Page 13

WRATH * XII * WRATH

Strike Three

The Animator was even less subtle than those that had preceded him.

Thinking along the same lines that the Shapeshifter had thought along, the Animator
saw how it was that the Succubus was limited in strength and capability by its need for
a body. Further, he saw how the Shapeshifter, though certainly more versatile, was still
bound by its need to occupy some form of body, no matter its being a person, animal
or thing. The Animator was not dependent on a body of any sort. He went from one
thing to the next, never suffering from any damage to the form he inhabited, and moving
like a breeze -- invisible and unstoppable -- from that one object to a new subject of
his fancy. In all his hundreds of years of existence, the Animator had never
encountered even so much as a shade of adversity. He had never desired the power to
do something which was beyond his reach: he had accomplished all he had ever set out
to do.

So when he was confronted by Death with the task of bringing Greggory's soul for
the harvest, he had not the slightest doubt that he could do it. When Death told him
about how the Succubus and Shapeshifter had met up with their defeat and demise, the
Animator said, "I'm not surprised." When Death told him about Greggory's ally,
Eliphaz, the Animator said, "So?" And when Death warned the Animator to be careful,
he had only "Careful of what?" to say in reply.

Death said, "You would do well to learn a lesson from the failures of your
compatriots, Animator. They also were of the opinion that they could not fail. They
were every bit as clever and powerful as you yourself are, bearing gifts and abilities that
I had bestowed on them, but now look for them. They have been removed from the
sight of mortals, by just the determination of a single man. Be wary, lest you should
suffer the same fate."

But still, the Animator scoffed. "Let them try to stop me," he said. "They might as
well try to wage war against the weather, the clouds, the rain."

So he went, bold, trumpeting his own arrival, to his showdown with Greggory.

* * *

By night he went to a department store and equipped himself with a mannequin
body which he scavenged from other plastic bodies with: shaping for himself a giant,
six-armed monster. When the alarms went off, and the security guards came running to
confront the intruder that the building's sensors had detected, he beat them all senseless
and stripped them of their guns and nightsticks. Then, searching through the rest of the
store for devices to arm himself with, he picked up a football helmet, two chainsaws, a
hunting rifle and a blowtorch. He put things too numerous to carry into a bag and slung
it over his shoulder.

Exiting the store, he strode purposefully down the road to an all night restaurant
where he expected to find suitable transportation. He entered the restaurant, six-armed
model of the working man, shod in blue jeans and steel-toed, black workboots, helmet
on his head, hockey duffel over one shoulder. Both his chainsaws were wielded
openly, also his rifle, lit torch and the two pistols from the security guards: a weapon for
every hand.

There were only three people in the restaurant: a waitress, a cook, and a big, over-
weight man with a cigarette and a cup of steaming coffee. The customer was doubtless
the man who owned the "Roadmasters" semi-trailer truck parked outside. They all
turned to see the Animator enter. A bell attached to the corner of the door-frame
dinged to announce his arrival. Three jaws dropped. The trucker's cigarette fell to the
floor.

The waitress said, "What the hell," with exactly the right amount of red-eye shift,
Southern, white-trash-waitress drawl. Hell came out sounding like hay-ull.

The cook offered up an even better profanity. "Shit," he said.

"It ain't another couple of months until Halloween, is it?" said the trucker. He tried
valiantly to look tough. He was scared, but thought it had to be someone playing a
joke on either him or the employees. Someone was putting him on, that was for sure.

The Animator walked right up to him; pleasant-smiling, plastic face with blue-
painted eyes. The Animator made the mannequin talk: its brittle-hard, pink lips cracked
apart, and paint chips flew, into the truckers face, with the lifeless words: "I need your
truck. Give me the keys."

"What!?" The man's front of confidence was shattered, that much was evident.
The sound of the dummy's voice along with the effect of its molded-still lips moving had
stripped what little courage he had remaining away from him.

"You heard me. If you don't give them to me, I can take them quite easily. Make
things simple for yourself." And as he spoke, the Animator turned his arsenal of
weapons to face towards the trucker.

"What is this?"

In response, the Animator put his torch to the trucker's hand. The man snatched it
back before any serious burns were inflicted, but still, the point had been made. He
fumbled in his pocket for the keys to his truck, the spirit for confrontation having been
quickly sapped from him. "Hang on a sec," he said. "Hang on."

"Time is of the essence," said the Animator. His mannequin voice was a perfect
dead-pan; like a recorded message telling about a number that has gone out of service.

Finally pulling his keys free, the trucker handed them over without another word.

"Discretion is the better half of valor," said the Animator, taking the keys. "But in
your case, it is simply a show of cowardice." Then he left.

He went outside, for a moment an insect-shaped silouhette beneath the glow of a
street-light, then he climbed into the truck, and drove off.

Without a word, the cook bent down behind the kitchen counter and rummaged
through a cupboard there. He produced a near-full bottle of vodka and three glasses.
The waitress poured, and they all drank. In silence.

Later, drunk, it would all seem somehow less disturbing.

* * *

The guards at the gate of Castle Greggory saw the truck coming from a long way
off. For more than a mile they watched its approach as it winded its way up the long,
lazy-curving road to the main gate. The two of them noticed that it appeared to be
going a little fast; they could hear it go, tires squealing, around several tight bends, but
they didn't think it was necessarily suspicious. They received supplies from many
different trucking lines and had many different drivers, and they had seen a couple of
them drive like that before, pushing the metal to make a deadline. It wasn't until the
truck was on its final approach, on the last straightaway before the main gate, that the
two guards thought anything unusual about it.

It wasn't slowing down.

In fact, it was continuing to accelerate. About an eighth of a mile from the main
gate and still straining to go faster. The two men could hear the semi, like the sound of
a passing jet.

"Maybe he doesn't see the gates," one suggested. He turned on the gate-house
warning lights: flashing red and yellow strobes. His partner went to stand in the middle
of the road, waving one arm and holding the other up, palm facing out, to signal stop.

But if the driver saw them at all, he gave no heed. The truck kept coming on, diesel
scream and tires buzzing on the asphalt like a swarm of killer bees.

"Maybe he fell asleep at the wheel."

"And managed to navigate that road while he was unconscious?"

"We're going to have to sound the alarm, I think."

"So do it!"

So he did.

He yanked down on the fork-shaped, yellow handle just one and a half seconds
before the breach klaxon went off automatically.

The truck blew past them like a low flying plane. The chain link gates with the coils
of barbed wire, and the toll bars with their flashing red lights went, up and out,
scattered like a house of cards; smashed. The guard at the alarm handle punched the
button that brought up the "severe tire damage" plates, but only in time enough to catch
the rear wheels of the trailer as they roared over. The truck went over the spikes with
a sound like a chorus of gunshots and continued then with a trailing wake of sparks
thrown up from the wheel-rims grinding on the pavement. Without a hitch or a pause,
the truck rolled up the hill on a collision course with the front door.

"Crap," said one guard. He drew out his uzi, but he was still reluctant to pursue the
intruder and get into a situation where he would have to use it.

"But it could be a decoy," said the other, laying his hand across his companion's
arm. "We better stay put."

In fact, it was a relief to have orders excusing themselves from conflict. Cautious
lest they should "over pursue," the two guards stayed at their post. They were among
the few surviving later.

* * *

The castle's automatic defense systems stopped the truck far short of the main
entry. Broken laser beams, motion detectors, tripped wires and a succession of hidden
pressure plates allowed the computer to follow the truck's progress and bring around a
barrage of small-to-larger arms' fire on the truck from all directions. LAW rockets,
heavy NATO rounds, explosive bullets, geysers of flames, lobbed grenades, and finally
one shot from each of the Howitzer artillery cannons in the front towers, reduced the
main body of the truck to flaming wreckage. Its momentum kept it rolling forward
some short distance past where the worst damage was incurred, but from there, the
Animator had to go on foot.

When he hopped down, out of the cab, his "rugged tough" work clothes were on
fire, but otherwise little damage had been done to his plastic and plaster body. Guns
blazing and chainsaws growling, hungry for meat, he continued on his way towards the
guard house at the portcullis. As a suddenly much smaller target, the computer had a
harder time hitting him. It became increasingly obvious, as he went, that guards would
have to close up on him in order to effectively stop him.

* * *

In the control room, in the midst of the monitors, Greggory, Eliphaz and Bradley
watched the Animator's progress.

"Well, tracking him by movements of cold seems rather moot now."

"Not necessarily."

"There's no way he's even going to make it to the house though," said Bradley.
"No way."

Eliphaz hummed. He scratched his chin with a curled index finger. "We may be
able to stop this body, Bradley, but think of what others are available for him to
possess. The Animator has every reason to approach us as confidently as he is. I'd
imagine it's hard for him to even think of a way by which we might defeat him."

"Do you think our trap will work?" Greggory, speaking fast, the only way his voice
could betray anxiety now.

"We're going to find out awfully soon now." Eliphaz reached for his walkie-talkie,
where it was, dangling from the arm of his wheelchair by a leather thong. He spoke
into it, "Randolph, this is Security One. I want you to go to the research complex with
four other men. Get the skin-cage and the portable cold-tracker and meet me in the
great hall entryway. Over."

And, through a static cloud, "Roger that, Security One. Over."

Eliphaz' chair buzzed, an electric whine, as he backed out of the circle of monitors.
"Our trap's only chance of success is reliant on the Animator's not being able to locate a
different suitable weapon. If we set up in the great hall he just might go for the bait.
The hall is remarkably barren of equipment and furniture. He might be forced to go for
whatever option we can present him with. Greggory, come with me. Your presence in
the hall will be an added motivation for the Animator to act quickly. His over-
confidence will be our biggest advantage now."

Greggory hurried after him.

"What should I do?" asked Bradley, suddenly without direction.

Eliphaz answered him, shouting back over his shoulder from down the hall. "Go
up to the helipad and find a good thorough way to disable the chopper. I don't want to
leave any weapons as effective as that unattended to."

* * *

The Animator made short work of the four men in the main guard house. They shot
the murderous mannequin full of holes, and even succeeded in blowing off two of its
arms, but in the end they were not quick enough in their retreat from the remaining
chainsaws. It was a massacre. Screaming, a sound like a panicked mob, and cordite
smoke, thick, like a tangible curtain, filled the room. And then, blood, like mist, was
hanging in the air; red haze. The Animator was then quick to discard its pistols and rifle
in favor of their much faster, more destructive machine guns.

The heavy, iron portcullis was down of course, posing a considerable obstacle to
further egress. But the Animator was slick and unstoppable. He was hung up on the
problem of the door for only the merest flicker of a second.

He abandoned his gorgon-armed body for a moment and passed -- ghost --
unhindered into the wall of the castle. He merged then with the network of wires and
electronics running through the house -- put himself into the motor used to raise the
great steel grating and then, quick as a blink, passed back into the body of his
destroyer.

The main body of the castle's guards was waiting for him in the room beyond: a
great, pillar-lined hall at least a hundred fifty feet in length. There were twenty guards
there, in various positions, taking what cover they could as was provided by the pillars.
They were twitching; ready for a fight. And the Animator was more than willing to give
them one.

One of the guard captains yelled, "Open fire!" And then the guns erupted.

The Animator strode in, guns firing, bullets aimed with supernatural accuracy; biting,
shattering, exploding all that they hit, and very few of them went stray. Guards perished
like mayflies, left and right, in the deadly hail. Gore and gobbets of flesh flew from them
in a torrent, and the hall was fast turned into a flowing river of death.

One man, with his back pressed to a pillar, decided to take a quick peek out, just
to get a sense of the flow of the battle. He exposed, for only the briefest of moments,
one corner of his face -- just an eyebrow the eye below it -- but as quick and cautious
as he was, the one bit of him that came out from behind the cover of the pillar was
enough. The Animator caught him right directly in the eye. Explosive bullet: the guards
eye and brain stem blew out the back of his skull in a blossoming shower of glistening,
wet red. So the battle went.

The Animator was like a lethal machine there: quick-firing death from the hip as he
made his slow progress through the hall. But he did not go unscathed. Indeed, his
every step was contested. Ten feet of motion down the hall towards his goal had taken
him nearly as far as his body could go. By then he was all smashed and shattered
pieces; barely able to continue at the pace of a shambling crawl.

And at last the end of his range of movement did come: a line of bullets tore up
through his left leg and it exploded apart at the knee. He swayed and then toppled,
smashing into pieces as he impacted with the stone floor. Still, he stayed with that form
until all his ammunition was wasted; and by that time he was inhabiting nothing more
than a wasted pile of dust. Then, he flew to one of the chainsaws.

He was a smaller target that way, and with less potential for mass destruction, but
certainly no less deadly to his victims. He plunged his way, lance-like, into an
impressive number of men before finally rupturing; exploded by a shower of bullet-
sparks in the gas tank.

There were only two of the original twenty guards left; terrified and quivering and
slicked with blood, as though they had just showered in it.

* * *

Such was the sight of the brutality and carnage of the hall when Eliphaz and Randy
led their team into it. They stopped, dead in their tracks, confronted with it. And there
was nothing to say, faced with that scene, for there was no way to describe it. Most of
them had seen battlefields before, but that display of the Animator's determined fury
carried with it even greater impact than the aftermath of war.

"God," Randy whispered, and his team of guards, leading in the cage and the
temperature tracker, were frozen to their spots.

Only Eliphaz was unaffected. "Set up! Hurry!" he yelled. "Haul that thing into the
middle of the hall, now! Tell me where the cold zone is! God-dammit! Where's
Greggory? I need his ass down here!" And the men, waked from their shock by his
direction and stolid leadership, set to.

One of Randy's team carried a flat, square device with an electronic LCD display
on the top of it. A band of rotating black, like the second hand of a clock, swung
around on the screen, painting, in its wake, a contour map of temperature zones within
a seventy foot radius: a meteorologist's map of the hall. On it, the guard could plainly
see a blot, an outline of air, twenty degrees colder than the rest of the room. It was
moving fast down the hall. "I have it!" he cried.

"Where?"

And he pointed. "There!"

Then Greggory came running into the room.

* * *

Of all the rooms of the castle, the hall was indeed, as Eliphaz had said, the most
sparsely furnished of any of them. The only things in it were two security cameras, a
series of colorful tapestries depicting scenes of medieval battles, and a massive,
wrought iron chandelier that hung by a chain from the ceiling in the middle of it.
Everything else in it was of stone and part of the decor: the pillars, the arches over the
doors, the sconces...

Everyone in the room followed to the end of the pointing guard's finger with their
eyes: along the pillars and past the tapestries, coming to rest at last on the carven figure
of one of the gargoyles which perched, like a vulture, on the apex of an archway
framing the door to an interior hall.

"Lord," somebody said.

"We're too late," said Eliphaz. He punched the armrest of his wheelchair.
"Dammit!"

The gargoyle started to move.

* * *

Having disabled the helicopter, Bradley went aimless, having difficulty deciding
what the next reasonable thing to do was. He could hear the far-distant sounds of the
shoot-out in the hall, but he had fear of what would happen if he should join the battle
there and go leaving some obvious way for the enemy to outflank them unprotected.
Besides, Eliphaz, Randy and probably twenty or thirty guards were already down
there. What good could one more gunslinger possibly do?

His wandering brought him back to the control room. He had subconsciously
decided that the best way to help out was by keeping his eyes open for some trick or
trap, and the best place to do that from was the control room. You could see
everything on the whole grounds from there: every corridor, every stairway, every
blade of grass on the front lawn.

So he was watching when the gargoyle came to life.

* * *

At first its movements were so subtle as to be barely perceptible, but everyone
there could hear it plainly enough. Tortured, flexing rock; it sounded like a mountain
groaning, the earth straining against its faults. Then, easier to see, its limbs started to
stir, and then its whole body suddenly convulsed, and it was quite clearly waking, like
Frankenstein's Adam coming to life.

It jumped down off the archway and landed on the stone floor like a pair of
sledges. The cobbles and bricks under its feet shattered and cratered beneath its
massive weight. Its hard-brittle wings flexed and stretched open, cracking, flaking, like
aged lacquer on a ceramic pot: a spider-web of cracks and chips.

Stone living. It was huge. Eight and a half feet tall, a chest so broad it was the size
of two men standing side by side. Its arms were like the trunks of trees, and its legs
were like pillars. Its wings were fifteen feet in span. The gargoyle's face, scowling
demon, broke suddenly, a cruel grin splitting its fanged mouth. It spread its arms and
opened its talon-sharp claws. It came towards them, each step resounding in the hall
like hammers on an anvil.

Eliphaz was the first to shake of the paralyzing fascination of the gargoyle's motions.
He said, "Don't just stand there. Let him have it!"

Seven guns snapped to, almost in unison. The sound of their firing was like the
close roar of Niagara Falls. It was deafening.

But the gargoyle, being of stone, was considerably better made than the department
store mannequin. Almost all the striking bullets ricocheted off of it, leaving no more
than a smoking puff of scratched white to show where they had hit. Those that didn't
bounce away entirely made very little penetration: most sticking so shallow that they fell
free with the statue's next, jarring step.

Eliphaz knew the prelude to retreat when he saw it. Their attacks were going
completely ineffective. "Randy, Greggory, go get in the car. Everyone, retreat! Lay
down cover fire to keep him from closing on us!" And when Randy and Greggory
broke away, heading for the exit, Eliphaz followed behind them, as quick as his wheels
would carry him.

The gargoyle followed after them like a taunt. Steadily, refusing to hurry or pause;
inexorable, even against the deadly lead rain. Taunting, arrogant. A challenge for them
to give him their worst. And every step he took was like adding an exclamation point
to the gargoyle's claim of strength. More than six hundred rounds poured into that
stony body, yet for all their effect they might as well have been freckles.

Then the guards, smoking guns empty, turned and ran, following after their
commander. Demoralized and frightened, they fled.

The gargoyle continued on in the wake of their retreat, stalking. Slow and
deliberate.

As he left the chamber, several new guards entered behind him. They hurried to
the frame of Eliphaz and Greggory's cage trap, lifted it, and carried it between them,
after the departing Animator. Eliphaz' voice squawked out their orders from the talkies
at their belts.

* * *

Bradley watched as the combatants slowly made their way back through the hall.
They went through the guard house and out onto the front lawn. He had to keep
looking from monitor to monitor to follow everyone's progress.

He saw Greggory and Randy, ahead of everyone else, arrive at the armored
limousine and climb into the back seat. The driver had met them right outside the gate;
an evacuation executed just the same way as it was written on paper.

He saw Eliphaz wheel out to the limo right behind them, waving frantically, shouting
something. A confused look on his face, the driver got out and helped Eliphaz into the
seat behind the wheel. Brad watched, thinking, That's an interesting change in
plans. And meantime, he had decided what his best course of action was. His hands
hovered over the bank of switches to activate the minefield. Let that gargoyle step
on a couple of high explosives, he thought. We'll see how tough that son of a
bitch is. He waited for the Eliphaz-driven limousine to make its retreat.

* * *

"He's just playing with us right now!" Eliphaz shouted, over his shoulder to
Greggory and Randy in the back seat. "He's a cocky bastard! That's for sure!"

But Greggory was panicked by Eliphaz' deviation from the standard plan for
evacuation. He should've been safely driven off the estate by now. "What're you
doing?" he yelled. "What're you doing!?"

Eliphaz, calm, "We've got to take his options away from him! We've got to limit
the number of useful things he can choose to animate! Then he's more likely to go for
our bait!"

"What're you doing?"

"You guys'll be safe back there. Trust me."

* * *

The guards came running out into the yard. The gargoyle was just a short distance
behind them. Bradley watched it all happen, a whisper on his lips: "Come on you guys,
back out of there. I got him. Back out of range. I got him."

His fingers were ready on the switch.

But the limousine was motionless on the screen. It showed no signs of retreating.

* * *

"But," Eliphaz was saying as the guards came bursting from the door, "if we stop
the gargoyle now, we'd just be presenting him with our vehicle. You see? I need to get
rid of both him and the limo. And at the same time we need to keep Greggory close by
so the Animator feels hurried to make his next move."

"What're you talking about? What're you going to do?"

Then, there it was, framed in the gate, looking like a sculpture on display.

"Hang on!" Eliphaz yelled.

The limousine's engine howled. Eliphaz had the gas pedal pressed against the floor,
but the gear-shift in neutral. When the gauges showed red-zone, 8,000 rpm's, he
slammed it into drive.

The limo shot forward like a sprinter from his block, aimed for the castle's front
gate, the gargoyle lined up square between the fenders.

The Animator had time to move, but he didn't. He stood, like a pun, rock-solid,
passive, in the doorway, bravely facing his fate.

When the limo hit him, his body broke totally: shattering and scattering, but the
massive bulk of his stony vessel likewise did much damage to the car. Striking him as
he stood, fast and immobile, the frame around the engine buckled on the impact. The
front end of the limo smashed up like the bellows on an accordion. The engine pushed
back into the front seat of the passenger compartment and the steering column was
thrust back into Eliphaz' chest like the head of a battering ram. His blood sprayed like
rain on his passengers in back, but they themselves were saved from death by a
deploying air-bag.

Greggory was screaming. So loud was the sound of his fright, resonating from the
speaker in his throat, that it actually triggered a moment of feedback. His scream was
like the whine of a Ted Nugent guitar solo.

Randy could only stammer. "Goddamn! Goddamn! GODDAMN!" And really,
what else was there to say?

* * *

Bradley couldn't believe his eyes. Surely the head security man had just killed
himself. Gone Kamikaze. There was no way he could've lived through that collision.
What was he thinking?

What was he thinking?

He continued to watch, disbelieving, as the group of guards from outside went
running to the limo, where it was stopped in the gateway, intent on pulling Greggory out
of it.

It looked like both Greggory and Randy were relatively unharmed. They both
came out of the vehicle in one piece, and gained their feet unaided rather quickly.

But as the two of them went, trying out their arms, and shaking the pain out of their
legs, and making sure nothing was broken, Brad saw that the guard with the cold-zone
tracker was growing increasingly excited about something. Even from the distance
Bradley's view was afforded by, he could see the exaggerated movements of his mouth.
He could read his lips; like a football coach ranting at the officials on the sideline, and
then...

Then he thought (still lip-reading) he saw the guard say, "The fucking thing is huge!
It's everywhere!"

What?

The figures Bradley watched on the monitor seemed suddenly reckless in their
desire to flee. Helter-skelter scurrying, like ants whose hill had been stirred up. Randy,
Greggory and their six guards ran out of the castle and across the yard. They looked
like they would never stop.

"What's going on?" Bradley asked the empty room.

Then he noticed the floor and walls were beginning to vibrate.

And he had an inkling...

When he saw Greggory and his escorts get clear, he flipped his switch to on.

* * *

Like the earth, quaking, the whole fortress was suddenly in upheaval: shaking as
though its foundation was being rocked by God Himself.

Greggory and Randy and the guards all watched it. They had run down to the
perimeter wall, and now they were all turned to face back towards the castle. The
question of what was happening perched right on the bar of their teeth, but none of
them asked it. Inside, deep in the knowing part of their hearts, they all understood
what they were witnessing, but it was a horror so severe as to warn them away from
even contemplating it. And though surely they were seeing it happen, none of them
could manage to give voice to the thought of it. It confounded the mind. It sent the
very concept of reality reeling.

They saw the last ones to leave the castle safely: Eliphaz' last team, the three guards
bearing the cage trap between them. The three stumbled as they crossed the threshold
to the yard, but then came, hurried yet smooth, the rest of the way.

Static burst from the radios then. A voice said, "Warning! Warning! --" but it was
broken off before it could complete its thought.

* * *

The Animator had put himself to animating the castle itself. He had never gone into
anything bigger than a house before, but he had every confidence that he could do it.
He knew the limitations of his power.

He thought of how those mortals would cower and despair. How could they hope
to compete and succeed against such awesome power? They would probably
collapse, outright, dead; consumed by feelings of hopelessness and grief when they saw
the example of his raw might. He was like a god to them. They were so inferior and
subservient.

He was thinking, Pray, and make sacrifices to appease me mortals, lest my
wrath go on you unleashed! And like the told-of faith the size of a mustard seed, he
put himself to the mountain, and told it to get up and walk.

It did.

It sounded like Vesuvius. Like the judgment on Pompeii.

It sounded like the shock-wave radiating out of Hiroshima.

The ultimate Wrath of Death.

The castle stood up. Ancient colossus of stone. It reared up and formed, like
earth turning into a golem, as wrought by the skilled hands and incantations of a master
sorcerer.

Towers were its arms, and towers were its legs. The main gate, archer slits blazing
for eyes, portcullis gnashing like teeth, rose up as a head on top of that mighty body. It
was at least two hundred feet high. Its mass was so heavy and large as to be
immeasurable. Cracks formed in the mortar and brick of the great, tower arms as the
Animator went, fashioning tremendous, boulder-like hands for himself: for grasping, and
for the stuffing of its hungry, iron maw. Then he caused the great, castle champion to
bellow once, and it sounded like the thunder of near-striking lightning.

As the Animator had indeed intended, the sight of his power struck to the very
heart of the men who were there to witness it. Three of the guards with Randy and
Greggory dead-away fainted, and Randy was reduced to just muttering, from between
bloodless lips, "How can we fight that? How can we possibly fight that?" And they
were all like trees, rooted to the spot where they stood. Helpless to retreat from the
sight of their godlike master.

The Animator reared up one foot, one well-founded tower, and huge clumps of
earth were still clinging to it in a ring, so it appeared like the flared end of a hammer. It
brought that mighty, powerful foot forward.

It took one titanic step...

Seventy, eighty feet in one massive stride...

One step.

Every bit as dramatic as that first one off the ladder of the moon lander into that
drift of lunar dust. One step.

Into a minefield.

Onto the triggers of at least forty highly explosive mines.

* * *

Later, Greggory would stop to think: There was nothing humorous about that
situation at all. But when it first happened it seemed down-right hysterical.

The huge right leg/tower of the Animator burst, a huge column of white-orange fire
shooting up from the ground to smite it. The leg crumbled, cracked, scattered, rubble
and debris blew every which way. Greggory and his companions were flattened by the
blast, and lucky they were not to get crushed by the rain of boulder and rock and grit
that came down around it.

None of them were on their feet long enough to watch and see the Animator teeter
on his one leg. See him topple side-long towards where his foot had moments ago
been, but where now there was only a gaping pit of a crater. None of them saw it.

But they all heard it well enough.

Like a mountain being dynamited to make way for the pass; like a building going
down to clear the block for new construction.

When they managed to regain their feet it was all done: the mighty castle was
smashed across the hilltop; a scattering of ruins. Like a broken gingerbread man, in
pieces on the kitchen floor.

And it wasn't just Greggory who was laughing, it was all of them who were still
awake. They were laughing so hard that soon there was no air left in their lungs for it,
and they were left gasping and watery-eyed.

* * *

And it was rage that drove the Animator then. He was furious. The mortals had
embarrassed him. He was humiliated. They were laughing at him. Laughing.

He would show them.

He would show them!

They were there, sprawled out in uproar. Helpless with their hilarity. Oh, would he
show them.

He didn't stop to think about what the rocket launcher was doing there. He didn't
stop to wonder why it was hanging there, suspended from a chain in the middle of a
skeletal cube, metal frame. He was only thinking of taking it, aiming it, and firing, firing,
firing...

When he first touched the weapon, entering into it, there was a light, red, and a
sound, beep! Then suddenly the chain was gone, spring-drawn away. There was a
puffing noise and a hiss. Pink colored walls sprung up around him, like a net, and they
closed off at the top as though drawn by a string.

Suddenly he was in the dark. And he was trapped. For the first time ever, unable
to move as he pleased. He was thinking, What's going on here? What just
happened? And the weapon was not really a weapon after all. It was just a piece of
molded foam rubber, painted and detailed to look deadly, but in truth as pliable as
gauze, and totally harmless.

There was no space in there. No leverage. He was in the form of the phony
weapon, and it was useless to him, and he was trapped on all sides by walls of living
tissue that repelled his every attempt to enter or pass through. But for lack of a mouth,
he would've screamed.

* * *

Greggory and Randy heard the trap go, but neither one could believe it had been
properly set off. They turned to look at it, dumbfounded, at first thinking it must have
malfunctioned. But even as they were slowly recovering from their hysterics, wiping the
tears out of their eyes, the guard with the cold-zone tracker was confirming it for them:
they had just trapped the Animator. That set them off laughing all over again.