The fire escape resembled a nearly finished game of Jenga—if the wooden blocks were rusted iron, and the whole thing dangled off the side of a building.

  Its only visible supports were bendy metal poles so thin they looked like wire coat hangers straining under the weight of a suit of armor. In places, those poles vanished altogether, leaving the staircase floating in midair.

  Each level switched back on itself, sagging like overloaded garage shelves, before disappearing around a corner.

  The steps themselves were steep and slippery, when they were there at all. Half were missing, and not in a convenient, one-out-of-every-two way where you could easily jump between them. These were gone in clusters of three or four. Even in the more intact sections, the metal hung loose and twisted, clinging on like half-detached ring pulls on a soda can. Even the paint was chipped.

  “OK, so they do look dangerous, but I don’t see what’s so special about them,“ said Bastion. “They’re falling apart just like all the other buildings out there that don’t have any theming.”

  Mayor Big Time shook his head. “Those other buildings break down because they don’t have theme magic to stop them from breaking down. These stairs were already broken when the Warp happened, and now magic keeps them that way. They look like they’re falling apart, but they’re not. They’ll stay exactly this level of dangerously dilapidated forever because that’s their theme. The same way a wall of crenelated foam will withstand a battering ram, these stairs will warp reality to drop you.”

  “Then why the hell do you keep them here?” Bastion said, exasperated.

  “To be a death trap for any enemies stupid enough to try climbing them. It would have worked out great, except these enemies weren’t stupid. They clearly knew enough about theming to choose another route.”

  Roy wondered if stuff like this was around every corner here in Florida. In a single day, he’d already experienced more theme magic than he had in years back in the Star Republic.

  He was still learning more every moment. Right now he was focused on how it felt when the power of thematic resonance slipped away. It hit him as soon as he stepped out onto the iron stairway, the weight returning to his body, the accumulated fatigue hitting him all at once.

  It was like flying in a dream, only to wake and remember that you never could. Like the crash when an elixir wore off, hitting even harder because he’d soared so much higher.

  From the way he felt now, it seemed knights and acrobatic obstacle courses weren’t a good match.

  Bastion looked to be doing better, nimbly stepping around the rusted parts of the steps, while the Mayor gripped his clock tight, holding it pre-wound in case he needed to halt a falling step.

  Roy followed behind them, stepping out cautiously. The first steps wobbled underfoot, and he had to grip the rails to avoid sliding on the slick metal. The railings wobbled too. He had no confidence they’d hold his weight. If a step suddenly dropped out from beneath him, he’d have to throw himself forward and hope the next one held.

  As if to confirm the thought, a piece of railing snapped off in his hand when he gripped it too tightly. He let it go and watched it plummet. The rain was so intense that he never heard it hit the ground.

  There were other sounds in the distance, though: waves that crashed without rhythm, the muffled clamour of panicking men, and the distorted warble of weapon blasts.

  Ahead of him, Bastion slipped, but he took it in stride, appearing to surf down the stairs. He skidded to the bottom of the flight just as a few steps dropped away behind him. Roy hoped that meant Bastion had already triggered every step that could fall.

  Mayor Big Time nearly lost his footing, but steadied himself against the railing. His fingers twitched over the winding mechanism, but he didn’t let go of the clock.

  Roy caught up with them as they reached the next flight. Here, all the railings were missing, and the twisted steps tilted toward the drop.

  “Better to take a straight run at it,” Roy said. “No stopping.”

  They took off together. Even without resonance, Roy was faster. Twice he had to leap over steps that wobbled and dropped away the moment his foot left them.

  Suddenly, Big Time appeared ahead of him, having used his clock to freeze a piece of falling metal. He didn’t move to wind it again.

  “There’s a cooldown,” he explained, winded. “Be careful. I can’t do that again for a while.”

  Roy nodded and sprinted on to where the stairs turned sharply around a corner. He was on the back side of the building now, passing under the rusted remnants of cooling units. The ruined city was spread out to his right. Still no railings.

  He kept going, boots hammering against metal, until his right foot snagged on a twisted step. His leg jerked backward mid-stride. He started to fall.

  Only his reflexes saved him. Years spent running on broken roads had made him used to uneven surfaces. The key to remaining on your feet was to come to a stop slowly, using each step to absorb your momentum, rather than crashing to a stop all at once.

  His left foot hit the edge of a step, and he lifted his right sharply, freeing it just in time. Skipping the next two steps, he launched off the third. Then he slammed his left foot down again on a relatively level patch of metal, trying to establish some friction.

  It worked, and he stood still, feeling relieved until the step dropped out from under him.

  This time, he didn’t recover. With no time to think of something, he landed flat on his ass one flight down.

  It was a stringing kind of pain, the kind you needed to rub at. He felt quite foolish when Bastion glided down the stairway toward him.

  “You ok?”

  “I should be. I need to get some better armor though.” He needed something that would provide a good baseline of resonance, so he didn’t run completely dry in the wrong setting.

  Above, a step gave way under Big Time. His legs dropped through the gap, but his torso caught on the edges, leaving him awkwardly wedged in place.

  “Ugh. Can you help me out here?”

  Roy and Bastion each grabbed a leg and pulled him free. Bastion visibly winced from the weight, and Roy’s glutes didn’t feel quite right after landing on them.

  “Is your clock still on cooldown?” asked Roy.

  “It just finished,” said Big Time, “but I’m trying to save it for whatever’s around that corner.”

  Probably a smart move, because when they turned again the chaotic scene before them was almost too much to take in.

  Waves crashed over the streets of Bay Town like watery claws, then pulled back into the riverbed, only to strike again seconds later.

  Plasma bolts rained down on town guards as they sprinted down the flooded street with nets and harpoon guns. They were rushing toward the bridge, trying to get to the source of the deluge: a giant hermit crab wearing the top half of a submarine as its shell.

  The same submarine that had sat atop Tech Trove.

  Mr. Pepper stood atop it, flanked by gray-suited men, wearing the Sea King’s crown and wielding his trident.

  “Holy shit,” said Bastion. “I knew we couldn’t trust Tim after he only gave us one diving suit.”

  “We don’t know for sure that Tim gave it to him,” said Roy.

  “Look. He’s wearing that weird fishtail armor you told me about.”

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  The one we told Mr. Pepper about. Roy felt a pang of guilt. Was this us? Is this our fault? He could have told Bastion to leave Tech Trove before he’d given those details away. He’d had a bad feeling about Mr. Pepper from the start.

  “Of course Tim gave it to him,” said Bastion. “I had a bad feeling about him from the start.”

  “We’ll find out what happened later,” said Big Time. “First, we need to stop that thing.” He turned to Bastion. “Do you have a clear shot?”

  “Let’s find out.” Bastion unslung his crossbow and aimed at Mr. Pepper. He fired in a parabolic arc, trying to cover the maximum distance, but a flick of the trident sent a wave surging toward them, and the bolt vanished in the spray.

  The wave kept coming, its crest rising as it went. Roy was admiring the way the fishtail armor synergised with the trident’s magic when the stairs beneath him collapsed.

  This time it wasn’t a single step or even a cluster of them; the entire stairway went down, taking all three of them with it.

  Water rushed in beneath them as they fell, preventing them from splattering against the concrete, which had to be the exact opposite of what Mr. Pepper was trying to achieve.

  Roy’s head plunged beneath the surface, and surging water spun him around in the dark. After a few seconds of turbulent, disorienting motion, his chest slammed against stone.

  Spluttering, he patted his thigh to make sure his sword was still there. Then he pushed himself back to his feet. His armor had held up well, but the clothes beneath were soaked and heavy. He’d been washed into a side street and couldn’t see Bastion or Big Time anywhere.

  The whole street was ruins: sections of wall with no roofs above them and no sign of what their interiors had once contained. In some places, the only hint that buildings had once stood here at all was the shattered road between them. The cracked concrete was a reedy watercourse, flooded long before the wave Roy had rolled in on.

  Neon reflections shimmered in the puddles, leading him back to Bay Town’s main street. To the only place around here that meant anything.

  After a short time running, he looked up to orient himself and found that he was back alongside the hotel. The fire escape’s stairs had returned to their original place above him, exactly as broken as they were meant to be once more.

  Roy ran through the half-flooded street, taking in the battle unfolding before him. There were no gray men on the ground, and only a handful riding up on the crab over on the far side of the river, but the trident alone was enough to hold back Bay Town’s forces.

  Any time one of the navy-themed fighters got close, another wave crashed down and washed them away. A few managed to fire harpoons from the opposite bank, trying to drag the crab down with ropes, but most just bounced off the submarine’s hull. The few that were embedded in the crab's flesh only served to drag the harpooners into the river when the next wave hit.

  Roy ran for the bridge, trying to find some way to help. As he passed the storefronts, the speakers that had played cheery tunes when he’d first arrived now thumped out thunderous bass. A wave caught him as he neared it, knocking him back along with a handful of other men. They scrambled to their feet and began wading forward at a painfully slow pace, only to be swept back again seconds later.

  Others tried to use their themes to help. The witch girl sprayed a water jet into the wave from her glow-stick wand, but the spray wasn’t strong enough to force it back, and when she lost her hat in the river her magic stopped working.

  The man in the cardboard robot costume made better progress. His stiff movements gave him the magical weight he needed to stand firm against the current. It worked well for a while. Unfortunately, his costume didn’t look that great, and he was being carried hard by his commitment to the role. The silver-sprayed cardboard didn’t react to the soaking like chrome plating; it turned soggy and collapsed around him.

  The Martial artist ignored the bridge entirely and tried to jump kick across the river. It worked amazingly well at first; he flew as though propelled by some unseen force, which Roy assumed was exactly what was happening. But mystical martial arts moves couldn’t help him against the wave, which cast him back to land on the riverbank.

  That blast of water sprayed wide, slamming into the Bay Town sign at the end of the street. The neon B came loose and crashed to the ground, still glowing.

  Roy couldn’t do anything useful from here. He drew his sword and checked the stars on the blade, hoping one might have recharged by now. No luck.

  He glanced behind him. A robed man watched from within the Virtua-Quest portal, making no move to help. Nearby, Bastion stood atop one of the iron tables lining the front of the hotel, firing bolt after bolt at Mr. Pepper.

  Bastion aimed high, and Roy instantly recognized what he was doing. In the cadets, they trained you to aim for center mass most of the time, since at a distance it was better to increase your chance of hitting at all than go for a headshot.

  That tactic was for fighting monsters, not men. Men wore themed armor and carried weapons that could be capable of anything.

  For situations like this (or at least in the same broad category, Roy doubted the academy’s instructors had ever faced something exactly like this) the goal was to disable your enemy’s theme as quickly and efficiently as possible.

  Bastion knew what to do here, but he couldn’t do it. Mr. Pepper had conjured a swirling watery shield in front of himself to deflect incoming fire from the town guard’s hand cannons, and Bastion’s bolts splashed off it just as easily.

  The way he spun the trient sent the waves roiling in random directions, wrecking everything in their path.

  A pillar popped out from under Pizza Palace, bringing down the whole facade in a crash of plaster and plastic.

  A penguin atop the snowcapped cafe was blasted loose and slid down the fiberglass mountain. Another bolt saw it decapitated on its way down. Its head shattered a section of the roof, exposing steel girders behind the fake snow.

  The Bay Town sign took another blow. This time, it was the star that fell. Roy lost sight of it as it floated away toward the sea.

  Roy didn’t know what these people wanted, but they were destroying one of the last great wonders left in this world. Just like those bandits who’d tried to loot the movie theater. That was the first time he’d had to fight for real. For this, he’d gladly do it again.

  He thought of the ruined street he’d just come from. If this continued, Bay Town would end up just like everywhere else. He couldn’t let that happen. He had to save it.

  Ripping his sword from its scabbard, he brandished it high above him, not knowing what he planned to do with it, only that he had to do something. To his astonishment, it began glowing with golden light. The lights around him glowed brighter too, signs and storefronts flaring with vibrant colors. Even the shattered neon B on the ground crackled with crimson sparks.

  All around the battlefield, people paused, turning toward the sudden glow. All attention was on him now.

  Up on the crab, Mr. Pepper dropped his watery shield to aim the trident at Roy. No doubt he was following the same military style rules as Bastion. He wanted to knock out Roy’s theme magic because he didn’t know what it could do.

  That makes two of us.

  ”Now!” Roy spoke, and his voice came out like a crack of thunder.

  The trident jabbed, and a wave shot toward him. He could only hope that Bastion would know what to do.

  A bolt flew, and struck true. The crown toppled from Pepper’s head and fell down the side of the crab he rode on, clinking somewhere on the street below.

  The wave veered off course, crashing into and over Pages of the Ages, missing Roy entirely.

  Mr. Pepper swung the trident frantically, chanting sea-themed puns as fast as he could, but his control was slipping. The waves grew weaker and went wildly off target, missing the bridge or dissipating before even reaching it. One of them backfired and blasted a gray-suited man off the submarine. Roy winced as he crunched against the concrete.

  Sensing their opening, the forces of Bay Town immediately raced toward the crab. The Witch had recovered her hat and was jet-washing the puddles off the bridge, clearing a path for the harpooners.

  The town guards had both superior numbers and the home turf advantage, and by splashing water all over the place, the men in gray had given them a theming advantage too. Harpoons sank into the crab’s flesh, fired with supernatural force, and teams of men began dragging it away from the river with enhanced strength.

  This group of grays had no time slowing stopwatches, and while there were multiple pairs of shades in play, none were charged with light. Their plasma guns packed a punch, but more guards rushed in to take the place of those that fell, and when they were hit anywhere but the head they had the ability to seal their wounds simply by rubbing them with water. Handy, Roy thought.

  The Martial artist double-punched one of the crab’s legs to snap it, fists blurring in the air, then snapped it loose with a spinning kick.

  The robot guy had ripped the keyboard from his ruined costume and was now smashing it against the crab, sending keys flying everywhere. In plain clothes, he cut a dashing figure, with long blonde hair flowing behind him and muscles flexing with every strike.

  Once enough ropes had latched onto the crab, a team of guards hauled a barnacle-crusted anchor off the back of a boat and tied one to the end of it. The moment it hit a few inches of water, the rope snapped taut.

  At first, Roy wasn’t sure if it was just the weight of the thing or if some kind of magic was involved, but his question was answered for him when the rope started to shorten, reeling in the crab.

  Roy charged over the bridge and hacked at one of the legs, chopping it like firewood. He was one of many. The fight seemed well in hand now. Across the street, a guard fished Big Time out of the River.

  From the submarine deck atop the crab, Mr. Pepper stared at the Mayor for a few seconds, then spoke into a small radio.

  Roy pressed his hands to his ears as a whirring noise filled the air above. Moments later, a black dual-rotor helicopter hovered over the rooftops.

  The men propping up Mr. Pepper fired grappling hooks up to its side, and the crab’s remaining crew grabbed on to be lifted into the sky.

  As the helicopter disappeared into the night, the crab slumped to the ground, freed from the trident’s control.

  They’d fled as soon as it was clear their plan to assassinate Big Time had failed. This didn’t look like the imminent conquest of Bay Town that the Mayor was so preoccupied with preventing. Instead, the big, lumbering crustacean seemed more like a massive, eye-catching distraction.

  “Well,” said Bastion, coming up behind Roy and slapping him on the back. “I’d say our job just got a lot more urgent. You think we can ask for a bigger reward?”