SWNOVELS Chapter Chapter Fifty-Six
“Wait! What? Kick my ass?” Dorian stammered.
“You know how this works. To wear the armor, you need to earn it by besting its wearer in a physical challenge. He needs to kick that sweet little tuchas of yours!” Granny swatted Dorian’s hind side as she moved past him into the kitchen. She gathered the squirt rifles and set them next to her bucket of filled balloons. “How did you earn it?”
“Arm wrestling.”
“Then do that.”
“I think I can beat him fairly easily. I’m pretty strong, now, with add my body modifications.”
“Then let him kick you in the nuts.”
“What? I’m not going to have him kick me in my nuts!”
“How about he punches you in the face?”
“No!”
“You’re such a pussy!” Granny jeered. “A big, muscly baby!”
“Have you ever been kicked in the nuts or punched in the face? It hurts!”
Granny sighed in disgust and shook her head. She walked across the living room and opened a cabinet in the bottom of her trophy case laden with blue ribbons and shiny urn-shaped awards. She removed a cardboard box labeled with a photo of stereotypical pre-teenage nineties kids intertwined in a very innocent pile.
“Then do this. You’ll suck at it.”
“Will this count? I realize that it’s a physical challenge, but, really?”
“You can use that or devise some other challenge. Just lose. I need to get going and so do you.” Granny took Dorian by the arm and led him back to the kitchen. “Now, go on!”
“But. . . “
“But, what?” Griffin replied.
Dorian found himself standing back on the opposite side of the yellow door.
“What did she say? Will she help?”
“She will, but with conditions.” Dorian held out the box.
“She will help, but only if you play Twister?”
“She wants us to play Twister.”
“Is she going to watch? Who would have thought that Numia had a kinky side?” Griffin chuckled.
“It isn’t like that, although she probably would enjoy it. She needs you to wear the armor.”
“And playing Twister figures into that how?”
“She suggested it as a physical challenge that I could lose so that you could gain control of the armor. You win, I relinquish the armor. That’s how it works.”
“Did you mention these?” Griffin pointed down at his mechanical legs. “Left mechanized lower extremity, red!”
“It never came up. Sorry. She was trying to provide an alternative that I was comfortable with.”
“An alternative to what?”
“Oh, you’re gonna love this!” Dorian laughed. “You need to better me in a physical challenge, right? So, she said that you should, get this, punch me in the face!”
“Punch you in the face?”
“Yeah or kick me in the nuts! Can you belie . . .”
Dorian’s head rocked back as Griffin’s fist hit him squarely between the eyebrows. He fell backward into the yellow door a slid down until his seat settled on the welcome mat. Griffin squatted beside him, shaking the pain from his knuckles.
“Did I win?”
“Why would you do that?” Dorian groaned.
“Because I don’t have good enough control over my legs to kick you in the nards. Did I win?”
Dorian didn’t need to answer. The clasps on the breastplate were released on their own.
“Help me up. I’ll help you get this thing on.”
After a brief struggle with getting the breastplate to fit around Griffin’s wings, he was all buckled in. He wriggled around a bit, rotating his arms.
“This really pinches . . .”
“Under the arms. Tell me about it!” Dorian agreed. “Ancient dudes must have had tiny shoulders. Let me show you what I know about how to control this thing. This button is an emergency default that will jump you back to the moment that I started my quest. You’ll stay in the spot you are standing, but you will travel back to that moment.”
“Cool!” Griffin replied. “What if I want to go to a different time?”
“You use these.” Dorian pointed to a series of lapis stones embedded in the design of the armor. “I wasn’t trained in how they work, but I saw Reese move them around to set the default, so I wouldn’t mess with them.”
“They’re really pretty.” He stroked his finger over their surface. “What does this thing do?” Griffin touched a quarter-sized carving at the end of the string of stones and disappeared.
“You’ve gotta be freakin’ kidding me!” Dorian yelled into the empty corridor. He kicked the Twister box and sent it sliding into the hallway. It came sliding right back, slamming into his foot.
“What did Milton Bradley ever do to you?” Cate purred as she appeared from around the corner.
“You? What are you doing here?” Dorian sighed. “Have you been following us?”
“Following. Watching. Listening. It’s easy to multitask when you have more than one head.”
“Charlie knows that I’m here? Does he have you spying on me?”
“Yes, he knows you’re here. And, no, We’re not his flunkies. Do you think that just because he is a man and we’re a woman he tells me what to do?” Cate hissed.
“Uh, no. I didn’t even think of you as a woman.”
“Excuse me?” Cate growled.
“I mean, I thought of you as a cat. I don’t assign genders to animals. He behaved like he was in charge, so I assumed he was your boss.”
“He isn’t. We’re coworkers. It’s easier for him to carry the tablet because he has pockets and walks upright.”
“Having hands is a plus,” Dorian suggested.
“You’re one comment away from us scratching your eyes out.”
“Sorry.”
“One more,” Cate reiterated.
“Got it.” Dorian jittered.
Cate lurched toward Dorian, making him flinch.
“I got it! Jeez! So, why are you, under no one else’s instruction, watching me?”
“Because we think our boy Charlie has gotten in way over his head. He’s trying to game the system and It probably won’t end well.”
“Why should that concern me?”
“Oh, it really won’t affect you, per se, but your lady friend is another story.”