another fine mess

Now where was I? Oh yeah...

We launched a major assault on Baba Yaga's Siberian base. Oh you shoulda seen it. Hell the snowstorm was so heavy I barely saw it myself. But I sure heard it. And felt it with each explosion. Qlippothic and Ash were crushing robot huts right and left. Bloodwing and Zavael were counterspelling like crazy and generally unleashing cosmic whoopass on undead witches. The Jagers were shooting anything that moved and stomping on them when they were done just to make sure. Those glowing Digital Knight guys that Ash rescued from that other Grid were buzzing around slicing robots with their frisbee-things.

No, I'm not on medication. This really happened. This is pretty standard as far as Mason adventures go. You must be new here?

Well anyway, I was in my inframask suit darting around slashing mummified witches and robot tentacles. Eventually we ran out of things to smash and we generally agreed that we won. The only problem was that the witches set their reactor to self destruct. Instead of panicking like I normally do, I figured out away to hook the reactor up to Qli's galvanic tesseractor and reconfigure the chamber as a time machine, using that explosion to start the engine instead of leaving a huge crater in the middle of Mother Russia.

The Knights knew circuitry like the backs of their hands (which had circuitry on them actually, so it makes sense) and helped us rewire everything. Xavael cast a spell called SEAMLESS ARMOUR which usually is used on SUITS of armor, but he said he heard it got cast on a leaky boat once so he figured it would work on a time machine. And Doc Mason as usual was directing everything from the safety of the New Babbage Consulate.

"Is everything ready?" he asked from a staticky screen perched over my shoulder while I was spotwelding.

"Yes! We double-checked and triple-checked!" I snapped back.

"As a point of testing I've dilated the time in the immediate vicinity to give us the equivalent of days of preparations instead of the actual hours we had left," stated Qli from inside the tube where she was plugging cables into the joints of her brass armor.

"Yeah, it works great. But unlike you Qli some of us need to eat and sleep once every few days!"

"It's quite normal for you to feel cranky in your present state..." interrupted Doc. "Blah blah blah cans of tuna in the lower cabinet..."

FINALLY! I ripped off my goggles and jumped down and started tugging on the cabinet until it blew open with a shower of sparks. Doc started yelling at me as I reached for the fire extinguisher. Ash looked up from where he was riveting the bulkhead as the whole chamber started shaking. "I believe that was the wrong cabinet."

"Is Doc cursing at me in Russian now?"

"No." Qli answered. "You've launched us into hypertime! The feedback through Doctor Mason's connection he sent him into a backwards loop."

"Yeesh. He's gonna tan my..."

Another huge explosion. I wrapped my arms around a support strut as everything that wasn't nailed down got sucked through a hole in the wall where Ash was still hanging on. One of the other cabinets burst open. I saw the cans of tuna spinning in mid-air, hurtling towards the infinite void. I leaped...

"NO!" Screamed Qli as I hit a sliding sheet of metal with full force.

"What happened?" I asked as I waited for the room to stop spinning.

"Ash covered the rupture from the outside and hung on long enough to spot-weld it before he..."

"Before he what? Where...where is he?"

"He is lost." Qli placed a can of tuna on the floor beside me as I curled into a ball. I grabbed and hurled it across the room. I was too busy yowling.