46, then sailed cleanly through the air past the edge of Ectopia Cordis.

A shadow loomed over the parking lot. Drivers shat themselves in panic and tried to drive away in every direction possible. Traffic jams happened immediately. The few who ended up stuck in their cars did not have a good day. Those smart enough to get out and run tended to fare better. Even though they now had to contend with the pig-like garbage-eater beasts. An apartment building was too much of a meal even for them, so they also tore off like lightning. Which put them in the midst of a running smorgasbord of easy meals. Thankfully for most, terror of falling ferris wheels tends to give a furson the speed to outrun a morbidly obese parasomnic construct.

It is a testament to just how well Ectopia Cordis is built that the city itself didn't shudder in the slightest when Gyre 2 finally made landfall. Citizens from every Bigwheel gathered around the edges to watch, some of them falling over. When the building finally hit pavement, hundreds of cars were reduced in an instant to tinfoil. Many hundreds more all hopped up into the air upon impact, only to fall back down again in disarray. Many, many, many car alarms went off.

The asphalt was cracked in a mile-wide spiderweb all around where Gyre 2 landed. But it was over.

The wheel was still.

The catastrophe had ended.

Thousands of Ectopians cheered.

And way back up on Bigwheel Forty-Six, one very satisfied mutt with wrenches for arms was lying in the grass and grinning his groovy little head off.

"I did it," he whispered contentedly to himself.

It sounded so good, he said it again. "I did it."

He honestly didn't even mind when big metal clamps grabbed hold of him and began to drag him off to jail.

What could the cops do to worry him? He'd just stared impossibility itself in the face, and she'd blinked first.

*****

CHAPTER FORTY THREE

The air throbbed with screams, sirens, and the aftershocks of shuddering metal.

Toby was bent over, hands on shins. Staring at the undulating concrete below him. Breathing hard and trying to prevent more vomit. Piffle was patting him on the back. "Good boy, Toby. You did good. I'm proud of you."

Toby tried to gasp out some thanks, but all he could manage were weak little squeaks.

They were lucky enough to be lost amongst the chaos for now. Everyone around them was either fleeing or rubbernecking. No one much cared about a mouse in blue and a hamster in pink. Piffle was aware that this would probably change quickly once the residents remembered that the criminals who'd brought down the mall were still standing around in plain sight.

Piffle swatted Toby's tush. "Let's skedaddle! We might be able to escape if we're quick enough!"

That little spank brought Toby back to reality and put some red in his cheeks. "Where's Zinc?" He scanned all around for the canine, but picking out one lone furson amongst all the shattered glass, dead bodies, smashed furniture, and clouds of debris-dust was impossible.

Piffle tugged Toby's shoulder. "The coppers'll probly catch him, but if we get away we can plan a jailbreak! C'mon!"

"I'm not very optimistic about that," he muttered. But his brain was elsewhere. His eyes ended up lingering on a great big crumpled thing with tangled rotors on top of it. "That's that news copter that was flying around," he said absently.

Piffle didn't give a hoot. She gave Toby's arm another tug, then was dumbstruck as her mousefriend started pulling away from her towards the crime scene. "Toby! Yoohoo! Wake up! You're runnin' to where the cops are!"

"I know, but..." He squinted through the smoke and dust. "There's probably people in that helicopter. They might be trapped in there."

Pink hearts exploded out of Piffle's head. "Oh, Toby! You mean you wanna rescue them, at great risk to life and limb, even if it means gettin' thrown in the hoosegow? How heroic!"

He blushed harder. "Wl'actually, I was thinking that if we do something to show the news people we're not evil, that might help our case in court. I have a feeling we're not gonna escape this one. Might as well plan ahead."

"Slightly less selfless, but still admirable in its practicality," Piffle assessed. "How can I help?"

They arrived at the shore of a vast glass ocean. The falling chunks of window had brought the chopper down and was now trapping it in a lacerating web. Piffle's feet hurt just imagining what- Her jaw dropped as Toby started off across the glass without a second's hesitation.

He walked with careful, deliberate steps, but his posture showed no fear.

Piffle couldn't believe it. Even with his brand new sandals, that glass was still sharp enough to carve right through. How was timid little Toby deLeon not terrified of the stuff?

In truth, he kind of was. But he kept his mind clear and focused on his footsteps. It wasn't far to the helicopter, and he could already see the pilot and the cameraman dangling out, their bodies red as pasta sauce. He winced. He called back over his shoulder, "Piffle? If I drag 'em out, can you fly them to a place where there's less glass?" 

"Roger that!" She flitted over, like a little helicopter herself, and perched on the roof.

The pilot was the easiest. One tug got him flopped out past the windshield for Piffle to pick up. She 'Oof!'ed at his dead weight. Her evac gave Toby time to extricate the cameraman. Toby tried not to look at the square knot the man's legs had been turned into. Also, his camera would be coming with him, as it was literally duct-taped in his grip.

Once Piffle had him spirited away as well, Toby poked his head inside to look for anymore... survivors? That was hardly the right word.

The chopper's main body was dented like a crushed beer can, but the vixen lady's bright orange fur was not hard to spot. Getting her past the bent seats and toppled computer equipment was the hard part. The feel of blood on fur made Toby grimace as he got his arms underneath her. Lifting her up, he had a moment of recognition. The grey suit, the transparent joints... This was the lady from that news report he'd seen on TV earlier. 'Small world.'

He ducked out from under the collapsed roof and scuttled sideways to bring her past the debris. She stirred in his arms. She was coming back to life.

Toby saw her eyelids flutter and her chest hitch as breath returned to it. "Miss? Ma'am? Whatever your name is? You're going to be okay."

Jamais blinked. Something blurry was holding her.

Toby felt hopeful. 'I can tell her our side of things. How we were trying to save the city, not destroy it. Maybe they'll show me on the news. Maybe I'll get a medal for heroism!'

Jamais moaned as pain awoke her nerves. She grimaced, then blinked as her eyes adjusted and she could see who was carrying her.

She immediately decked the mouse in the temple.

Toby dropped her and Jamais started pounding on his head mercilessly. "You're one of the terrorists!! You were trying to kidnap me!! I won't go that easily, you rapist pervert! HELP!! POLICE!! I'M BEING ASSAULTED!!"

"Ow! Ow! Ow!" said Toby.

"He's trying to rescue you, you big jerk!" Piffle yelled as she swooped down and grabbed Jamais' arm.

"There's another one!! HEEELLLLLLLPPPP!!!" In an impressively acrobatic move, Jamais whipped one of her shoes off and started using it to pummel both her assailants.

Unsurprisingly, five policebots showed up. "YOU ARE UNDER ARREST FOR TOO MANY FELONY CHARGES TO SUCCINCTLY LIST. LIE DOWN ON THE GROUND AND YOU WILL BE COLLECTED WITHOUT HARM."

Jamais jumped away, pointing. "Yes! Arrest them! Beat the shit out of them! Save me!!" Her head swiveled around. "Where's the fucking camera!?"

Piffle rolled her eyes. She steadied Toby, then held up her arms. "Do y'mind collecting us standing up?" she asked the cop-bot politely. "I'd prefer not to lie down on broken glass."

"REMAIN MOTIONLESS OR YOU WILL BE RESTRAINED WITH FORCE," the cop replied. Which was apparently 'yes', because its tummy opened like a washing machine and its arms scooped up Piffle to bundle her in.

"See ya later, Toby!" she said cheerfully as she was tucked inside. The door slammed shut, sealing her away.

Toby was perfectly happy to offer no resistance whatsoever as robot arms did the same to him. "Well that worked out just fabulous..." he grumbled.

***

The police detectives were really quite gentle with him, considering that he and his friends were collectively charged with two counts of terrorism, two counts of conspiracy to commit terrorism, two counts of willful sabotage with intent to destroy a public landmark, several thousand counts of malicious destruction of property, a few hundred murder charges, and one count of petty theft from Rippingbean & Woofingbutter's Survival Emporium.

When the policebot had shoved Toby inside its abdominal cavity, that had actually been kind of a relief (instead of the claustrophobic hell it was for most people). It was almost like being in a sensory deprivation tank. And Toby, overstimulated beyond anything else he'd ever experienced in his life before, was rather appreciative of the chance to just sit in the dark and not have to deal with any more blood or explosions.

Another nice thing about the ride in the cop's belly was that it had taken his mind off the state of his clothes. He emerged with his outfit clean as new. He'd been deposited at Bigwheel Forty-Six's police precinct, on a bench that his flesh seemed inescapably magnetized to. His friends were beside him, also stuck, also free of blood and dust. Somehow the cops had gotten a collar on George that had reduced him to nothing but a head. Toby wasn't sure if his body had been vaporized, or was just shrunk down to the size of a jellybean.

There wasn't much time to wonder about that since he and his friends were soon whisked away to separate interrogation rooms. Toby had hyperventilated a bit at finding himself in a tiny white cube with two broad-shouldered detectives staring at him like vengeful golems. Toby honestly expected them to start punching him to pulp as soon as the door closed. They read his body language and promised him nothing of the sort would happen. Toby was surprised by how reserved and neutral their tone was when they spoke.

"I don't know where you're from, kid, but here we take 'innocent until proven guilty' seriously. We're just here for your statement. You tell us the one-hun-dred-per-cent truth, and there will be no problems."

That was exactly what Toby had planned to do anyway. With great relief, he spilled every bean he could think of. They nodded and 'hmm'ed, but asked surprisingly few questions. Toby tried to be as helpful and honest as possible. He just hoped that the others hadn't come up with some elaborate bullshit story to stick to that he'd inadvertently torpedoed.

After maybe an hour, two at most, the detectives nodded to each other and said they had all they needed. They told Toby to stand up, turn around, and face the wall behind him.

Toby broke out in a cold sweat, suddenly one-hun-dred-per-cent certain that this was where they'd club him in the back of the head and throw him in a rock quarry somewhere.

Instead, there was a big black rubber asshole in the wall.

He had only a second to ponder this before it opened up and sucked him in. Toby found himself traveling at very high speeds down a pitch-black esophagus that smelt like the inside of balloons. He didn't scream too much, as this was quite a lot like being vacuumed to and from his room at Sawbuck's Sleepeteria.

The ride ended abruptly as he was spat into a giant brass birdcage.

Toby took a moment to regain his senses, and before he could, he was tackled by a large, soft, pink object.

"Good ta see you again, Toby! Did they interview you too? Didja clam up and not tell dose coppers nuttin'? Or did you sing like a canary?"

From behind him, Toby heard Zinc snicker at that. Piffle helped him stand up. "I sang like a canary."

Piffle nodded approvingly. "I did too. We all did. I mean, we're the good guys, so there's no reason not to tell what really happened."

Toby looked around and was glad for the dim light down here. Otherwise his stomach might've rolled over once it realized where he was. The rubber tube had spat him into a hemisphere-shaped cage. The bars were brass. The interior featured a circular couch upholstered in well-scuffed red faux-leather. Nothing else to speak of in the cage, besides Zinc, Junella and George. When Toby walked towards the edge to squint beyond the bars, he froze in place. There were uncountable other birdcages down here. Each one was lit by a ring of lights surrounding the rubber hose exit. They were like glowing Christmas tree ornaments. And from their light, Toby got the sense that they were all dangling inside of a massively huge cylinder, like a grain silo, with an endless darkness below and above.

Very quietly, and very carefully, Toby turned away from the abyss and sat down with his paws in his lap. "We're gonna be stuck here a while, aren't we?" he squeaked.

Zinc was lying on his back, relaxing as well as he could on the curved couch. "Maybe, maybe not. But we may as well get comfy until we know for sure. Sit back. Kick your feet up. Want some confinement loaf?"

Zinc handed over a pan of what looked like very stale cornbread. Toby took one, not sure if it was food or building material. He gnawed a corner. It tasted much less awful than it looked.

Piffle skootched in between Zinc and Toby so she could hold the mouse's hand and tickle the canine's ears. "I'm still impressed by how brave you were, Toby, saving those folks in the news chopper. I'd never be able to run across all that broken glass!"

He shrugged. "It's not that impressive, really. And I didn't run, I walked. That's the secret. I saw it on some TV show that examined the physics of circus acts. Just like lying on a bed of nails, it's all about pressure and surface area. If you walk soft and watch for pokey-up parts, you'll be fine. Just one of the endless bits of TV trivia I've picked up. Though I've never actually put it in practice till today."

"Still pretty brave," Zinc said approvingly. "Shame I couldn't see it, but I was out of it, amigos." He made a little 'swoosh' motion with his hand. "Way gone."

"You were amazing," Toby told him, with as much emphasis as possible.

"I kinda was, wasn't I?" Zinc made little pleased 'arf's at Piffle's nimble touch.

"I would say that we all performed quite admirably today," George interjected. He was still just a head, and Junella had him seated in her lap while she drummed her fingers on his brow.

"Thanks, Georgie," Junella sang gently. The drumming seemed to please him, like petting a cat.

"You were amazing too, both of you," Toby told the skunk and stallion. "I only caught glances, but I could see waves and waves of cops. And you two held every one of them off by yourselves! That was incredible! And Junella, I thought it was all over when you ran at the cops and they shot you so many times!"

She grinned. "All part of the plan."

"You wanted to get shot!?"

She nodded: absolutely. "You can't win a fight with a cop-bot unless you stay clear of all their hand-gadgets. Safest place to be is to snuggle right up. And you can't do that without catching a few bullets first. It's all in the mindset. You gotta psyche yourself up. Convince yourself that no matter how many times they hit you, you'll hold on."

Toby just stared at her in awe. "I could never do that."

"Takes a lot of practice and a lot of craziness," she admitted.

Toby looked over at Zinc, about to ask him how he'd sawn through the mall supports, when he noticed that Zinc's wrenches and doorknockers were still attached to his shoulders. "I can't believe the cops didn't confiscate those."

Zinc shrugged. "What'm I gonna do with them in here? Try to escape?"

Toby looked around at the cage's bars, which didn't look particularly unbendable. "Well, yes."

Zinc and Junella both chuckled at the same time. "Trust us, Toby. We've gotten arrested in every city in Phobiopolis. We know every prison on the planet intimately. You do not escape from an EC cage."

The mouse cocked his head, not understanding why.

"Let's try a little deductive reasoning exercise," Zinc said. The mutt was looking supremely contented. He'd scooted over so his head was resting in Piffle's lap. "If we did bust out, where would we go?"

Toby glanced over at the inky depths surrounding them. "Straight down, I suppose. This has to be somewhere inside the main city shaft, right?" Zinc nodded. "So you'd probably fall for a mile or so and then splat. But you could resurrect and climb out, couldn't you?"

"Maybe. If you had real grit you could try. The walls here are completely smooth. Tough as lead. And the only way out is at the very top. But that's still not why nobody with any sense ever tries to escape."

Toby thought some more. "...Can I get a hint?"

Zinc grinned. "They send food and water down every now and then. But do you see any 'facilities' for afterwards?"

Facilities? 'Oh, he must mean toilets.' Toby looked at the floor of the cage. Perfectly smooth and padded just like the couches. No drains. So that must mean that the only place to do one's business was to drop your pants and aim it over the edge. Over the edge and down... to the... bottom...

Toby's face screwed up like he'd just eaten a whole lemon. "EEEWWWW!!!"

Zinc laughed his ass off.

The mental image was too gross to fathom. "If there's an ocean of poop down there, then why aren't we gagging on the stink right now!?"

"We're up really, really high," Junella answered. "So you'd get plenty of time on the way down to reflect on your stupidity if you do decide to hop the cooler and take a dive."

Toby held his tummy. "Let's stay put then."

Piffle kicked her feet back and forth as she looked across the other cages. In most of them she could see shadowy shapes. Other prisoners pacing around. "You seem to know about how stuff works here," she said, running her fingers through Zinc's cheekfur. "How long d'you think they'll keep us?"

He thought a bit. "Trials are pretty speedy in EC. Plus we're accused of some major pandemonium, so the people'll want justice ASAP. I'd bet we'll only chill in this swank pad less than a week. Probly a lot less. Luxy's crew work quick."

"He mentioned them during the trial I saw," Toby remembered. And felt a shiver of unreality at realizing he'd soon be in that courtroom. "I was gonna ask about them. And what's up with those plastic women with the TV heads?"

Piffle remembered too. "Oh right, the waiting room! How'd that turn out, by the way? Who won?"

Toby gave her a summary. She was quite pleased to hear of Luxy's cunning in getting the suspect to implicate himself.

At hearing Luxy Bleeder's name praised, Junella gave a 'Hmmph' and turned her attention to sharpening her needles with her cutlass.

Zinc's eyelids were shut and he looked like he might slip away at any moment to dreamland. But he'd kept listening. "To answer your questions, Toby, nobody knows who Luxy's crew are. They're his informants. Information-gatherers. Their identities are tip-top secret. Could be anyone. Could be disguised as random citizens. Could be robots. Or maybe Luxy's just God, who knows?

"As to the robodames," he chuckled, "I told you the guy's a homicidal maniac. If he had real assistants, of the alive, breathing, and female variety, he'd never be able to resist the temptation to kill 'em."

Toby grimaced. "How nice. And he's the guy that's gonna be deciding whether we go free or spend the rest of our lives down here?"

"Hey, you saw him in action. He's nutty as a fruitcake but he keeps his eyes on his cards," Zinc countered.

"Sometimes," Junella added venomously.

Toby's curiosity could no longer be contained. "Okay, I gotta ask! Junella, why do you seem to hate him so much?"

She looked like she'd been itching for that question to come up. "Because we did a job for that rat bastard a coupla years back and he welshed on paying us!!" she exploded. "He put out a casting call for mercs and we showed up first. We were right there in his office, sippin' his cognac, close as I am to you right now. He told us about this sickie who'd stolen some rich people's kids and fucked off to Papiloma to hide out and ransom them. Our job: track him down, beat him up, get the brats back. And we did. Busted our asses finding the scumbag. I did some shit to him with my tail I don't wanna describe in polite company. And then we had to drive back to EC totin' his carcass and babysittin' six screaming, spoiled little hellspawn. Every time we passed a cliff I contemplated kickin' 'em off. And after ALL that, what do we get for our troubles? He stares at us like he's never seen us before! Like we're out of our minds! And he's all flustered and apologetic, saying he's grateful and all, but he has no idea who we are, so he can't pay us for a job he never gave us. MotherFUCKER!! Yeah, he gave us half of what he promised as a 'reward' for dragging the kids back, but otherwise, he can go eat pigshit till he dies. Someone who can't honor a deal ain't worth the jam under their toenails." Here she pointed an accusing needle at Zinc. "And I don't know how the hell you can still talk so rapturously about that pukesuckin' putz like the sun shines out of his asshole!!"

Zinc looked like he'd been on the receiving end of this tirade many times before. His mouth opened and closed as he considered several responses and rejected them. "What can I say, Juney? He screwed us over once, yeah, but he's got a whole city to run. People make mistakes. I'm not gonna deny every one of a man's accomplishments just 'cause of personal shit."

Junella made a 'washing her hands of the matter' gesture. "I'm in no mood for another two-hour fight about this. I said my piece. Let's both drop it."

"Fine by me," Zinc added immediately.

Toby and Piffle looked at each other, feeling how the tension had risen in their little cage. Neither wanted to say anything to make matters worse.

After a few unpleasant seconds, it was Zinc who broke the silence. "By the way, Toby, you mentioned that rapist guy getting sentenced to The Pipe and flippin' his lid over it. I infer that might be weighing on your dome."

"Yes, actually. Is that's what's gonna happen to us?"

Zinc still didn't bother opening his eyes. "Just like you correctly guessed this place runs down the city's central axis, so does The Pipe ...which is always referred to like that even though they got more than one of 'em. Anyways, the deal is, it's a bigass long metal pipe that goes from about level Fifty all the way to the bottom. Just a bit too small for a person to fit through. But there's a vacuum at the bottom. And the sides got broken glass all up and down 'em. They put you in, you come out the bottom about a week later. And if your sentence ain't finished, you go back in at the top again."

All through this description, Toby's skin had been crawling harder and harder. Good lord, what would that feel like? What would it do to a furson's mind? He imagined himself in there, trapped in pitch darkness, hearing only the echoes of his screams. For a week that probably felt longer than a year. "That's... that's unspeakable!"

A nod. "It's only reserved for the crème de la cruel. The bottom of the barrel. And yes, that is exactly what we're facing if we're found guilty. But we won't be. Don't worry your pretty head about that, Toby. Or you, dear fair maiden Piffle." She giggled and 'beep'ed his nose. "At the trial, we are going to be found innocent. Because we are innocent. We're going to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth about that wacky-eyed muskrat sonofabitch, and why we knocked the mall over, and we are gonna walk away clean. Look at me. Do I seem concerned? The way I see it, it's been quite the eventful day for all of us, and I think we should take this opportunity to sleep the sleep of the just. Any takers?"

With that, he disengaged his wrenches and shrugged them off to clatter on the floor. He snuggled into the couch, enjoying his Piffle-pillow, and was snoring within seconds.

Junella shook her head. "That magnificent dumbass could fall asleep on the wing of a crashing airplane, I swear."

The rest of Zinc was still, but one footpaw raised up and curled all but the middle toe in her direction.

She laughed silently. She set George down and slipped gracefully to the floor. "He's right though. I'm tired, it's quiet here, and we don't know how long it'll last. Best make the most of it."

Toby considered. At first he thought he'd be too worried about The Pipe to possibly relax his mind and sleep. But then his body gave him a poke and reminded him of all the insane adventuring he'd been getting up to today. He thought back to waking up in the pink fur bed at Sawbuck's. Had that really been this morning? And wasn't it only late afternoon now? Impossible.

Piffle caught his attention with a short whistle.

She patted her other thigh. "Got a vacancy open."

Toby looked at Zinc, who did seem the epitome of comfortable. "You're sure it's not a bother?"

She beamed. "To have two handsome guys on either side of me? Have you gone silly?"

Toby chuckled, then got himself turned around and positioned. Mmm, that was nice. And the couch was pretty cozy too.

Toby's mind had been a-swirl with thoughts just a moment ago, but now his physical self was taking control. Gently shutting his eyes. Letting the tension in his muscles fade. Getting itself ready to take some time to recuperate.

***

Toby dreamt that he was lying in bed back at home and his mother was feeding him like a bird. Bent way over him while his mouth was open, regurgitating. Except it wasn't food she was giving him. It was an endless gush of pills.

An unfamiliar voice woke him up from this image, and that was a relief.

At least it was, until Toby registered what the computerized feminine voice was saying: "Attention, prisoners, attention. Your trial is set to begin in ten minutes. Please make all appropriate preparations at this time."

"WHAT!?" Toby yelped.

*****

Part FORTY-FIVE

The disembodied voice was merciful enough to actually give them a whole eleven minutes to get their shit together.

Toby had screamed a bit until Piffle calmed him down. Yesterday, ending up in a prison cell hanging hundreds of feet above a cesspool seemed almost relaxing in comparison to staving off a runaway apartment building. Today, it most certainly did not. Piffle crammed some confinement loaf in his mouth to cease his shrieks.

As Toby looked around, he saw that everyone was reacting to the ten-minute warning as expected. Junella and George were already pre-plotting an escape from the courtroom if found guilty. Zinc looked like he fully intended to make use of every second of sleep he could hold onto. Piffle was a bit nervous, but tried to keep up her good cheer by observing that today would definitely be interesting no matter what happened.

'And I'm panicking,' Toby realized. 'All systems normal.'

Soon the rubber sphincter above them beeped in unmistakable countdown tones. Toby didn't even have to ask how they were going to get out of the cage. When the beeps stopped, hurricane-strength winds plucked everyone out like an interoffice pneumatic mail system.

***

Toby and the others were swooshed away from their cell, back into the police station, where they were re-informed of their ultimate destination. Then they were all snatched up by the shoulders and carried bodily out of the building by police drones. As soon as the doors opened, Toby's eyes were assaulted with a ground-level fireworks display: the flashes from the press' cameras. The ambush of reporters hurled questions towards the five suspects at such volume that not one word was comprehensible. Toby's ears rang. Blue afterimages swirled in his vision. The copbots just bulldozed their way through the crowd towards the nearest elevator.

Toby had a realization. He and the others could just as easily have been put inside the robots like last time. But this was on purpose. The police wanted the suspects to be seen. Maybe to humiliate them. Or maybe so Ectopians could enjoy watching the terrorist scumbags being frog-marched to justice.

They were escorted by their metal guards without a word, to begin the long ride down. A few of the more rabid reporters tried to squeeze their way into the wrought-iron car, but a couple rubber bullets dissuaded them. Toby had plenty of time to squirm and worry as the elevator descended several dozen levels, all the way down to Five. He thought he vaguely remembered hearing that this was where Luxy lived. If so, it made sense to have the courtroom there too. Short commute.

The elevator car was open-air, giving Toby some splendid acrophobia, but also allowing him to get lost for a moment in the city's design. So many wheels. So many people living on them. He'd seen a lot of the city already, yet it was still just a small fraction. It was a strange feeling to pass by places he knew he'd never set foot on.

They descended past another of those Luxy Sez billboards. Like the rest, Toby wasn't sure if he agreed with it, or even fully understood it:

	HOPE IS FOR PEOPLE WHO DON'T WANT TO GET THEIR HANDS DIRTY

And then below, their terminus came into view: a massive metal cube as big as a sports arena. All of Bigwheel Five was structured around it. Crisscrossing metal beams covered the outside. Walls crawled with floodlights and neon. A rippling sea of people encircled the place. Toby could hear them even from high above, plus the pumping growl of hard rock music to excite everyone's blood.

The copbot holding George engaged a police-level override on the elevator, shunting it onto an enclosed horizontal track heading towards the cube-building. 'Like being inside the arm of a construction crane,' Toby thought. He'd been wondering how he'd survive being led in through that mob at the doors. Descending through the ceiling was a solution he approved of.

The rock music rumbled the rafters. It was dark up here, with thin beams of light slipping through from the main chamber below. One by one, the copbots tossed their prisoners into a large round cage. Once everyone was inside and the door was shut, Toby saw a dim figure approach. It was a feline stage manager with a clipboard, earpiece, and biceps the size of canoes.

"You need anything explained?" she grunted.

Neither Toby or the others could think of anything.

"Good. You'll be lowered into the courtroom in a few minutes. Don't interrupt Mr. Bleeder or he'll kill you. Don't try to run away or he'll kill you. Don't try to break the cage or I'll kill you. Are we feeling cooperative today, chums?"

Four nods. (George was currently unable.)

The stage manager nodded, turned, and gave a signal to an unseen assistant. The cage began to move.

A hatch below the five defendants opened, and they descended through to dangle just below the ceiling of Luxy's Court.

To see it on a small television set is impressive.

To see it in the flesh is intimidating enough to loosen one's bowels.

The air in here was dim, smoky, and shaking with relentless noise. Down below was a square room roughly twice the size of a college gymnasium. From the floor to the ceiling was a twenty-foot drop. And covering that floor was a carpet of writhing bodies. This did not look like a courtroom, but a rock show. The music was loud enough that Toby could feel it vibrating his entrails. The audience thrashed and crashed against one another. Discs of colored light swam over everyone's heads. Beach balls and moshers were being tossed around. Electric guitars screamed like the death cries of buzzards.

Situated at the front of the room, at approximately ribcage-height to the crowd, was an actual basketball floor (Toby didn't realize the pun for several minutes). To one side was the source of the music. A six-man act was pulverizing their instruments while the hype man Toby had seen on TV was cradling his mic and erupting bloodcurdling lyrics into it. For as short as the guy was, he sure as heck had some pipes. And he was still wearing his black suit and the black sunglasses with daggers through the lenses (Toby could just make out red tears streaking his cheeks, so definitely not a special effect). The rest of the band was a motley crew of different species. All lanky, scuffed-up, scarred, and tough as gristle. They looked like a pack of skeletal pirates.

Also on the courtroom floor were the bare essentials of courtroom furniture. Two long wooden tables for the defendants, a podium for the judge/prosecutor, a box for those lucky enough to have ringside seats, and half a dozen cameras and cameramen. Several of those TV-headed mannequins were strutting around too. Creepy.

Behind the court, the far wall was nothing but carnival bulbs. A solid floor-to-ceiling square of light. At the very top, in colossal neon letters, were the words LUX AETERNA.

Being this high up, Toby noticed some other writing. Opposite the courtroom floor, near the ceiling, a long quote was engraved in austere font. Given that he had no idea how long he'd be spending up here until the show began, he tried to make it out. (He was glad to discover his dyslexia was receding. The letters only jittered around a little this time.)

	"Only a corrupted heart and a moral mind are fit to lead.
	A soul of pure good remains always at the mercy of the ruthless.
	A soul of pure evil sows disloyalty and reaps a lonely downfall.
	Those with righteous hearts and corrupted ideals are the most dangerous of all.
	But a soul born to evil, who learns the ways of good, 
	will come to learn the proper time for both."

Seeing as there was no attribution at the end, Toby could only conclude it'd been written by Luxy himself. It was certainly poetic. Though Toby had no idea if it was actual wisdom or just hot air to inflate the raccoon's ego.

Toby could also finally get a sense of what he and his companions were trapped in. The cage was a sphere, made of interweaving bands of black iron. Comfy enough for one, but a little cramped for four people and a skull. The design of it seemed familiar, and Toby soon remembered that it looked just like the big metal globes he'd seen motorcyclists driving around inside at the circus.

The band below played on. Smoke seemed to stream from the instruments. The drummer was nearly cleaving his skins in twain. They finished up with a demonic crescendo and fireworks exploded behind them. The crowd's cheer was like an earthquake.

Sweating like crazy, the lead singer wiped his forehead with his hat and stepped forward. "AllrightallrightallRIGHT!!! Are we FEELIN' it tonight, ladies and gentlemen!?"

Their roofshaking response was a definite "YES!!!"

"Damn good! Damn good! Now we all know why we're gathered here, don't we? We all know why the house is packed even fuller than normal? Why it's standing room only, shoulder to shoulder? We all KNOW, don't we!?"

"YEAH!!!"

'To crucify us,' Toby thought.

"So let's not waste any more of your precious time! Raise your heads skyward and call out the name of the one you love!"

"Luxy!!!"

The hypeman twirled a finger in his ear. "I don't think he heard you! Hell, I don't think I did! You nice folks wanna try that again, a little LOUDER this time?"

"LUXY!!!"

"Can I giddit one! More! TIME!!"

"LUXY!!!!!"

"Then let's bring that motherfucker on down! The nexus of mind and might! Our wingless angel of vengeance! The center of the universe himself... LUXYYY BUH-LEEEE-DERRRRR!!!" The hypeman turned and pointed to the ceiling. Toby felt a shudder in the rafters as a hatch opened and powerful hydraulics began to whirr.

The crowd went positively apeshit as their mayor descended from on high. Two incredibly long articulated arms carried down a platform containing one ornate maplewood desk, two lovely plastic assistants, and one sagging pelt of raccoon fur that looked like roadkill.

The audience didn't seem to mind that their icon was passed out or possibly dead. They cheered and stomped the floor. Toby wondered if this was a regular occurrence.

Lights flashing and reflecting all around, the desk lowered with tantalizing slowness. Toby noticed that one of the TV-head ladies by Luxy's side had a large meat grinder and was putting... something shiny into it. What the heck?

When the platform touched down, about a dozen audience members managed to scramble up onto the courtroom floor and run towards it. Four of the TV-heads produced semiautomatic weapons like a magic trick and gunned the stage-rushers down quite efficiently. Bouncers with push brooms mopped their corpses back into the audience pit.

Toby could see clearer now: Luxy's plastic assistant was grinding up diamond necklaces into a fine powder. Luxy himself still looked catatonic, then suddenly he reached behind himself and yanked his head up by his shirt collar. The raccoon's eyes were the color of spoiled tomatoes. He blinked, tried to focus, and directed his head by scent towards the pile of powder. Another assistant provided him a rolled-up Luxybuck. With one heroic snort, half the pile vanished and the coon was instantly on his feet, a Cheshire grin lighting up the whole room.

"Hoo-wee!! Rock 'em sock 'em shitbang! Let's DO this!!"

The crowd’s decibel level doubled.

Luxy Bleeder, king of Ectopia Cordis, swung his agile frame around his desk and moseyed over to a microphone stand. Sharp snout, wiry limbs, black fur glossy on his gloves and bandit mask. Slender as a machete with a tail. He was resplendent. And 'audacious' did not begin to describe tonight's outfit. Orange denim pants. A belt buckle with his own name on it. Ostentatious cowboy boots: pure leather. A red and blue vertically-striped vest underneath a big fluffy bear-fur jacket. And from behind the round yellow lenses of his sunglasses, his electric eyes gazed out.

He cupped the mic in one hand like a lover's shoulder and leaned in.

The audience was silent.

The mic picked up the parting of Luxy's lips. Then he whispered, eyes closed, "How we all doin' tonight?"

An eruption of noise. A waterfall of screams.

Luxy's smile seemed to cover the whole room. Perfectly comfortable as the center of everyone's attention. He let go of the mic and suddenly ran full-tilt over to the gallery box.

The spectators there leapt out of their seats, all of them reaching out their arms in hope of a single touch.

Luxy obliged them. From within his jacket he pulled two nightmarishly-long black-handled straight razors. Jacket flapping behind him, he sailed past the gallery, twirling and flicking his blades like a conductor's baton. Fingers flew. Blood arced. Flesh parted like the red sea.

It was a stomach-churning sight, and Toby clutched the sides of his cage hoping he wouldn't throw up on the people below. Though there was nothing but smiles among the victims. Toby knew he should have been used to this by now. Luxy was beaming with pure love for his fans, and they were as receptive to his blades as a cheek to a kiss. Those who were lucky enough to get maimed held their bleeding stumps with faces full of awe. Toby saw two girls who'd had their noses sliced off turning to each other and hugging in joy.

Even with all that blood flying around, Luxy walked away near-stainlessly. There was gallons of the stuff on the floor, and he flicked plenty off his razors, but his outfit was still immaculate except for a few red dots on his sleeves. Not luck: skill.

He strolled back to the microphone. "I hope you sweets didn't come all the way out here just to see me. Let's give it up for our house band, the magnificent, hardworking, Nitrous Dockside!!"

The band played a crunching riff while the crowd clapped their hands red.

Luxy pointed to his hypeman. "Keep it going for the vox populi himself, Loud Kevin!!"

The applause poured over the stage and Kevin pumped his fists in the air, drinking it up.

When the room quieted again, Kevin and Luxy began their traditional pre-trial patter. "Dude, man, you looked ROUGH just now! Hard night?"

The raccoon nodded, running a paw through his uncombed (but still marvelous) hair. "Very accurate. I have not slept voluntarily in a couple of centuries."

"I haven't seen you snort diamond necklaces before. A hell of a lot of other stuff, but not diamond necklaces." A chuckle and a beat. "What's the high like?"

"Ah, there's no high at all. But the pain is fantastic!" he grinned. "Wakes me right the fuck up!"

The audience guffawed.

"You're, uh, havin' a birthday soon if I'm not mistaken."

"Right you are, o faithful major domo. This coming Tuesday. I believe I will be four hundred and twelve." A swell of applause. "I'm not gonna tell you nice peoples to send me gifts, but I'm also not gonna tell you not to send me gifts."

Perfectly timed, someone threw a pair of panties onstage.

"There's the spirit!" Luxy shouted. He swished over and scooped them up, stuffing them in his pocket. "A thousand thanks, mon chere. I'll smell them thoroughly later." He turned back to the mic, as if in afterthought. "You know, I get frequently asked questions sometimes. Eff-ay-kyews. One of them I get is, 'Luxy,' they ask me, 'you're the most handsome and popular man in Phobiopolis. When are you going to settle down? Find that special someone? After all, with your limitless, raw, voodoo-like charisma, you could have any girl in the city!'

He paused for dramatic effect.

"My answer is, 'I already do.'"

Riotous laughter and applause from the crowd. Toby noticed there were a lot fewer clothing articles amongst them than just a few minutes ago.

Loud Kevin chortled. "That is true. Plus several boys. And nonevs. And furniture."

"Now that is just slanderous and shocking and perfectly true," Luxy replied. "C'mon over here, Kevin."

"I'd better not. You'll kill me."

"Ohh, come on! Be a sport. I promise I won't."

The prairie dog did not budge. "You're reaching for another knife already."

"P'shaw! I would never! Trust me!"

"Ehhh..."

"Kevin, have you ever seen me lie?"

"I have seen you lie literally hundreds of times on this very stage."

"Ha HA! Absolutely correct! I am a monster of Biblical proportions!"

The crowd enjoyed a good laugh at the well-oiled interplay between the two. Luxy let it continue for exactly the right amount of time, then made a sharp horizontal slash with his hand.

Instant quiet.

Luxy stepped in closer to the mic and held it tight. "Ladies and gentlemen, there is a psychological need for the catharsis of tension through laughter. But now it is time to fully face the purpose that brings us here on this day. We are here because of a crime beyond the pale, against city and citizens. You've all seen the news footage by now. The wheel. The bodies. The destruction. The mall. This is not the humdrum everyday felonies this courtroom usually sees. This is not your regularly scheduled programming. This is something different. This is... an affront, is all I can call it. Even though I'm sure we all share a mutual love for blood and destruction- I myself can't deny a respect, perhaps even an awe, for the sheer magnitude of the chaos we witnessed yesterday- what happened is more than just the images on our screens. Some of you died yesterday. Some of you lost your homes, businesses, life's savings, irreplaceable possessions. In a city where life is cheap, we know the value of what we own and work for. Ladies and gentlemen, let's look beyond the immediate. Yesterday was an afternoon of screams and suffering, of losses both personal and financial, and it is going to have long-term repercussions as well. This is going to fuck up our economy, and hard. There's no ignoring that. We all, as a city, are going to feel the effects of yesterday's cataclysm for quite some time. And, speaking personally, I'm just a little bit upset about that. Aren't you?"

A rumble of anger and grief had been brewing amongst the audience as he focused their minds back on the unholy mess that had been wreaked upon them the day before. Luxy kneaded and molded their outrage into a tidal wave that grew and crashed upon the courtroom floor as a mass cry for retribution.

"What is our law?" Luxy asked.

Together with the crowd, he recited: "Have a good time. And do not fuck with someone else's good time."

"That is correct." Luxy Bleeder spoke softly, placing careful emphasis on each word. "A great many good times were fucked with yesterday. Not the least of which belonging to our steadfast cleanup crews, who'll be spending god knows how long rebuilding. Give them kisses and cash wherever you see them, promise me. But this was not a natural disaster. Not the kind where no one's to blame but Lady Luck. No. This was planned. This attack, that cost us so dearly, was masterminded and executed with cold, ruthless precision. I feel your hearts calling out for blood. And you will have it, my sweet darlings, oh I promise you that. But, as in the aftermath of a natural disaster, I have seen you all pull together and show me the best parts of yourselves." He glanced to someone in the crowd with her shirt off." There's a pair right now. Thank you Ma'am." A guffaw rippled through the crowd. Luxy's sincere whisper did not miss a beat. "I am asking that best-ness from you now. I am asking for your trust. The urge to vengeance is one of the most basic parts of us. But we are more than that. We are smarter than that. We will feel that fire burning inside us, but we will temper it with reason and patience. We do not rush to justice. Not here. Not you. Only evidence decides guilt, not our hungry hearts."

He stood up straight and tall, suddenly holding the microphone up above his head, above the crowd.

"WHO ARE YOU!?" he shouted.

"WE ARE ECTOPIA CORDIS!!!" came the unanimous cry.

"AND WHAT IS THIS CITY!?" he bellowed, voice cracking from sheer force.

"WE ARE THE LIGHT OF REASON IN THE CHAOTIC NIGHT!!!"

Luxy took the mic back, breathed hard for a moment while the crowd cheered, then whispered, "Damn right we are. Let's get this goin'."

***

All while Luxy spoke, Toby had felt like he'd been standing mere inches away from him. It was almost disorienting to realize, after the mesmerising words had ended, that he was still in a little round cage thirteen feet off the floor. Luxy was a vortex of attention. The very silverest of tongues.

As the raccoon went back to his podium and began to paw through a mound of hand-scrawled notes, Loud Kevin took over at the mic. "The videos have been playing day and night on every news channel. You've seen their faces. You know their names. You want their heads. So here they come! Please, no projectile weaponry as we bring in... your defendants for today!"

Toby's guts lurched as the cage jolted into motion. The small mouse looked across the crowd and saw an ocean of hatred reflected back. Gritted teeth. Glaring eyes. Roars of outrage. He found himself immensely grateful for Luxy's speech persuading them to hold back judgment, otherwise he was sure there'd have been a hailstorm of bricks and molotov cocktails heading straight at him.

The cage bumped into the courtroom floor and sprang open. Everyone inside tumbled out. They stood up and stretched while Kevin motioned for them to take their positions at Table A. Toby felt a million hateful eyes upon him. He could barely stand the thought that he'd be sitting with his back to them. All those people, staring. Burning holes in his neck.

Piffle saw him shaking and took Toby's paw.

He squeezed. "Thank you."

Together they took their seats. At least the chairs were comfy. The table was plain, wooden and well-scuffed, with microphones on little stands before each chair. Zinc looked cool as a cucumber as he plopped down and put his feet up. Junella took a moment to turn and face the crowd, matching their fury with her eyes. She stared defiantly for a few seconds, then scooped up George, plopped him on the table, and sat down too.

"Well SOMEone's certainly not displaying remorse!" Kevin cracked.

"Ain't done shit to feel guilty for," she shot back.

The audience "Ooooohhh!!"ed.

"But that's not all, folks! Incredible as it may seem, we have yet another defendant here in the courtroom today! Yes, that's right! Despite what you've seen with your own eyes, an accusation has been made that everything that transpired yesterday was masterminded by... this man!"

Another cage lowered, and this time the audience was a lot quieter. They buzzed with confusion, squinting to see the sphere's lone occupant.

It snapped open when it touched the floor and out popped the muskrat with the totem pole eyes. He dusted himself off and stood with wounded dignity.

Toby was as surprised as anyone else to see him here, but was damned glad for it anyway. He'd thought they would have had to go through their own trial first, then afterwards, if they managed to somehow prove their innocence, they'd testify against the muskrat. He'd never heard of two prosecutions happening simultaneously. 'Certainly efficient though.'

What puzzled him was the rodent's body language. If it wasn't for his appearance (those eyes were unforgettable), Toby would have thought he was looking at a completely different furson.

He was dressed in a cheap but presentable suit. He stood with shoulders hunched, stooping, seeming to wilt under the weight of the crowd's gaze. His forehead was damp. His hands clutched at his jacket buttons. The sneering arrogance from yesterday was gone, every atom. This man looked like a cowering puppy, bewildered to be here and wholly unprepared. He was paralyzed, squinting through the bright lights to all those angry faces in the crowd. Loud Kevin had to come around the table and nudge the man towards his chair. The muskrat's arms were shaking so badly, he nearly tripped while trying to sit down.

Toby looked over to Zinc and Junella. The skunk loomed over the table, eyes slitted, shooting daggers at the little man. Zinc was breathing so hard he sounded like the Big Bad Wolf. "Hold me back, Juney, so I don't run over there and blow our case by doing somethin' dumb and bloody to him."

She put a vinyl paw on his shoulder. "Ease up. So he's a good actor. Makes things more difficult, yeah. But we'll get him back one way or another. Either we win here, or we break out afterwards, hunt him down, and give him nightmares for eternity."

Zinc ground the gears of his wrenches. "How 'bout both?"

Luxy pondered at his podium a while longer, then straightened up and approached Table A, arms folded behind his back.

Toby looked up into those eyes. Their gaze reminded him of a security system scanning intruders with a laser grid. They darted back and forth over the five defendants, soaking up every detail. In just the few seconds it took for the raccoon to walk towards him, Toby felt as if that cold gaze had given him an autopsy.

Then, like flipping a switch, the 'coon changed demeanor again, rubbing his hands together and smiling gregariously. "Bienvenido, amigos! How was jail? The food okay?" He quickly cataloged all their reactions.

George was unreadable, Toby was apoplectic, Piffle smiled warmly, Junella didn't flinch, and Zinc made direct eye contact and shrugged a little. "Eh, not shitty. I've had worse; I've had better."

Luxy nodded. "You are Anthony 'Zinc' Galvan, yes?"

The canine winced a bit at all these people hearing his real name, but nodded back. "Yeh."

Luxy sized him up. "Uncouth, dangerous, and irreverent. A petty thug. A goon. A brute. A hooligan. A rapscallion. A knavish malfeasor!"

Zinc grinned and feigned bashfulness. "Y'trying to flatter me or what?"

A few people in the audience chuckled.

Luxy grinned approvingly and took a step to the side.

When he saw the limitless disdain in Junella's orange eyes, it startled him.

"Ah, Miss Junella Brox. I believe I last met you and your hardware-laden partner while I was under the influence of an impish little pill called 'duststorm'. A transcendent high, and then episodes of lost recall for four days afterwards." He leaned in, emphasizing this last point, letting her know through his tone that he understood her contempt perfectly.

Junella sat up a little, honestly surprised.

He waited for the recognition in her eyes, got it, passed to her a glance of sincere regret, then went back to being professional. The audience didn't need to know of his previous acquaintance with these two suspected terrorists. Or that he'd accidentally screwed them out of money he had promised them. "I shan’t dally with that devil n'more."

Luxy moved on. Piffle beamed at him and held out her hand for a shake. Luxy instead kissed the back of it, making her explode in giggles. "And this must be the charming Piffle-Whiffle Whisper-Whizzle Weasel-Fister Princess-Penis Shrinky-Dinky Humpty-Dumpty Something-Or-Other McPoodlescreech. A pleasure."

She was thoroughly amused by his mangling of her name, and could tell he'd done it just for fun. "You big silly! Get it right! That's Shimmer-Thistle Whisper-Kimmy Vivilandria Lavender Dorabelle Loribelle Trixi Fizzy Piffle McPerricone."

His eyebrows went up, as if he couldn't believe he'd made such a dreadful faux pas. "A thousand and one apologies! Pray, forgive me! Your outfit is as pink as a dozen sunsets and your eyes are like ruby disco balls."

She covered her mouth with her paws to hide giggles.

Luxy took another sideways step, this time chuckling at how much Toby shrank in his seat at the sight of him.

"Toby deLeon. The new kid on the block. Only been in the Big P a few weeks, judging by your scent." He squinted. "What's that on your palm, son?"

Toby had to look and remind himself. "Oh, this? It's something I bought in Coryza." He carefully unsheathed his hammer in the most nonthreatening way he could manage.

Luxy ran a finger along the steel. He took a sniff. "Only recently been baptized. Just a few heads knocked in." He sighed wistfully. Then his tone turned ice-cold. "Are you usually in the habit of drawing a weapon in front of a judge?"

Toby's whole body jumped. "What!? No!! I mean... You asked, right? I'm sorry!!"

Luxy snickered. "Wowza, kid, you're easy to spook! Relax; you'll live longer!"

Toby sucked his hammer back up and tried not to faint.

Finally, Luxy stood in front of the large blackened horse skull resting on the table. He cocked his head sideways like a dog. "You folks keep a pet nightmare? How?"

George cleared his throat. "If you please, sir, my name is George Charles Atkinson. And I am not a pet."

Luxy whipped off his sunglasses to make sure he wasn't hallucinating. "It TALKS!? Jesus McFucking McChrist! How'd you teach it THAT trick!?"

"I taught myself," George said in a patient tone that betrayed a bit of irritation.

Luxy darted around, poking at George, lifting him up, inspecting the restraint collar, trying to find where the speakers were hidden. Finally, looking utterly stumped, he set the head back down. "Well shit my pants. I've seen a hell of a lot of stuff in this city, but a talking bonecuddy... I gotta admit that's new. Are you, uh, prepared to testify?"

"I would prefer to do so with the rest of my body restored, but I cannot say I begrudge the precaution, given the behavior of the rest of my kin. I am not only prepared to testify on behalf of my loyal and wrongly-maligned companions, but my memory is near-to-flawless."

Luxy was not so egotistical to hide the fact that he was flat-out stunned. George's sentience was something he hadn't believed, even despite all the videos and reports he'd seen so far. Certain things just didn't happen. Pretty high on that list was an ascended nightmare. He'd heard legends, but only a couple times in a century. His skepticism was grounded. He'd been sure up until a second ago that this was a very well-made robot. But once you've been killed by a bonecuddy, you never forget how they smell. And that smell was not easily replicated.

Luxy made a small bow to George and then walked over to the other table. Toby thought he'd been awfully friendly to them, and that maybe it meant he believed their story. But then he considered that, more likely, Luxy was simply treating both sides as innocent. And also trying to catch flies with honey. Toby watched and was proven correct.

The muskrat fidgeted in his seat a bit when Luxy approached. Though seemingly from indignity, not guilt.

The raccoon's eyes caressed the fellow like giving him a pat down. "Here now we have the other item on today's menu. Mr. Pandevar Skyks. I don't think I've ever heard of you before. I had to research you before the trial. By all accounts, you're a mild-mannered inoffensive nobody."

The muskrat bristled a bit at that. "Mr. Bleeder, I do not understand why I'm here today."

Luxy looked genuinely concerned. "...The fuzz didn't explain it to you?"

Mr. Skyks sat up a little straighter. "No. I mean, yes. I mean, they did. I mean, I understand the charges against me, but how could anyone take them seriously!?" He pointed across the room at the other defendants. "They did it! They're on camera doing it! Why am I here!?"

Luxy leaned in to put his hands on the man's shoulders, flexing his skilled fingers to relieve tension. "Calm thy heated blood, Mr. Skyks. Justice, you see, is all about coralling every possible possibility, then hacking away like mad till all the impossible ones fall. An accusation was made, Pandy. Fair play says I'm duty bound to look into it." He paused. "Speaking of that, how's your depth perception?"

"Just fine, thank you."

Luxy gestured up and down between the man's eyes. "Was that, like, an accident? Birth defect? Lose a bet?"

The muskrat deflated a bit to be asked, as if it was a question he was dead tired of answering. "An April Fool's prank. It never wore off, and it hasn't bothered me enough so far to get it reversed."

"C'est la vie," said Luxy. "By the way, what do you call it when siblings fight over who gets to go first unwrapping presents on Christmas morning?"

Pandevar blinked at the total non sequitur. "What? I..."

"Opening arguments!" Luxy threw his hands in the air. Confetti fell from the ceiling above him. "Don't you just love 'em? Let's have a few right now, whatchasay?" He reached in his pants pocket and, lightning-quick, launched a flash of silver high above his head. "Call it in the air!!" he commanded Skyks.

"Heads! No, wait, tails!"

Luxy caught the coin in his palm, making sure the cameras could see which side it landed on. "Lucky boy. Tails it is" He gave the mic in front of the muskrat a tap. It echoed appropriately. "Go nuts, kiddo."

Taking that to mean that he'd won the tossup and he could make the first statement, Mr. Skyks cleared his throat and pulled the mic closer. He opened his mouth, then cast a worried glance behind him at the crowd. Then he looked down at his reflection in the shiny tabletop, not able to meet the unblinking gaze of the two cameras that were wheeling in close.

"I... I don't really know where to start. I didn't prepare anything. I didn't have time to, really. I spent all last night dangling in a cell, wondering why I opened my door last night to find a pack of riot cops standing there. I was stuffed inside a police drone without a word. It was dark and stank of sweat, and I probably screamed my throat raw begging them to let me out.

"When they finally did, they explained everything. How I was being called some kind of comic book mastermind. That I'd blown up the Praxus Pammer apartments and was somehow responsible for the Panjandrum Mall too. I can't... I mean, how is someone supposed to respond to that? How can you even begin to respond to something so crazy and ridiculous!? And stupid! I mean, look at me! Judge Luxy's right. I am... a nobody.

"I've been wracking my memory all day, trying to figure out 'why me'? The best I can come up with is that I'm pretty sure I bumped into... him the other day." He cast a wounded, ugly look at Zinc.

"He says I shot him and stole his arms. That's insane. Yes, I saw him. That's it. You might be asking, 'So what were you doing all the way down on Bigwheel Fourteen when you live on Twenty-Eight?' Because Baccetti's is there. It's a nice little restaurant. I enjoy eating there. I like their soup. I was just leaving after lunch when I passed by this furson with metal arms. Maybe I brushed against him, and maybe he said something. And maybe someone robbed him, but I don't know who. Maybe I was just someone he remembered seeing and I was convenient to point the finger at. So I went home. I watched Drainage Ditch and Who's On Fire until dinnertime when I ate some leftovers, watched more TV, and fell asleep on the couch. Everything was normal."

His head had sunk lower and lower onto his folded hands. "The next thing I knew, the cops were banging at my door. I spent the night in a cage. I never... What did I do to deserve this?"

His head suddenly whipped around towards Table A. Desperation, frustration, and tears burned in his eyes. "You did this!! You've already caused so much pain to so many people! Why me too!? Because I bumped into you? Did you just pick me at random? I don't understand! Please, haven't you done enough? Can't you just take back whatever it was you said and let me go!?"

Toby was stunned. The muskrat's words seemed completely heartfelt. Exactly how he'd expect an innocent man to sound. If Toby hadn't seen him with his own eyes at the crime scene yesterday, his aching plea might have been convincing. Toby began to wonder if he and his friends had made a mistake somehow. Was this man innocent? Could he be? It suddenly occurred to Toby that the furson he'd seen sabotaging Gyre 2 might have transformed himself into Mr. Skyks' likeness. 'I hope that's not the case. I'd feel guilty for weeks.'

Luxy had been standing to the side, mind and features blank, concentrating everything on listening. When Mr. Skyks finished, the raccoon walked over and patted the man's shoulder. "Thank you."

The muskrat seemed to snap to reality and remember how many people were watching him. He sat up and interlaced his fingers. "You're welcome, Mr. Bleeder."

Luxy then strode across the floor to the other table."The defendant has suggested that your accusation against him is meritless. He is asking you to rescind. Anything you'd like to say in response?"

Junella saw the explosion about to come out of Zinc's mouth and gently pinned her partner's lips shut with her fingers. She looked to Luxy and asked placidly, "Is this all on the official record?"

"Of course," he said.

Without a ripple in her expression, she enunciated, "Then my response is as follows: I don't give a fuck. Not a single fuck. Not a single solitary fuck, motherfucker."

Luxy's eyebrows went up.

Junella leaned all the way back in her chair to make eye contact with Skyks. "Does that answer your question, you lying-ass homicidal piece of shit?"

Skyks was so flustered by this he puffed up like a wet hen.

Luxy steepled his fingertips "I'm just gonna make a wild guess that you're in disagreement with his version of events. Would we like to share with the class?"

"We would like nothing more," Zinc snarled.

And thus the quintet began to tell their side of the story. Seeing as this was just the opening arguments, everyone tried to summarize. There'd be time enough to go through the details later upon cross-examination.

"...and then POW!! Next thing I know, I'm wakin' up in a pool of blood with my ears ringin' like churchbells and my wrenches gone. 'Inconsolable' is not a word I use lightly, but it applied. Now, did I see him do it? I didn't. I admit that. But I got a few witnesses who did. And I sure as hell smelled the rotten little prick strong enough to track him all the way to Fifty-Two..."

"...he was standing closer to me than he's sitting right now. I was keeping crouched down and hidden. He had my friend Zinc's wrenches on his shoulders and he was fiddling with some buttons and stuff at a control panel. He and Zinc yelled at each other for a bit, then I heard him say that he'd done something to the main hub and it was gonna explode in a few minutes. I swear I am not making any of this up..."

"...whereupon Sir Zinc located a Route Finder and we plummeted to Rippingbean & Woofingbutter's fine department store, which we had patronized not more than an hour beforehand. We were in need of a transformation potion to use upon myself and time was of the essence. I regret to admit that Sir Zinc did indeed burgle said potion. But we would be more than happy to pay for it this very moment, plus any interest deemed appropriate by the proprietors."

"...do you have any idea the kind of work it takes to knock over a whole damn building? No one's denying he did that, or that I keelhauled about forty-five pigbots to stop them from stoppin' him. But look at the results. Picture the destruction that already happened, but add five or ten more Bigwheels' worth. Just take a moment to really fix that image. Instead, we flattened some cars and pissed off some shoppers. Big deal. We probly saved half the city. You people oughtta be thankin' me. I swear to fuck, if you try to put me in that Pipe, I will personally..."

"...and then the whole mall shook like jelly and went CRRREEEAK! It got real tipsy, and for a second there I thought the other wheel was gonna miss it, but it didn't! It went KERSMASHAROONIE and there was oodles of broken glass, and the big bad apartment building went SWOOSH all the way down the side and rolled off the edge like a big donut! Hooray! We did it! So listen up, all you nice people. We didn't do anything bad. We was framed, y'see! We're a pack of peppermint patsies!"

Reactions were mixed.

Toby couldn't see behind him, but he could hear the waves of murmuring going back and forth across the crowd. There seemed to be some consideration that these five freaks might actually be telling the truth. But most of the other whispers were partially or unmistakably hostile in tone. Toby had heard the word "bullshit" multiple times.

Luxy had been reclining upon his podium, eyes closed, muzzle pointed heavenward. He stayed in this statuesque position for quite a while after Piffle had finished up her section of the story, until some people began to wonder if he'd fallen asleep on a diagonal lean. Instead, his hands suddenly clasped together and he vaulted between the two tables towards the audience. "Intrigue! Deception! Mystery abounding! Two different versions of events, both of which cannot simultaneously be true. Oh, it's delicious. I was hoping for one of these, weren't you? Isn't it boring as hell when someone's just obviously guilty as shit right from the start? Ain't it so more satisfying when there's a tangled web to chew through?" He clutched his crotch. "MMMmmmnhhhffhh!!"

Toby blinked.

Luxy whirled around. "Kevin!! The big screen, sill voo play!"

"Ready!" The prairie dog already had a control box in hand, and with the push of a button, two long, thin panels at the back of the room cracked open. From below rose a flatscreen TV half as big as a billboard. Meanwhile, two of Luxy's mannequin assistants were wheeling in a large bingo cage. They positioned it near Luxy's podium and made a flourishing gesture like magician's assistants.

Luxy walked over and put his paw on the cage. "Before I spin the witness balls, would either side like to add another name? Last chance!"

Toby guessed from context what was about to happen. He whispered to his companions, "When were we asked about calling witnesses? The police didn't tell me anything about that."

"It's taken care of," Zinc reassured. "Junebug and I gave 'em about a dozen names. We're covered."

Toby nodded, glad to hear it.

At Table B, Skyks spoke up. "Is Mr. Baccetti in there?"

Loud Kevin replied, "If you asked for him, he will be. No worries." Then he turned around to face the audience and recited a soliloquy he'd been through so many times he no longer even heard the words. "For new viewers the cage to my left contains the names of all the witnesses requested by any and all defendants witnesses will be called one by one chosen randomly each time all witnesses will eventually be chosen all witnesses will testify via Luxycam to ensure the safety of the witnesses back to you Luxy."

"Righty-o! Let's give 'er a swirl and see who's on first!"

Kevin opened his mouth.

"...and if you say 'what's on second', I will put many bullets into you."

He pouted. "You're a mean ol' poop, bossman."

Luxy tittered. He gripped the handle firmly and sent the witness balls a-tumbling. The band struck up a quick riff. Then Luxy brought the cage to a stop, popped the hatch, and dived his hand in. Each ball was ping-pong sized. He peered at the one he'd chosen.

"Ohoho, one of my favorite newscasters. Our first talking head is, appropriately enough, the fetching Miss Jamais Dreamsicle!"

He gestured towards the big TV screen and it came on. The perspective showed the hallway of a relatively posh apartment building. The camera dipped in low towards one of the doors and something emerged below the lens to pick the lock. From the movement, Toby soon guessed the camera was housed inside a hovering drone.

Luxy twirled his mic around his finger as the softly-humming Luxycam floated around the apartment, looking for Jamais. A muffled sound was heard past the living room. The camerabot surged forward.

Then it showed a door being flung open and one unsuspecting vixen sitting with her bloomers around her ankles on the toilet. She looked up and screeched. The audience cackled while Jamias threw hygiene products at the lens and tried to wrap the shower curtain around herself. "LUXY, YOU UNIMAGINABLE BITCH!!!"

He was grinning ear to ear. "Pleasure to see you again too, Jammy! My stars, you sure do keep your bathroom tile clean. What's your secret?"

***

Thus began the long, long, LONG parade of witnesses.

On every daytime court show Toby had ever seen, cases were decided as swiftly as fast food orders. He was absolutely unprepared for how a real trial worked. There were dozens of balls in that cage, each one corresponding to an Ectopian citizen who told their version of events, and were then asked a plethora of followup questions from the defendants and from Luxy himself. Toby would have been gobsmacked to learn that Luxy's court was actually incredibly efficient compared to most others in the terrestrial realm. With his policy of forbidding lawyers, the plaintiffs and defendants were responsible for their own cases, meaning far fewer technicalities, no tedious bickering over what was admissible (everything was), and, most importantly, the furson with the most amount of money to spend on a legal team didn't automatically win.

Once she'd knocked the Luxycam out of the room with the lid of the toilet tank, finished her business, and moved the interview to her balcony, Jamais began her testimony. She was, unsurprisingly, firmly against the defendants at Table A. She said she'd never seen or heard of Mr. Skyks before, but as footage from her newscast played on picture-in-picture, she narrated her eyewitness account of the canine, skunk, horse, hamsterfly and mouse demolishing the Panjandrum's supports and murdering dozens of security guards.

Toby watched the video in baffled fascination. It had seemed so different while it was all happening. It felt like it'd lasted a lot longer, for one. And he hadn't fully realized just how many copbots George and Junella had plowed through. There was a literal hill of sparking tin corpses once they'd finished.

Then there he was, flailing his hammer around. Missing with most of his swings, but when he connected... holy shit. He didn't remember most of it, but he'd made some true home runs. He felt kind of sick to realize that he was much better at bludgeoning people than he ever would have imagined.

And Zinc. The canine was a literal blur. 'Awesome' is a word so overused it has lost its meaning, but watching Zinc work on those support struts was awesome. He moved faster than Toby thought physics could allow. For these short moments, he was the living incarnation of determination.

Jamais finished up by telling how the 'albino one' had tried to take her hostage, which Toby rolled his eyes at. Next on the stand was one of Millie's friends from Bigwheel Fourteen. She tried to help the quintet's case, but probably did more to harm it. At first she said she was 100% sure Skyks had shot Zinc. But upon cross-examination, admitted that she hadn't actually seen it happen. She'd looked out the window after the loud 'pop', and saw someone muskrat-shaped running away. Luxy eviscerated her testimony, and her face was flushed red by the time the camera switched to someone else.

For hours afterwards, the big screen showed more eyewitnesses to the destruction, more friends of Millie's, several residents of Praxus Pammer, several mall employees, several security guards, several employees at Baccetti's restaurant, several police drones, and eventually Millie herself, plus the bazooka-toting doorman.

Some of the witnesses helped Toby's case, others damned it. But the longer he sat and watched, the more he came to realize just how good Luxy was at his job. His questions were rapid-fire, never allowing his prey the time to think up a lie. Plus the raccoon could put a chameleon to shame. He could transform into a different personality with each question he asked. Constant shifting from silly to serious to bored to abusive. It was a juggling act. Keeping the witness on their toes at all time, never sure what he'd do next. One moment he'd be demanding specific details about what they'd seen, the next he'd be asking them for their shoe size, or their favorite type of pie. And if someone stonewalled on giving Luxy a simple 'yes' or 'no' when he wanted one, he could use his words like a scalpel to force it out. Toby could barely believe that someone could switch so effortlessly, like a leaf on the breeze, between comfortingly persuasive or viciously ruthless.

Luxy wanted truth. Nothing else mattered. End of line.

But he didn't have to show his venom often. Most of the witnesses were cooperative. Either because they wanted to help their chosen side, or just because they tuned in frequently to Luxy's Court and didn't want to end up on the receiving end of a tyrant's temper.

It was difficult to watch the testimony from the employees at Baccetti's. They painted a picture of Pandevar Skyks as a beloved regular. A humble, soft-spoken fellow who always tipped. One waitress said she'd breathe a sigh of relief whenever he walked in, because he was a dependable contrast to some of the other assholes from the neighborhood. "He never came in drunk, never puked, never punched nobody. I wish we could run a business just sellin' soup to him alone. Whoever called him a terrorist is fucked in the head, I say."

If that was difficult, when the security guards spoke it was downright heartbreaking. Toby would cringe and try to will himself to vanish whenever one of them showed up on screen. These were decent people, all of them. And with the exception of the beheaded guard on 52, he and his friends had murdered or maimed every one of them. Not caring if it hurt their case, Toby made a point of always standing up at the end of each guard's testimony and saying, "I am genuinely sorry." Some responded with disgust, but others looked surprised and appreciative.

Toby had thought that the malamute doorman was going to slam-dunk their story. He'd seen Skyks entering Gyre 2. And while wearing Zinc's arms to boot! But Skyks pounced. He became surprisingly fierce, bombarding the man with questions, accusing him outright of being in league with Zinc in a conspiracy against him. "What else can we assume from a guard who lets four strangers, and a nightmare, just waltz right into the place he's supposed to be guarding? Please tell me they fired you for that! That's dereliction of duty if I ever heard it!" The doorman tried to stick to his story that he'd already seen Skyks enter, but the muskrat countered that, even if it were true, that only meant he'd failed at his job twice in one day. The malamute wilted like a pressed daisy after that. The muskrat had torpedoed his credibility.

Skyks tried to do the same with Millie, but she wasn't having any of it. The Luxycam showed the squirrelgator lounging in her bed, a cigarette dangling from her paw. "Y'know, I always wanted ta be on TV." She was wearing a nightgown so transparent you could see the stitching in her undergarments.

Luxy was pleasantly flustered. "Madam Millie Maybach, I presume?"

"At ya service, sugar." She pulled her big fluffy tail up close like a teddy bear and ran her scaly claws through it.

Luxy made an involuntary growl of 'I enjoy what I am currently seeing'. "Well, ah, yes. Would you do this courtroom the honor of providing testimony about the events of yesterday afternoon?"

"Are you sure that's all ya need me ta do?" she purred.

The raccoon melted slightly.

Zinc chuckled from his seat, not a bit jealous. Millie's livelihood was to have this effect on people, after all.

Millie began to describe, with perfectly composed candor, exactly what she and the defendant Zinc had been getting up to the day before. Suffice to say, heavy duty fooling around had commenced. There were many shouts of "Woooo!!" from the audience.

Zinc basked in the happy memories for a while, until he glanced over at Toby to give him a 'Yeah, that was me!' wink. Then he saw Piffle.

The hamsterfly was sitting very quietly with her hands in her lap. Lips pursed. Very deliberately not looking at the screen or at Zinc.

She didn't look angry. Something else. Zinc puzzled over it for a moment, and then a lightbulb came on.

"Oh..."

It seemed he'd need to talk with her later about this.

Toby said nothing, but was glad to see the realization flash over Zinc's face.

Skyks was pointing at Millie. "This is the same story as the other two, uh, hookers that already testified. None of you got a good look at this furson you claim you saw, but you're all ganging up and blaming me anyway! And you all seem to know this Zinc guy pretty well. Well enough to lie for him!"

Millie sat up straight and folded her arms across her not-inconsiderable chest. For a moment it was as if the screen wasn't there and she was sitting directly across from him giving him the evil eye. "I'm not exactly fond of being called a liar to my face," she said coldly.

"Neither am I!" Skyks shot back.

"Listen, shrimp. You're right that I didn't see you shoot my dear playmate. So I can't testify ta that. But what I will say izzat I trust my girls. I tawked to everyone, we pieced together a description, and it matches you. For whatever it's worth, I put my trust in that. Although, what I can testify to is that I've nevah had a terrorist's tentpole all up in my campgrounds, if ya know what I mean. Zinc's a stand-up guy. I believe him. And what I did see out that window? I saw his dead body layin' in the street, arms missing, blood all ovah the place in a pattern that looked remarkably like a shotgun blast. I've been around bad places long enough ta know what one looks like."

She turned to Luxy. "Talk ta Rosella, sweetie. She says she got a photo. I'm sure you have blood spatter analysis guys down there who can take a peep at it."

He patted the bingo cage. "She's in the balls somewhere."

"That sounds accurate," Millie quipped.

The audience guffawed.

Pandevar was not amused. "If I allegedly had a shotgun, then where is it? The cops said they never found one."

Millie shrugged. "People dumbfound things bigger than that." She casually flicked her cigarette out of existence, then reappeared it in her other hand.

Skyks tried a few more angles of undermining Millie, but she parried his jabs like a champion fencer. Luxy, charmed as he was, was not gentle either. Millie was more respectful with him, but managed admirably to keep up with his chaotic questioning. Her story did not budge an atom.

After Millie departed with a shake of her tail, the next witness up was one of the maintenance workers from Gyre 2. Toby had been steadily slipping into boredom for the past hour, and while Millie had perked his interest, now it was plunging floorward again.

As he stared ahead and spaced out, Toby inadvertently noticed something interesting about the camera feed. There were tiny colored numbers down at the bottom edge, flickering by so fast they were almost unreadable. Toby puzzled over them a bit, then noticed Luxy kept glancing at them. The mouse got a hunch that they were displaying things like heart rate and other body signals which wouldn't be apparent on normal video. The Luxycam was secretly a lie detector. He felt certain he was right about this.

The hours dragged on and the witnesses started blurring together. Toby was sure one of the security guards had testified three times. He was having trouble keeping his head propped up in a position faking alertness.

But then, something entirely new began to demand his attention. His bladder.

'Oh crap,' he thought. What was the procedure for something like this? This situation hadn't come up on any courtroom drama he'd ever seen. Did they call a recess? Would the bailiff escort him to the potty? He looked around. There wasn't even a bailiff here. Or did Loud Kevin count? Toby certainly did not want to be escorted down the hall and then have that blaring voice asking him, "HEYYYYY, you through tinkling yet!?"

Piffle came to his rescue when she noticed him squirming. "Are you doing the Zuni rain dance, Toby?" she whispered.

He squeaked in alarm. "Am I obvious?"

She giggled. "You look like it's about to come squirting out your ears."

"What do I do!?" he moaned.

"Silly mousie!" She tickled his tummy briefly (which made him wiggle like a fish). "Just will it to go away! You're in the spirit world, remember? Bodily functions are an illusion."

He had forgotten that. He took a moment to calm his nerves, thought about how it felt to fill a willwell, and told his bladder to behave. Just like that, the urge vanished. "Huh."

"Easy as pie."

A thought occurred to him. "But wait... If no one has to go number one or two, then was Zinc lying yesterday about the big pile of poo below the jail cages?"

"Prolly not. After all, you do gotta concentrate to make the feeling go away. I imagine most new people just 'go' like normal for a long time after they get here, until they figger out they don't have to."

He nodded. "That seems likely."

"Discussing legal strategies?"

Toby just about had a heart attack as he realized that Luxy Bleeder had crept up soundlessly and was leaning over with his face two inches away from theirs.

Piffle jumped a little, but was less fazed. "We were talking about bathroom issues!"

"I see. That's understandable. I'd hate to think I was boring anyone." He traipsed off towards the screen to resume interrogating the guard.

Toby's heartbeat sounded like a timpani. "That brought back bad memories of first grade."

***

Hours earlier, some TV-head gals had brought around a cart with fresh-baked confinement loaf. It broke the monotony, but just barely. After that it was back to the seemingly infinite cavalcade of witnesses. Toby thought he might actually get so bored his flesh would all fall right off his skeleton.

One thing had become clear to him though: his side's case was not going well. People tended to believe what they see with their own eyes. What they'd seen was him and his friends running away from Gyre 2 just before it exploded off its hub, and then destroying a much-beloved shopping center in broad daylight. What they had not seen was Pandevar Skyks. He didn't appear in any video taken by any spectator yesterday. It was much easier for most people to believe the simple, obvious story of events, rather than the convoluted truth. Countless guards, tenants. and shop owners had directed pure hatred at Zinc and the others, refusing to believe they were anything but terrorists. On their side, it was pretty much just the malamute doorman and Millie's girls.

Though there was also the video a bystander had shot of Toby and Piffle rescuing Jamais and her crew from the crashed news chopper. Piffle leaned over to hug her mousefriend for that, congratulating him again for being brave and thinking ahead. Jamais' cameraman had not been able to answer Piffle's question, "If we're so evil, then why would we bother rescuing you?"

Things got much more interesting in the courtroom once the last ball was drawn from the bingo cage and the last security guard gave near-identical testimony to a dozen others.

It was finally time for the defendants themselves to take the stand.

By now, Pandevar Skyks had built up a juggernaut of sympathy. He was flawless at portraying an innocent man wronged by the conspiratorial lies of a quintet of evildoers. When Loud Kevin announced that his testimony would be next, the audience cheered. And there was a near-tangible aura of goodwill coming towards him as he fielded Luxy's questions.

The one spark of hope Toby was clinging to was that Luxy did not seem to have fallen under Skyks' spell. He questioned the muskrat with no more sympathy than anyone else. Pandevar sat at Table B with his arms folded neatly in front of him. He looked Luxy straight in the eye as he calmly walked though the previous day's events one more time. Luxy came at him from every angle imaginable. And he seemed to catch him in a lie more than once. But Skyks was a wiggler. Like magic, he always had a perfectly reasonable comeback.

Luxy interrogated him for nearly an hour. At the end, Pandevar sat there smelling like a rose. Looking like a halo was hovering above his head. The harder the raccoon pressed, the more the mood in the room turned against him. They felt he was just bullying the muskrat at this point. When Luxy turned and stalked away towards his podium, Toby saw an expression of dark, blazing irritation briefly flash on his face, before he covered it again with a mask of nonchalance.

The crowd had been willing to laugh along with Zinc and Junella's wisecracks at the start of the trial. The rock music had them pumped and giddy anyway. But after hours of testimony, and plenty of video, all depicting in abundant detail the havoc and carnage these five had wrought upon their beloved city, the crowd was not laughing anymore. Zinc was glad he was facing away from the audience pit. If he thought there'd been hatred directed at him before... Not even close. He was glad he only had to look at Luxy now while he was being questioned.

Zinc, overall, did well. The day's accumulated boredom helped temper his molten hatred towards Pandevar. He was able to keep a cool head as Luxy lobbed figurative fastballs. He stuck to his story, and supplied as much detail as he could remember. Details he hoped could be corroborated by other evidence. It did at least help that, when Zinc brought it up, Luxy was honorable enough to admit having hired him and Junella years ago. The audience was a bit shocked by this. Zinc didn't push Luxy too hard, and didn't make him reveal what he'd said earlier about duststorm. It was enough just to have it entered into evidence that the mayor of Ectopia Cordis could personally vouch for Zinc being the owner of the two big metal wrenches on his shoulders. That fact could not be disputed. Pandevar had tried earlier to sow doubt that Zinc had even been robbed at all.

Junella was next. Toby had prayed to whoever was listening that she'd reign in her dislike for Luxy and her general combative disposition. While she smoldered like cold fire with her every response, she never lost her temper. Or swore too much. When asked about the police drones she and George had destroyed, she didn't deny a bit of it. Even said she'd had a hell of a lot of fun. But she remained adamant about her motives. In every way possible, she denied responsibility for the attack on Praxus Pammer, and in every way possible she reiterated that knocking over the mall was a choice made to prevent even greater losses if the wheel had continued downward.

When Luxy had finished, Skyks asked to cross-examine.

He scooted his chair back to lock eyes with her. "What do you have to say to the people who were in that mall yesterday? The people who lost their shops? The customers who died screaming? What do you have to say to them?"

Junella remained placid. She considered her answer then sang back quietly, "I would tell them, 'You got dealt a bad luck hand', that's all. If it had been some other big building at the right time and place, it would have been them instead. But it wasn't. That's just how it goes. And also, I'd ask those people, 'If you knew another few thousand people would've suffered if we hadn't done what we did, would you have asked us to spare you?'"

The courtroom got very quiet then.

Skyks turned back around in his chair and muttered, "No further questions."

Next up was Piffle. She didn't really have much to add that hadn't already been said before, but she let her natural effervescence work in her friends' favor. She answered Luxy's questions with a persistent cheerfulness. By the time he had finished, there were few in the room who weren't at least considering the doubt that someone this sweet could somehow be as evil as the evidence suggested.

Then it was Toby's turn. He immediately requested a glass of water.

Luxy sat it down and said, firmly but apologetically, "I know you are scared, but I'm not going to be any easier on you than anyone else."

Toby gulped down liquid and nodded back. His throat slammed closed from sheer intimidation, but when he was able to force it open again, he said, "I respect that."

And Luxy had been truthful. If indeed these five fursons were terrorists collaborating together on an insane lie to frame Pandevar, then Toby was the obvious choice for a weak link to break. Luxy pummeled him with questions. What happened when, who did what, why, how, where. He threw in innumerable random, nonsense queries too, trying to trip Toby up like marbles on a glass floor. Luxy asked him again and again and again, from every possible angle, to repeat patches of his story. Anything and everything to trick him into a lie. And Toby knew he'd fumbled plenty of his answers. He just hoped Luxy could tell the difference between plain terrified nervousness and a crook trying to keep his house of cards together.

When the questions finally stopped, Toby slumped down in his seat, panting like he'd run a marathon. Piffle reached out to pat his knee. He slammed back another glass of water.

And then George came to the rescue.

Anyone would have thought it impossible for a nightmare in Ectopia Cordis to get a roomful of people rooting for him. And while George didn't change everyone's minds, he changed the vibe in the room considerably. He was the perfect witness. Magnificently composed. His pleasing basso voice resonated through the room like a cello solo. He was unfailingly polite in his responses, and replied effortlessly to whatever cockamamie tactics Luxy hurled at him. Best of all, his recall, as he had said earlier, was immaculate. He remembered more details than the other four put together. Specific details. He was able to describe, exactly, the path that Gyre 2 had taken, and the path it would have taken if he and the others had not diverted it. He described the destruction in calm, surgeonlike precision. Luxy allowed him the request of a city map, and George listed site after site that would have been ashes if the wheel hadn't been sent to the parking lot. A guard earlier had testified to the total amount of property damage Zinc and the others had caused. The total amount that George calculated was nearly triple that. Why in the world would a terrorist group expend so much effort to cause less destruction? And it just kept getting better. Because George was able to punch holes in Pandevar's story that even Luxy hadn't touched. By the end of his testimony, this blackened skull positioned on a table like a basket of fruit had the complete attention of everyone in the building, plus the thousands tuned in on TV.

After Luxy finished up, thanked George for his cooperation and walked back to his podium, Toby leaned over and hugged the horse head so hard he almost splintered.

"I take it then, Sire Toby" the stallion said, his voice wavering a bit, "that I have performed to your satisfaction?"

Toby couldn't speak to reply. He just hugged harder. Piffle, Junella and Zinc joined in, till the poor horse felt like he might get ground to powder. But in the best possible way.

Luxy, meanwhile, was sagged over his podium, glaring daggers at his notes. His shoulders were hunched, his knees sagging. He was finally letting his exhaustion and frustration show. It was bravado, what he'd said earlier about how much he preferred a twisty, complex trial. Ones where the guilty party was all but advertising it in neon were so much easier. This one was a slog. He could take it though. He was the mayor of Ectopia Cordis after all. But to drag the defendants, the witnesses, and the audience through all this was unfair. Under his breath he muttered, "Things would be so much simpler if I had a truth ray."

But in his position, he knew, 'they must never see you slip.'

So he sprang up, posture straight, and ran his fingers through his headfur. His grin returned, blazing incandescently.

He strolled to the front of the stage and clasped his hands together with a boom. "Well! This's been fun. We should do this again sometime. In fact..." Irritation slipped into his smile. "...it looks like that's gonna be necessary."

Grunts of confusion from the audience. They'd been getting psyched up for him to deliver the verdict.

He could see that in their eyes. "No one's more disappointed than me," he said, placing a hand upon his chest. "But justice is not about wants. Justice is about the weight of the evidence." He mimed holding up a scale. "Before you today, we have heard two stories. Two very different stories. One, admittedly, much less ridiculous than the other." He cast a nod of acknowledgment towards Skyks, who looked quite happily surprised.

Luxy continued, gravely. "...But I don't make decisions based on plausibility. We have heard considerable amounts of testimony today, my pretty darlings. Testimony enough to bore the ears off a brass cat. And while much of it has favored one side over another..." Another nod to Skyks. "...we are concerned only with the content of the evidence we sift, not the quantity." He paused. "I just said 'titty'." This thought amused him into a blank stare for the next six seconds. And then a sudden twitch. "Where am I!? Where was I?"

"Evidence 'n shit, boss," Loud Kevin supplied.

"Yes! Evidence! Trials! Law! The thought of titties can make a man forget such things, Kevin."

"This is true."

Weary chuckles from the audience.

"Anyway, from where I'm at, there's really only one way to determine guilt or innocence at this point," he said somberly. Then he punched his palm and pointed ceilingward. "Dance-off!!"

Everyone at both benches gawked at him. Most of the audience did too. Piffle looked quite receptive to the idea.

"Only kidding, folks," Luxy said with a chagrined chuckle, realizing that, with his judicial eccentricities, far more people had taken that joke at face value than he'd expected. He kneaded his hands together and began to pace in a tight circle. "This pains me. It really does. Because I know everyone in the room wishes I could deliver a nice, fresh, steamy verdict right now." A groan of disappointment came from the crowd. Luxy held his fingertips a millimeter apart. "I understand the groan, my fellow Ectopians, for lo, I am this close to rendering a decision. But I can't yet. My moral code won't let me. Because, you see, it's all in my gut right now. I've heard the evidence for and against both sides. I'm weighing them. And neither side outweighs the other. There are heaping great mounds of circumstantial and eyewitness evidence in this case. But it's not ENOUGH, forfuckssakes!!" He punched his hand hard enough to sound like a bat smacking a baseball.

Something about the way Luxy kept saying 'evidence' tickled the back of Toby's mind.

Luxy raked his claws down his cheeks melodramatically. "Ohhhh, it's driving me shitbonkers, ladies and gentlemen! I've read the lines and I've read between them! On one hand, we have a band of vile terrorists hellbent on causing wanton destruction to our bright, shiny home, and they're willing to frame an innocent bystander with a skyscraper-sized lie to cheat accountability. On the other, we have a single monstrous mind, stealing a stranger's very limbs, framing five strangers for the colossal crime he is about to commit, and forcing them to do the unthinkable to minimize the aftermath. Every sinew in my body is telling me I know which story is true by now. But it is not enough that my blood and bones know. I need something I can point to, something that tips the balance."

Toby's breathing had begun to quicken.

Zinc heard his mouse friend start hyperventilating and looked over. His eyebrows shot up. "Jeeziss, Toby! Your engine about to throw a rod or what!?"

The mouse was sitting rigid as stone, eyes bulging out of their sockets, hands clutching the edge of the table like he was afraid gravity was about to reverse. He could barely force himself to speak. "I think... I think I've just found a way to win the case..."

Zinc's ears sprang up. "Well don't keep it to yourself, man!"

Luxy was still pacing. "You good kind folks know I am a lover of efficiency. I hate to have a trial last more than a day. But in this case, I think I have no choice. Tomorrow, I think, we will bring in more expert witnesses. People who can attest to-"

Toby's hand shot up.

The raccoon stopped mid-stride and swiveled around. He cocked his head; puzzled and amused. The white mouse had his hand raised like he was about to ask his teacher for a restroom pass.

Toby was nearly paralyzed. Half of his brain was screaming at him to go ahead and blurt it out already because this might just save all their butts. The other half was telling him that he was no superhero detective. There was no way this stupid, last-second idea would change anything.

"Yes?" Luxy asked.

 Toby's willpower reached inside his body and forced his jaw and tongue to produce sounds. "Sir... I think, maybe, I might have, maybe, thought of something interesting."

Skyks put a hand to his chin and narrowed his eyes. He had a bad feeling about this. But why should he?

Luxy crossed his arms behind his back and strolled over. "Sir? Sir!? The touristyness is strong with this one, innit?" The audience laughed. "Don't call me 'sir', it's too boring. Call me 'Luxy'. Or 'your excellency'." He paused. "...'Your Luxcelency'?" He considered the sound of that.

"Luxy, sir, Mr. Bleeder," Toby sputtered, "you said you needed evidence?"

That got his attention. His posture mirrored a hunting dog en pointe. "If you know where I might find some, don't hold my balls in suspense."

Toby took a humongous deep breath. "Okay. Um. So, I don't even know how this occurred to me just now, but you said 'evidence', and then you said something about 'blood and bone', and that made me remember that Zinc's wrenches are bloodpowered."

Zinc nodded. "Yeah. Go on, kid."

"Okay, so, well..." Toby's lower lip wouldn't stop trembling. "When Skyks stole them, he'd have to have powered them with his blood, right?"

Junella's jaw dropped as she realized where Toby was going with this.

Skyks sat bolt upright in his chair and left clawmarks in the armrest.

"So maybe..." Toby went on, "...there might still be traces of his blood inside. Which would be proof that he stole them from Zinc."

Skyks leapt skyward to stand on his chair. "THAT'S COMPLETE BULLSHIT!!!"

Luxy turned slowly, like a buzzard towards a carcass. "My goodness. You seem to be agitated, Mr. Skyks."

It was the muskrat's turn to sweat and fidget. He collected himself and got his mask back on. "I'm sorry, but I'm just tired of this! You were right on the edge of telling us we could go home! I've been sitting here all day! I'll go back to that jail cell if it means I can just rest my brain. And now he's trying to keep it going with this... this bizarre, untestable garbage idea! I am tired, Mr. Bleeder! And I think most of your audience are tired as well."

Luxy Bleeder's eyes seemed to transform. To become cold, undead glass, shining with mischievous fire. He spoke softly, but through a grin that threatened to slice his face in half. "Superbly interesting, Mr. Skyks." His head creaked towards the audience. "Well, my loyal subjects? Is he right? Does he speak for everyone?"

Only a few affirmative shouts, which were quickly muffled by whoever was standing near the shoutee. The clear consensus was no.

"Or maybe," Luxy purred through that monstrous smile, "would you like to stay a teensy bit longer to see where our boy Toby's idea leads?"

A solid wall of roaring agreement.

Toby was quite happily stunned.

Skyks sat down hard. He seemed to deflate. His eyes reflected the coiling tension of a nonev caught between fight or flight.

Luxy smelled fear, and pounced. In half an eyeblink he was across the room, clutching at Pandevar's fat arm. "You won't mind if I borrow this for a second, eh Sunny Jim?"

"Let go of me!" Skyks squealed. "I don't consent to any blood test! Stop!"

Luxy's head tipped back obscenely in an echoing chortle. "You really think that means anything? Have you forgotten this ain't no democracy you're in?" With that, he swept his head forward and bit deeply into the man's flesh.

Skyks shrieked and the audience bellowed its approval.

Luxy tossed the little man aside and sucked in a deep breath. His smile was now ringed with red, like he'd eaten half a tube of lipstick. He licked his chops. "That was just a taste test, ladies and gentlemen."

Skyks had tumbled to the floor, clutching at his arm, wailing. "My ARM! You bit my arm like a rabid animal!!"

Luxy looked over his shoulder. "Yup!"

He then moonwalked back to Table A. Sitting down in front of Zinc he asked, "Y'mind if I borrow one of them thar doohickeys you got fastened t'yer shoulders?"

Zinc knew there was no hope in this exercise. Skyks had used the wrenches for a tiny fraction of time. And once he got them back, he'd put them through the most intense use of his life. Any trace of Skyks's blood would have been scrubbed clean by the sheer amount of lava-heated red he'd surged through them during the mall assault. But then again... this was Luxy. Maybe there was a tiny bit of hope.

He shrugged off his right wrench and reverently handed it over. "Careful, I just redid the upholstery on 'er."

Luxy guffawed. "Won't need this but a mo'," he assured. He stood up, making sure the whole crowd could see him, and brought the shoulder mount of the wrench-arm to his lips. He began to suckle like a baby at a tit. Like a vampire at a neck.

The sounds were obscene beyond describing.

Everyone stared at him. Zinc stared. Skyks stared. Toby stared. (Poor George couldn't, but only because no one remembered to turn him in that direction.)

Luxy's eyes were glassy and faraway. He slurped and slurped at the wrench, drawing in every last drop of blood he could. Filtering out the taste of the metal. Losing all his other senses. Concentrating everything on taste...

Then his eyes lit up. And one could practically hear his head ding like a bell.

He lowered the wrench, and that ungodly, mile-long grin was on his face again.

He rotated in place towards Skyks. "You... my friend... are fucked."

Skyks leapt straight up out of his chair. "OBJECTION!!!"

The crowd murmured. Some of them didn't understand exactly what Luxy had found. Others weren't sure they trusted it. Others were already convinced of the muskrat's guilt just by his body language and wanted to start the lynching right then and there.

Luxy sauntered back towards Skyks' table, hands in pockets, wide-eyed innocence in his eyes. "You object? Dearie me, whatever for?"

He'd exhausted himself with his sudden vertical vault and panted to get the words out. "That's... that's... Am I expected to believe you're going to convict me based on THAT!? Because you supposedly found a fleck of blood inside that thing that tasted like mine!? That's ludicrous!"

Luxy tipped a shrug towards the crowd: 'fair point'. "You know, Skyksies, that's reasonable. It really is. But you see..." He traced a single finger lightly down the man's face, from forehead to lips. Skyks slapped it away. "It brings up a contradiction is what it does. You said you've never been to Gyre 2. They say you have. So if we could manage to find one single molecule of you at that crime scene... well, that's case closed, now isn't it? And, what a shame, any evidence that you'd thrown yourself into the main hub was surely destroyed in the sub-see-qwent explosion. Or was it?" He tapped his chin. "Was it, Sky-blue-skyksiekins? I'd considered the possibility, then discounted it. Thought it would take too much time to sift through all that debris. But now I think I've had a change of heart. You don't think the evidence as it stands is sufficient? Your blood in his wrenches? Okay then." He lowered his head and his voice, putting both palms flat on the desk. "I'll have my little elves crawl all over Praxus Pammer like cockroaches. I'll have them bring me every single shrap of shrapnel they can find from the Gyre's core. And I'll stand here and I'll look you in the eyes, and I'll lick every single piece of it. Alllllll over. Just hunting for a taste of you." He waggled his tongue. "You don't think I will? I've got all the time in the world. We can stay here till midnight. Just give me the word, sweetheart, I'll have 'em start bringing in debrisicles right now."

Skyks bolted.

You wouldn't think a short little fat guy could run so fast. But when you're running from the wrath of Luxy Bleeder, you find surprising reserves of inner strength. Of course, it was wasted effort. Like ghosts appearing from thin air, half a dozen TV-headed assistants popped up and sunk their plastic claws into the muskrat. They wrestled him to the hard lacquered floor with ease, fracturing his shoulder. Luxy tittered as they dragged him, mewling and wiggling, back to his seat.

Luxy had the presence of mind to return Zinc's arm before zeroing in on Pandevar again. "Gosh, Pandy, you'd almost give me the impression you don't enjoy my company. And here I was just about to invite you to have tea and scones and mud pies."

"LET ME FUCKING GO OR I'LL DISMANTLE EVERY LAST ONE OF YOU!!!" the muskrat screeched at the mannequins.

Plastic does not typically respond to threats. Their stiff, pointy fingers remained snaring him in place like the teeth of a bear trap.

Luxy, eyes locked on Skyks, extended a hand to cup the man's chin. He savored the moment as long as he could. 

Their eyes were locked. A silent contest of wills began.

Skyks clung to his lies for as long as he could, but was inevitably powerless against the sheer typhoon will behind those yellow orbs of Luxy's.

Finally, he let the act drop.

"Wow. Sonofabitch, you got me. Goddamn. I actually thought I was going to get away with it."

Luxy nodded, pleased that his prey had shown the good sense to concede defeat and not drag this out any further. "Many people do think that. It's why I don't doubt that there really would be villains lining up to commit crimes in Gotham city, or 'round near Baker Street."

"Christ, Luxy, are you actually comparing yourself to-"

"Yes." Simple and unequivocal.

Skyks shrugged. "I guess you've got reason." He sighed. Then he craned his head as far to the side as he could. Trying to get a clear view of Table A. He called out, with a surprising lack of malice, "Hey! Hey mouse! Double fuck you, okay? Double fuck you. Do you understand that? I'm going to hunt you til my last breath and bury you alive in your own shit, you feel me?"

Toby was still quaking and trying to process the fact that he might have actually, through some miracle of luck, saved the day. He barely registered that the muskrat guy had just threatened undying vengeance upon him. He felt a moment's stab of fear once it sunk in. But then Junella reached behind Piffle to put a hand on his shoulder. The skunk caught Toby's gaze, and her eyes said, 'No he won't.'

Toby nodded in gratitude back to her.

Skyks shook his head at Luxy. "So are you really telling me that you could detect such a tiny, tiny amount of my blood in those wrenches? Seriously? Fuck me, I never planned for that. Never even imagined it."

"Sure" Luxy tossed off. "I've been in the murder business a right long time, pardner. I think I know the taste of B positive when I come across it, even when it's mixed in with a gallon or two of O. It was like finding an olive in my ice cream."

Skyks grinned an absolutely mirthless, eternally spiteful smile. "Fuck you too, Luxy. You pompous cunt."

Luxy chuckled, then sighed happily. "I thought I saw through your disguise right from the start. But then you started talking. And oh boy, could you lay on the bullshit thick. Even knowing my super special secret thing about you, I started doubting that you did it. You had me doubting my instincts, Pandy-pie. Do at least take some credit for that."

Their noses were inches apart. The rest of the room held their breath. Both men smiled and spoke as if in cheerful conversation, but the tension between them was like two electrical storms trying to shove each other out of the sky. "Get bent, clownshit," Skyks said pleasantly. "What the hell kind of super secret do you think you know about me?"

Luxy 'tsk'ed. "You didn't say the magic word."

Skyks made a kissy face at him. "Tell me now, you pathetic psycho-faggot."

"There it is," Luxy purred. "Y'see, my investigative crew is thorough. Legendarily so. We have computers like you wouldn't believe, and we can crosscheck anything we can think up, even in our wildest tripping-our-tits-off imaginations. One of the things I asked them to crosscheck was if there was any connection whatsoever between a certain pudgy muskrat and any of the victims of yesterday's little 'oopsie'."

Skyks' smile cracked a little.

"I mean, how nuts is that, right? The idea that someone would destroy a fifth of my beloved city, all because of a vendetta against one furson? Aw, that's Christmastime fruitcake with nuts! But we checked it! Because it might be true. And we found something very funny, hee hee."

Skyks' teeth ground against each other.

"It seems that, almost six years ago, a landlord named Faron Yonburg terminated the lease on an apartment belonging to... gasp! What's this? One Pandevar Skyks! And Faron later sold the whole complex and used the profits to buy himself a spot on Bigwheel Fifty-Two. Not in Praxus Pammer. Nosiree. We thought about that first, and it was really only pure luck we had the goofy thought to check beyond that. So where did Mr. Yonburg move to? Why, the apartment building exactly three blocks across from Gyre 2!"

Skyks' eyes seemed to boil. "Fffffffuck youuuuu..."

"Could it be? Could it be that retard-bangingly simple, Pandykins? In this whole big craaazy universe, is it anywhere possible that one man could hold a grudge for six years, and hate his landlord so much that he'd get his revenge by throwing an entire goddamned building at him?"

Skyks' voice was tiny, bitter and quivering. "You weren't supposed to find out now. I was going to get away with it, and then reveal it after the trial. Double jeopardy. I couldn't be tried twice."

Luxy's smile radiated sunshine, fresh meadow air, and baby lambs. There was nothing he loved more than freshly squeezed stupidity. "Pandy, Pandy, Pandy. You miscalculated. For starters, you’re still thinking in terms of a court system that has to play by the rules. If you ever confessed post-trial, I would have hunted you down and personally eaten every last scrap of flesh off your bones. Just for being a dickhead."

The muskrat flinched, looking at Luxy's teeth.

"For seconds, are you honestly trying to tell me that, after living in this city for at least six years, you didn't know that 'they deserved it' is a perfectly viable legal defense?"

Skyks closed down his face, saying nothing and showing no more emotion.

Luxy cocked his head back and forth, trying to force through that blank mask. "I read the file. He terminated you on shitty grounds. You had a case. You could have walked right up to him, cut his nuts off, hit him over the head with them, then told the court, 'He threw me out of my home for petty, personal gripes.' And I would have said, 'You're lucky he only cut your nuts off. Get outta here.' And that would've been that. You just... I mean, wow. Everything else you caused, was just so singularly unnecessary."

A facial twitch.

"Or was it...?" Luxy probed deeper, like a doctor with a bonesaw. Digging open Skyks' closed face with the sheer penetrating force of his will. "No... it wasn't..." he breathed in amazement.

Skyks' facade fell slack. Luxy had cracked his safe.

Luxy was giddy with joy now. "It wasn't! Oh you demented little puppy! I get it now! This wasn't just about Faron. I mean, he was the lynchpin allright. The keystone. He was your motivation. But I can see you, huddled over a table in whatever rathole you were able to carve out after he kicked you to the curb, planning. Hating him. Rejecting idea after idea, because they were all too simple. They weren't big enough to demonstrate to this little ant the colossal enormity of your hate for him. And then one day, you got the idea. THE idea. But it was TOO big. You could never pull it off. Or could you? With a little planning, heck yes you could! All you'd have to do is start going to some little out-of-the way diner. Establish a presence there. Build your persona. Make them love you. Love you enough to maybe misremember that you were still eating there at the time when Praxus was going boom-boom."

This was intolerable. Luxy was reading him like the back of a cereal box.

"It would have been so perfect, wouldn't it?" Luxy cooed. "You'd get your revenge in the most spectacular way imaginable. You'd send a twenty ton yo-yo crashing through your ex-landlord's living room, and all the other death and ruin would be whipped cream on the cake. It would be your message to the world: 'I am not small. I can move mountains. You do not fuck with Pandevar Skyks'.

"...But you deviated from the plan. Didn't you, Precious? Tsk-tsk, such a nono! You saw some rube walking past with a twinkle in his eye and big fucking metal wrenches for arms. How useful those might be! So you took it as a sign of providence. You dumbfound up a gun and claimed your new toys. But the downfall for people like you, Pandy, is that you can't conceive how other people might have as rich and complex a life as yours. You couldn't fathom that the guy you just mugged was a bounty hunter good enough to get hired by me. And now he was coming to get back what you stole."

Skyks stole a glance towards the other table. Pure concentrated radioactive murder was in his eyes.

"Your message got spoilt, chuckles, because no one was supposed to suspect you. Not until you confessed on your own terms. Not until you beat the system, got away with it, then revealed your masterstroke. Show 'em all. But it didn't work out the way you hoped. Shoulda stuck to the plan, my man! Guess that's the way the cookie crumbles! And that brings me to your third big mistake. All this time, you were courting the wrong judgment. All the time you spent at Baccetti's? All through this trial, working the crowd's sympathies like milking a teat? You thought you needed to worry about the public's judgment."

Luxy pulled him a little closer by the front of his shirt.

Skyks could smell his own blood on the man's breath.

"No, Pandy. You needed to worry about mine."

He kissed Skyks on the nose.

Skyks' pupils became catlike slits. He was vibrating with sheer vitriol. He forced his words out through gritted teeth. "I hated him, and look what I did. I hate you now, Luxy darling. You're never going to be safe from me. Not even if I have to wait a millennia for my chance. I will bury you for toying with me like this."

Luxy chortled and patted him on the head. "Nigga, please. I killed Scaphis Tarrare. I fear you about as much as my own toejam."

For a second, it seemed like Skyks might actually morph into a giant blood clot and explode from rage. Then it passed, quite suddenly, and a calm smile appeared in its place. "Fine then. Fine. Let's just get this over with. How long in the Pipe, Luxy? How long for bad ol' me? Ten years? Twenty? That millennium I mentioned?"

This day just kept getting tastier and tastier! Luxy clapped Skyks chummily on the shoulders. "Heavens no! I'd never dream of doing something so barbaric!"

Oh dear. Skyks did not like the look of pure screaming joy in Luxy's eyes right now.

"Not because I'm merciful, but because that would be completely wasted on someone like you! It's too easy! You'd dangle in there, completely immune to remorse or self-reflection, and just plot and scheme all day about how yer gonna git me. No, no. We've gotta think of something better. Something more useful."

Skyks barely stopped his bowels from opening and filling his pants with terror-turds.

"Pandy, sweet moron, what you are is a coward. You made other people suffer because you had a tiff with one man. That's not how adults settle their differences. No sir. I don't abide cowards, Pandy. They give me gas. So what we are going to do, to hopefully stir some empathy somewhere in that wrinkled gonad you call a soul, is put you to work. You're going to join the rebuilding crew. You are going to toil, day and night, without rest, putting back together all the toys you knocked over. I am going to give the workmen special instructions. They are going to give you all the shit jobs, dear Pandevar. The jobs so demeaning they normally get robots to do them, because to knowingly let a fellow sentient being take on such a task is, well, defiling. And if you step out of line, they will have special dispensation to punish you in any way they see fit. Pandy my fellow mental abnormality, you are not going to rest on your lazy little tuchus in the Pipe. You're gonna fix everything you broke. You are going to work your fingers down to stumps. You are going to learn the meaning of 'back-breaking labor'. You, my friend, are going to make amends."

Skyks seethed. His chest muscles vibrated like high tension wires. His face was clenched up like a boil about to pop. Loathing incarnate. "You won't break me," he snarled. "I'll wait. I'll put back every pebble, and I'll wait till my time's up. I'll wait for you, shitcunt. You prick. You germ."

Luxy just shrugged. Face a blank. He flicked his hand in a dismissive gesture, ordering his plastic lovelies to take Mr. Skyks away.

The crowd began to cheer as they lifted him up and his chubby legs dangled in the air. He struggled in their clutch, staring back into Luxy's eyes the whole time. Glaring daggers. Machetes. ICBMs.

Luxy turned and looked up towards the ceiling, a glaze coming over his gaze. "Oh! Oh, right, I almost forgot! Silly me!" He waved at the TV-heads. "Bring him back, girls!"

Puzzled silence trickled over the crowd.

Skyks held his glare, but began to fidget. His face turned wary. The sentence was already passed. What now?

The assistants dragged Skyks to within a foot of where Luxy stood. A tiny flick from his fingers. They obeyed, and brought the man closer. Another flick. Closer still. Until the two men's shirts were rustling against one another and they were sharing each other's exhales. Luxy held up an A-OK to the mannequins. Just perfect.

Luxy's teeth parted, and he whispered. "You didn't really think you were going to get off that easy, did you?"

The crowd pushed nearer to the courtroom floor. The stage crew brought the mics closer. Viewers at home turned up their volume.

Skyks chewed his lips. He probed Luxy's eyes. They might as well have been glass lightbulbs. The raccoon's poker face was impenetrable. Skyks had no idea what was coming.

Luxy lifted a hand to Skyks' shirt and began to play with the neckline, twisting it back and forth between his fingers. "No, you see... Putting you to work would only address one half of the problem. It'd be miserable for you, and it'd help heal this city's broken bones... but it's not enough, y'know? Pandy, you... you didn't just hurt my city. You traumatized it. You didn't just cause buildings to crumble. You caused tears. You caused terror and loss and heartbreak. You took away things that people had worked their whole lives for. And just putting brick and mortar back together isn't gonna heal that, now is it? No. And in fact, nothing will." He pulled himself even closer, wrapping an arm around the muskrat like they were old college buddies. Skyks was wrigglingly uncomfortable. The camera caught beads of sweat rolling down his nose. "And that makes me sad, bubbe. You wanna know why? Because I get irked when there's something I can't fix. For all my power, I can't fix hearts and bad dreams. That gets me all tangled up inside. So what do I do when I lack the ability to set something right? Well... let's just say I never took the phrase, 'two wrongs don't make a right' to heart. I like making wrongs. To the right people, I mean." His voice was already low, but it had taken on a disturbing, breathy edge. He began to rub himself up and down Skyks' body. "I bust their fondest dreams into itty-bitty pieces. I find what they yearn for most, and I take it from them." He made a grasping gesture with his left hand. "You, Pandevar Skyks, want recognition. That's why you confessed here. Not because I had you, but because I was teasing you with the prospect of dragging this out and letting uncertainty linger. You couldn't wait to get to the good part where you'd get to jump up and down singing, 'It was me! It was me! Look at what I did! All that sadness and strife! All that power! Look at the power I held, to affect so many people! I'll be in the history books!'" Luxy traced a finger across Skyks' lips, then roughly pinched them shut. Openly humping the muskrat's leg now, he withdrew from his pants a silver pocket watch. Or so it seemed. He opened it and pressed it to Skyks' muzzle. Together their eyes widened. Skyks from the sensation, Luxy from the reaction. "Here's a little something I probably shouldn't have, but I stole a sample of it a while ago from an old friend of mine. Just let it do its work. It's gonna shut you up good, Pandy. No more crowing about your dastardly achievements. I'm taking away your gloating, little boy. More than that, I'm taking your identity." He hissed the word. Pandevar had lost the ability to blink. "I officially pronounce you guilty, Mr. Muskrat. Guilty of causing unnecessary suffering. Tons of it. And just like the pharaohs of old, I am going to strip your existence from all records. Your photos, your history, your very name. You will be forgotten entirely. People will remember your crime, yes, but they'll draw a blank when they try to remember who committed it. 'Who was that? I can't remember.' You don't deserve an atom of satisfaction from your legacy. As of right now, it's just gone up in a puff of dust. You have already heard your own name for the last time. You, my friend, are a non-entity. You're a ghost. You are expunged. Your only name now is a description. Wholly deindividualized. You are nothing now but Cleanup Crew. Welcome to the rest of your infinite afterlife."

The muskrat began to howl. It was the senseless, feral scream of an infant in pain who doesn't understand why the world is so unfair.

Yet he was almost totally silent. The sound was muffled, by a thick gag of melted teeth and flesh.

The device Luxy held had erased half his face. Permanently. No more mouth. Just two raving eyes and a flat, wide scar. No more laughter, no more witticisms, no more boasting. Cleanup Crew would remain silent forever. 

He thrashed desperately to get away. Trying everything to escape from the mannequins holding him down, until his tantrum made their fingers dig in and get red.

Luxy savored this moment like a connoisseur sipping from a goblet of hundred-year scotch.

Then he turned to the audience, as if remembering they were all still there. "But, is that not immediate enough for you folks?" he asked brightly.

They were a bit too stunned to respond.

"How 'bout this? I'll let you guys play with him a bit before his sentence begins. Cash and prizes go to whoever brings me the biggest piece of him when it's all over!"

All it took was a nod to his assistants and they let the muskrat flop into Luxy's eager hands. He smiled at the little man. Cleanup Crew squirmed mutely in horror. The kind of horror people feel when they look into the eyes of a Lovecraftian horror. Luxy lifted him up and drop-kicked him into the audience pit below.

They fell upon him like starved piranhas.

"Bare hands, everyone! No tools!" Luxy called out merrily.

Luxy paused a moment to appreciate the charming scene before him. The splashes of scarlet. Skyks' near-imperceptible shrieks as his consistency was altered. Pure art.

While the crowd in the stadium enjoyed playtime, Luxy's head popped up to face the cameras and he clapped his hands for the home audience's attention. "Sorry if I got a little quiet. Whispers do help put the fear of god in 'em. But I meant what I said. I'd like you all to help me carry out my sentence. If all of Bigwheel 52 can change their sky, an entire city oughtta be able to do something as simple as forgetting one li'l ol' name."

He held up his palms and drilled into the cameras with his most hypnotic stare. "I'm going to count to three, my friends, then clap. When I do, my friends, you will choose to forget this criminal's name. You will deny him his fame. You will help me bury him in the past, while this city moves forward without him. Ready, my friends?

"One... Two... Three."

CLAP

The sound seemed to echo far more than possible within the open amphitheater. Many people, even at home, felt a shockwave pass their faces like a breeze.

And just like that, over sixty percent of Ectopia Cordis forgot the muskrat's name.

Luxy knew his little trick wouldn't affect everyone. Only those who had truly put their hearts in it. But the rest would take care of itself. He'd put his crew to work right away scrubbing the city's records, scouring the muskrat's identity like a stain. He'd strangle every remaining source he found. Citizens who dared speak it aloud would be taken aside, have the words plucked from their mind, and then sent on their way with a spanking. He was serious about the muskrat's unequivocal obliteration. He'd change the man's body, too. Make it unrecognizable. Starve off even his own memory of his former self. And even if, despite all his efforts, some lingering trace of 'Pandevar Skyks' still remained extant outside of Luxy's own mind, it would be enough that the muskrat believed. That he would lament his obscurity every hollow night and every backbreaking day. Eternally. No second chances, no redemption. Just a torment that would last for all time, yet would still not equal the sum total of what he had caused.

The raccoon turned his head towards Table A. "Looks like all I gotta decide now is what to do with you guys."

Toby let out a shriek a full octave above what he thought his larynx was capable of producing.

Luxy 'tee hee'ed. "Oh, no need to be like that! You guys are innocent! Off the hook. Out the door." He jerked a thumb over his shoulder and whistled.

As much as Zinc admired Luxy, he had to admit he'd come very close to shrieking like Toby had. "G-good to hear!" he said shakily.

The raccoon could see that all of them (besides the nightmare) were varying degrees of terrified, and that was understandable. "No, really. You can relax. Honest injun. I got my jollies out with Whats-His-Name over there." And dear god, there was actually a wet spot on his pants. "You five deserve nothing but praise."

Junella arched an eyebrow. "For serious?"

"Cross my heart." He had a thought. "Speaking of that..."

He turned back to the crowd. "Hey, guys! Guys? Could you maybe murder Mr. Cleanup Crew a little quieter, for like, two minutes? Okay?"

Very few people can calm a ravenous mob and make it look so effortless.

The crowd settled down, stopped hooting in animalistic triumph, and cast their eyes to the front of the court. Even the bloodstained dozens closest to the stage paid attention. (Cleanup could not look up, because at the moment he had become Manhattan-style clam chowder.)

Luxy held his arms up, palms out. "I'll let you get back to unrestrained acts of savagery and bloodlust and all that wholesome family fun in just a moment. For now," he looked towards the table, "would you guys come on up, right over here? Oh, and you can take the collar off your pony pal."

Toby got out of his chair and turned around to see uncountable eyes pointed in his direction. He had cringed when they'd glared at him in hatred. But now the expressions were varied. Some still refused to believe his innocence, but some... some were actually looking at him like he and his friends had done something heroic.

It was not as uncomfortable as being reviled, but Toby nonetheless flinched at having no idea how to react in a situation like this.

Zinc leaned across the table to scoop up George. "Hold 'im steady, Junella," he asked. She did, and he snipped through George's restraint collar with a crunch. Seconds later, there was a full-sized horse skeleton standing on stage. (If Zinc had not ducked, George's rapid re-expansion might have gotten him a hoof-shaped sternum dent.) Some of the audience instinctively recoiled at seeing a nightmare so close. But once he'd gotten himself reoriented, George took a bow to them, then trotted with dignity towards Luxy.

The other four followed. Zinc raised his wrenches and let out a rebel yell as the crowd cheered. Junella waved her sword, her face a quiet smirk of 'Was there ever any doubt?'. Toby kind of wobbled in place for a moment, until Piffle hug-propelled him forward. She speckled his cheek with kisses. "See, Toby? I told you everything was gonna come up roses!"

Luxy Bleeder, mayor-king of Ectopia Cordis, stepped aside to let the five friends stand center stage.

He allowed the crowd to make noise for a little while longer, then gestured for quiet again. "Fellow Ectopians, I know there will still be those among you who will have a difficult time disbelieving your eyes. You saw these five seemingly commit acts of mass chaos. But if you trust me at all, believe this: the longer I listened, the more I believed each one of them. Their story is true. For all of you who live on levels Fifty-Two through Forty-Six, there was nothing that could have been done to spare your homes. I am sorry. I take full responsibility, because the cranes should have gotten there in time. My administration: my accountability. I failed to protect you.

"But luckily, for everyone on Forty-Five and below, someone else was there to do what I couldn't."

He simply swept his hand towards the five, and the crowd erupted applause.

At times like this, there is not really anything one can do but simply stand there and let the moment wash over them. To stand and receive the ovation of hundreds, knowing that many more are watching from their homes, cheering too. For you.

Toby looked over and... was Zinc crying?

Luxy smiled. Not the razor-sharp madman's smirk from before, but a warm and genuine one. "You guys,  I have a gift for you. It's not much. But, along with an official declaration of innocence, it's what I have to give."

When Toby glanced at Luxy to see what the gift might be, he could see a small white mouse standing there in the big TV at the back of the room. Was that really him? Was all this really happening right now?

Luxy marched forward to stand before the quintet. "Hold out your hands in front of you. Cup them slightly." He winced and looked towards George. "That'd be a little difficult for you. How 'bout I think of something special if you gimme a sec?"

"That will be perfectly fine," George said.

The others stood there with their hands cupped. Toby wondered if they were going to get medals, maybe?

Instead, Luxy reached into his vest and solemnly drew a pearl-handled knife with a blade that looked carved from moonlight. Obviously a very personal weapon.

Toby's eyebrows went up. "Um..."

Zinc muttered out the side of his mouth, "Just go with it, guys. If this is what I think it is, there is no higher honor. You can't even pay for this to happen to you."

"Damn right," Luxy said.

As the foursome stood still while George looked on, Luxy let his fingers dance along the blade of his instrument, letting them remember its weight and dimensions. He looked the four defendants up and down. Precise calculations were made in his mind. This move required all of his considerable skill. These four deserved no less.

"Close your eyes. Please," he requested.

Zinc did. Junella did. Toby (hesitantly) did. Piffle, with her compound eyes, couldn't. So she focused up at the ceiling instead.

Luxy drew in a deep breath, then lunged forward like a painter taking first strokes at a blank canvas.

The arena was so quiet, everyone present could hear the slash of perfect metal through muscle. Skin yielded. Bones parted. The action was so quick, even the blood stood still until after the act had been completed.

Toby felt a tingling wave ripple through him. A kind of euphoric shiver. Then he felt something warm and heavy land in his hands.

He opened his eyes.

All four of them now stood holding their still-beating hearts. Perfectly excised. Like cut gems.

There was no pain at all. Just a spinning, sparkling sensation too fleeting to categorize. Toby stared at the peach-sized ruby in his hands. He blinked. A heart sat on Zinc's wrenches, and one in Piffle's paws too. Junella's was black as oil. 'Looks like a big olive,' he thought, and recognized the oddly-welcome feeling of going into shock.

Luxy spoke softly, so only they could hear. "This is the best of what I do. I can think of nothing greater I could give you to show my thanks."

Junella dropped her heart and her falling arm scratched out, "How 'bout cash?" before she and the others all passed out from blood loss.

As they spun down into darkness, the last remaining sensation that echoed in their ears was the audience's applause.

*****

Chapter Forty-Eight

"Hiiii-eee! Wake up, sleepyhead!"

Bright lights nibbled Toby's eyes when he opened them. His lids slammed shut again. He'd only seen fuzzy, indiscernible blobs of color. The mouse didn't know where he was, but he did know his bed was rather uncomfortable. Chilly surgical steel.

He was starting to get an idea.

He risked looking again, prepared for the light this time. Though he was unprepared for a neon-green nose in his face.

The nose's owner spoke again. "Glad to have you back! Your friends are doing just fine. Want some help getting down from there? We've got coffee and danishes, free of charge!"

A helpful paw helped him sit up. The metal was cold beneath his tush, and that's when Toby realized that he was not just in a morgue, but naked in a morgue. "YEEK!"

The attendant giggled. "Don't gotta be modest. I've seen eighty thousand dead dicks pass through this joint."

Toby imploded into a ball, trying to cover everything at once. "Maybe so, but I'd still like to know where my clothes are!"

"I'll go get 'em, doncha worry!"

The attendant winked and skipped away. Shi was a wolf with matte black fur and day-glo green flesh. Nose, ears, paws: the works. Plus, from the way hir cartoony little nurse's outfit bulged, shi seemed to be packing some nonstandard equipment up front.

Toby found himself sitting on a reflective silver slab. Just one of many down here. The architecture was a mixture of gothic arches, pristine tile, and sharp silver. There was a wall full of square doors behind him, all presumably full of other stiffs. 'Though... don't dead people come back to life pretty quickly in Phobiopolis?' Maybe this was just a room to chill out for a while. Toby chuckled, realizing he'd inadvertently punned.

The wolf returned with a small pile of neatly-folded blue. Hir tail was wagging happily. "Here we go! Expertly washed and pressed. Just like you!"

Toby placed the pile of garments over his sensitive areas. "Just like me?" He noticed the wolf's nametag said "Zhiral", and wasn't sure if that rhymed with 'viral' or 'squirrel'.

Shi nodded. "That's my job! Dead doods come in, I give 'em the spa treatment. Viscera cleanup, sponge bath, patch their clothes, etcetera."

Toby flushed a bit, thinking about this stranger doing stuff to him while unconscious. Though shi did seem quite professional about it.

"I made sure not to clean your tummy too much," she said with a chuckle.

Toby looked down. Something was written on him. It was hard to decipher upside down but...

It was Luxy Bleeder's signature. He'd signed his handiwork.

Zhiral sighed enviously. "Lucky..."

Memories of his latest death came rushing back to Toby. The memory seemed somehow distant, as if it had happened days ago. The whole trial felt like that, actually. How long had he slept down here? Did the morgue somehow slow down resurrection?

"Your friends are already up 'n about in the lounge. Come join 'em whenever you're ready." Zhiral headed through the door hirself to give the mouse some privacy.

Toby searched through the pile of garments for his underpants and fumbled them on. He thought back to after the verdict, feeling considerably conflicted. On the one hand, Luxy's "gift" for their actions was to freakin' murder them. To call that 'not normal' would be an understatement. And yet, Zinc knew about it. The crowd did too. Maybe it was some kind of ceremony or tradition. Toby wasn't sure if the violence itself, or its unexpectedness, bothered him more. 'Though this is probably what it was like for the others when they got their hearts eaten by Lady Xenoiko,' he thought.

And that reminded him of something else. He blushed, remembering. What Luxy's knife did to him had felt... almost good. There was not just an absence of pain, but an uncommonly intense endorphin rush. Was that part of the raccoon's technique? Or was his blade so sharp as to cause whatever it touched to cleave willingly?

Something to ask about later. Toby got his sandals on and headed for the door.

The lounge was a small room with puffy sofas, a coffee machine, a snack table, some still life paintings on the wall, and a ceiling so low that the top of George's head kept bonking it. As Toby entered, he tried not to let vertigo get the better of him when he glanced out the window and saw that, like RB&WB's garage, this building was hanging from the underside of Bigwheel Five.

"THERE HE IS!!" Zinc roared, raising his cup of coffee like toasting a conquering warrior. Junella mirrored the gesture.

"Yay for Toby!" Piffle said, applauding.

"Well done, Sire!" George added.

The mouse was befuddled for a moment. "What? What'd I do?"

Zinc blinked. "Don't tell me you lost your mem'ries, chief! Your big kiester-saving idea at the trial?"

Toby smacked his forehead. "Oh, right! But it wasn't that big of a deal, was it? I didn't even know if it'd work."

"'The certain path is rarely found, and victors must often clear their own brush'," George recited. "I heard that once and it inspired me."

"I'm almost disgusted I didn't think of it first," Zinc admitted. "But, I suppose, I'm so used to my wrenches, I don't even give a thought anymore how they work. S'just second nature."

Toby nodded. "...But to me, the idea of stuff being bloodpowered was new enough to stick in my brain."

"I'm glad it did," Junella sang sincerely. She seemed to be in a good mood. "I was not looking forward to another day in that courtroom. Especially in those chairs. Hard as rocks. You saved my ass literally, mouse."

He chuckled and headed for an empty spot on the sofa between Zinc and Piffle.

"Have a nice nap?" the hamsterfly asked as he settled in.

"I suppose so. I hope I haven't kept you guys long."

"Nah, just got here ourselves," Junella sang as she munched a danish. One of the benefits of her body was that she could speak perfectly clear even with her mouth full.

George passed Toby a tray full of ripe strawberries. "They're delicious!" he said through clamped teeth.

"Thanks!"

"You got autographed too," Piffle noticed through his vest.

"Yup. He did you guys?"

Piffle pulled up her blouse, showing Luxy's name on her exoskeleton. "He sure did!"

"Same here," Zinc added.

Junella brushed her scarf away. "Can you read it?" she asked the others. They leaned in.

Not only had Luxy used gold ink so it could be seen against her black vinyl, but he'd added a personalized message:

	To J. Brox. I never forget a face twice.

"Awwww!" said Piffle. "That was sweet of him!"

"You forgive him now, Juney-pie?" Zinc teased.

She rolled her eyes. "Mmmmaybe."

"What'd he do for you, George?" Toby asked.

"I had hoped it would be obvious," the stallion said, sounding a little vain. He turned his flanks side to side and Toby could see the lights glisten off them. All the splinters had been sanded off and a thorough buff and polish had been applied. The skeletal horse was still jet black, but he now looked clean as a museum display.

"Oh, I see now! You look good, George. Very sleek."

He trotted in place happily.

Zhiral swiveled around, looking for hir clipboard. "Where izzit? I swear I'd lose my brain if it wasn’t locked up in my skull. Ah, there! I wanted you guys to all be together to sign this." She held up the board for everyone to see. "Just a standard li'l legal document. It says you acknowledge your status as having been declared innocent by reason of extraordinary excuse. There's also some stuff about how you're not liable for anything that got destroyed; about how Rippingbeep & Woofinbutt waived the shoplifting charge once they heard the verdic', and also the receipt of $3,427 Luxybux in restitution for theft of personal property and false accusation by one Mr. Cleanup Crew."

She held up a thick roll of colorful bills and Zinc nimbly nabbed it. "I'll take that, thanks."

Junella wasn't sure if the payment was standard or if Luxy had taken her last suggestion seriously. "Seems like kind of an odd amount. Not that we're complaining."

"It's all Mr. Cleanup had in his personal bank account," Zhiral explained.

Zinc beamed with schadenfreude. "I like this town."

"There's also a note here from Judge Luxy," the herm wolf continued. "He applauds your courageous actions, but suggests very strongly that you guys "get the hell out of Dodge", since there's still alotta people in the city who're mad about all the shit ya knocked over."

Zinc grimaced. "That is sound advice. Good thing we were thinkin' about puttin' the pedal down anyway."

Toby blinked. "Really? I understand, but... I dunno if I'm ready to get on the road again so soon. We've been through a lot. Couldn't we rest here for a few days? Maybe someplace low-key?"

The others all looked a bit startled at this.

"I thought you were all revved up to get home, chief," Zinc said.

"Did you forget where you hired us to bring you?" asked Junella.

Toby blanked for a second as he realized that, yes, he had. For a while now, his goal of Anasarca had been completely absent from his thoughts. That stunned him. How could something so important have left his mind? And when had it gone?

"I guess we could..." Zinc considered, rubbing the back of his neck. "Maybe a cheap hotel somewhere in the middle Bigwheels. Might still get spotted though. I doubt you wanna sleep with one eye open, watchin' for people with vendettas and tire irons sneakin' into the room."

"I guess not." Toby fidgeted on the sofa. "I think I'm just feeling overwhelmed. Everything that's happened in the last few days... I'm almost glad I got a little rest in the morgue. But I think I want more. All this excitement is bad for my stomach. And, I admit... I've been having second thoughts about Anasarca."

Junella immediately tensed into a growling stormcloud.

Toby winced, having known she wouldn't react well to that.

She narrowed her eyes at him. "I suspected all along you might pussy out, but you were starting to convince me otherwise," she said coldly.

"Hey! Don't be mean!" Piffle defended.

"I'm not saying I'm backing out!" Toby insisted. "Just... well... can you blame me for having the feeling? My nerves were frayed even before we got mixed up with that muskrat, and now they're practically fricasseed. Can you blame me for just wanting to find a relatively safe corner to curl up in and have nothing bad happen to me for a while?"

Junella didn't say anything, but nibbled her lip.

"We all feel that sometimes," Piffle reassured.

Zhiral had respectfully moved to a corner of the room to let them hash this out, but piped in to say, "I know I have sometimes."

George said nothing, but nuzzled against his master's ear.

Junella looked solemn and spoke low. "I'm not gonna lie and say the thought's never crossed my mind either. But it's one that's easy to give in to. It's easy to just crawl inside your bellybutton and think about stayin' there. That feeling can trap you. Better to face it. Keep moving." She sighed. "...But if that's not something you can handle, Toby, lay it on me now. There's adoption centers here. We can take you right there, part ways, and you can find a home here and be taken care of."

Toby's eyes widened. That was an option?

The skunk did not like the eagerness she saw in the mouse's expression. "Sure you can. Sure. And you can stagnate. Sit on your ass. Be safe. Never grow a thicker skin. Never train yourself up so when life hits hard, you plant your feet and tell it to hit harder. This has been a shitty visit to EC, I admit. And I ain't got no good news for you either. The road we're planning to take is relatively easy by Phobopolis standards, but it's still gonna suck lemons all the way. The maze is gonna be bad, and Dysphoria is gonna make Fugax look like a bake sale. It is only going to get harder, Toby."

She locked eyes with him. "But you will too."

Zinc nodded, and patted his partner's knee in appreciation. "Well-put." He eased his gaze back to Toby. "That's the question you have to ask. Easy or hard? Which one's worth more to you?"

The small white mouse did not like the feeling of being put on the spot like this. As if he had to make the choice right this instant. He looked down at the beige carpet. To be honest, his heart was pleading with him to go to the adoption center. Find a new mommy and daddy. Then life could go back to being simple again. And. he supposed, if he agreed to keep going, that would also be partly due to cowardice. The embarrassment of dragging his friends all this way for nothing.

His friends...

He looked up, into all their faces.

Junella. Zinc. Piffle. George.

And something inside shoved him towards a decision.

"Let's go find the car, and head out."

Unsurprisingly, Piffle tackled him in a hug.

"Good to hear, tiger!" Zinc said, tail wagging. "We'll try not to make the ride too bumpy. First part's Hypovolemia, and for that, all you gotta do is stay in the backseat and close your eyes if we pull too many G's."

"Doesn't sound exactly appealing, but thank you, Zinc." He glanced at Junella.

She didn't say anything, but gave him a wry smile like she already knew he had more guts than he let on.

"Sire Toby," George said solemnly, "I understand your desire for a safe place. Let me pledge then, that you will always have one. By my side."

Toby looked up, genuinely touched by that, and got off the couch to hug his friend's big bony foreleg.

From the corner, Zhiral squeaked a little sob. "Oh geez, you guys are just so adorable together!!"

***

They all signed the form (George held the pen in his teeth), and Zhiral gave them enthusiastic hugs to wish them well on their journey. She wasn't the type to try for Anasarca herself, but she encouraged them to come back and write a book if they made it.

"The exit's just that way. Up the stairs, turn left at the T, and there's a little elevator at the end of the hall. Bye, guys! Good luck!!"

They said their goodbyes and Zinc tipped her a large denomination Luxybuck. Her directions were solid. Soon they were at the elevator.

Zinc reassured everyone that their clean getaway was assured. "The new and improved Fearsleigher's already down at ground level in the garage. Got the ticket for 'er in my pocket. And yes, Juney, I checked that it didn't get deep-sixed in the wash."

Toby's chest felt tight. His heart was already kicking him for passing up on the chance at easy street. But as he looked around his little group clustered in the bright hallway, he actually felt a bit hopeful.

As before, forgetting about their clothes had returned them to good-as-new condition. And Zhiral had even done some alterations. Zinc's leather jacket had never looked better. George and Junella both had a nice glossy sheen. Piffle was back to full pinkness. And his own vest and shorts burst with blue.

They looked like they could take on the world.

They rode the cramped car up through the carved interior of a Bigwheel spoke. It emerged on a busy avenue about a block from the courthouse. Ectopia Cordis was bustling as usual. Freaks of every kind hurried to and fro on the carpetwalks. An elephant with no head, her facial features stretched across her bare chest. A teenage girl so thin she looked like she weighed less than the assault rifle she was carrying. A midget with a grandfather clock growing up from his back, tick-tocking with his every step.

And then, from behind them, came a loud shout of, "IT'S THEM!!!"

Followed by, "LET'S GET 'EM!!!"

The fivesome looked around to see a mob so huge it clogged the street. Even from this distance, Toby recognized some of the enraged fursons from the witness stand. They were all former employees of the Panjandrum Mall. They had been camping out, waiting for this moment. And every last one of them was armed.

"Oh fuck," said Toby.

Imagine four people and a horse all trying to scramble out of an elevator at the same time. They put on a brief slapstick act for the rest of the pedestrians as they all tried to simultaneously squeeze past George. Piffle got her head stepped on. Thankfully, they finally succeeded. Zinc pointed out the fastest carpetwalk heading away from the lynch mob and they all tripped a few times dashing for it.

Behind them came a roar of vengeance. Managers, clerks, salesmen and cell-phone vendors came pouring down the street in a flood. Fists shaking, weapons drawn. There were even honest-to-god pitchforks raised. A stampede of feet pounded the carpetwalks. Bullets started whizzing by.

Junella shouted behind her, "You're all gettin' vacation time 'cause of us! Show some gratitude!"

"Yes, antagonize them, Juney. That is a wonderful idea," Zinc deadpanned

A hatchet hit the carpetwalk a foot to Toby's left. "Can we possibly go faster!?" he squeaked.

"You need but only ask, my friends!" George said cheerfully. "Grab a rib!"

They all reached out and secured a firm grip, knowing that if they didn't, they might lose some fingers.

"Head for the edge!" Zinc shouted.

"My plan already," George concurred, and blasted off. Divots of carpet rained behind him.

Toby's ears nearly popped. He clamped down till his knuckles turned white. The sound of the mob behind him vanished rapidly as George poured on the horsepower. All around him, Ectopians screamed and dove out of the way. George was one hell of a taxi.

Toby realized this would very likely be his last look at Phobiopolis' grandest city, so he tried to make the most of it. The eye-searing colors, the spinning shops, the pierced and puzzled-together citizenry. This would have been an amazing place to spend a longer time exploring. But the gunshots still aimed in his direction were a pretty unmistakable message that it was not meant to be.

"Edge in sight!" George called out. A moment later the others could feel the change in temperature as they left the aura of heat from the city's main shaft, into the winds that swirled around the circumference.

An unpleasant thought hit Toby. "We're not taking another elevator down, are we?"

"That's a negative, copilot deLeon!" Zinc hollered cheerfully. "Remember the waterfall?"

He did. He was not fond of the waterfall.

"I could try to catch you, like I did for Junella before," Piffle offered.

And it was a tempting offer. But Toby remembered what they'd just discussed in the lounge. Easy or hard. "Thanks, Piffle, but I gotta get used to things like this sometime. Might as well be now."

Her antennae bobbed happily. "That's wonderful, Toby! I'm very proud of-"

"GERONIMO!!!" Zinc shouted.

And then there was nothing but five stories of air between them and the pavement.

Gravity socked Toby in the gut and the groin. Oh, he did not like falling. The wind screamed in his ears and slapped at his cheeks.

He watched Junella let go of George and assume a swan dive pose. Her long white scarf trailed behind her like a comet tail. She glanced at Toby and stuck her tongue out.

"I'm not quite ready to do THAT!" he said to himself, clutching tighter to George's ribcage.

"You wanna pick up something for dinner before we head out?" Zinc called over casually.

"It'd be our last hot meal for a while. Good idea. Nothing too spicy though."

'They're just showing off to tease me,' Toby thought. 'Gotta be.'

The parking lot spun like a kaleidoscope below them. Endless vehicles in every color. And directly below, the ring of debris. A nice big garbage mountain to break their fall. And their bones too.

'I'll be fine, I'll be fine, I'll be fine,' Toby repeated to himself. His instincts were bleating in panic. The ground drew closer. The wind howled louder. 'I held my own heart in my paws and woke up in a morgue. I will be fine!' he insisted. His rational side tried its hardest, but it was going to take a hell of a lot longer before his body started listening.

Those nightmare pigs were rooting around. Toby hoped he wouldn't land on one. Or that they'd start eating him the moment he woke up.

The ground was getting closer. The onrushing air felt like a hailstorm, but he couldn't make his eyes close.

'No last-second saves. I'm going to hit the ground, and die, and it's not gonna be the end.'

His instincts weren't buying it, but he at least felt a little pride at trying.

SPLAT!!!

***

He remembered an instant of transcendent excruciation as his nose compacted into his spine. But now it was over. The pain was no more than an echo. Toby's eyes were open, he was facedown in trash, and the worst sensation he currently had to deal with was the smell.

He heard a snort.

He looked up to see an enormous, mucus-dripping, tri-nostrilled snout pointed at him. It gusted a wave of bad breath at him like dumpster fumes in August. Toby skittered backwards and his hammer shot into his palm without conscious thought.

Then there was a flash of electricity, a pissed-off squeal, and the garbage hog ran away.

Standing there was a parking lot attendant with a heavy-duty electrical prod. "Good evening, folks!"

"Thanks for chasing the piggy away!" said Piffle.

"It's my job," he replied with a tip of his cap, and chased off after another porker.

The fivesome got themselves unstuck from the mound of food wrappers, newspapers, pizza crusts, eyeglasses, bullet casings, and birdshit. They slid down the side to regroup.

"I seem to have something stuck in my pelvis," George reported. "Would one of you be so kind as to..."

"No problem, sweethooves," Piffle said, and extracted a bicycle's handlebars.

Toby's heart was still beating fast, but he enjoyed getting to say, 'I told you so,' to himself. It was over and he was fine. Although the same couldn't be said for his newly-clean clothes.

Junella picked some gum off her shoulder. "It does get easier," she whispered to him. "It just takes time."

He thanked her with a smile. "Also, there's a coney dog in your tail."

"Motherf-." She shook it loose and record shards flew all over.

Zinc vaulted onto George's back and took command. "No idea where the garage is from here, but if we keep goin' in a circle we can't help but find it. Piff, Toby, you guys are gonna shit bricks when you see what we did to the car. Oooh, damn! Just thinking about it's gettin' me stiff! Forward march!" He pointed the way and George dutifully headed off.

Then the canine paused, as if having a profound thought. He turned back to the others. "Y'know, I think maybe we should skip going to the mall next time we're in town."

"YA THINK!?" Junella bellowed. "Piffle, find me something vile to throw at him!"

Zinc grinned.

~~~*~~~*~~~
END OF BOOK TWO
~~~*~~~*~~~