Chapter 115: Book 2 Chapter 29.2 Shoved in a Locker

Hawke being short a shoe made their journey slightly slower, but no major obstacles presented themselves for quite some time. After a relatively uneventful hour of walking, Kim and Hawke happened upon their next major obstacle. Hawke carefully approached the ledge and looked down. Far below, in a chasm of garbage, a river of multicolored molten wax bubbled and boiled. Halfway down the wall of detritus, a single box of Crayola crayons was lodged into the wall, and a single crayon rolled out of it, plummeting into the river of wax below with a dull plop. A few moments later, another crayon, in a slightly different color, likewise fell out and into the river.

“Hmm. Magic box of infinite crayons plus a heat source somewhere down there in the chasm equals Crayolava,” Hawke said.

“Good pun, bad situation,” Kim said. The crayon chasm stretched as far as the eye could see in either direction. “We’ve got to get past this somehow.”

Just another moment where Kim cursed herself for not knowing pyrokinesis. A little heat manipulation here could save them a lot of trouble, but no matter how Kim tried and tried, she could not summon even a single spark, much less cool an entire river of molten wax.

“I could stretch out the Jingu Bang and we could sort of shimmy across the pole,” Hawke suggested.

“It’s round, Hawke, it’d roll,” Kim said. There was nothing to anchor the staff in place on either side. “But, speaking of making it longer…”

Hawke took another long look down the canyon.

“You want to pole vault across?”

“Why not? Seems more stable than trying to shimmy across a pole, and you’ve got less time to potentially lose your grip.”

“Well, I’m convinced,” Hawke said. Anything that reduced his chances of falling into a pit of boiling crayons sounded good to Hawke. “On one condition: you go first.”

“Why me?”

“Because you can brain-google perfect pole-vaulting technique and show me how it’s done,” Hawke said. “And also, then you’ll be on the other side to catch me if something goes wrong.”

“Both valid points. Give me your stick...and don’t ever tell Harley I just said that.”

Hawke handed over the staff, and Kim took it to the chasm’s edge. She did her usual brain-googling routine as the staff extended to the bottom of the pit. She’d been done studying technique for about a minute by the time the staff finally hit bottom.

“Man that’s deep.”

“Please save color commentary until we’re on the other side,” Hawke pleaded. He didn’t need any new and interesting nightmares to contemplate as he prepped for the jump.

With expertly googled form, Kim kicked off the ledge, leaped forward, and clung to the staff for dear life as it tilted forward. She made it about halfway across the chasm, expertly going through the motions of a perfect pole-vault, before the pole started to slow. Kim had failed to calculate for her metal skeleton, and the very different weight distribution it gave her. She had about a half-second to start doing the math before she started to tilt backwards.

“Uh oh.”

The tilting pole started to reel to the side as it fell, and collided with a ledge lower down the chasm, preventing it from tilting all the way back towards Hawke. Kim managed to keep her grip -barely- while her mind raced for options. Even as she held on for dear life, the staff started to tilt to one side again, promising a sidelong plummet into the molten wax below.

Just as Kim’s planning was starting to turn to panic, the staff rattled with a sudden impact, and started to tilt the other way -the right way. In seconds, the staff was leaning along the far side of the canyon, and Kim could safely dismount, putting her feet on solid ground. No sooner had she done so than she heard a whimper from behind her.

Just a few feet below the chasm’s edge, clinging to the pole for dear life, was Hawke, still letting out some soft whines and trying his best not to stare at the bubbling molten wax below.

“Please help me up,” he pleaded.

Kim wasted no time granting his request, and pulled Hawke out of the chasm. He fell downwards to lie in the dirt almost immediately, grateful to be on solid ground yet again.

“What did you do?”

“I just sort of went for a diving tackle,” Hawke said. He’d relied on sheer inertia and his status as a prodigiously thick lad to do the work. “It wasn’t a great plan, honestly.”

“It worked. And probably saved my life too, so...thanks.”

“Don’t mention it. Seriously, don’t. If word gets around people are going to keep thinking I’m brave.”

“But you are brave.”

“Don’t!”

“I’m serious, Hawke,” Kim said. She sat down in the dirt next to him and tried to relax after her own harrowing experience. “I’ve downloaded a lot of tv shows and books and stuff, and they all say that doing what you’re afraid of is the best way to be brave. And you’re afraid of everything. QED, you’re always being brave.”

“Even if that’s true -which is debatable- it’s the shitty kind of brave,” Hawke said. “Nobody thinks about how cool and brave you are if you’re running around screaming and crying.”

“Well I think you’re cool,” Kim assured him.

“You think that all you want,” Hawke said. He peeled himself off the ground to sit upright next to Kim. “And since we’re apparently baring our souls next to this chasm of molten Crayola...I think you worry too much about being normal.”

Kim pulled her knees close to her chest and fell silent while Hawke continued.

Stolen story; please report.

“You got your eccentricities, yeah, but who doesn’t? You’re a really good friend, and honestly, I don’t think I’d have been able to keep it together this long without you.”

After Hawke finished, Kim immediately stood up and turned to face the horizon.

“Okay, pull out that rune and let’s get back to tracking.”

“You’re deflecting,” Hawke said.

“Yes.”

“Luckily for you I also want to get out of here,” Hawke said. “But I meant every word, and you better know it.”

“I know, I know, just do the rune thingy.”

Hawke relented, and did the rune thingy.

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“Alright, the car was already pushing it, but there’s no way in hell they got that through a locker door,” Hawke snapped. The rusting hulk of a massive, Gundam-style mecha was sitting in a heap in the wasteland. The runic tracker had led Kim and Hawke right to the rusting mecha’s resting place, and was now pointing upwards.

“I don’t suppose you brought any rock-climbing gear?”

“Actually, I’m pretty sure Lee keeps some in her purse,” Kim said. “So it’s probably somewhere in here with us.”

Kim gestured broadly to the expanse of the dimensional wastes, and the various bits of detritus stored within. Hawke couldn’t even muster a sarcastic chuckle.

“And maybe while we’re looking for that, we can go on a quest for Lee’s chapstick,” he said. “Give me a boost and let’s get out of here.”

The mech had fallen down in a hunched over position, which at least made the angle of the climb relatively manageable. The rusted exterior and thick metal sheets made it hard to get a grip, however. More often than not, Hawke had to do some creative stretching with the Jingu Bang to get them up to the next ledge, a task that left him trembling with fear each time. The extending staff had nearly gotten them killed earlier today, but managed to make up for it with relative stability as they climbed. In a few minutes, both had made it to the top.

Kim almost considered trying to enjoy the view from the top, but the mecha had weird head ridges and spikes that obscured most of the landscape anyway. Since the view probably consisted mostly of literal garbage anyway, Kim didn’t think it was worth making an effort to see. She focused on tracking the soulstone they had come looking for.

“It says we’re all but right on top of it,” Hawke said. “I don’t see anything up here, though.”

“Maybe it’s in the cockpit,” Kim said. “Look for a door, or a latch, or something.”

The duo split up and started scanning either side of the titanic mechanical head. After a few minutes of searching, Kim brushed aside a pile of rust flakes and found a large metal handle. She gave it an exploratory pull, just to check. If it was attached to a door, it wasn’t budging yet, so she pulled it again, harder this time.

“Found it!”

Hawke triumphantly held up the recovered soulstone, and a surprised Kim yanked on the handle a little harder. With a loud clunk, the handle switched into a new position, but no door opened.

“What’s that do?”

A loud rattle of machinery rumbled through the entire mech, and the flakes of rust around the lever shook off even further, revealing the words “OFF” and “ON” engraved into the metal. Kim let out a long, resigned sigh as the mecha started to shake below her.

“Who puts an off switch on a mecha?” Hawke pleaded, begging for answers from an uncaring universe. “On the outside of a mecha!”

“No one sane can answer that,” Kim said. “Move!”

She grabbed him by the wrist and pulled Hawke off the mecha’s head, sliding down it’s metal back towards the ground. Even as they slid, the two could see metal starting to shift and lights starting to glow as the mecha reactivated. As they reached the bottom of their long slide down the metal back, the mecha started to rise, and their landing site started to get further away. Thinking quickly, Hawke extended the Jingu Bang again, and when they ran out of back to slide on, they slid on the pole instead, riding it to the ground like a fireman’s pole. It caused some severe friction burns for Hawke, but his legs weren’t broken, so he considered that a good thing. He needed legs to run for his life with -and run he did.

As the two sprinted across the wasteland of detritus, the mecha rumbled behind them, tracking it’s targets. Hawke didn’t even bother asking if that thing needed a pilot, and instead focused on getting far, far away from the mech and it’s paradoxical self-piloting. While making a dead sprint in a straight line back towards the exit did give them a lead on the mecha, it also ran them into other problems.

“Crayon chasm,” Hawke said, breathlessly.

“I see it, I see it,” Kim said. She was not capable of being breathless, or she would’ve also been speaking breathlessly. “Get your staff ready. We get one shot.”

Hawke let out a loud, pathetic whine as he ran, but he didn’t have any better ideas, so he readied the Jingu Bang. He got the staff as long as he could before they reached the lip of the canyon and jammed it downwards. It hit the bottom of the chasm, and he and Kim held on for dear life and lunged across.

The impromptu pole vault swept upwards, then froze in place, and then wobbled slightly. Hawke screamed and kicked his legs in the direction of the opposite ledge, managing to provide enough panicked inertia to the pole to send it limping to the other side. Kim and Hawke awkwardly dismounted and fell into the dirt.

“I wonder if this school has a pole vaulting club,” Kim said. “Because we definitely need lessons.”

“Even if it does, I don’t think two-person lava vaulting is on the agenda,” Hawke said. No one was ever too breathless to be sarcastic. “Run!”

Their slow, awkward vault had given the mecha time to catch up, and was now just a few steps behind. Each heavy footfall rattled the earth, dislodging chunks of the loose amalgam of garbage and sending cracks through the terrain. Hawke leaped over one such crack, and then another, but then a third caught him and sent him tumbling to the ground.

“Hawke!”

Kim stopped in her tracks and reversed course to get Hawke back on his feet. As she did so, a foot of a very different kind swung their way, and the shadow of the mecha loomed over them, ready to stomp. Kim closed her eyes, turned off her pain receptors, and embraced a rough ending for this loop. She’d been crushed before, at least. It wasn’t all bad.

The duo waited a few seconds for the crunch to come. What they got instead was a dull, rubbery thud. Hawke dared to crack open one eyelid.

“Is that my shoe?”

The slightly mold covered footwear sat on the ground in front of the two, darkened by a massive shadow lingering above them.

“FATHER…”

A tidal wave of sentient mold arced overhead, colliding with the mecha in a stupendous crash. The living sandwich mold pushed the rusted mech back and away from Kim and Hawke, before sweeping over it’s entire body to continue the colossal battle.

“Huh. I guess the mold really did move,” Kim said. Hawke had put his shoe back on already and was using his newly regained footwear to sprint for the exit even faster. “Oh come on, Hawke, are you abandoning your child?”

“Don’t even joke,” Hawke snapped. The massive mold was no son of his. “We’re getting out of here, and so help me god if that demon car comes back too I’m going to flip my fucking lid.”

Thankfully, the demon car was well and truly dead, so the two made an escape with Hawke’s lid unflipped.

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Harley snatched the phylactery out of the storage closet, checked it to be sure, and headed back for the looper lair.

“Looks like Lord XXX was telling the truth,” she said, as she entered the lair. Giving him the soulstone on the previous loop had earned them “official minion” status, and gotten them information on the circumstances of Lord Thorax’s resurrection. “His phylactery was just sitting around an old storage room. I’d guess we got a little while before it activates, though.”

“We have a surprising amount of storage closets with surprisingly dangerous contents,” Lee noted. They were doing their best to make their own storage closet a little safer, as Lee tried to remove and catalog potentially dangerous items one by one, with Hawke and Kim’s support.

“And it’s wildly irresponsible,” Hawke said. “What kind of person just shoves world-ending garbage in a closet and forgets about it?”

A thin black smoke started to emanate from the phylactery. Acting on instinct, Harley chucked it into the open door of the storage locker, and Hawke slammed it shut.

Everyone stared at Hawke, and Hawke stared right back at them.

“Okay, I get it,” Hawke said. “But we’re leaving a note.”