Right Back Where We Started [Five]

Fourteen

Let's pass the story. The first person to comment starts the story with a sentence and everyone onward adds a line/sentence to create a story.

The Kugelblitz was indeed a ball of lightning.

This much Emery's mind could process as he stood before it.

A big ball of indestructible death in a marble shape... if the marble was one hundred times larger and had the potential to do more than just choke you or disrupt your digestive system if ingested wrong. No- this was death in a basement. Literally.

"Beautiful, isn't it?" Fei said.

"'Beautiful' is a generous term." Emery muttered sourly under his breath.

Lila just scoffed. "That's what took Stanley."

"Along with a few other billion people." Fei added.

"Yeah, who I didn't know and don't care about." Lila went on as she surveyed the blitz.

"Right. So it's all about you."

"All of us are irrelevant." Five said as he gazed at the thing, face glowing orange in its reflection. "This thing's gonna take the whole damn universe. What is it made of?"

"Micro black holes collapsing at increasingly short intervals." Sloane explained.

"Then why aren't we getting sucked inside?"

"Honestly, we don't know. You shouldn't exist here, and neither should this."

"An impossibility for an impossibility." Five mused. "The universe is a sucker for balance."

"Grace has been tracking the waves." Fei said. "Next one is due in three hours."

"All right, so what do we do?"

"We trap it." Sloane said.

"Stain sphere?" Five ventured.

"Yeah."

Five clicked his tongue. "Okay." He crossed his arms as he started quizzing the girl. "Confinement factor?"

"0.98 at peak energy flux." Sloane answered easily.

"Tensile strength?" Five pressed.

"UTS ceiling of 10,000 gigapascals."

"Should I be finding this hot?" Lila asked.

"No!"

"No!" Diego and Luther replied at the same time as Emery uttered, "Yes."

Lila just winked at him.

"What do you think, Five?" Allison pressed.

"Could work." He admitted. "Or we could all die horribly." He added. "I'm in."

"You're not the one we need." Fei was quick to shoot down.

"Excuse you?" Allison said.

"For this to work, we need Sloane, Lila, Emery, Christopher, and—"

"Viktor." Allison filled in the blanks. "Of course." She said, pushing off the bit of all she was leaning against.

"What do we have to do?" Lila said.

"We need to wait for Viktor for one, and only then can we start." Sloane explained.

"I'll get him." Ben ventured, waltzing away and around the bend.

"Are we sure that's the best idea?" Emery asked as Ben's figure disappeared from view.

"Probably not, but he's already gone and something tells me this version of Ben is a lot more stubborn... and stupid." Five said. "He'll get Viktor." He pulled Emery off to the side. "Are you sure about this?" He asked, eyeing the Kugelblitz in the middle of the room.